BIN prices on eBay - what percent do you offer

KendallCat

Happy New Year everyone and had a quick question. For BIN prices on eBay where the price is very high compared to VCP high - in the 50-75% above high VCP range what do you typically offer and what is your success rate. Looking at a few cards currently listed and SSS has some high prices on them - nice cards but not at those prices. Thank you in advance for the help.

KC

dictoresno

I wait until I find an appropriately price one. Was looking at two 2013 Arenado bowman chrome refractor PSA 10's. One was BIN for $30, the only other one was BIN for $65. I checked sales history and saw $20-26 was average. So I got the $30 one and ate the difference. The $65 one is still on eBay.

For me, depends how desperate I am or how often it comes up for sale. If it's rarer, I'll jump on it. If not, I’ll wait for a more appropriately priced one.

Kkathyl

I offer a fair price for what I see. I don’t take a coin or card worth 100.00 and offer 50.00 that’s insulting. I would say on average I go for 10-15% less. I get about 75%. But again I don’t look to steal a good deal.

erikthredd

I usually make an offer in the 65-75% range and go from there. If a card is considerably over-priced, i'll go to that seller's "Feedback as a seller", find a Best Offer sale with a similar asking price then copy & paste that item URL into this site below to see roughly how much of a discount that seller has recently taken. Maybe even checkout 4 or 5 of his like-priced sales doing the same. There has been times i got stuff for less than 50% of the asking price by just using this method before making an offer. There has been other times where i barely got any discount at all but it doesn't hurt to just check his previous sales anyways before making your offer.
http://www.flippertools.com/tools/ebayOfferHistory/ebay-best-offer-actual-price.htm?itemId=302326152831

prgsdw

I offer a fair price based on previous sales. In my experience the seller response typically falls in the following categories:

1. No response.
2. Counter offer for a trivial amount off, typically a discount equal to the amount of shipping. In those cases, I typically wait for another option.
3. Offer accepted or countered with a reasonable counter. I usually note these sellers so I know I can work with them in the future and most of the time complete the deal.
4. A borderline crazy response... some examples:
   A. I know the card is a 9, but we feel it would 10 upon review hence the 10 price.
   B. Those sales you quote were from 4sc and everyone knows they get preferential treatment, so this item isn't comparable. Note when it is this crazy response, it's typically a very long rant and it's pointless to attempt any further discourse.
   C. I don't have to sell! Typically followed by this card is part of PSA set xyz and is currently ranked #1 (insert some random number usually between 1-5). I'm not interested in anything less than 4x what I paid for it.
   D. If I sell it to you, then I won't have it anymore (no joke got that more than once).
   E. I don't care what VCP says. If everyone only followed VCP there would never be a new price for anything.

Good luck...
Steve

Brick

It is usually not worth the hassle of trying to deal with those who have vastly overpriced BINs.

mintonlypls

Keith...

From my experience...SSS will come down ~10% from listed price. If SSS has had a card listed for considerable time...they probably would come down more. They have listed a nice '67 Carew for $2900 that was $4000 at one time.

jfkheat

I will look at recent sales and VCP and make an offer based on that. I don't really care what their BIN price. If they get offended by my offer they should rethink their prices. It seems like most of SSS's high priced cards are eventually moved to auction.

James

HighGradeLegends

@jfkheat said:
I will look at recent sales and VCP and make an offer based on that. I don't really care what their BIN price. If they get offended by my offer they should rethink their prices. It seems like most of SSS's high priced cards are eventually moved to auction.

James

THIS.

If the seller does not agree, just move on. Almost annoying as a seller with overly high prices is a buyer complaining about it....not saying this is happening here...just making a general statement. The market will clear at the market clearing price....find that and you win....wait it out if you have time.

KendallCat

@mintonlypls said:
Keith...

From my experience...SSS will come down ~10% from listed price. If SSS has had a card listed for considerable time...they probably would come down more. They have listed a nice '67 Carew for $2900 that was $4000 at one time.

Thanks for the info Monte and everyone else. It has been a long time since I have dealt with them, and the card in question is nice but I can love without it. They have it priced between the current grade and what grade they think it should get. Might offer and see what they think - no worries either way. Really need to focus more on narrowing down my targets and not getting excited at every shiny new toy

KC

jfkheat

Keith,
They have a website with their phone number listed on it. http://triplesssinc.com/ You might try to contact them that way.
James

mtcards

I will usually make an offer in the range of previous sales, regardless of what the BIN is listed at, however, if the item is listed for more than double, I wont make an offer since I pretty much expect that the seller isnt willing to negotiate that much.

Just as an opinion, having an item where your best counteroffer is $3 less than your BIN is nonsense, I mean if you list something at $50 and get an offer of $40 and then counter with $47, why not just list it at that to begin with. The last item I made an offer for has had sales in the $25-$30 range, it is listed at $40 or BO, so I offer $30, the high end of previous sales and the counter is $37, I mean really?

Dont get me wrong, I understand that if every sale was based off the previous one, prices would never go up or down, but if a $3 difference cost you a sale, why not just list it at that to begin with.

NGS428

Are we talking about BIN with the seller accepting best offers, or listings with a BIN only? I give offers to sellers on each...

bens4778

I've had some surprising luck with lower (50%) offers... I've also had sellers auto-reject offers 5% below listing (why even bother with a best offer?).

