Note to all: getting Top-Rated Seller status is not worth it
TonyC
Posts: 1,399 ✭✭✭
This is an OTW violation, but I think this is a valuable anecdote for people who are chasing TSR status to get their (phantom) 20% discount.
In March 2011, I got a neutral because someone felt my shipping charge of $4 for a magazine USPS first class was "excessive," and my DSR for S & H fees was at around 1.5%. If I exceeded 2%, my account would get blackballed and selling limits would have started applied, regardless of the facts that I have been on eBay since 1998, have over 10,000 positive feedback with 1 negative and 1 or 2 neutrals, and have been a Powerseller since the program started.
At that point, I made the decision to go to free shipping on all items, raising the price of my items to account for this. I could go into a long story about why I think free shipping is not a wise policy for eBay to promote for sports cards and collectibles, but I won't--unless someone wants to know.
In December 2011, enough of my low DSRs for S & H charges were lost due to attrition for me to qualify for the Top-Rated Seller program and my (phantom) 20% discount.
Today I looked at my invoice for the month of December, and I noticed that my "discount" did not equal 20%; it was more like 12%. Now, eBay says Top-Rated Sellers get "20% fee discounts," according to this link. (Hint: It does not specify what they take 20% off of except for one mention near the bottom of the page.) eBay's TSR program
I called eBay to ask why my discount did not equal 20%. The CS rep said that the 20% is taken off of final value fees ONLY--the discount does not apply to my insertion fees or my $50 per month eBay store fee. I said to her that the amount I got in discounts for the month did not even come close to covering all of the free shipping I had to give out, and that the program is grossly misrepresented. She said that that is "a business decision you need to make."
Now, going to the link I provided earlier, I scoured it, and there are four mentions of the 20% discount, of only which the last one specifies that the discount is on FVF only. I may go back and research this if I have time tonight/care to do it, but I can almost guarantee you that the vast majority of the advertising they put out on the Top Rated Seller program just states that you get a 20% discount, not that this applies to FVF only.
For all the hype eBay builds up for the TRS program, I want everyone to know that 20% isn't really 20%. It's a good thing I didn't buy TRS status from eBay on eBay; if I had, they would have gotten a "1" for "item as described."
In March 2011, I got a neutral because someone felt my shipping charge of $4 for a magazine USPS first class was "excessive," and my DSR for S & H fees was at around 1.5%. If I exceeded 2%, my account would get blackballed and selling limits would have started applied, regardless of the facts that I have been on eBay since 1998, have over 10,000 positive feedback with 1 negative and 1 or 2 neutrals, and have been a Powerseller since the program started.
At that point, I made the decision to go to free shipping on all items, raising the price of my items to account for this. I could go into a long story about why I think free shipping is not a wise policy for eBay to promote for sports cards and collectibles, but I won't--unless someone wants to know.
In December 2011, enough of my low DSRs for S & H charges were lost due to attrition for me to qualify for the Top-Rated Seller program and my (phantom) 20% discount.
Today I looked at my invoice for the month of December, and I noticed that my "discount" did not equal 20%; it was more like 12%. Now, eBay says Top-Rated Sellers get "20% fee discounts," according to this link. (Hint: It does not specify what they take 20% off of except for one mention near the bottom of the page.) eBay's TSR program
I called eBay to ask why my discount did not equal 20%. The CS rep said that the 20% is taken off of final value fees ONLY--the discount does not apply to my insertion fees or my $50 per month eBay store fee. I said to her that the amount I got in discounts for the month did not even come close to covering all of the free shipping I had to give out, and that the program is grossly misrepresented. She said that that is "a business decision you need to make."
Now, going to the link I provided earlier, I scoured it, and there are four mentions of the 20% discount, of only which the last one specifies that the discount is on FVF only. I may go back and research this if I have time tonight/care to do it, but I can almost guarantee you that the vast majority of the advertising they put out on the Top Rated Seller program just states that you get a 20% discount, not that this applies to FVF only.
For all the hype eBay builds up for the TRS program, I want everyone to know that 20% isn't really 20%. It's a good thing I didn't buy TRS status from eBay on eBay; if I had, they would have gotten a "1" for "item as described."
Collecting Tony Conigliaro
0
Comments
If you consider that ebay takes approximately 10-12% of every sale, and you would get back 20% of that 10-12% (or 2.0 to 2.4% of the total sale) if you're a top-rated seller, you're shipping charges need to be less than 2% of your final sales price for the 20% fee reduction to work in your favor.
