EBAY: Sports Cards and Memorabilia Sell Thru Rates
storm888
Posts: 11,701 ✭✭✭
Category: Sports Cards and Memorabilia
Weekly Sell Thru Rates
Week of June 23, 2010
Total STR
Approx 30%+
Auction STR
Approx 40%+
BIN STR
Approx 20%+
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Note: BIN counts are averaging 10X Auction counts in SCM categories.
Folks Who Bite Get Bitten. Folks Who Don't Bite Get Eaten.
0
Comments
Bosox1976
The cumulative BIN sellers are moving several times more merch
than are the auction sellers.
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Auctions
100 Items Listed = 40 Items Sold @ some price.
BINs
1000 Items Listed = 200 Items Sold @ list price/OBO.
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NOTE: 10X more BINs than Auctions are listed.
<< <i>Storm - any idea what gross sales (all types) might be (per whatever) and how that compares with "the good old days"? >>
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The category $-numbers are proprietary; a secret.
There is a way to come up with a WAG, but it might or
might not be accurate. No way to know for certain.
Look at their revs announced on July 21.
Look at the Alexa traffic to "collectibles" for April, May, June.
Determine the percentage of collectible sales contributed by
SCM.
Divide the category-percentage into the total revs.
(That will be a guess, but it can show a range of $s as
a percentage of total items moved on the site. Also, that
formula relies on traffic=sales; if that is false, your "guess"
will be incorrect.)
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We don't need a weatherman to tell us when it is raining.
And, we don't need oddball math to tell us that "the good
old days" are long gone.
Any numerical answer will not anwer the question, in any event.
In TGODs, 80%+ of items listed were "collectibles." Now, collectibles
make up a small percentage of total listings.
Are collectible sellers getting their fair share of "category crossover
buyers?" I think many are, but not enough to make up for the changes
that we have seen since TGODs.
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And, we don't need oddball math to tell us that "the good
old days" are long gone."
Storm once again is spot on. I am sure at the quarterly meeting they will have lots of nice things to say.
Lots of new (former) members to report. Good sales over last year this time (about the height of media $ scare in my lifetime) and with all those investments.....something there has to sound good in a line or two. Yep, it's congrad's all around. JD we love you....uh, sorry...loved you. Meg...please come back, you got this ball going...take your share of the pie.
Raw: Tony Gonzalez (low #'d cards, and especially 1/1's) and Steve Young.
Storm
are you saying 40% of auctions sell and 20% of BIN sell making it an average of 30%?
if that is the case and BIN outnumber auction by 10 to 1 wouldn't the average be less since there are 10x more BIN - using a weighted average?
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
100 Items Listed = 40 Items Sold @ some price.
BINs
1000 Items Listed = 200 Items Sold @ list price/OBO.
To carry it one step further, that means for every PSA and SGC graded card that sells at auction, there are 5 sold with BIN. This means that 1/5 of all PSA and SGC cards sold on Ebay are not going into VCP's database. The 2nd line on VCP's website reads, "Values are based ONLY on sales transactions of graded sports cards that occur on eBay and major auction houses." It doesn't matter if the BIN prices are high or low. They are occurring with 5 times more frequency than cards sold through Ebay auctions, yet the data is ignored.
No matter how good a businessman a person is, when they start losing money, they will eventually die out. Ebay used to be the cash cow because of the ability to move unsellable merchandise at any other location. Buyers couldnt resist the temptation to buy $100 worth of garbage cards for $10. Now, those same buyers have dried up with less money to go around and the only people buying now are those shopping for quality merchandise, something the knowledgable sellers will NOT sell at a discount or take a chance on an auction getting little action.
With the number of sites that cater to sportscards and collectibles growing (ie sportlots, GSB, checkoutmycards, etc etc.) there is no reason for good quality cards to sell for less than retail anymore, someone WILL eventually buy them for what they're worth and if the seller can wait for that person to come along, the trend of more BINS and less auctions will continue, especially if ebays trend of more fees and less buyers goes along with it.
