eBay fees and thoughts
amwldcoin
Posts: 11,269 ✭✭✭✭✭
I grumble inside every time I sell an expensive coin on eBay, not that I am not happy about the sale.
Other than the 3% +- transaction costs for payment processing. It doesn’t cost eBay a bit of difference if what I sell costs $20 or $5000! Their liability and risk is extremely low to non existent.
Your thoughts???
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Comments
I agree with you. They are laughing all the way to the bank on expensive items. Easy money for them, and we absorb the majority of the risk.
You are paying for the eyeballs that they offer which is the best deal on earth for numismatic items.
A very, very good deal.
EOC-you got any ebay tatoos ?
Tattoos are ridiculous, IMO. Why brand yourself. 30 years from now it will all be an inky mess.
They charge what the market will bear. It's business.
When I compare it to renting a brick & mortar and opening an LCS, it feels like a steal.
Or the fees, time delay and S/H + insurance fees associated with a respectable auction house. My only complaint with ebay is all the ad nonsense that pervades my ebay page.
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
The only reason I would ever open a coin shop would be for the buying opportunities, which cost you nothing on ebay!
If it really bothers you, don't use eBay to sell expensive coins, maybe?
There was a thread here the other day where people wanted PCGS to adjust grading tier values so it wouldn't cost as much to get their coins graded. Everybody would like to pay less for the services they want.
Umm, time is money so it does cost you to search on ebay
I don't sell many coins because I generally buy coins that I want. However, I have a tendency to buy duplicates sometimes and want to sell them. eBay definitely has the most eyes and when compared to fees elsewhere, they probably are not that terrible. Note: I don't really have a lot of coins that I consider "expensive" but those that are tend to be the ones I don't accidentally but twice.
Eyeballs for the dollar is off the chart on eBay.
I don't sell a lot, but usually eBay is my first choice, followed closely Great Collections.
Dave
Not true. You've got buyer protection, seller protection, etc.
eBay for us has been a love/hate relationship since we started buying and selling on it in 1998. They have a long and storied history of fixing things that aren't broken, and not fixing things that are. They also are trying to gradually turn themselves into Amazon a little bit at a time. Our usage of it has declined significantly over the past few years, mostly to pick up some currency from time to time, an occasional hit for a local want list or to spin off things that are oddballs, overstocks or homesteaders.
RIP Mom- 1932-2012
I had not sold anything on Ebay for a while until a few months ago. When I saw the fees I was not happy.
It may have looked like that in the past but the recent change by eBay in counting the actual number of views of each item in a stated time frame gives a much more realistic count of the eyes on the prize.
That is partially true. Take from a business seller who was scammed by a customer returning counterfeits, yet eBay sided with the buyer for the most ridiculous reason in the world. We have "30 day free returns" as our default, since we stand behind our products.
We package everything on high-res video, and when we receive returns, we open the packages on video. We provided this information to eBay, along with all other pertinent details. eBay said that they sided with the buyer because when we accepted the return, we admitted that the coins were counterfeit. Unbelievable. So, the buyer/seller protection is not at 100% guarantee.
I think the OP was lamenting the fact that eBay charges the same seller's fee percentage regardless of the item value. I suppose they do that to facilitate (subsidize) the times that eBay does have to pay a claim out of their pocket.
The eBay fee percentage is not the same regardless of the item value.
They have always backed me. However, regardless of who wins and loses, there is an insurance cost to the guarantees that would scale with the sale price. That was the OP's original question.
Look on the bright side. If they used the same fairness standard as the IRS, the fee percentage would increase with the sale price.
Have a website with a name that matches up with your eBay name and make sure it has a contact form.
Lotta buyers will find that on the bigger coins, somehow.
"It's like God, Family, Country, except Sticker, Plastic, Coin."
I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that the 3% fee from Ebay is considerably less than your typical auction house consignment fee.
Wisdom has been chasing you but, you've always been faster
The 3% is only on the finance end, not on the sale price. My fees average about 12 %, maybe a little more..
How many auction houses have fees less than 12%?
zero.
And with a store, my eBay fees are under 9%. And you get a LOT of services for that from free shipping supplies to discounted shipping rates to buyer/seller guarantees and the all important eyeballs. Anyone who thinks that is expensive doesn't know much about retail.