For sellers that sell a lot of items that sell between $5 and up to $100 and charge $3 to $4 shipping per item, it's not even close, which is why the 4SC's and DSCSports and PSA Set-Guys of the world still charge for shipping and don't care much about the 20%. I'd go so far as to say that for no seller on the planet does it make sense to expect that the 20% FVF reduction would offset what the normal "take" for shipping would be if free shipping wasn't offered.
If you do mostly fixed price items and you have upped your prices to allow free shipping, then you can come out ahead.
"I made the decision to go to free shipping on all items, raising the price of my items to account for this"
Just curious why you then (9 months later) complained to eBay about the money you lost having to give out free shipping???
I'm not really complaining that my discount does not equal my shipping costs. I'm complaining that eBay hypes free shipping and the TRS program, but it isn't all it is cracked up to be.
When I made the switch, it wasn't so much to be a TRS as it was to take the ammunition away from the eBay terrorists who wield feedback and DSRs like WMDs. Become a TRS was incidental, but the actual details don't live up to what eBay says they are.
Thus, I'll change the last sentence of my original post to the following:
For all the hype eBay builds up for the TRS program, I want everyone to know that 20% isn't really 20%. It's a good thing I didn't buy TRS status from eBay on eBay; if I had, they would have gotten a "1" for "item as described."
For example:
A.) List ten cards with a starting bid of $0.99 with $2.00 shipping. The same buyer wins all ten cards at the $0.99 opening bid. You combine the shipping of all ten items for a grand total of $11.99.
B.) List ten cards with a starting bid of $2.99 with FREE shipping. The same buyer wins all ten cards at the $2.99 opening bid. Since there is no shipping charge, the grand total is $29.90.
As a seller, I love free shipping.
<< <i>Here's something funny about "free shipping". I recently started doing this, and I'm making more money from it when it comes to people who bid on multiple items.
For example:
A.) List ten cards with a starting bid of $0.99 with $2.00 shipping. The same buyer wins all ten cards at the $0.99 opening bid. You combine the shipping of all ten items for a grand total of $11.99.
B.) List ten cards with a starting bid of $2.99 with FREE shipping. The same buyer wins all ten cards at the $2.99 opening bid. Since there is no shipping charge, the grand total is $29.90.
As a seller, I love free shipping.
Now, try this equation: suppose all ten cards went to different buyers. In the second example, you made $29.90 and spent $20 mailing them.
Working on the following: 1970 Baseball PSA, 1970-1976 Raw, World Series Subsets PSA, 1969 Expansion Teams PSA, Fleer World Series Sets, Texas Rangers Topps Run 1972-1989
----------------------
Successful deals to date: thedudeabides,gameusedhoop,golfcollector,tigerdean,treetop,bkritz, CapeMOGuy,WeekendHacker,jeff8877,backbidder,Salinas,milbroco,bbuckner22,VitoCo1972,ddfamf,gemint,K,fatty macs,waltersobchak,dboneesq
you don't need free shipping to get good dsr's...just give people great service and ship real-time...
we only use free shipping on heavy items...
this will always work to your financial advantage
Ebay Store:
Probstein123
phone: 973 747 6304
email: rickprobstein1@gmail.com
Probstein123 is actively accepting CONSIGNMENTS !!
<< <i>you don't need free shipping to get good dsr's...just give people great service and ship real-time... >>
Guess the guy who got his 35 cards from me in a flat rate box two days after he paid doesn't agree with Rick. He left me 35 1's in shipping price, even though I charged him less than what it cost me to send it.
~WalterSobchak
I'm right there with the OP, Paypal and eBay are pain in the butts. They take a big chunk of change out of each sale and try to excite people with fancy advertisements.
Can't beat the buyer that made a purchase on the night of December 24 and complained it wasn't there on Dec 27. What about the Canadian buyer that I accepted a Best Offer from and didn't want to pay the shipping fee. Maybe the Thailand buyer that expected express mail on free shipping.
<< <i>
<< <i>you don't need free shipping to get good dsr's...just give people great service and ship real-time... >>
Guess the guy who got his 35 cards from me in a flat rate box two days after he paid doesn't agree with Rick. He left me 35 1's in shipping price, even though I charged him less than what it cost me to send it. >>
OUCH! what a knob
<< <i>Here's something funny about "free shipping". I recently started doing this, and I'm making more money from it when it comes to people who bid on multiple items.
