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CoinZip
Posts: 3,253 ✭✭✭
I remember the days when I would see the ole counter rack up over 1000 a week....
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CoinZip
Posts: 3,253 ✭✭✭
CoinZip
Posts: 3,253 ✭✭✭
Comments
Coin's for sale/trade.
Tom Pilitowski
US Rare Coin Investments
800-624-1870
The ones that remain aren't interested in any Buy It Now opportunities.
List them for 99c and they will show up - but will only bid cents on the dollar.
And more likely than not, the buyers will be flippers - who then relist the coins with a BIN.
BST transactions: dbldie55, jayPem, 78saen, UltraHighRelief, nibanny, liefgold, FallGuy, lkeigwin, mbogoman, Sandman70gt, keets, joeykoins, ianrussell (@GC), EagleEye, ThePennyLady, GRANDAM, Ilikecolor, Gluggo, okiedude, Voyageur, LJenkins11, fastfreddie, ms70, pursuitofliberty, ZoidMeister,Coin Finder, GotTheBug, edwardjulio, Coinnmore...
I wish I could eliminate ebay all together, and do use other avenues to sell my items, but when it comes down to it, I sell more items, and usually for more money on ebay.
My Ebay Store
not over....most are BIN's way over retail (raw coins for PCGS graded prices, etc). The auction format allows
me a chance to save some money if I win as I just put in my retail price and wait. I get a few but not like
years gone by.
bob
80% of what I search for are BIN's. What happened to auctions? I will pay retail on most coins I bid on but
not over....most are BIN's way over retail (raw coins for PCGS graded prices, etc). The auction format allows
me a chance to save some money if I win as I just put in my retail price and wait. I get a few but not like
years gone by.
bob
I wanted to get rid of a few common date certified Morgan dollars, so for the past few weeks I ran .99c auctions. Granted some of the coins were slightly ugly, but most sold for less than Bluesheet. The ugly ones probably 20% back of sheet. Add the fees and shipping and they were a real loser. That's why many people are gunshy about auctions.
My Ebay Store
My Ebay Store
The number of views may not be that important. Today, the fewer viewers that you get are probably more likely to purchase (and willing to pay a fair price), due to improved algorithms and direct marketing. Just a guess...
Excellent point, quality over quantity...
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I remember the days when I would see the ole counter rack up over 1000 a week....
Ah, but those were the days when everything was listed at $0.99 and if you did list something at the BIN figure, you were charged accordingly.
Now every seller (almost everyone) lists their coins at almost full retail and they expect huge traffic.
Time for these sellers to wake up.
"“Those who sacrifice liberty for security/safety deserve neither.“(Benjamin Franklin)
"I only golf on days that end in 'Y'" (DE59)
I also hear often, when I make an offer, that the seller is not going to sell it for less than he paid. Could you image having that attitude in the car business, or many others? There just are not as many collectors as there used to be. Prices have come down and may keep going down.
The coin prices realized are down all around and most sellers do not/will not take a loss. I can't tell you how many ridiculously low offers I have tuned down. I normally leave some "wiggle room" in my BIN listings, but I am not going to give it away.
Perhaps those "ridiculously low offers" actually reflect the real market.
1. Listing a coin at a ridiculous price and wondering why it has been for sale for an ETERNITY.
2. Constantly listing over priced coins in three day auctions so they show up relentlessly in my 'newly listed' searches. I consider this spam and if you feel free to waste small segments of my life then you get no money from me.
3. Veiled keyword spamming. "Looks FB" "99% FBL" "Just like a doily holder" "Ask me about my CAC full set also for sale"(in the title) etc. Again, spam my life away.
3. Pricing an OGH at the next highest price point in the price guide.
4. Pricing a CAC coin at the 'plus' price for the grade on every CAC coin you have.
5. Having your item show up in a 'newly listed' search because it was posted 5 minutes before I looked and it already has a discounted price.