GC fees are 0% for coins over $1k with only a $10 listing fee. 5% on everything else.
Do they have a buyer's fee?
Plus 12.5% charged to the buyer.
Well, GC's buyer's fees are 10% on coins over $1,000 if you pay by check and 12.5% if you pay by credit card. You can argue that they are buyer's fees and not seller's fees, but we all know that buyer's fees are baked into the bid price and, as such, come out of the seller's pockets. Don't get me wrong, I love GC, but there is money being spent by buyer's that does not end up in the seller's pockets.
In honor of the memory of Cpl. Michael E. Thompson
Well, I don’t pay to advertise, yet my expensive items still get the eyeballs needed to ensure they don’t underperform. I don’t pay overhead for a store location or even a public office. I don’t have to worry about driving traffic to my website and hoping the right person sees the coin at the right time, where instead many potential buyers are automatically emailed within hours of my item going up, letting them know it’s there.
Beyond all of that, eBay has plenty of costs of its own. Maybe the expensive items subsidize the cheaper ones, and the trade would be lower fees for the expensive items you sell (which for most sellers is probably not their main price point) in exchange for higher fees on the many more cheap items you sell. Looking at it as fees for overall sales totals, I bet the net fee is cheaper this way.
Ebay has momentum. Collectibles have been strong throughout the pandemic and currently they have signed some very lucrative marketing deals. With the economic slowdown looming discretionary spending will be concentrating on the very highest perceived value collectibles i.e. rare coins.
They are positioning themselves as the go to marketplace for collectibles, i am very bullish right now.
Yes. 10% plus the set up fee.
Yes, and I'm told it's not at all uncommon for a seller to have a -5% fee at a major House, that is he would get 105% of hammer. Coins have to be special, but I'd imagine just how special varies with the percent of hammer. A famous rarity might yield 110% or more as a "loss leader" for the House.
I could be wrong, but even 105% or 110% of hammer is still 10-15% less than what the buyer is paying. I'm assuming you're referring to Heritage's 20-22.5% buyers fee which of course gets factored into every bid. Let's not fool ourselves your hammer price is 20% lower than it otherwise would be.
http://ProofCollection.Net
It's funny how many folks out there don't know how to google! I was warned by ebay awhile back for replying to a message "Google is your friend!"
Yeah, but the auction houses do all the work! Even GC charges a setup fee per listing!
The shipping supplies are paid from your store subscription lest you forget. Don't forget to add that to your calculations. If not for all the crap ebay branches out into, I suspect that alone is profitable enough to run the platform. You can also get those discounted shipping rates in a number of places! The 1 time ebay's seller protection could of helped me from a dollar standpoint ebay bailed on me! I can about guarantee you ebay's cost of buyer and seller protection is closer to 0 than it is 1% of the FVF.
although the fees are high, they are low compared to a store in a shopping mall.
Yes that's true. It's also true there are lots of coins the auction houses won't handle.
Yes, it is. But it defers the cost of the store.
I defy you to find an equivalent of "eBay standard shipping" anywhere.
I've saved $400 or $500 due to eBay seller protection in the last 3 years. That is probably closer to 1% of what I've paid them than to 0%.
And I'm sure you'll complain about their missteps on taxes also, but I've saved a ton of time on reporting and submitting sales tax since eBay took over that task. [Not that eBay wanted to.]
You can't cobble together the eBay package for 2x what eBay charges. Even a personal commercial website will cost you $25+ per month, even if you don't make a single sale. Then you're still going to pay 3.5% for payment processing (Paypal is 3.5% these days, if you didn't know.) And you'll have lower discounts on shipping (PayPal gives you $50 insurance on priority, like USPS, while you get $100 free insurance from eBay, for example), fewer eyeballs unless you advertise, etc.
If it were easy or even possible to create a lower cost eBay equivalent, it would have been done. It's not like no one wants a piece of the internet marketplace.
Inquire of Amazon how much it will cost you to sell through them. It's a MINIMUM of 20% + payment processing.
