Semi-OT: The great eBay experiment

CIVITAS

After reading all the posts here from people who seemed to enjoy using the Best Offer feature on eBay with Blue Moon's offerings, I figured I'd send up all of our store inventory with the same last month. It has been an interesting experience, to say the least. We've received the full spectrum of offers from the most reasonable ($285.00 on a $300.00 listing) to the most obscene ($20.00 on a $400.00 listing ). I'd say we probably accepted about 50% of the offers that came through. We went into it with the notion that any offer that made us a profit (or minimized loss on old inventory) was one worth accepting, assuming the offer wasn't below a known wholesale level at which we could liquidate to another dealer (i.e. Dealer A always buys this coin in this grade for X and the eBay offer is X-$5.00).

So of the 50% of offers that we didn't accept, about half of those were just due to us not willing to take a loss on fairly fresh inventory, which means 25% of our total offers received were just ridiculous to ludicrous. Apparently the guy who offered $20.00 on a $400.00 coin thinks we're just putting these up for our health. He was not the only one though. I'm having trouble deciding the motivation/reason for some of these offers. I think it's a combination of just lowballing and hoping the seller is ignorant (which one should be able to tell from our listings that we're not......mostly not ) and not knowing the market for the item they're offering on. We had one guy pick out about 7 or 8 coins priced at $100 or more and offered $30-$35 each across the board. ($30.00 for an UNC 1887 Double Florin? I don't think so.) This was after negotiating a $95.00 listing to $60.00 after several back and forth offers. All were coins we could easily sell to another dealer for more (and for that matter we had paid more than $35.00 for each of them).

Has anyone else sold using this feature? What kind of results have you had?

Those of you who have bought/offered, how do you go about making your offers? Do you calculate a fair market price for the coin and then knock a bit off for your time? Do you just throw a number at it and see what happens? Something in between? Just curious.

coinpictures

Useless answer #844: "It depends."

Keep in mind that the counteroffer capability is fairly new; previously it was once and done per item. Finis. So instead of people knowing they only had one shot at an item (and therefore had to make it a realistic offer), you probably see more lowballs now, with people knowing that the seller will probably counteroffer.

In my case, as a seller, if the offer is 50% or above I probably counteroffer. If below 50% I just decline, because we're way too far apart to begin with to end up with anything other than a waste of time on both parts.

As a buyer, I base my offers on Krause or Spink, etc. and the amount I feel comfortable paying, which depending on the country and coin might be anywhere from 50% of Krause to 200% of Krause, although more frequently closer to the former. If I see the seller has their BIN price at stupid money levels, I will add notation as to why I am making the offer I am. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not...

Ricke

<< <i>Website Updated 9/23/06 >>






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CIVITAS

Dan, that makes sense. I agree with you on the counteroffer feature, makes people treat it like more of a game. I generally ignore offers below 50% too because why dignify them with a response? 50% or over, there's a chance we can make something happen. I just accepted an offer of 33% on a coin but I looked into it and the market has come down on them quite a bit because of a recent hoard, so gotta sell to current market (can't pretend it's still worth $300.00). An educated buyer with whom we've done business before.

Rick, if but I had the time. Show schedule has been crazy lately and just keeping my invoices entered is a challenge. Plus, gold and silver are flowing into the shop like crazy, so I've been busy with bullion and coin silver. Keep your eyes on the website last week of November/1st week of December. I've got some really nice stuff to put up. Some nice hammered gold and world gold coins.

ajaan

To having to reply to rediculous offer, choose the automatic decline option for any offer below a certain amount.

ex. BIN of $200. Best Offer option allowed. Automatic decline of any offer less than $125.

newsman

<< <i>To having to reply to rediculous offer, choose the automatic decline option for any offer below a certain amount.

ex. BIN of $200. Best Offer option allowed. Automatic decline of any offer less than $125. >>



That's a good idea. It will get rid of the people who troll eBay making lowball offers.

Of course, it also doesn't help that there are unscrupulous sellers (not you, Josh, but others well-known to us) who set unreasonably high BINs (such as $180 for a Maria Theresa in average Unc. condition) in an attempt to sucker unsuspecting buyers. Those people deserve to be hammered with insultingly low offers.

shirohniichan

<< <i>Of course, it also doesn't help that there are unscrupulous sellers (not you, Josh, but others well-known to us) who set unreasonably high BINs (such as $180 for a Maria Theresa in average Unc. condition) in an attempt to sucker unsuspecting buyers. Those people deserve to be hammered with insultingly low offers. >>



It's hard to offer too little on an average Maria Theresa restrike.

newsman

<< <i>

<< <i>Of course, it also doesn't help that there are unscrupulous sellers (not you, Josh, but others well-known to us) who set unreasonably high BINs (such as $180 for a Maria Theresa in average Unc. condition) in an attempt to sucker unsuspecting buyers. Those people deserve to be hammered with insultingly low offers. >>



It's hard to offer too little on an average Maria Theresa restrike. >>



I offered him melt and he was highly insulted.

SYRACUSIAN

Has anyone else sold using this feature? What kind of results have you had?



I have and I'm a big fan of it with its new rules (seller can counteroffer, buyer can make upto 3 offers).As a seller, I always place an undisclosed reserve, a very low one, in order to have any insulting offers auto-declined. IMO, if you decide to place this reserve, it should be slightly below the minimum amount that you're willing to sell, because you can always counteroffer.

The reason that I like it, is that I'm not happy at all with the majority of no reserve results that I see lately. NEN just sold a 1/4 and a 1 kharub from Tunisia, the Heaton mint hoard, AH1281, for less than a third of what they were initially asking on their website, and I'm mentioning this as an example to show that even the most serious sellers with the best reps can and do suffer lately from some no reserve auctions, nobody can pretend to feel safe.

I think it will gain more and more popularity in time. Interestingly, I too (on a much smaller scale) have had about 50% of the items sold straight away with this system.It not only protects the seller, but also does not discourage bidders from making offers, unlike auctions with a reserve or auctions with a high starting price.