Generally, one of the first things I'll do is see if that seller has other accepted offers and what percent of BIN they accepted. You probably already know that even though you can't see the exact price sold with best offer, you can arrange completed listings by price and figure out the offer that way. I noticed one seller this past year was auto-accepting offers at 50% of BIN, and so I offered that for all the cards I wanted and they were all auto-accepted.

slum22

@mtcards said:
I will usually make an offer in the range of previous sales, regardless of what the BIN is listed at, however, if the item is listed for more than double, I wont make an offer since I pretty much expect that the seller isnt willing to negotiate that much.

Just as an opinion, having an item where your best counteroffer is $3 less than your BIN is nonsense, I mean if you list something at $50 and get an offer of $40 and then counter with $47, why not just list it at that to begin with. The last item I made an offer for has had sales in the $25-$30 range, it is listed at $40 or BO, so I offer $30, the high end of previous sales and the counter is $37, I mean really?

Dont get me wrong, I understand that if every sale was based off the previous one, prices would never go up or down, but if a $3 difference cost you a sale, why not just list it at that to begin with.

I list items similarly to what you are writing about so let me explain my thinking. A slight difference is my listings are probably a bit closer to recent sales (in your example I would price my BIN/BO at $35). But the reasoning behind why I would set a BIN at $40 even though I would accept an offer of $37 is because some people will just hit BIN at $40 and not bother offering at all. In these cases I can get the full price. Second, $3 off of a $40 card is 7.5%. This is not inconsequential. Imagine if everything you bought in your daily life cost 7.5% less. Or on the flip side imagine if your salary was 7.5% less? This is essentially what the seller is offering by reducing the cost $3 on his $40 item. That’s how I think about it anyway.

tonylags

@slum22 said:

@mtcards said:

Just as an opinion, having an item where your best counteroffer is $3 less than your BIN is nonsense, I mean if you list something at $50 and get an offer of $40 and then counter with $47, why not just list it at that to begin with. The last item I made an offer for has had sales in the $25-$30 range, it is listed at $40 or BO, so I offer $30, the high end of previous sales and the counter is $37, I mean really?

Let me give my thoughts on this. I do this frequently, as a seller, however when I list items I always use best offer. I also adjust prices as time and competition, current listings and previous sales warrant. Some times I'm at my lowest price, that I am willing to accept for now, unless it goes to auction. I understand BO is still active but it is just easier to leave it there rather than go through and edit each and every listing. What I don't understand is if someone has a card listed at 40; why offer 37? Selling on Ebay roughly costs me 15-25% per month, depending on sales, when you factor in all expenses. So that 40 card, actually only puts 30 in my pocket, if it's graded figure another 10 after shipping each way to/from PSA. Did I get card for free; probably not? I understand both perspectives; buyer doesn't want to overpay; seller doesn't want to take a bath. I guess for me that's where BO comes into play. I try to find a happy medium. Sometimes a sale is made; sometimes it's declined.

mtcards

@slum22 said:

I list items similarly to what you are writing about so let me explain my thinking. A slight difference is my listings are probably a bit closer to recent sales (in your example I would price my BIN/BO at $35). But the reasoning behind why I would set a BIN at $40 even though I would accept an offer of $37 is because some people will just hit BIN at $40 and not bother offering at all. In these cases I can get the full price. Second, $3 off of a $40 card is 7.5%. This is not inconsequential. Imagine if everything you bought in your daily life cost 7.5% less. Or on the flip side imagine if your salary was 7.5% less? This is essentially what the seller is offering by reducing the cost $3 on his $40 item. That’s how I think about it anyway.

I see what you are saying, but my point isnt the $3 would be inconsequential, but that most people, in my experience, are going to offer you their first offer and nothing else. Although I have had many people who on a BIN/BO i have had make counter offers, generally I either accept their first offer or they do not send/respond to my counter, even if the counter is at or below recent sales.

dontippet

Not too long ago, I offered maybe $12 for a $14.95 Buy it Now or best offer. He declined my offer saying that he couldn't go any lower than $14.95? Who knows why he had best offer up.

Stone193

@dontippet said:
Not too long ago, I offered maybe $12 for a $14.95 Buy it Now or best offer. He declined my offer saying that he couldn't go any lower than $14.95? Who knows why he had best offer up.

Hiya Don

I can never figure people out. If someone has a BIN with BO and I ask for a 10% discount and they decline? Why even have the BO?

1all

@dontippet said:
Not too long ago, I offered maybe $12 for a $14.95 Buy it Now or best offer. He declined my offer saying that he couldn't go any lower than $14.95? Who knows why he had best offer up.

Could be that "BIN or Best Offer" is now the default auction type and there is no longer a check box to remove the "best offer" option. You have to know how to get into the Advanced Listing Tool to remove it. Very annoying for novice seller.

dennis07

All of your crazy responses were classics. This one is my favorite.
E. I don't care what VCP says. If everyone only followed VCP there would never be a new price for anything.
What the seller meant to say was I am trolling for the uneducated to pay way too much for it.

ReggieCleveland

I use BIN/BO almost exclusively to get true rarities and stuff that only comes up for auction once or twice every few years (or less, in some cases). In those instances, I'm usually fine paying 10-15% above the last sale. The way I see it, the seller is putting in work by stocking inventory of rare cards and I have no problem compensating them for their time. I'll usually start by offering right around what the card sold for previously and we go from there. Of course, there are some that just have their head in the clouds cough yepbg cough and I just stay away.

If the item I'm after is a condition rarity or something that comes to auction regularly, I just wait for the next auction.

Arthur

rcmb3220

I offer around what previous sales are. Then if I need to counter, I'll go a little above since it's worth something to not have to deal with following an auction. If I don't get that accepted, I move on. It should be noted that the success rate of this method is worse than my success on winning auctions.

Nathaniel1960

5% lower than watchcount average for seller's prior BOs.