My sister has been collecting Harry Potter right from the off - Wizards of the Coast. Every once in a while, I used to delve into Ebay for that elusive card which was needed. Not seeking a bargain (although it was nice if it happened), just a card at what I thought was a reasonable price. One card I've been watching for over 2 years has, during multiple listings by the same seller, quadrupled in the asking price. I felt the original price was a bit over the top. Last week, I asked the seller why the price keeps going up. "It's rare and there's not going to be any more" was the reply. Not just this seller, but most of those on Ebay seem to feel that if a card has a three figure price on it, it'll be snapped up because it has some kind of "Holy Grail" covenance to it. Yes, there are some cards that command high prices, but the case with them is you've either got them or you can't afford them. You live with it. It's sad, but with the way prices are escalating, my sister will never complete her sets.
Do any dealers drop their prices to move old stock, or do they just hang on hoping for a newbie with a pocket of cash and no knowledge of the product lands on their doorstep? I know of one dealer that's had a Star Trek: First Contact Data autograph for sale getting on for 18 years. He won't take offers because "It's worth it".

It all depends on the seller. I know sellers that will not budge on pricing and others where everything is negotiable. There are people here on cardtalk too that I just don't bother to contact to trade because they think their cards are "worth it" even when they contact you and want cards you have for pennies off the fair market price. At the end of the day, if a deal is not fair or too expensive-walk away.

quote:

Originally posted by Graham:
Do any dealers drop their prices to move old stock, or do they just hang on hoping for a newbie with a pocket of cash and no knowledge of the product lands on their doorstep? I know of one dealer that's had a Star Trek: First Contact Data autograph for sale getting on for 18 years. He won't take offers because "It's worth it".

Logic would dictate that stock should be moved and if a price hasn't been met for 10+ years then the price must be wrong!

Not all cards increase in value, 'Buffy-The Vampire Slayer' cards were once rocketing up in value, but you can now pick them up for much less than a few years ago.

quote:

Originally posted by Graham:
......I know of one dealer that's had a Star Trek: First Contact Data autograph for sale getting on for 18 years. He won't take offers because "It's worth it".

What it's worth is down to what a collector is willing to pay for it at the CURRENT time. If this card has been unsold for so long it is obviously (personally) worth more to the dealer than it is to any of his customers. Not a great way to run a profitable business.

Where Ebay is concerned, things have really changed over the last few years because sellers now get pretty much endless free listings, so there is no risk to them if an item doesn't sell.

Prior to that, you had to be careful pricing an item too high because if it didn't sell, you'd be out the listing fees, which could really add up, especially since the higher your listing price, the higher the listing fee. That incentive for sellers to move an item the first time through no longer really exists. Besides that, closing fees are now 10% and they used to only be a fraction of that, so that's has also resulted in higher initial pricing.

Raising the price when something doesn't sell IS pretty wacky. As for the dealer with the 18 year old card sitting there with the same price on it, it is decidedly not "worth it", at least to those who actually see the card. If it were worth it, it would've sold. Not only that, every new Data autograph that comes out, and there have been plenty since, makes that one actually worth less by the laws of supply and demand. More Data autographs out there, even on different cards, means a little less money for each of those cards.

A lot of card listings are just that, listings. The seller overprices the card and doesn't really expect it to move, but it costs him nothing, so if some fool comes along its all gravy.

Same thing with best offers on BINS. They put down that they will except offers, but won't negotiate when you try. It's all just a waste of your time.

A dealer needs to move inventory both to make profit and to fund new business, so any seller sitting on the same card for ten years is not trying to sell it. Maybe he is just showing off that he has it while he waits for the fool.

Don't call uninformed people fools that's not nice. Anyone new to the hobby will make mistakes they are not fools.

There are just all these different configurations of sellers. Some need to flip everything immediately and will mark prices down and take offers. Others are more in the long game, so to them, it doesn't matter if they sell it, and then there are collector-driven sellers like me. I generally buy and sell on Ebay to build my collection.