For example:
A.) List ten cards with a starting bid of $0.99 with $2.00 shipping. The same buyer wins all ten cards at the $0.99 opening bid. You combine the shipping of all ten items for a grand total of $11.99.
B.) List ten cards with a starting bid of $2.99 with FREE shipping. The same buyer wins all ten cards at the $2.99 opening bid. Since there is no shipping charge, the grand total is $29.90.
As a seller, I love free shipping.
And you know what Jeff, this is what all the buyers who complain about not getting free shipping or feel they are getting ripped off because the seller does not add the extra cost into their price instead of adding into shipping don't understand. They are actually costing themselves more money if they buy more than one item from a seller.
I think it;s hilarious when buyers complain about a seller charging a quarter or so more for shipping than it actually costs and thinking that "scammer" seller is getting over on them. They feel they win when they force more sellers to offer free shipping when in reality they are just costing themselves more money because sellers are not going to eat the money, they just raise their prices. The higher prices are passed on to the consumer, but hey, that whiny consumer is happy because he got "free shipping".
I have said it before, as a buyer, unless it is a single higher dollar item, I don't like to get free shipping. If I am buying multiple items from a seller I would rather they charge me shipping with combines policies.
<< <i>I'm so thankful that I'm a buyer and not a seller on Ebay. >>
While I agree with you on that point, current ebay rules, which work so much in the favor of us buyers, has caused a lot of good sellers I know to quit using ebay for their cards . That hurts us buyers as well
Bowman Baseball -1948-1955
Fleer Baseball-1923, 1959-2007
Al
I dont sell any big items but used to do great sales on selling 1 to 5 dollars cards on Ebay. It is now cost prohibitive for me to do this and with the jerks and a**es out there who think nothing of filing a Paypal claim against you, well it just isnt fun for me anymore. To be honest, I am going back to doing something I havent done in 15 years. There are a number of smaller and medium size shows popping up in my area and starting this spring will give shows a try again. I am also going to try something we did back in the day and have a "sports garage sale" in which I will try and clean out all the stuff I have accumulated. Shows and garage sales dont cost much and i willome out ahead over selling on Ebay!!
(1) Is it worthwhile to pay the monthly fee for the ebay store?
(2) Is it worthwhile to get Top Rated Status?
(3) Is it worthwhile to offer free shipping on my listings?
To look at the first question about whether you should get an ebay store, for me, the biggest difference is th difference in Final Value Fees (FVF). The link for the ebay FVF chart is here, I believe. Link If there is a more recent one, you'll need to take a look at that.
If you do not have an ebay store, the FVF is 9% of the total value of the sale for auction listings, including shipping, capped at $100. If you do have an ebay store, the FVF is 7.5% of the listing cost up to $50, 4% of the cost from $50.01 to $1000 and 2% of the cost from 1000.01 and above. Therefore, if you have the cheapest ebay store at $14.95/month, and you assume you sell all of your listings at under $50, you would save at the minimum 1.5% of the total cost of your listing. Therefore, to make a store worthwhile, you would need to sell at least (14.95/.015) $997 per month in sales. Therefore, if you have at least this amount in sales every month through auction listings, an ebay store is worthwhile for you. If you have the second level of store like the OP has, you would need (49.95/.015) = $3330/month in auction sales to make it worthwhile. Again, there are other advantages to a store such as significantly lower BIN costs. However, if you have these minimium levels in auction sales per month, you will know that you are guaranteed to have saved money by having a store rather than not having a store.
Regarding insertion fees, for me, it is best to wait for those ebay "dump days" when ebay has seller promotions and no insertion fees for listings (or deeply discounted to say 1 cent per listing). That way, you do not need to start your listings at 99cents, but you can set the starting price to VCP or a starting price that you are comfortable selling your item at. If you don't sell them, no fees. Obviously, although, ebay has had a lot of these promotions recently, there is no guarantee that ebay will continue them (and if you don't have a store you get 50 free listings). Therefore, you need to take this into account. When, there seems as if there may not be one of these specials, I do put listings using the reduced BIN rate for my store.
