BIN vs. Auction of PCGS and NGC (and +/- CAC) coins

mercurydimeguy

Just made a strange realization while doing a daily check on eBay...

There are 4,861 coins listed on eBay with a CAC sticker. Of those only 163 listings are auctions, the rest are BIN.

At the same time there are 143,040 PCGS and NGC coins on eBay and 15,658 of them are auctions.

That is a ridiculous majority fore either search.

What your thoughts as to why?

Stuart

Sellers of coins are using eBay to reach out to more people, to gain more exposure for selling their fixed price coins.

Many of them will also negotiate price to some degree.

ebaytrader

Feepay is not kind to auctions, and is going to get worse.

mercurydimeguy

So is the business model evolving to be like an online flea market, albeit having some higher priced goods, or is it essentially becoming like Amazon.com?

TJM965

I don't look at the BIN'S. I will only look at real auctions with no reserve and .99 or less start. Why waste my time.

AMRC

There was a time you could not see an eBay Ad without reference to auction aspect of the business. Now-a-days, eBay is a store for the masses that happens to do auctions as well. Evolve or die.

bigjpst

ebay can't make up there mind if they want to be amazon or twitter, or a combination of both. Lots of people are going to the BIN Best offer listing because they are tired of losing on the auctions.

CoinZip

In my situation, eBay is just an advertising platform not a sales platform.

mercurydimeguy

..

mercurydimeguy

So essentially the sentiment is that the sell-through rate at market prices on eBay is less than on other auction venues and/or the net proceeds are less as well? So if a Morgan that sells for $500 on Heritage was to be listed in a similar auction on eBay it would sell for less, is that the gist of it?

illini420

Bottom line is that a 7-day auction on eBay is not an ideal place to sell a higher value or better date coin. Sure it may work for common Morgans or coins that trade close to their bullion value. But it certainly doesn't work for things like a better date MS66 Liberty Nickel or MS67+ Classic Commemoratives.

What are the chances that a buyer willing to pay full market value will happen to notice the coin and bid in that 7-day period??? Not great. But listing in a Buy It Now/Best Offer for 30-days (renewable for additional 30-day periods indefinitely) gives you a much better opportunity to find that retail buyer, even if it takes a month or two or more. Even in auctions other than eBay, things often sell too cheap regularly as the time they are available just isn't long enough for all of the buyers to find the coin and have the chance to get it.

3keepSECRETif2rDEAD

<< <i>I don't look at the BIN'S. I will only look at real auctions with no reserve and .99 or less start. Why waste my time. >>



...or the seller's

Erik

LindeDad

<< <i>I don't look at the BIN'S. I will only look at real auctions with no reserve and .99 or less start. Why waste my time. >>



Just why most sellers have quit doing auctions that end not making enough to pay the postage.

Purfrock

Funny enough, I buy more of my coins from BIN that I do in regular auctions. I can't tell you
how many times I've seen a BIN coin go unsold, show up soon after as an auction, and then go for
a higher price in that auction than they wanted in the BIN. Also, as a buyer you can also negotiate
a price for a BIN coin, even when the seller doesn't have the "best offer" icon up. Lastly, I've also heard
of SOME people (not me, of course) finding a BIN coin they like and then looking up the sellers email or dealer
webpage and seek out that coin at a more palatable price.

mercurydimeguy

Interesting feedback and perspectives...

One person commented an eBay auction might not a be an idaal place for higher value or better coins...but data shows that less than 11% of the listings arw auctions, which doesn't support the HQ hypothesis since I'm sure not nearly 90% of the graded material is higher end. Maybe I'm wrong...I'll continue researching.

Someone else made a comment regarding eBay becoming a place to advertise...I instantly had a vision that eBay has evolved into a 24x7 virtual coin show; you have your table, someone likes a coin, they make an offer...essentially BIN and Best Offer accomplish that.

Still back to cold hard data...3.5% of all CAC coins are listed in an auction and 96.5% are BIN. And nearly 89% of all PCGS and NGC listings are BIN. Is it possible the auction model (in general) is a losing bet now, for anything other than high demand coins (which seemingly have nor rational price point)? I know I've gotten some steals in the last 12 months on HA, SB, GC, et al., for nice mainstream material. Had higher bids in, won them several clicks below my max bid...had I seen some of the coins for sale I would have probably paid more.

Thoughts??

LindeDad

Been doing a few auctions each week have based the start at about half of my cost. Thoughts---Lost money on all them and most where PCGS graded.

jdimmick

I buy ebay coins from the public at a price where I will make a profit selling on ebay. if they don't like my offer , they can check elsewhere, now for special coins I don't mind stretching because I usually don't ebay those anyhow.

In lamor terms : I had to adjust my buying prices to reflect real prices realized on ebay for the stuff I sell there

Cougar1978

I do well with my BIN coins and avoid the auction giveaway. Auctions are a liquidation venue.

I keep an excel spreadsheet of ebay auction results of coins I am watching or purchase to get a bottom line number on what these coins go for relative to CDN Bid.

When there is an update in CDN Bid value, I will scan ebay for BIN's on these to get some good pickups.

I have had some ebay auction wins where I sold them BIN from my Store within two weeks or less making 50-100%. A recent world banknote pickup went for 2x what I pad and I had not held it a week.

DollarAfterDollar

I would put up coins occasionally that were auction formatted with a fair starting price (say 85% of actual value). What I discovered with BIN is that BIN gets maybe 4 times the views of a coin priced less in an auction format. I don't understand E-Bay buyers at all.

hiijacker

I have found many true no reserve .99 cent starting bid sellers on eBay. Just need to know how to find them. They often are the sellers who sell many different types of items with coins just one of them, and some are consignment sellers. They also don't really care what the closing price is, just take their commission.

For example, I have picked up a few undergraded coins at great prices from thecrownejewels1 and from crossroadpawn

If you take a look you can see they sell an assortment of items, and almost all are no reserve. These are the types of sellers to look for on eBay.

oreville

Didn't yahoo kill themselves off with their BIN approach when they tried to compete against ebay when ebay was still primarily an auction venue?

I believe ebay will hurt themselves and become irrevelant with this new BIN approach.

Cougar1978

Not a surprising stat at all. Auction coins realize much less than coins I can retail BIN. I have had coins I started at Bluesheet get no bids, then sell at retail the following week when I relisted them at market plus a premium for CAC.

A smart seller is not going to start an expensive coin at 99c unless he is broke. Even then he might start it at 10-20% behind bid. Its up to ebay buyers to recognize the coin is a super bargin at its start price instead of just stupidly follow the heard.

Cougar1978

<< <i>I have found many true no reserve .99 cent starting bid sellers on eBay. Just need to know how to find them. They often are the sellers who sell many different types of items with coins just one of them, and some are consignment sellers. They also don't really care what the closing price is, just take their commission.

For example, I have picked up a few undergraded coins at great prices from thecrownejewels1 and from crossroadpawn

If you take a look you can see they sell an assortment of items, and almost all are no reserve. These are the types of sellers to look for on eBay. >>



Thank you - I have bookmarked these sellers.

spacehayduke

When I used to sell on ebay the coins always went higher than my expectations. The key is having good quality for the grade and excellent images.

Best, SH