6. Blocking out the cert# on any holder in all the images.
7. Pricing your coin that PCGS says is $500 at $550 with an 'or best offer' option and declining all offers under $500 (not ridiculously under either)
8. Charging more for shipping than it costs. If you want to charge me $3 for a 50 cent mailer and the $2.56 ebay shipping cost, I am on with that. But when you charge me $8 or $10 and it shows up with the same $3 cost to you I probably won't be back.
9. Your items show up in my search as 'sponsored item' and are not related to my search. Your fault or ebay's fault, I don't care, I won't be buying your stuff.
After all these years I have identified folks who do some, or all, of these things and I can recognize their listing styles and photos and I just skip over their listings when they show in my results.
Here are some things that I find are effective:
1. Whatever option out there is that notifies me of a price drop near the end of a listing. If I have it on my watch list and was on the fence, often this is enough to get me to make a purchase.
2. Listing an item for a reasonable price (one that would still make it worth while to sell for seller) and also offering 'or best offer'. If I see something I really want that is newly listed and the price is reasonable but there is a BO option as well, do I really want to send a BO and try to save a few buck while some other buyer may want to BIN to keep from losing it? If it is close I will just pull the trigger and pay a little more to get the item.
3. Following up on a sale by emailing me info on your own website. If I liked the ebay transaction and I know about your site, I will look at it and start to buy items (usually more expensive items) from you directly for a check where we can both pocket a bit more money.
4. Dropping the price each time you relist the item. Bozarth does a great job at this. He posts items and that which isn't moving is discounted at a certain point to move it. Often I buy these, but I also buy more full price stuff from him, and through his site, because he always has fresh stuff to look at. I will even pay more for his stuff because of his decisions. If there is a coin on ebay for $250 and Bozarth has the same coin and grade for $260 or $270 and I like them both, I will buy from Bozarth more often than not because he will have other good stuff for me in the future.
Not bashing anyone, each person makes their own business decisions and I respect the decisions. I just wanted to share what gets me to open my wallet and what makes me keep walking.
Not realistic BIN's in today's market, are a "kiss of death." As a buyer, I don't even look at BIN auctions for coins, and for bullion, only if there is a "sale."
I list my BIN's above what I want and run sales with 10% off so if somebody buys it, I get the price I want and they think they got a deal.
I only wished it worked.
I think all of the points made from the seller's perspectives are correct. Ebay has not quite killed the golden goose, but it is on life support. The flurry of ebay bucks offers at the end of each quarter are a sure sign that the business model is not producing results for the other 85 days of the reporting period. From a seller's perspective, there are seller behaviors that I cannot tolerate and they cost sellers my business and even determine if I will look at their listings. Here are some that have gotten really troublesome lately:
1. Listing a coin at a ridiculous price and wondering why it has been for sale for an ETERNITY.
2. Constantly listing over priced coins in three day auctions so they show up relentlessly in my 'newly listed' searches. I consider this spam and if you feel free to waste small segments of my life then you get no money from me.
3. Veiled keyword spamming. "Looks FB" "99% FBL" "Just like a doily holder" "Ask me about my CAC full set also for sale"(in the title) etc. Again, spam my life away.
3. Pricing an OGH at the next highest price point in the price guide.
4. Pricing a CAC coin at the 'plus' price for the grade on every CAC coin you have.
5. Having your item show up in a 'newly listed' search because it was posted 5 minutes before I looked and it already has a discounted price.
6. Blocking out the cert# on any holder in all the images.
7. Pricing your coin that PCGS says is $500 at $550 with an 'or best offer' option and declining all offers under $500 (not ridiculously under either)
8. Charging more for shipping than it costs. If you want to charge me $3 for a 50 cent mailer and the $2.56 ebay shipping cost, I am on with that. But when you charge me $8 or $10 and it shows up with the same $3 cost to you I probably won't be back.