The second question is Top Rated Status is worth it. This is a 20% discount off your FVF. So if your discount is 9% if you don't have a store, your effective fee (excluding shipping) would be (9*.8) = 7.2%. If you have a store, and your fee rate for items under $50 (excluding shipping) was 7.5%, the effective fee would be (7.5*.8) = 6%. For this store, if you sell $1000 worth of items (under $50) per month, your FVF would decrease from $75 to $60. If this discount is not worth the pain of maintaining your Top Rated Status (TRS), then don't do it. However, as mentioned previously, you do not have to do things such as Free Shipping to maintain TSR. The best ways to do it are to ship quickly and safely and to make sure that your shipping costs are in line with other sellers who have TRS. If you have items that are particularly expensive to ship, make sure that you show the postage cost on the item when it is more than the buyer paid. (And don't show postage costs when it is less than the buyer paid.) Again, this is your business decision. You would think that most shoppers are smart enough to say that the total cost of their item is item cost + shipping. Therefore, if you reduce shipping costs by a dollar, they should be willing to bid a dollar more. However, you may find that this is not always the case. If you believe that if you consistently "overcharge" for shipping, you would make more money than you save by having TSR, then by all means do it. Obviously, the other advantages of TSR are that it is supposed to give buyers more confidence in a seller so that they are willing to bid higher, and that ebay also has search criteria that can refine the search results to only show Top Rated Sellers. Again, you may decided that these advantages are minimal.
The last question is in regards to whether to offer free shipping. Again, as others have stated Free Shipping doesn't always work. Sometimes it does, sometimes, it doesn't. You would think buyers would take free shipping into account and thus bid items higher, but this does not always happen. There is an ebay refine search criteria for Free Shipping that some buyers use so that they only see items w/ free shipping. Sometimes this can help sales. In general, I agree with others like Probstein, which says it does not. What I usually do instead is to offer a reasonable shipping fee for most of my items. For my listings that haven't moved for a while, I will offer free shipping on those items to see if that will help get more "eyeballs" on those listings and perhaps help them sell. ebay had a seller promotion over the holidays where if you as a seller offered free shipping (and expedited also), you would receive an additional FVF discount. Therefore, as an experiment, I changed all of my listings to have free shipping. I really did not get any more sales than I would in a normal week w/o free shipping, so I didn't think it was worth it. However, there is another benefit to free shipping as has been pointed out. If you raise your prices to compensate for free shipping, you make money because you don't have to do combined shipping discounts. If 20 different people buy 20 different items from you, you don't lose any money because you already raised prices on those items to compensate for the free shipping. However, if the same person bought those 20 items, you make out considerably because you don't need to give that person any combined shipping discount.
Another post that is as long as a novel, and good luck to any ebay sellers. It can be a tough market out there.
Lou Gehrig Master Set
Non-Registry Collection
Game Used Cards Collection
<< <i>There are three distinct issues in the OP about ebay fees, and you really need to separate each one when selling on ebay to determine what works best for you. The issues are:
(1) Is it worthwhile to pay the monthly fee for the ebay store?
(2) Is it worthwhile to get Top Rated Status?
(3) Is it worthwhile to offer free shipping on my listings?
To look at the first question about whether you should get an ebay store, for me, the biggest difference is th difference in Final Value Fees (FVF). The link for the ebay FVF chart is here, I believe. Link If there is a more recent one, you'll need to take a look at that.
If you do not have an ebay store, the FVF is 9% of the total value of the sale for auction listings, including shipping, capped at $100. If you do have an ebay store, the FVF is 7.5% of the listing cost up to $50, 4% of the cost from $50.01 to $1000 and 2% of the cost from 1000.01 and above. Therefore, if you have the cheapest ebay store at $14.95/month, and you assume you sell all of your listings at under $50, you would save at the minimum 1.5% of the total cost of your listing. Therefore, to make a store worthwhile, you would need to sell at least (14.95/.015) $997 per month in sales. Therefore, if you have at least this amount in sales every month through auction listings, an ebay store is worthwhile for you. If you have the second level of store like the OP has, you would need (49.95/.015) = $3330/month in auction sales to make it worthwhile. Again, there are other advantages to a store such as significantly lower BIN costs. However, if you have these minimium levels in auction sales per month, you will know that you are guaranteed to have saved money by having a store rather than not having a store.
Regarding insertion fees, for me, it is best to wait for those ebay "dump days" when ebay has seller promotions and no insertion fees for listings (or deeply discounted to say 1 cent per listing). That way, you do not need to start your listings at 99cents, but you can set the starting price to VCP or a starting price that you are comfortable selling your item at. If you don't sell them, no fees. Obviously, although, ebay has had a lot of these promotions recently, there is no guarantee that ebay will continue them (and if you don't have a store you get 50 free listings). Therefore, you need to take this into account. When, there seems as if there may not be one of these specials, I do put listings using the reduced BIN rate for my store.