KbCards -
VCP should now be capturing the buy it now listings.
the history of VCP capturing BIN as I remember it -
- VCP did not believe BIN core listings were a true reflection of prices realized and did not capture those listings.
- VCP never tracked eBay store BIN listings
- VCP then began capturing BIN core listings but not eBay store sales
- eBay recently began listing store BIN with core BIN listings so now VCP should be capturing all BIN listings
For comparison:
In "coins," the BIN/Auction mix is about
25% Auctions
75% BINs
The STR in the coin category is about
Total 50%
Auctions 55%
BINs 30%
The coins vs. cards numbers may have to do with pricing practices
of BIN sellers, but also must be affected by the relative popularity
of the two categories.
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Time Periods:
Sell-Through for Week Ending January 8, 2004
All Categories - 29%
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Antiques - 30%
Art - 15%
Books - 27%
Business & Industrial - 26%
Cameras & Photo - 33%
Cars, Parts & Other Vehicles - 25%
Clothing, Shoes & Accessories - 28%
Coins - 47%
Collectibles - 27%
Computers & Networking - 21%
Consumer Electronics - 30%
Crafts - 29%
Dolls & Bears - 29%
DVDs & Movies - 25%
Entertainment Memorabilia - 22%
Everything Else - 19%
Gift Certificates - 35%
Health & Beauty - 29%
Home & Garden - 23%
Jewelry & Watches - 29%
Music - 27%
Musical Instruments - 26%
Pottery & Glass - 31%
Real Estate - 35%
Sporting Goods and Fan Shop - 31%
Sports Cards and Memorabilia - 33%
Stamps - 42%
Tickets - 38%
Toys & Hobbies - 32%
Travel - 25%
Video Games - 32%
........
STRs This Week...... All Categories: (June 2010)
Total 30%
Auctions 40%
BINs 20%
Of 110,000,000 listings.......Cards make up about <4% of all listings.
Graded Cards account for less than .50% of total listings.
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I am slowly coming around to the idea of BIN instead of auctions, especially if auctions are on their way out.
I still haven't gotten my head around how, down the road, BIN sellers will be able to establish accurate prices without auction data, which they currently have.
As we all know, in a market like ours, values can fluctuate quickly based on # of collectors of a specific issue, population reports, registry competition and other factors. Modern collectors rely on current player performance. With auctions, these changes in demand etc are shown very quickly, allowing BIN sellers to observe those results, and perhaps set their BIN at a slightly higher level to maximize profit on the card.
Fast forward, when all auctions are a distant memory, how do sellers establish good BINs, other than to slowly lower prices until they finally have a buyer?
Not sure that best offer will solve this, either, since without auction data, sellers still won't know what a fair offer would be, they would accept or decline the offer based on what they wanted out of the card, not what the market says it should be worth (because how would they know this without auction results?).
I know most cards eventually sell, but it seems that down the road, it will be a long and frustrating process for a buyer, maybe even enough to get buyers to significantly ramp down their buying activity. Buyers, after the 20th consecutive refused offer, will move on.
What am I missing?
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Auctions will not vanish from EBAY. They may not even
rapidly decline much from current levels.
The OBO-feature will become more popular. This will
deliver some of the "fun" - but prolly not the bargains -
that some buyers still get from auctions.
Sellers have simply decided that auction data has become
faulty; providing a floor of 99-cents - or less than grading
costs - on many items is no more useful than no data at all.
Sellers did NOT move to BINs voluntarily. They were forced
to do so by prices realized in auctions. Maybe a miracle would
pop the prices up and reverse the trend to BINs. I dunno.
As far as I know, VCP is reporting BINs. As you note, absent
lots of auction data, BIN-sellers will need to be mindful that a spike
could leave them vulnerable to sharpshooters; a minor problem
for most folks that pay attention to what is happening in sports
and news.
Lots of "bad circumstances" have combined to make BINs
worth a try for folks who have been using auctions only.
Bosox1976