9. Your items show up in my search as 'sponsored item' and are not related to my search. Your fault or ebay's fault, I don't care, I won't be buying your stuff.
After all these years I have identified folks who do some, or all, of these things and I can recognize their listing styles and photos and I just skip over their listings when they show in my results.
Here are some things that I find are effective:
1. Whatever option out there is that notifies me of a price drop near the end of a listing. If I have it on my watch list and was on the fence, often this is enough to get me to make a purchase.
2. Listing an item for a reasonable price (one that would still make it worth while to sell for seller) and also offering 'or best offer'. If I see something I really want that is newly listed and the price is reasonable but there is a BO option as well, do I really want to send a BO and try to save a few buck while some other buyer may want to BIN to keep from losing it? If it is close I will just pull the trigger and pay a little more to get the item.
3. Following up on a sale by emailing me info on your own website. If I liked the ebay transaction and I know about your site, I will look at it and start to buy items (usually more expensive items) from you directly for a check where we can both pocket a bit more money.
4. Dropping the price each time you relist the item. Bozarth does a great job at this. He posts items and that which isn't moving is discounted at a certain point to move it. Often I buy these, but I also buy more full price stuff from him, and through his site, because he always has fresh stuff to look at. I will even pay more for his stuff because of his decisions. If there is a coin on ebay for $250 and Bozarth has the same coin and grade for $260 or $270 and I like them both, I will buy from Bozarth more often than not because he will have other good stuff for me in the future.
Not bashing anyone, each person makes their own business decisions and I respect the decisions. I just wanted to share what gets me to open my wallet and what makes me keep walking.
That is good information for sellers to contemplate. Thanks for sharing
Jim
When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest....Abraham Lincoln
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.....Mark Twain
I'm not going to give my stuff away, I will turn things over through other venues and am at the point where I can often get more at my local coin shop when I remove the juice.
Also, the E-Bay Bucks is something that does absolutely nothing for me.
E-Bay is dying a quick death.
Many buyers on the bay are simply looking for what they can pick off. Lately have done better on sell side with Model RR material than coins. I recently bought a nice AU NGC slabbed Canadian coin which is listed at $30 in KRS for less than $4. Surprised seller shipped it. Better be careful what you list for 99c opening bid.
The dealer set up next to me at the Vegas show last weekend had a sign on his backup table that said, I ripped off the last guy so that I could get you a good deal. People seem to want it both ways. They want us to give them a great price when buying from us, but want us to pay them retail when we buy from them.(Not just collectors, but the "wholesale guys" that seem to walk around every show. Of course with no coins to sell.) Can't work both ways. I see people posting here all the time about how dealers have unrealistic prices, but you look at the BST and half the posts are from collectors trying to sell their items for way over market.
The eBay "free listings" policy, which began after Whitman left, has turned eBay more into a retail site instead of an auction site. We keep seeing the same stuff, listed week after week after week at ridiculously high prices cluttering-up the listings. Some coins have been listed for years because there are no insertion fees. Until eBay starts charging listing fees (used to be up to $2/listing) their traffic will not grow.
Not only a retail site but a junk site too. That wasn't nearly as bad in the "old days." But what's the alternative? They're just about the only game in town in that format, at least that I know of.
Most of my stuff is now BIN, as buyers seem impatient, and won't wait a week for an auction to end, or since they do not know the final price, move onto a BIN, so I basically have stopped auctions.
I metric my stuff (left over from my real job days) and I am at a 56% sell rate, meaning of the items I list, 56% sell in the first 30 days, and average 6 sales a day.
Junk and clutter in searches: I have a LARGE number of saved searches, with gobs of qualifiers. For example, one of my "bread and butter" type of item that I buy a lot of, I checked today, and I pulled all the filters off, and there were 211,534 items listed. With the filters, 8,539. If I assume the average listing lasts 7 days, then about 1200 a day, or 6 pages at 192 a page, and I can skim 6 pages in less than 15 minutes, less if I do it a couple times a day. On the weird side, a friend, who is also a competitor, asked me to give him my searches (he is not real computer literate), and I nicely declined. I have a lot of design time in the searches, and I make money off them, so I do not give away competitive processes. He got REALLY offended, and stopped talking to me.
