Is it just me or does the Economy/E-Bay seem to be hurting Sellers? It Really is Time to Buy!
thedutymon11
Posts: 668 ✭✭✭✭
Afternoon,
So I am wondering if I am seeing a trend which eventually is going to lead to a shortage of Card product or? What I am talking about , at least with my recent experience with Offers and Counteroffers. Since Thursday of last week I have Picked up 7 different Item(s) that I had thought I had no Chance in HeL!! of getting the item for my Offer. All seven of these items were just throw away Offers, now I've spent $550 I didn't plan on!
As an example, this morning I offered $75 for an item listed at $149.99 and it was accepted, another, I was sent an offer for a $33 dollar item I was watching, for $30, I countered with $23 and the note that there would be no more negotiating, was approved 2 minutes later. Another item was originally listed at $129.00, on Sale for $89., I offered $70, it was taken within minutes.
At this rate I just need to Watch something and the offers roll in!
Anybody else seeing this, and No I won't tell you the items or where I'm watching! 
YeeHaw!
Neil
Comments
Infrequent eBay bucks, higher shipping costs, state sales tax - it’s a frustrating time to buy.
Kiss me twice.....let's party.
Yes, I've received offers on items that were on my watch list much more frequently than in the past. It is surprising. I rarely pull the trigger for the same reasons as Nathaniel1960 states. With sales tax and shipping an item that I would purchase for $1000 on eBay would have to be sold for around $1325 on eBay just to maybe break even. A PC hold forever card, maybe.
How do you send offers to watchers? I'm not seeing this option.
I agree it's a buyer's market right now. Send an offer... you never know what might happen.
Im also seeing an increase of idiot offers. Items that sell for $200, the day before, I get offers of $25.
I had a guy actually get mad at me the other day when he lowballed me and I responded that I was already the lowest price on ebay, right at the amount 3 others had sold in the past month. Sure, make me an offer. Just don't be an ass about it when I say no.
I've experienced the opposite on vintage. Very few of my "best offers" are accepted. Last night I offered $14.99 for a 1954 Bowman common in an SGC holder listed at $19.99 BIN. The seller countered with....$19.50.
As hard as it was, I declined the 49 cent discount and bought the card from someone else. Makes you wonder why people bother with best offer if their negotiating room is pennies. Would have met him halfway....geez.
@thedutymon11 Care to say what cards you obtained?
Sure I'll mention a couple, the $75 for an asking price of $149 was a prominent Hockey Card lot of 150 each of exactly the same Card number claimed to be MINT, 1989/90, I received today (because of Centering, 1/2 were out of the question., But about 20 each were possible 10's!)
And I am going to sub about 10-15 of them eventually. PSA 9's of this card sell for $30-$60, last two Gems went for $140-$150. If I sub 12 of these as I plan too, if I Pop 3 10's I'll maKE A FEW BUCKS!
Next Up: Some of my purchases are a little off the wall.
YeeHaw!
Neil
it is a buyers market for sure. I wonder, though, how long the buyers will continue to have expendable income for Cards due to inflation?
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Inflation is killing us all!
Currently Im back to just buying and acquiring Stock at ridiculous prices. I quit Selling on E-Bay, Have a couple hundred listings on MYSLABs, sell one every week or so, have another 1000 on COMC. Dont think I've sold anything on there for months!
I have also Noticed that the variety on E-Bay is getting lesser and lesser as well! Another thing I do is find stuff I'm interested in and Watch it, make a low ball offer, get turned down, then just wait. After 2 months and if the card still there I Mention that its looks nice on His Virtual shelf, but does he ever really want to sell it. Then offer the same price I did the first time with the No Negotiation Caveat, and 7 out of 10 sell it to me!
YeeHaw!
Neil
What I'm seeing is BIN pricing that has no basis of reality. It seems to be a selling strategy to list a card with a crazy high sale price or Best Offer. I guess it's the "you never know" mentality but I find it a waste of time. It is so easy to do a little research to find out what a card has been selling for and price accordingly.
NFL HOF Set
https://www.psacard.com/psasetregistry/publishedset/398345
I think there's a mentality aspect but it is more in line with the idea that people like to feel like they got a deal. For example, it seems more common lately that an arbitrary card that should sell for around $40 moves more quickly if priced between $50 to $60 as BIN/OBO and seller either uses the send-offer option or a buyer submits an offer at $40, as opposed to just having it listed as BIN with no OBO. Also, sellers are able to use send-offer on items that are listed fixed BIN w/o OBO, so when they do so, perhaps it seems even more enticing to the buyer since the item looked like it wasn't taking less in the first place.
