EBay is so tedious and overpriced that I'm testing an alternative
Slade01
Posts: 294 ✭✭✭
I put up like 15 coins on www.usacoinbook.com yesterday at the urging of a friend that has been selling over there. So I put up a couple of PCGS and NGC Morgans, silver nickels, and some other stuff all MS65 or 66. All your stuff ends up on your page and is also searchable
I already sold an 1882-S Morgan and 6 silver nickels. They charge 2% and you have to use PayPal so another 3.49%, but no monthly fees and the site waits up to 30 days for you to pay them the 2% amount, they don't touch your money.
So far so good with the experiment for me. Seems like more serious coin buyers than on EBay and none of the EBay advertising racket, not to mention lower sale fees and no store monthly fee. I immediately ended and deleted all the items off EBay upon sale, to avoid a problem there.
So today I added some common gold -- 2 MS65 St Gaudens (a 24 and a 27), and some Lincolns.
I just did straight listings and sales but they allow auctions and you can permit offers.
They have a kink or two, like no modern gold commemorative heading, which I informed them and they are addressing.
I have no conflict of interest, as I only heard of them a few days ago and was not too sure at first, but warming up to their site.
Comments
You can sell a $20 St for a total of 5% on ebay with a store, 4.5% if you're top-rated. Just saying. And 9% for other coins or 8% with top seller.
Ebay is the cheapest major marketplace out there, so calling them "overpriced" seems a bit unfair. I guess GC, Heritage, and Amazon are EXTREMELY overpriced.
The BST is free. If it doesn't sell, you haven't lost anything.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
https://www.usacoinbook.com/
Only if you have the volume to cover a store, its just some extra stuff that I have so it is 13.5%. And what I have varies depending on what I upgrade. I send a fair amount of stuff to GC that is too good for the average EBayer.
I buy a lot from Heritage and GC and some from Stacks but they have the quality difficult pieces that would be quite unusual on EBay. I am a collector who just sells off extra stuff. EBay may work for a full time big operation, but even APMEX is a lot cheaper on their own store than EBay.
And, Amazon? First they totally hose their sellers, and second they have just junk -- perhaps you were thinking of Stacks.
No, I meant Amazon.
And 1% of a Saint is a one month store subscription.
But admittedly, you need volume to justify it, although not s much as people think.
Ah, here I thought we were talking about buying/selling coins. You must not be aware of how badly Amazon screws their sellers. Sure I buy a lot from there, the subscribe and save is easy, but it would be the last place that I would ever go to either buy or sell a coin.
Ah, good, I see that Collector's Universe has an ignore so as not to suffer fools, bye.
I'm well aware of Amazon. I used to sell on Amazon. But people generally trash ebay and like Amazon and GC even though eBay is the lowest cost of the 3.
I sold a silver tea and coffee set. eBay charged 12.5% base plus 1.65% foreign account fee (even though the shipping address is US), plus final value is 0.40. I pay for the shipping $28.89. So I sold the set below the melt value after all the fees. (that's before silver price moved up to current 31.47 price). However, I would still use eBay for selling because it is easier and in most cases is trouble free. eBay only hold my money for two days, not like PayPal hold for 21 days.
$20 monthly store fee I treated that as advertisement fee.
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But when the coins are $2,400, the 5% in fees is $120.
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I think 5% might be bullion only. I pay almost 10% for coins.
That's correct. I'm not saying I recommend selling 20s on ebay. But the site he's promoting here charges 5.5% for the same 20. Personally, I prefer to just flip them wholesale since the bid/ask spread is less than 5%.
Talk to the OP. He's the one selling 20s on usacoinbook
Thanks for sharing, aside from the sidebar distractions.
HE>I
Glad it is working for you, it is nice to have a more fee friendly site vs ebay for those of us that are not power sellers, as one person thinks everyone is.
My Collection of Old Holders
Never a slave to one plastic brand will I ever be.
Just the ebay facts. Nothing more. Nothing less. Do with it what you will.
Now, if I want to sell two $20 St, I would just wholesale them as the bid/ask spread is 3.5%
Now, if I wanted to retail then and didn't already have a store, its cheaper to get a store for a month and sell on ebay (5% total, including the store cost) than list on usacoinbook (5.5% total). Assuming, of course, that you can sell them in a month. And you'll get more eyeballs and greater protection on ebay.
Just the facts.
You could also do FB or IG for a total of 3.5% in fees or less if you sell local or take checks.
Again, just the facts.
And you can't ignore the value of ebay. You can debate what that is, but if you're selling more unique or unusual stuff, ebay will get more pertinent eyeballs on it that any other site. What's that worth? But if you're selling common date MS64 Morgans, yeah, you might be better off on a low cost site.
Except with GC you generally don’t have to deal with returns (or the dreaded CC charge-backs), they take professional photos and you ship once (or drop off at a show). eBay might be ‘cheaper’, but you are also doing more work and taking more risk.
And let’s not get started on a customer service comparison - good luck ever finding a reasonable person to talk to at eBay. Meanwhile Ian will personally deal with any problem that arises at GC.
I don’t know any serious sellers or collectors that use Amazon and doubt it’s part of very many dealers’ business model.
I am a bit confused.
We have an E-Bay basic store.
Ebay charges us 9% FVF up to $4000.
They charge 5% if we sell modern bullion coins.
How can we sell Saints through the store @5%?
ty
List them under bullion. For 64 and under, they generally qualify, at least in NY. If you're selling 66s, then they technically need to be under coins.