This should be a BIG competitive advantage to ebay. I hope they can exploit it even more to break the Amazon quasi-monopoly - 20% is ludicrous.
I took a long hiatus from selling on ebay. After one week back into selling common "widget-y" stuff, I can definitely say I'm paying more in fees/taxes/shipping that I did some years ago. All totalled... I've made around 75% of what ebay has so graciously displayed as my 90-day total.
Successful BST transactions with: SilverEagles92; Ahrensdad; Smitty; GregHansen; Lablade; Mercury10c; copperflopper; whatsup; KISHU1; scrapman1077, crispy, canadanz, smallchange, robkool, Mission16, ranshdow, ibzman350, Fallguy, Collectorcoins, SurfinxHI, jwitten, Walkerguy21D, dsessom.
I've made around 75% of what ebay has so graciously displayed as my 90-day total.
I just noticed, the other day, that those 'sales totals' on your 'overview' page include your shipping charges and the sales tax that ebay collects for your state. Just a bit deceptive.....
Don't forget all the cheer leaders they hire behind the scenes that scrutinize the most minimal twitch of interest by prospective buyers and do what they can to clinch the deal for you.....Plus they work hard to keep their site safe.
Sorry. My point was just that Greatcollections fees aren't as much less than everybody else's.
Depends on what you're selling. For some price ranges, GC fees are actually higher.
And for some things, GC fees are lower but you'll put less money in your pocket in the end.
I agree the ebay standard shipping can't be beat. That's what made me dip into the subsidy that's helping to pay for all your low dollar listings!
Before the ebay standard shipping I would do my best not to list anything under $25.00. For the 1st time my average cost of per item sold dipped below $200.00 recently.
As I said above, the ebay seller protection has only had the opportunity to help me once, and they pretty much told me to stick my claim where the sun doesn't shine. I was actually pretty miffed and wasted several calls and hours trying to get them to cover it! It was only $40 but the principal of it made me push and ponder! I felt like it should have been a no brainer for them to cover a seller who never had a claim and is well into 7 figures in sales with them!
Of course I know about amazon. They pestered me for 2 years telling me with the click of a button they could move my inventory onto amazon. I went round and round with them about their bloodsucking costs to sell!
Ebay does have their platform buttoned up pretty well from a trademark patent standpoint. I suspect and hope one of these days ebay bends on the higher priced FVF or someone is able to offer up a good run against them!
My thoughts;
I sell on ebay everyday. I have a local shop, but its mainly for buying. Only thing I can sell here in town is bullion, bargain basket junk, and stuff to the flea market/vest pocketers that come thru. No good coins sell here locally.
I dont like selling the more expensive stuff on ebay, not so much for the fee's, but shipping issues and problems that arise with buyer issues,shiesters, all the lost packages, etc. Got one currently, its only 600 bucks, but appears definitely lost.
When I gather a few of the larger $ items together, I will shoot them out to GC for sale, its worth the small fee (buyers fee) not to have to deal with above issues, plus they have a great customer base as well. I actually have a good customer base on ebay as well from 23+ years, so for 1000 dollar and under items, ebay works just as well for me with when you factor in the extra 5% GC charges to the seller.
It's really a question of how they distribute their fixed costs not the incremental costs of the sale. If they cut the price of high value FVF, they would have to raise the price of low value FVF. That might sell be unsustainable for lower cost items. If the fees on items under $100 goes to 25% to allow the fees on $1000+ items to go to 5%, you'll kill the under $100 markets. While the incremental costs of a $1000 sale are only marginally higher than a $100 sale, they still have to cover the fixed infrastructure costs somehow.
Here's some data.
I'll be listing another 80 slabs by the end of the month, probably, then 60-80 more next month, then I'll slam it into neutral and coast the rest of the way while selling backlogged inventory. Guessing revenues will come in around 200k-250k by end of summer, which should be a nice sample size to give y'all a better idea of the actual costs of selling on eBay.
"It's like God, Family, Country, except Sticker, Plastic, Coin."
Don't forget about the 1099 now if you sell over $600 from ebay.
Positive BST as a seller: Namvet69, Lordmarcovan, Bigjpst, Soldi, mustanggt, CoinHoader, moursund, SufinxHi, al410, JWP