Do people miss auctions SO MUCH that they drive the prices higher than BINs???

bobbyw8469

...just an observation......

kingbeeswax

I've noticed that items I saw or had listed at a BIN or starting price that did not sell, when listed the very next week it sold for more than that BIN or starting price the previous week. Guess it depends on how rare the card is and if someone see's other people bidding on it, then they must have it too.

kingbeeswax

...and yes I have also seen regular auctions sell higher than the same card that you could just buy it now.

SDSportsFan

Many people filter out all the BIN items from their searches since so many of them are over-priced, and thereby never see the BINs to begin with.

Edited to add:

There have also been instances where I've seen an item listed by a seller, with both a starting bid, and a higher BIN price. The BIN was within my comfort level, but I've bid on it at the lower starting bid, to try to get it at a lower price. Sometimes, this doesn't work, as the final price exceeds the BIN that was on it. It's basically a roll of the dice.



Steve

chaz43

<< <i>Many people filter out all the BIN items from their searches since so many of them are over-priced, and thereby never see the BINs to begin with.

Edited to add:

There have also been instances where I've seen an item listed by a seller, with both a starting bid, and a higher BIN price. The BIN was within my comfort level, but I've bid on it at the lower starting bid, to try to get it at a lower price. Sometimes, this doesn't work, as the final price exceeds the BIN that was on it. It's basically a roll of the dice.



Steve >>



All of you get used to BIN's. chaz

eyebone

yes! check out a seller called capspsorts2000. a quebecer who runs a thousand auctions (mainly hockey) a week and starts virtually everything at 1.99 in true auction format. some of the prices he gets are absolutely unbelievable. i am certain some of this is due to auction-starved bidders who are just happy the way he runs things. he has a huge following.

eyebone

WalterSobchak

Buyers who only look at auctions are doing themselves a disservice. There are many BIN sellers who provide great service, high-quality scans, and sell their cards at a fair price. Just because there are a few 'museum sellers' with a lot of cards that clog up your searches is not a good enough reason to abandon BINs entirely, IMO.

Yes, I get frustrated by it too- but some of the nicest cards in my collection today would not be mine if I only searched by auctions.

jwgators

Being a relatively new returning collector, I have found myself getting caught up in a few auctions and paying more than I would have it I had just searched the BINs a little better... Live and learn.

JHS5120

I always filter out BINs. If I pay more at auction then I would've if I just clicked BIN then so be it.

Griffins

<< <i>I always filter out BINs. If I pay more at auction then I would've if I just clicked BIN then so be it. >>



I"m still scratching my head on this one. You'd rather pay more in an auction than you could just by clicking and buying? Are they doing a remake of Brewsters Millions?

bobbyw8469

<< <i>I"m still scratching my head on this one. You'd rather pay more in an auction than you could just by clicking and buying? Are they doing a remake of Brewsters Millions? >>



LMAO!!! That's what I am thinking...I can have a card with a BIN for $200, yet you would gladly pay $275 for the same card thru an auction format.....gimme a freaking break!

hammered

I passed on a 1974T set at a BIN of $275. It went unsold. Here's that BIN listing: UNSOLD

A week later, he relisted it on auction this time. I bid in low 200s, but was outbid: $364 At Auction

No action on the BIN. Once it goes to auction, it sells for $80 more and gets 23 bids.

Ebayers still love auctions and I think a ton of them still search "auctions only". And they may even realize that they could be passing up a good BIN deal. I think they just don't want to take the time to sort through the vast amount of BINs to find that one deal.

chadridge

A couple of weeks ago this was brought up on the board. I spent hours reviewing all of the PSA graded vintage BINs and I found that perhaps 1 in 100 was offering cards at what I was consistently purchasing them for in auctions. It just doesn't seem worth the effort.

Except, of course, the auctions seem to have dried up over the last week or two. Is this a response to a change in Ebay fees? Anyone know?

Chad

itzagoner

even if you spend enough time researching and bidding on eBay, you can't possibly see everything, although it's worth a try.....what IS enough time, anyways?

it helps to have a lot of stuff around to make sandwiches and mixed alcoholic beverages are a plus, but not in overabundance.

there are occasions where you will wind up paying a little more for an item than if you had just slogged your way through the mud puddle that is Buy It Now.

if you compete well and win a buncha auctions for sickeningly low amounts, you will more than overcompensate for the overbids and the terrible embarrassment which accompanies them.

dontippet

I buy almost entirely "buy-it-now" auctions because I can get better deals than with auctions. I rarely even look at auctions any more.

dontippet

This has happened to me twice:

A buyer lists a card as nrmt and I win it. I get the card and it is overgraded. I email the seller and send the card back for a full refund. The seller gets the card back and relists it and describes it as a lower grade, yet the card sells for more than it did when I purchased it as "a higher graded card."

grote15

All it takes are at least two competitive buyers and you will see this happen all the time. For some ebayers, being outbid is akin to losing at a competition.

JMDVM

Great points by everyone. Glad to know I'm not alone. Let me veer off topic a bit: has anyone noticed that Prewarcollector gets much higher prices than VCP for his listings?

itzagoner

<< <i>Great points by everyone. Glad to know I'm not alone. Let me veer off topic a bit: has anyone noticed that Prewarcollector gets much higher prices than VCP for his listings? >>



as a seller who consistently breaks vintage Registry sets and high quality accumulations, it's no wonder PWCC and others like him get paid much better than the average eBay guy....their stuff is typically better across the board and the card usually fits the grade assigned to it, plus their raw set breaks kick ass.

so, let's examine this a little bit closer.

if you're a seller and you're trying to accomplish what these guys are doing, perhaps following their business model would reward you with better success, but it's a helluva a hill to climb.

but, if you're a collector or investor of vintage material, you must be doing a few knee slaps watching the perceived value of your stuff going up, up, up while the heavies rake it in.