The second question is Top Rated Status is worth it. This is a 20% discount off your FVF. So if your discount is 9% if you don't have a store, your effective fee (excluding shipping) would be (9*.8) = 7.2%. If you have a store, and your fee rate for items under $50 (excluding shipping) was 7.5%, the effective fee would be (7.5*.8) = 6%. For this store, if you sell $1000 worth of items (under $50) per month, your FVF would decrease from $75 to $60. If this discount is not worth the pain of maintaining your Top Rated Status (TRS), then don't do it. However, as mentioned previously, you do not have to do things such as Free Shipping to maintain TSR. The best ways to do it are to ship quickly and safely and to make sure that your shipping costs are in line with other sellers who have TRS. If you have items that are particularly expensive to ship, make sure that you show the postage cost on the item when it is more than the buyer paid. (And don't show postage costs when it is less than the buyer paid.) Again, this is your business decision. You would think that most shoppers are smart enough to say that the total cost of their item is item cost + shipping. Therefore, if you reduce shipping costs by a dollar, they should be willing to bid a dollar more. However, you may find that this is not always the case. If you believe that if you consistently "overcharge" for shipping, you would make more money than you save by having TSR, then by all means do it. Obviously, the other advantages of TSR are that it is supposed to give buyers more confidence in a seller so that they are willing to bid higher, and that ebay also has search criteria that can refine the search results to only show Top Rated Sellers. Again, you may decided that these advantages are minimal.
The last question is in regards to whether to offer free shipping. Again, as others have stated Free Shipping doesn't always work. Sometimes it does, sometimes, it doesn't. You would think buyers would take free shipping into account and thus bid items higher, but this does not always happen. There is an ebay refine search criteria for Free Shipping that some buyers use so that they only see items w/ free shipping. Sometimes this can help sales. In general, I agree with others like Probstein, which says it does not. What I usually do instead is to offer a reasonable shipping fee for most of my items. For my listings that haven't moved for a while, I will offer free shipping on those items to see if that will help get more "eyeballs" on those listings and perhaps help them sell. ebay had a seller promotion over the holidays where if you as a seller offered free shipping (and expedited also), you would receive an additional FVF discount. Therefore, as an experiment, I changed all of my listings to have free shipping. I really did not get any more sales than I would in a normal week w/o free shipping, so I didn't think it was worth it. However, there is another benefit to free shipping as has been pointed out. If you raise your prices to compensate for free shipping, you make money because you don't have to do combined shipping discounts. If 20 different people buy 20 different items from you, you don't lose any money because you already raised prices on those items to compensate for the free shipping. However, if the same person bought those 20 items, you make out considerably because you don't need to give that person any combined shipping discount.
Another post that is as long as a novel, and good luck to any ebay sellers. It can be a tough market out there. >>
This is an extremely well thought out post, and I appreciate that.
A few comments on what has been said:
Rick: I know you do much more business than I do on eBay, and I respect your opinion on the matter of free shipping and DSRs, but I respectfully disagree that good customer service and quick shipping is "good enough" for some buyers. I have tons of anecdotes over the years about people you come across who you can't make happy, no matter what you do, and if someone were to dredge the boards, you would find many many more. Here are two that come to mind right now:
1. Recently, someone on this forum posted that they sold a textbook and charged $4 shipping, which is actually less than it cost to ship it due to the weight, and the buyer sent them a message complaining that the shipping charge was exorbitant and they wanted a refund on shipping.
2. I sold a magazine to someone the week before Hurricane Irene and shipped it the SAME DAY he paid for it, and to make a long story short the magazine kind of got "lost" and the buyer didn't get it for a month. He kept asking me for information, and I replied quickly to every question and offered him a refund if it did not arrive by a certain deadline. The buyer left me a positive feedback with a "2" for "shipping time."
Certain individuals are just unreasonable, and if I can take the gun out of their hands by offering free shipping and barring them from leaving me a DSR for that category, that is what I feel eBay has forced me to do.
I think it is also important to note that Rick is an established consignor who deals with a lot of high dollar items and whose clientele is probably made up of "serious" collectors; as many other people have said in this thread and others, you run into more problems with cheap items (less than $10) and with casual buyers who aren't educated about how eBay works. Thus, I don't have statistics to prove this, but I am going to guess that the type of customer Rick deals with is more "reasonable" than your typical eBayer.