Stuff that does not sell goes into the "time out" holding pen, and if I have free listings left over, I relist them, at a 10% off, and after enough 10%'s off, everything eventually sells. Maybe my expectations were too high, or whatever, but I prefer to sell it for something, than hang onto it forever. Like defending your plush deck chair on the Titanic instead of getting a lousy seat on the lifeboat.
What I paid for something +what I want to make off of it + what are similar items selling for = a quasi algorithm for the starting price, but eventually, the number of number of times it is listed, 10% off each time, sets the true selling price.
Snipe programs make manual bidding useless.
I've also disposed of all "average" coins and can usually do just as well with MY list of actual dealers.
I have been selling on ebay for 15 years.
Most of my stuff is now BIN, as buyers seem impatient, and won't wait a week for an auction to end, or since they do not know the final price, move onto a BIN, so I basically have stopped auctions.
I metric my stuff (left over from my real job days) and I am at a 56% sell rate, meaning of the items I list, 56% sell in the first 30 days, and average 6 sales a day.
Junk and clutter in searches: I have a LARGE number of saved searches, with gobs of qualifiers. For example, one of my "bread and butter" type of item that I buy a lot of, I checked today, and I pulled all the filters off, and there were 211,534 items listed. With the filters, 8,539. If I assume the average listing lasts 7 days, then about 1200 a day, or 6 pages at 192 a page, and I can skim 6 pages in less than 15 minutes, less if I do it a couple times a day. On the weird side, a friend, who is also a competitor, asked me to give him my searches (he is not real computer literate), and I nicely declined. I have a lot of design time in the searches, and I make money off them, so I do not give away competitive processes. He got REALLY offended, and stopped talking to me.
Stuff that does not sell goes into the "time out" holding pen, and if I have free listings left over, I relist them, at a 10% off, and after enough 10%'s off, everything eventually sells. Maybe my expectations were too high, or whatever, but I prefer to sell it for something, than hang onto it forever. Like defending your plush deck chair on the Titanic instead of getting a lousy seat on the lifeboat.
What I paid for something +what I want to make off of it + what are similar items selling for = a quasi algorithm for the starting price, but eventually, the number of number of times it is listed, 10% off each time, sets the true selling price.
Many good points above. Here is my take from a buyer's perspective on your strategy.
BIN is the wave of the future. You are correct that people are impatient and the coming generation is even more so, so it will only get worse. Additionally, when ebay drops an ebay bucks offer on you (always unannounced) and puts a 24-48 hour limit on it, you really only have buy it now as a viable option and if you BIN on things you didn't anticipate buying, you often have to cancel programmed snipe bids on real auctions to shift funds to the BIN purchase. You don't have a viable option to switch your sales to shorter true auctions because in a 3 day auction you cannot be sure that enough interested parties have seen your item to make an acceptable sale price probable.
Your strategy to use a time out holding pen is spot on. As I posted earlier, I don't want to see an item I am not going to buy every three days in my newly listed search. Waiting a while and then posting at a discounted price gives the item a freshness from two different points of evaluation ( ie I may have forgotten seeing it and I have definitely not seen it at that price before). I have found many folks who sell collectibles ( coins and stamps ) often love their items more than any potential buyer does and they price them accordingly. This, in my opinion, changes them from a coin dealing business into a numismatic museum.
