interesting occurance on ebay today

cohocorp

i found this situation rather interesting so i thought i would share it with the forum. for the past month i have been picking up some 1952 topps cards for a long term customer. i am making almost nothing for doing this, but he has been a good customer for a long term and prefers to stay behind thew scenes so i figured what the heck. no big deal i'll help out. anyway, one particular seller on ebay had 2 of the high numbers in his ebay store with "make offer" options also. he was pretty close in price so i made a reasonable offer. i had checked his completed listings and saw that he accepting alot of offers on a variety of cards for anywhere from 15-30 percent less. so i made an offer of 8 percent less and 12 percent less respectively for the two cards. the 48 hours goes by and he just ignores it. ok, no deal. i would have made a whopping $30 on over $800 outlay. as mentioned earlier this is pretty much a favor. so today i check on the 2 cards and this guy actually raised the prices by 40 percent on the first card and took away the "make offer" option on both. apparently i insulted this guy somehow with the offer. well why would he add the "make offer" option then. especially with his history of accepting much higher discounts from others (even on higher priced cards). i found this rather amusing. i just dont some peoples way of doing business. i can understand someone trying to lowball aggravating him, but my offer was certainly within reason. this was a really good way for him to push away a potentially great customer. after all, i dropped over $17,600 on just this one project in the past 4-6 weeks. oops, i almost forgot i had emailed him a question regarding a third card he had listed and of course he raise that price by $75. i hadn't even made an offer or indicated a price or anything, it was just a question regarding any creases. i just cant figure out some people. i certainly would not have handled it that way. maybe he was just having a bad day. lol. i thought some of you guys may enjoy reading this (although lengthy).
cohocorp

onlyanumber

Your email and bids must equal interest in his mind. He's gonna milk the cards for as much as possible right now. He will probably never sell them by making changes like that to his items. This is what seperates the really successful sellers on Ebay from the others--they know how to make and keep customers.

WinPitcher

are you saying that those 3 cards are the only cards he has changed?

Steve

cohocorp

winpitcher----- yes. from what i can tell.

Allen

onlyanumber- that is the same thing I was thinking.

sagard

Were the three cards underpriced? I made a mistake listing a set one time setting the price about $500 too low. Someone emailed me an offer even lower than my BIN, so I looked closer and raised the price.

cohocorp

sagard.
good point. they were in reason for the current market giving the condition of the card. if they were real cheap, i would have convinced my customer to pay the full price and just buy them outright. actually the 3rd card was over market alittle. but i didnt get to the point of making an offer on it. i think you have a very good point there though. the "feel" i got was it was kind of like a spite move. now i believe a seller should ask whatever he wants for his items. no question about it. but if he is gonna get insulted by offers, dont put the "make best offer" tab in the auction then. also, i can understand a sellers frustration if someone is constanly busting stones or arguing a lower price then then the seller raising the price. but this absolutely was not the case. personally i try to look at all aspects when buying or selling. this is why i have never had any problems whatsoever in the 12 years in this industry.

cohocorp

here are a couple pics of the set in progress. its coming along pretty nic. there is one double in this pic.