I would not generally compare ebay and GC or Heritage because they aren't in the same space. I actually wouldn't compare ebay to usacoinbook either as the latter gives you none of the services that ebay provides. But the OP raised the issue of cost and ebay remains the best bargain across all of these spaces for what it provides. If @ctf_error_coins hasn't gotten himself banned, I'm sure he'd agree.
TY
I agree. However , you're making the OP's thread about eBay and other venues..... not an alternative to it. Unsportsmanlike conduct would be my assessment.
HE>I
Actually, I would argue that the OP did that by disparaging eBay in the title to the thread. And I agree, that was unsportsmanlike behavior in the part of the OP. In fact, the title of the thread didn't even mention usacoinbook.
You would argue. That's the key
.
HE>I
Lol. True. As would everyone arguing with me, obviously.
Tell us how you really feel.
Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value. Zero. Voltaire. Ebay coinbowlllc
If I said " you started it", you (jmlanzaf) would argue the OP started it with erroneous information. Then, we are off the topic of an alternate site to move coins, again. Now, if that was the intent, I congratulate you for trying to correct that, and admit the thread title emphasizes ebay , so I get your point and stance.
HE>I
My conclusion, having made enough sales on that alt site and EBay is that the alt site is good for really cheap stuff, EBay is best for mid priced stuff, with more emphasis on slabbed coins, and GC for stuff too good ($$) for EBay, and Heritage for top end quality stuff. End of study.
On MS63 or so Saints, why not call up Rarcoa or HA? The premiums have shrunk on these and any percentage sales fees are making it a lot less profitable.
It is not so much Ebay itself, but the Ebay sellers that have fixed prices 20%-50% over auction house realized prices.
The OP was referring to the cost of selling not buying.
I sold a Saint gaudens for $2436. After fees I got $2200. Spot was $2450. I paid the or
iginal seller $2376. Looks like I'm needing to pay $400 under spot to be able to resell on eBay for a profit. That would never get tedious.
HE>I
Exactly. I occasionally sell dups on eBay, or coins that I've lost interest in for one reason or another. I normally just go with a 1 cent start, and no reserve, and let it fly. I almost always get a fair price.
That said, I always scratch my head when I see thousands of generic coins listed on eBay with a starting price of 50%-100% over price guide. I mean, it costs money (and time) to list these coins. I often wonder if I'm missing a marketing angle here. List 500 coins at 2X value, hoping a dozen will sell? Not knocking it...maybe it works? Weird...
Dave
It costs nothing (but time) to list coins on eBay.
Which is why they should only be sold as bullion in a store (4% fees) or wholesale to a dealer. There's only $100 bid/ask spread on Saints. PayPal fees + postage are almost that. Not everythong should be sold on ebay.
So, despite the title of the thread, ebay won!
Did you forget about listing and store fees?
That 1908NM Saint could have been sold on the BST for full melt value plus shipping. Instead, you lost $250 and you'll also get a 1099 at the end of the year. I don't understand why more people don't take advantage of the BST.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
There are no listing fees until you exhaust your free ones. Everyone gets a certain number of free listings per month (up to 250 without a store) and you don't have to own a store. So, no, I didn't forget anything.
https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/listing-tips/free-listings?id=4163
Indeed. Some sellers have used a lot of their time to list coins on Ebay for prices that will never sell. I am not sure what the record is for languishing ebay offerings, but I have seen some listings spanning years on Ebay.
Not only time, but the time value of money.
EBay average sellers seem to think that there coins are worth far over any of the guides, and it seems that a lot of those are either counterfeit or not errors anyway.
So listing 500 coins would indeed cost you money.
Dave
@jmlanzaf stated-
"Not everythong should be sold on ebay."
That's okay, but you know we are on a coin forum now, right?
In honor of the memory of Cpl. Michael E. Thompson
Not if done over 2 months. But I assume that number (500) is hypothetical. But 250 is the standard, some people get more. For example, I beta tested the managed payments and they gave me 10,000 per month fee.
Do 1031 exchanges for coins not require a third party facilitator like real estate does?
Ah, I haven't kept up with the changes at ebay.
@ProofCollection never mind, I hadn't seen that the rule has been restricted to a strict real property definitions following recent revenue rulings.
Wait, what?
What happened?
EBay really only is the best for cheap stuff unless you are a dealer with enough volume consistently to make it worth paying the monthly fee, not at all good for just getting rid of extras from upgrades, but some folks on here think everyone is a big EBay dealer or chronic overpricer as is common on EBay. And for bullion forget it. Even Apmex has a lot lower prices off EBay because of the percentage for CCs, etc.
Not completely true. Apmex gets special rates and their pricing is often the same depending on methods of payment.
Here's a case of our being CHEAPER on eBay
It's also untrue that you have to overpriced to sell on ebay. I don't. But you have to live with the low net margin which isn't that different than a BM Store. The only real difference is higher fixed costs for a BM versus higher variable costs for EBay.
That is not to say that everything can or should be sold on ebay. But other than cash in a F2F transaction, it is hard to beat EBay pricing. PayPal will cost 3.5% even with 0% sales fees. So being able to sell on a giant marketplace for 8% (top rated with store) is an incredible retail bargain. If you have store rent and utilities of $2000 per month, you need to do $25,000 per month (same 8% margin) in sales just to make $0 in income.
He got banned a few months ago for a political rant.