I think it's safe to say I've bought even more stuff than I've sold on Ebay, I've found and the "Best Offer" also has plenty of nuances. It's probably close to 50/50 where buying and selling are concerned for me and I have around 7,000 feedbacks on the three accounts I've worked on, which means it could be 10,000 transactions by now, since 1998 or so, I guess, so I've pretty much seen it all.

As a seller, if you list a "buy it now" with best offer and you get a several offers right away, it is best not to take them. That much early interest, especially if the offers are only asking a small discount, and it usually means it won't be long until this item sells for the price you've listed it at. You can set the listing to automatically refuse offers less than a certain amount and/or automatically accept offers higher than a certain amount, to shoot down the jokers right away, or to not make someone offering a fair price have to wait for your OK, respectively.

When sellers don't use those automatics, more factors are at play. For instance, I would be more likely to accept an offer from someone easy and cheap to mail it to (i.e, U.S. addresses where I am) than from someone who had an address that is expensive to send to (pretty much anywhere outside the U.S). Also, I might refuse an offer on one item but accept that same offer were it to come with an offer for an additional item. The more items that are offered for on a single ticket increase your chances of the seller accepting the offers, even if they are lower. By making offers for multiple items from the same dealer, I've found I can usually make lower offers and still get them accepted at about the same rate.

I don't usually use Fixed Price for my own listings, so I don't have the "Best Offer" option very often, but I've used it to purchase scores of the items I've bought. One really useful thing from the buyer's perspective is that you can now easily check to see what kinds of offers the seller accepts. Before even making an offer, it's a very good idea to check the seller's completed listings where Best Offer was accepted and this can really help you get an idea of what sort of percentage discount that seller is willing to give. In some cases, you may even find the seller accept 50% offers or even less meaning that you can offer lower than you'd originally intended to and still have a good chance of having it accepted.

quote:

Originally posted by Batman:
Don't call uninformed people fools that's not nice. Anyone new to the hobby will make mistakes they are not fools.

You are attaching a meaning to my post that it does not have. Perhaps you never heard of the old saying "A fool and his money are soon parted."

No where were we talking about uninformed people or people new to the hobby. We are talking about cards that are left on sale for years at overpriced values and the reasons why sellers might do it.

There is a lot of stupid money that is spent in this hobby and it winds up hurting us all in the process because sometimes these things become accepted as being OK. I call it as I see it, there is no intention to offend anyone, so stick to the subject please.

quote:

Originally posted by Graham:
Do any dealers drop their prices to move old stock, or do they just hang on hoping for a newbie with a pocket of cash and no knowledge of the product lands on their doorstep?

To be fair - Graham does mention them here

quote:

Do any dealers drop their prices to move old stock, or do they just hang on hoping for a newbie with a pocket of cash and no knowledge of the product lands on their doorstep?

If a seller list an item and then begin to receive offer after offer. He/she would understand that the card can be sold at the prize they ask.

As buyer, I saw a lot of seller listing/re-listing items for more than a year with high ridiculous prices. The worst to deal and lost of time are the sellers with BIN and made an offer.

I had some 1968 Anglo Confectionery Beatles Yellow Submarine wrappers that I listed on eBay for years. I sold them one at a time. It required patience and the prices were probably offered to high, but they eventually sold.

quote:

Originally posted by chesspieceface:
As a seller, if you list a "buy it now" with best offer and you get a several offers right away, it is best not to take them. That much early interest, especially if the offers are only asking a small discount, and it usually means it won't be long until this item sells for the price you've listed it at. You can set the listing to automatically refuse offers less than a certain amount and/or automatically accept offers higher than a certain amount, to shoot down the jokers right away, or to not make someone offering a fair price have to wait for your OK, respectively.

As a buyer, I can see why sellers may use the Best Offer to gauge interest and price. But it has been my experience that a high percentage of sellers that are doing this don't have automatic values in place and don't have the courtesy to come back and decline the offers.