HoofHearted

Hmmm. This conversation is making me think it's time to list a bunch of my '62T doubles on eBay. Now may be a good time as any...

But, to answer the OP, I monitored BINs and well as regular auctions completing my registry set and had no problem pulling the trigger on a BIN if it wasn't too outrageously priced...

nightcrawler

I just collect, and I'd be more than happy to exceed a BIN price for another card or seller I'm confident with.

twiley

I view both auctions and BIN's. I also try to search ebay frequently.

I noticed in the last year or so there are desperate people. They put up cheap BINs just to make fast PP money. I have been getting cards for cheap from this. Luckily I would see it and pull the trigger on em before someone else did. I also miss out on those type of listings too. On the other hand. I also have been winning on auctions here and there for cheap prices too. So who knows which is better? I just do both and by-pass all the wickedly high BINs.

fkw

No

All I see when Im on eBay are auctions, I havent looked at a single BIN listing in 6 months now.

If you click the button "Auctions Only" Its like the old eBay with the same amount of listing (PreWar) as we had 5-8 years ago.

If I want to BIN...... I will go to a show and overpay,
If you Dont waste your time looking at BIN and maybe more will go back to a true auction format.

KeepItWarm

I look at auctions only, but I then filter it even further by sorting them with "ending soonest". I'll look at the auction-style stuff that is ending in the next few hours and decide if I should put in a snipe bid.

Other than that...I look at BIN mostly.

Garabaldi

Who cares how it is listed, just search and eventually you will find your card at the price you want. The one great thing about BIN's if you are a seller is that you can have the auction listed as immediate payment. It eliminates all the excuses as to why you have to wait to get paid. If you are a buyer and you want the card you have the option to just purchase it. Pros and cons to all of it.

johnny1976

^^^This. I had some auctions that ended a couple of weeks ago and made more than I expected on some cards. However I am still waiting to get paid for a couple of them. I'm now going to list a few cards (at what the last auction ended at) with a BIN with immediate payment and see what happens.

I search ebay a couple of ways. First is auction only with the ending soon. The second is BIN only with cost plus shipping lowest first. I have found some great BIN's doing it this way and it only takes a couple extra minutes.

mexpo75

Am I the only one who, when finding a BIN card I am interested in, will email the seller and ask if they would take an offer? lmost every time they will listen to a reasonable offer. I treat a BIN as an auction. I have an amount I am willing to spend and will make that offer to them. If they take it that is great. If not, I move on.

ShootyBabitt

If you skip BINs, you miss out on deals like this.

itzagoner

<< <i>If you skip BINs, you miss out on deals like this. >>



excellent example. if you are in the market for this particular card in this grade, you are a WINNER.

or, you could have paid this

Piggs

My method is usually searching the newly listed including BIN's and have found deals. I've been in a '52 Topps funk lately and you notice what is a decent price for a card and what is outrageous so you

become your own filter of sorts. One thing for sure, when a decent BIN comes up they don't last long, kind of why I prefer the fresh listed cards. JMO

HoofHearted

<< <i>Am I the only one who, when finding a BIN card I am interested in, will email the seller and ask if they would take an offer? lmost every time they will listen to a reasonable offer. I treat a BIN as an auction. I have an amount I am willing to spend and will make that offer to them. If they take it that is great. If not, I move on. >>



You're not alone. I've done that several times with mixed success. It doesn't hurt to ask, especially when you've seen the BIN expire and be relisted 5 or 6 times...

WinPitcher

Sometimes a card at auction sells for higher than the same card in BIN format.

However, the card at auction might be centered better, the seller is more reliable, etc.


I don't think that specifically cards being sold at auction will drive prices higher or lower simply

because they are being sold that way. They will raise or lower VCP but so do BIN's.

I don't this their is a correlation between the two types of sales.

NickM

How much time you would spend looking through all the BINs depends heavily on how many items come up in your search in the first place. Most of my vintage material searches yield about 10 times as many hits if I include BINs as opposed to just auctions. When your search returns 25 total hits, looking at 3 auctions and 22 BINs is no big deal. When your search returns 520 hits, looking at all 520 as opposed to 55 auctions is a much bigger expenditure of time.

Nick

WalterSobchak

<< <i>Am I the only one who, when finding a BIN card I am interested in, will email the seller and ask if they would take an offer? lmost every time they will listen to a reasonable offer. I treat a BIN as an auction. I have an amount I am willing to spend and will make that offer to them. If they take it that is great. If not, I move on. >>



I've done this four or five times before, and in every case but one I was able to buy the card for less than the BIN. In that other instance the seller didn't respond to me at all.

SDavid

There are a lot of buyers who search for recently listed BIN's. Anyone who has used this format to any significant extent should know this. I find that if you consistently list BIN's, you generate much better sales as new items will cause buyers to browse the old listings.

I'm comfortable with auctions for some cards, but only when there's enough of a market where you can reasonably expect a bidding war in a seven day window. Conversely, if I know the market is down to one big spender, I will certainly not be starting the price at .99.

hammered

For me, the best solution has been to list cards at auction, but at a high enough starting price that I'd be OK with only one bid. I've noticed other sellers doing this as well.
This way, no one takes me to the cleaners, yet my listings aren't filtered out by auction-only searchers.