CollectorAtWork: Like I said, that was a very well-thought out and written post. Your statistical analysis was appreciated; however, most of it had to do with auction fees, but I run all of my items as BIN OBO, where the listing fees are different and the FVF are 11% on the first $50, 6% of $50.01 to $1000, and 2% of everything over $1000. There is a debate to be had on whether it is smarter to run everything as auctions or BINs, but that involves a multitude of factors and warrants a separate discussion (type of item, competition for the same item, etc.).
I disagree with waiting for the "free listing" days because here is what I have seen happen based on the small sample size that I tried and my observations when searching for items on those days: eBay gets inundated with overpriced junk, and it deters people from even searching on those days because they know that all of the auctions have started at the bottom price the seller wants for it. Like I said, I don't have any quantitative data to back up that conclusion, but that is what I "think" happens.
On the matter of whether free shipping actually "works" for the type of items I sell, I can say "no." For magazines I have listed with free shipping as BIN OBO, you wouldn't believe the number of times people offer me $2. I can't ship it for $2, never mind pay the fees. Often I look and see similar items sell for the same price that my counteroffer is once you include shipping charges, but since my counteroffer includes shipping and is thus higher than the nominal "sell" price of someone who charges shipping, yet the buyer will pass on my counteroffer. I think free shipping works for items that are expensive, but once you get into items that are worth little more than the price to ship them is, people don't think about the postage cost and only think about the price of the item.
I plan to use my buying ebay ID for the next round of inventory dumps. Like a Vegas dealer told me, you get $2 players at a $2 table.
<< <i> Like a Vegas dealer told me, you get $2 players at a $2 table. >>
This sums up SO many of life's little annoyances. Well put.
Working on the following: 1970 Baseball PSA, 1970-1976 Raw, World Series Subsets PSA, 1969 Expansion Teams PSA, Fleer World Series Sets, Texas Rangers Topps Run 1972-1989
----------------------
Successful deals to date: thedudeabides,gameusedhoop,golfcollector,tigerdean,treetop,bkritz, CapeMOGuy,WeekendHacker,jeff8877,backbidder,Salinas,milbroco,bbuckner22,VitoCo1972,ddfamf,gemint,K,fatty macs,waltersobchak,dboneesq
A couple of other things. First I put in all of my listings that if you have under 50 feedback you have to contact me before bidding. Otherwise, I reserve the right to cancel your bid. If someone w/ 0 feedback bids, I do cancel their bids. However, with others under 50, if they do bid especially on the last day, I don't cancel. However, I still think having this on my listing may deter a few questionables from bidding, and helping me overall.
In regards to ebay free listing days, I do know that a lot of people complain about all of the junk on these days and about how they hate wading through them. It is probably true that this deters some people from bidding on those days. However, every time I list on these days, I still find people bidding on cards that I had listed in the past and received no bids. This past week's free listing promotion that just ended, out of around 250 listings, I had about 20 listings sell with revenue about $1500. Only one listing that sold was a first time listing. All of the others had been there for weeks of re-listing and re-listing. I find that this happens consistently every time. Of course, there may be a time when this dead ends, but so far things have been fine.
A couple of sales strategies. First depending on how much free time I have (since this isn't a full time thing for me), I do try to put a few new listings every time to mix in with my old ones. Therefore, for my repeat customers, this encourages them to look at my listings to see if there is anything new and interesting for them. (And if they think something is new, but it's been there for eons, all the better!) Also, as I said, I generally price around VCP or a little higher for my cards, so I know they're price fairly reasonably. If someone sees my auctions, they in general, don't feel that they're going to get ripped off or that all of my listings are way overpriced. I do overprice some of my listings, but when I do, I usually try to make sure that they're still lower than the lowest BIN out there for the same card. Or the card is unique. No one else sells the same card. Therefore, if someone wants it, they gotta buy from me even though there's a premium.
One last thing is the cheapo stuff. I do sell some cards at losses, especially those 99 cent cards or even at 1 cent. The only reason I do this is because I do fill out Schedule C for the Businesses on my IRS form, and losses on these cards can offset the gains on other cards. Again, I purchased these cards also, often very overmuch overpriced, so I take the hit on it for my stupidity (at buying and then paying money to grade worthless cards).
Lou Gehrig Master Set
Non-Registry Collection
Game Used Cards Collection