The potential buyer is therefore left hanging for days, not knowing if the offer will be accepted, or is even actually being considered for acceptance, or if the seller is not just testing the water and had no intention of selling anything. Having wasted a lot time in this state, I no longer make any offers and don't trust listings that have them.

Set a fair BIN, but don't play games at my expense.

I sometimes use the Best Offer option on some of my ebay sales items and set an automatic decline for something too low, because sometimes you just get stupid offers. I've collected and researched WW1 medals for years and occasionally sell a few off to fund others, and I remember listing a trio at £75 which was £10 under the actual value of them, because I wanted to move them and I'd have been happy to sell at £5-8 lower than that...but I forgot to set the automatic decline level and I got two offers from idiots for £20!! Quite frankly that was taking the pee!

I remember reading somewhere that in any deals, be it internet or haggling at markets, that generally speaking the price agreed tends to be around 10% less than the asking price, (and as noted, if you're buying more than one item it can be a lot bigger discount). I've found this to be true with my own listings and that's how I price things with a 10% margin. When I make my own offers on things, providing the Buy It Now isn't too ridiculous in the first place, I'll use the 10% rule and I've had easily 90% of my offers accepted that way.

However, if it's something I really want, and there isn't many of them, and it's only a few pounds over what I'd like to pay, I'll go ahead and buy it without waiting for a Best Offer to be accepted.

On the "buy-it-now", Ebay mandates sellers set the buy it now price at least 30% higher than the minimum bid. It used to be just 10%. They changed it a couple of year back when they were really pushing the "Fixed Price" listing format, so it might have to do with Ebay trying to get people to list more things that way, or maybe just to inflate final sale prices, which increases the fees they get per sale. Could be those things or ten other reasons, but the result is, sellers can sometimes to seem to have the buy-it-now too high in relation to the minimum bid, but they actually don't have much of a choice. For instance, if something is listed for $19.95, the seller can have a buy it now of no lower than $25.95. If it is $49.95 minimum, the lowest BIN allowed is $64.59. Most sellers would be perfectly happy to have a $21.95 buy it now on that $19.95 item, which would be the 10%, but that's not allowed anymore. It can make sellers seem even more greedy than they/we actually are.

As for Best Offers, I love them as a buyer, especially since you can (for now anyway) check to see what kinds of best offers percentage wise a seller has previously accepted. It really helps me to offer enough, but not too much. If I see a seller has accepted 50% of the asking price for something similar in the past, I'll make an offer like that. If they seem to accept no less than 90% of the buy price, I wouldn't bother with an offer so low since I already know they're unlikely to accept it. If I can afford the 90% or so of the buy price, I'll make the offer. If not, I won't waste anyone's time. It does help to offer on multiple items from the same seller when you can. I've found the sellers are more likely to accept lower price offers as long as the total price of the order is a decent number. Everyone likes sending less packages to get around the same amount of money, certainly, but even at somewhat bigger discounts.

As a seller, I don't use best offers. I just list the minimums for as low as I can, with no buy-it-nows to begin. If there are no bids the first time through, I'll usually add a buy it now at that time, and then gradually reduce the price to as low as I'm willing to until it is sold. If it can't sell for enough to make it worth the time to even mail it, I'll pull those auctions and eventually bundle it with other items to make it more worth a buyer's while that way.

Finally, I've found that whether you use the Best Offer function or not, if the stuff a seller is offering is priced a little higher, you'll get plenty of best offers through the Ebay messaging system anyway. People are always looking for bargains, and really, it can't hurt to ask for a deal, as long as it doesn't bother you to be told no or outright ignored.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: chesspieceface,

Yeah, I know ebay have a system if you're using both auction and Buy It Now formats...in the UK the BIN has to be 40% higher than the starting auction price. But you don't qualify for free listings if you do both things on the one listing so I tend to only use either just auction or just fixed price BIN with best offer options.

I was talking about the value in your head for fixed price BINs. So you have a figure in your mind that you'd be happy to sell for and then put it on at around 10% higher, or have a price in mind around 10% lower than you list it for. Buying and selling psychology. A bit like £3.99 always sounding a lot cheaper than £4.