It's just different sales strategies, similar say to something like Kohl's vs. Target, where Target prices items at the amount they are intending to sell for, while Kohl's prices higher and then constantly issues coupons and promotions for buyers to use if they are willing to go through the associated hoops.
I think the reason is that by sending offers it increases visibility in the eBay search algorithm. on lower priced cards I send out many small discount offers and have noticed many times that the item gets bought by other buyers for the full price within the next day
Agree with this 100%. Was watching a '73 Mays PSA 9 that sold for $1251 just a couple days ago. BIN for the one on eBay is $2999. Heritage couldn't even get that asking price.
I think sometimes people offer a percentage of what the asking price is regardless of what they have been selling for. I sold a low pop PSA 9 card a few weeks ago for $700. There isnt any purchase history on the card except for a BGS 9, which sold for $500, but in this issue, they generally sell for about 35-30% more in the same PSA grade, so I had it up at a BIN of $699 with no best offer option, was up for 6 months and no interest other than a few people sending a message saying they would buy it for $500. I changed it to $799 OBO and in one day had an offer of $700, my original asking price. Coincidence? Possibly, but honestly, like was mentioned before, people want to think they got a deal, so combined with idiot offers, pricing for the BIN/BO is much higher than a realistic purchase price
Disclaimers: I refer to auctions, not BIN, and I pay in a relatively shallow part of the pool (the most I've ever paid for a card is $5000, and the vast, vast majority have been one or two figures), but I've consistently made strong, usually record, bids and tend to get blown out of the water.
As a seller, I use BIN almost exclusively. When pricing my cards, I first look at completed sales and then at current BINs to determine the comp. It is surprising how many times the prices for a recently ended auction exceed the prices for the lowest available BIN. If I leave town for a week, I'll switch all of my BINs to auction with the minimum bid equivalent to the BIN, and often cards that sat for months at a certain BIN price will sell at auction for that same price. It's obvious that some (many?) buyers never look at BINs. So yes, there are plenty of snapperheads who have insanely priced BINs, but to suggest that there are no fairly priced BINs on ebay is simply not true.
I use best offer on ALL of my fixed price listings, and all of them are set up to auto-accept/decline. Most of them are set up to auto-accept at about 60% of the BIN price. BIN is pretty much set at the highest comps. I never get mad a a lowball offer, because most of the time I don't even see it because it was declined automatically.
I am saying this respectfully, but this type of sales model I think is what frustrates buyers and sellers on ebay. Listing a card for $500 that you will gladly take $300 for or even $400 for that matter just seems odd.
As a buyer, if I see something listed for 67% over what I feel (or can prove) is a reasonable price for the card, even with a Best Offer option, I have zero interest in dealing with that seller, it just rubs me the wrong way. Plus, no way would I ever have the guts to send an offer to a seller of 60% their asking price. In fact, if I offered someone $300 for a $500 card and they accepted, I would probably panic thinking I missed something with the card
.
As a seller, it's clear that people DO find success offering at 50 - 70% of asking prices, and thus they expect that same discount for cards that are priced very near or just slightly above comps.
Just my 2 cents, probably not even worth that.
I respect your opinion and I agree with most of it. When I said most of my offers are set at ~60% of the BIN price, I was referring to cards that are $20 and lower. Most of my fixed price listings are single digits. My BIN/BO ratios are set up as $12/$8, $9/$5, $7/$4, and $5/$3. Not asking for the moon there. On my big ticket items, I have a couple $1000 BINs and their BO is set at about $800.
I truly dont understand why anyone would ever get upset at a "lowball" offer? I mean, it is not personal. It is not like a personal insult if someone makes an offer for 25% of bin. its just business. either accept or decline. doesnt seem like a big deal to me. I have had items priced in the very high 4 digits and received offers as low as $500. doesnt matter to me. I will accept an offer if it seems reasonable, decline it if not, then go about my day.
I cant imagine getting aggravated or feeling slighted if someone sent me a low offer. Seems strange to me.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Tom, I understand that if we're talking about modern 9s and 10s that most will look alike and comps matter, but if we're talking about vintage cards comps do not matter that much to me because usually no two 6s, 7s, 8s, etc... look alike and eye appeal deserves a premium.
