Your assesment of eBay at this time

laurentyvan

I see less coins being posted, less watchers, less biddders. What is your opinion?

Where do you like to sell your coins?

Preussen

<< <i>Where do you like to sell your coins? >>

I recently sold a number of high-grade German coins in a Heritage auction. They did very well -Preussen

Aethelred

I have been doing fine with eBay.

1960NYGiants

<< <i>I have been doing fine with eBay. >>



So have I. Action has started to pickup as autumn approaches. Especially true for me and greyside sales as our northern neighbors start to chill out.

laurentyvan

I guess what I'm talking about is the number of coins available on eBay in a variety of categories
and the opportunities that lie within the decline or increase in those numbers.

It seems to have declined over time and I could make the same observation about books.

A large part of that might be my subjectivity.

Aethelred, when you say you are doing fine with eBay, what does that mean?
1. Have you had to make adjustments in your selling tactics in your auctions lately to achieve consistent results?
2. Have you seen an uptick in what you normally sell or buy at or a downturn?
3. Has activity, i.e. watchers/bidders been normal or at high/low ends?

I don't mean to be picky but I guess I value your input.

crito

Many South American sellers have disappeared. I blame all the eBay fee hikes. May not seem like much if you're living in North America or Europe but to someone in Peru the cost of doing business on their platform is just plain exorbitant.

weresteve

Just wonder how the new eBay web page format will do ... normally I check darkside coins every evening when I am on, but passed tonight after playing around with their "new and improved" format for more than an hour. Wish they would make it a profile option to keep the old layout or use the new one.

SYRACUSIAN

<< <i>

<< <i>Where do you like to sell your coins? >>

I recently sold a number of high-grade German coins in a Heritage auction. They did very well -Preussen >>




Congrats!



The trouble with ebay, as far as slabbed coins are concerned, is that the prices often reflect the "dogs" for the grade, so selling a PQ coin for the grade often results in a disappointment. I now usually sell my best stuff in private deals, or consign them to high end shops , and sell mid to low end coins on ebay.

coinpictures

Sales are going well for me.

One thing that Ebay does do, with it's visibility, is potentially lead to future off-Ebay sales. It appears that some buyers like to use Ebay as a test of a seller's reliability, communication, and speed, to make sure things are on the up-and-up before "going to town" as it were. There have been a couple of cases where, after a successful Ebay transaction, the same buyer has come back to me via email, asking "Do you have any pieces from country X, Y or Z?" or "Hey, I'm interested in pieces A, B, and C. What kind of package deal can you give me?"

Obviously not having Ebay fees to deal with makes things easier for both parties... and of course Ebay does everything in its power to stifle off-Ebay communication and transactions. But I figure if commercial and/or power sellers can put in "All coins subject to local sale" and other similar disclaimers, and continually end auctions early to sell off-Ebay, I guess it's not that big of a problem, now is it...

wybrit

I don't sell much of my British material in auction anymore. For the past couple of years, most of the coins have done poorly in that format.

The "Buy it Now/Best Offer" store method has led to steady sales all summer. While the fees are outrageous, I do get what I'm looking for price-wise and that more than offsets the fee hit.

coachleonard

i'm late getting to this post, but to answer the original question... i agree, i agree and MAN do i agree! I'm selling about the same quality stuff as I always have, but my 90-95% sales rate is now down to about 30%. And they all go for the minimum-- it's rare that "competition" drives up the price at all.

But as far as less items, one very interesting thing I've noticed-- now when i search for hammered coins, there's now only maybe a page worth, whereas in years past, there were always multiple pages of hammered material. Don't know if British sellers (who usually sell that stuff) are holding onto the hammered stuff, or if the supply is drying up.

farthing

The number of Conder tokens listed has also gone down quite a bit.

laurentyvan

Are more and more sellers abandoning eBay and if so, where are they going?

weresteve

In my case ... activity at local shows has been picking up a bit which I don't mind since most of the darkside coins that I have recently acquired have been averaging 50% to 60% of Krause. While there have been a few nice Austrian and German States coins on eBay lately ... the ones I want seem to be going for moon money as of late.

rec78

Ebay is playing games with their "new and improved" search engine. It does something called a "best match" automatically and it is very difficult to find anything in the collectibles realm. Somehow i was unknowingly put in the beta test version---Believe me you--It totally sucks and i could not find anything that i was searching for. A Total nightmare.
Fortunately they let me opt out of it. However there are millions of people who are do not know that you can opt out of the silly thing. These people will get frustrated trying to find coins that they want and give up.
Summertime may have also slowed sales a bit - but i think it is mostly ebay testing new systems. I have not listed anything in months because people cannot find what they want with the dumb new search system. I know that other sellers have also quit selling for awhile because of this.
Also ebay fee increases and postal rate increases are also stymieing business.... Bob

coachleonard

rec78's post kinda scares me-- i was aware the ebay screens looked different, but was unaware of this new "search engine" thing. Makes me wonder if THAT'S why searches on particular items bring up little or nothing whereas before, the same search words brought up much more of the same items. How then is this new search engine supposed to be an improvement? And how do you know if you've been stuck in a 'beta test version' whatever that is??