If something isn't selling for what you want, get rid of it for what you can get and take that money and put it into something new that might make a profit when sold. Using your method of discounting, you are correct that you find the true market price which should allow you to make purchases in the future at prices that allow you to sell at that now known market price for an acceptable profit. As I said previously, Vic Bozarth does this. I believe he applies one discount to try and clear inventory and if the item doesn't sell, it disappears. When I put items on my watch list that I am considering and they don't sell, I always look at my watch list to see if they are relisted and look at them if they are. When I see them relisted over and over at the same price, I delete them from the watch list. If I see them relisted for a slightly lower price, I 'rewatch' them and there is a much greater chance that I may buy them.
But, as a seller, what you really want me to do is add you to my followed seller's list. I have only 9 or 10 coin sellers on that list, but I ALWAYS look for new items from that list of sellers FIRST. I also search for, and add, their personal websites to my browser. Lower and mid price range items will likely be bought on ebay. If it gets pricier (which is less likely to sell on ebay from my experience), then I check your site and if it is offered there, I contact you to see what the price would be for a check. You save on ebay fees, I save because I didn't use a credit card, the savings for me are enough to counter my impatience, so we both win. The key is making someone a 'regular' as opposed to making a strong profit off of every sale. Over time, your willingness to work with me will make you money.
I've noticed that a series of 7-day auctions get far more traffic than 30-day auctions. I think in the 30-day auctions the auction gets basically "lost" when people are sorting by most recently listed or ending soonest. A 7-day auction keeps the auction in the radar much better.
People that relist week after week or 3 days after 3 days fall off my radar completely. I almost want to label it as spam!
The eBay "free listings" policy, which began after Whitman left, has turned eBay more into a retail site instead of an auction site. We keep seeing the same stuff, listed week after week after week at ridiculously high prices cluttering-up the listings. Some coins have been listed for years because there are no insertion fees. Until eBay starts charging listing fees (used to be up to $2/listing) their traffic will not grow.
Not only a retail site but a junk site too. That wasn't nearly as bad in the "old days." But what's the alternative? They're just about the only game in town in that format, at least that I know of.
They are the only game in town because buyers make it that way. Every item I sell gets shipped with a business card, a packing slip and a postcard with a list of all my contact info including website and show list. When I get new items they go on my website first, then maybe here or coinzip first. If it's a large group I email subscribers first shot. Then eventually on eBay. I have lots of repeat buyers there, but they seem to refuse to understand that they will get a better price most of the time if they just save all that junk I send that they probably just chuck and check my website from time to time.
Edited to add. Most of the contacts or sales I get on my site are people i met at shows or via forum posts. Very few were once eBay customers
My Ebay Store
If you want to sell coins start at 99c but you may be giving them away. I have won dome good deals.
I sell a lot of coins that are under $30. Big ticket coins can do well but you have to find that wealthy buyer willing to spend money. These buyers seem rarer than the coins.
A lot of collectors are going with mods near BV. I have seen a lot of them trashing mods but they are blowing in the wind. The grading system that looks like a lotto ticket is not going to save them and adds even more subjectivity. People gravitate to what they feel safe with and can afford.
I'm not a big Facebook fan, though I couldn't really tell you why. It just never really caught on with me, though it has been a good channel to find lost friends and such.
(I visit my account maybe once a year, if that.)
What affect do you think FB entering eBay's turf will have on the market, if any? Even though I presently have no intention of selling stuff on FB, a little competition might be good for eBay.
Keep 'em honest, if you know what I mean. Make 'em realize that they might not be the 800-pound gorilla in the room forever.
Morgan Dollars:
Lincoln Wheat Cents:
Here is some ebay-provided data....
May I ask where you obtained this ebay-provided data?
Your charts are nice and reflect a traditional slow summer season. The surprise to me is how (apparently) strong these popular series' hold up late into the spring. They show April-May sales equal to or greater than November-December.
Here is some ebay-provided data....
May I ask where you obtained this ebay-provided data?
Your charts are nice and reflect a traditional slow summer season. The surprise to me is how (apparently) strong these popular series' hold up late into the spring. They show April-May sales equal to or greater than November-December.
I am wondering if it's just this sellers data?
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