I do this as well. My BIN is about 10% higher than the highest sold and my auto accept is in the middle at where comps are. Auto accept/decline does the rest for me. If I want a good laugh, I'll go through a few listings of mine just to see what idiotic offers I got. Plus I've found that in 95% of the instances where auto accept is made, they pay immediately...no waiting for a week to get paid because they forgot they won it while waiting for you to negotiate.
I do all BIN. I tend to set the price at the previous sales price if I have comps, or a bit lower than the lowest current listing. I'm not looking to sell for crazy highs. I just want to turn over inventory. But I also have some cards that I don't see come up for sale often. I'm not setting those at last-sale prices when the last sale was 2020. Those I price at my best-guess, but with a OBO. And then I have a few items that I don't really care if I sell. They're priced high - if someone wants to make me sell. Otherwise, I'm happy to keep them.
I have tried sending offers to several listings of cards that are not in high demand, but no significant budging if at all. One has to simply keep trying.
BST: Tennessebanker, Downtown1974, LarkinCollector, nendee
Hey Nick, 100% agree, and I don't think I was being clear. Basically what I'm saying is this: If a group of sane collectors can agree that a particular card that I need is worth $300, and one seller lists it for $500 with a best offer yet will accept $300, and another seller lists it for $325, I'm buying it every single time for $325. I wouldn't even bother with an offer to the $500 seller, and worse yet (right or wrong), I would not think very highly of the $500 seller.
All this being said, I don't do well in marketplaces where everything is negotiable (e.g. ebay and car dealerships). I'm much happier walking into Home Depot or Best Buy where the price is what it is.
Good luck with that one.
I agree. And, if you're going to get offended by lowball offers, just set auto-decline on the listing.
I don't think every item gets that opportunity. I sell very infrequently and ebay has allowed me to send offers on a couple items, but not all.
I'm actually having the opposite experience more times than not. I'll see a BIN/BO listing at $500, comps are at $300. I'll offer $285 and either get declined or countered at $475. I've certainly gotten some great deals too, but the number of times I'm getting a hard decline for offers within 5-10% of comps is crazy.
tells me sellers haven't felt the pain of the economic collapse yet. just wait its coming
No doubt. I keep adding things to my Ebay list just to see what kind of offers I'll get. I'm getting more offers but the discount prices are still higher than things I can get as a BIN. Sellers are acting like it's 2021. We'll see how that changes into the holidays and 2023.
I'm patient.
Some sellers are having trouble coming to terms with the prices lowering (on some of the items I buy). But it is eBay so you can attempt to sell at any price.
Nic
Guides Authored - Graded Card Scanning Guide PDF | History of the PSA Label PDF
I am waiting. if energy/heating oil prices do what I think they are going to do this winter, I anticipate a great time for buyers.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
After reading the above selling strategies I can agree with most. That said, I still believe there are a lot of perhaps inexperienced sellers out there trying to get a crazy price for cards that they can't possibly get. So what's the point? For example look at 1970 Topps O.J. Simpson card let's say a PSA 7. Plenty of them out there with that grade. You will see prices from around $250 to over $2000 for the same card with the same grade. The last several that have sold went for high $200s or $300. Why would you offer this card for over $1000 or even $2000 or more importantly who would pay that for it...
NFL HOF Set
https://www.psacard.com/psasetregistry/publishedset/398345
Or an even easier to see example....1989 Score Barry Sanders RC graded PSA 9. There are probably 100 or more of these for sale on ebay right now. BIN prices range from $99.99 to over $500! Why would you bother listing this card for over $500 when there are dozens of the same card, same grade available for so much less? There are a lot of cards listed these days but only a few with prices that are in line with reality.
NFL HOF Set
https://www.psacard.com/psasetregistry/publishedset/398345
DutyMon - 100% same boat!
My collecting blog: http://ctcard.wordpress.com
Afternoon,
And the buying opportunities continue..................Last Two days: Card lot was originally priced at $99.95, on Sale for $79.99. Offered $50 (Plus his shipping of $5.50), was accepted within minutes. Four different Listings of groups of cards were $12 each lot of 8 Cards. Offered to buy 4 lots at $8 each lot and One shipping charge, accepted within the hour! And I've had similar outcomes on 5-6 other listings in the last week!
YeeHaw!
Neil