Now I find out that Ebay have just created a new rule for international sellers selling into America. If it falls into certain categories (and books DVD's and magazines are examples)you cannot charge more than $4.00 postage. Yes that's right it's called Maximum Postage and if it costs $20 in postage to send the book then all you can charge is $4
Anyway, I have learned that Ebay Canada does not have such a stupid poxy rule as this so I simply registered on Ebay Ca and it was business as usual.

I can understand this if it is $4 per book or dvd but it is crazy if you are sending 20 books.

I don't know about international shipping specifically to America but eBay UK have a range of maximum postage charges that you can set across a wide range of items which includes books and DVDs. This has been in place for quite some time and is just part of their on-going campaign to get everyone to sell things as Buy It Now with free shipping.

A $4 limit for a book or DVD would not be viable for interenational shipping to anywhere from the UK. Anything over 100g has to go Small Parcel where the minimum cost is £3.80p, that's around $6.40. eBay are increasingly only interested in having their site populated by large sellers who can negotiate cheap shipping prices. They have forgotten what attracts buyers there in the first place

...and talking about eBay being 'at it again' please don't get me started on their new Seller Performance 'Defects' System that comes into force on the 15th August

i have seriously looked into starting a not for profit auction site for collectables. Market research shows there is demand and support for it. It would be a membership monthly fee for a shop up to 100 listings with no fees on listing or sales. More listing over 100 would attract another small supplement-to stop people spamming to sabotage it. The card world is pretty small so a move on mass with suitable advertising should do it.

quote:

Originally posted by richnet:
i have seriously looked into starting a not for profit auction site for collectables. Market research shows there is demand and support for it. It would be a membership monthly fee for a shop up to 100 listings with no fees on listing or sales. More listing over 100 would attract another small supplement-to stop people spamming to sabotage it. The card world is pretty small so a move on mass with suitable advertising should do it.

I already started a free site where people could and sell cards (thecardmarket.com), while there are some dedicated users it hasn't taken off despite the constant complaints by virtually everyone about eBay. There also is another site that does auctions, I believe called 'tradingcardauctions.com' that is trying to fill the need. . .

I think the trouble is that sellers have become accustom to eBay doing all of the marketing work for them -- the buyers are already there, so they don't actually have to market what they are selling in any way shape or form. . . They list it and it sells. . .

In order for TheCardMarket or any other site to work there has to be either a big advertising push, or the individual sellers will need to market their own listings (something I tried to facilitate by having form post code able to be automatically generated by the system). At any rate despite everyone hating on eBay no one seems to be able (or willing) to break the addiction.

We've all at some stage dreamed of ways to kill Ebay off stone cold dead in the market but they do not work and never will.
Why?? In a word exposure.

Everyone who sells wants the best possible exposure to the market place because the more people who are looking at your item the better chance that it will sell for a higher price.

Ebay brings more numbers to the table than anyone else can even dream of doing as a start up opposition.

As a result of this they rule the world and make all of the (unpopular) rules.
Always remember the golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules!

No one wishes them a more violent and terminal business failure than me (trust me on this!) but the fact remains that if I'm selling I want my item in front of as many people as I can get. If I'm buying I want as wide a choice as I can have. Ebay delivers both (dammit)

quote:

Originally posted by btlfannz:
We've all at some stage dreamed of ways to kill Ebay off stone cold dead in the market but they do not work and never will.
Why?? In a word exposure.

While entirely true in a general sense there are several smaller hobbies/industries who have well known, widely used marketplaces other than eBay. Scoundrel was pretty strong for sketch collectors, but when Scoundrel died nothing rose to take it's place.

quote:

Originally posted by btlfannz:
if I'm selling I want my item in front of as many people as I can get. If I'm buying I want as wide a choice as I can have. Ebay delivers both

Personally, I think this is entirely true for auctions. . . Which is why I didn't approach TheCardMarket as an auction site. . . The TCM approach is more Amazon.com like . . . I think that sellers want the largest amount possible for their cards, and buyers want to pay the least possible. A model like TCM can work for that because you can list a card on TCM for less than it sells for on eBay, the buyer pays less and since there aren't any fees the seller makes more. . . Unfortunately neither that nor the ability to get away from eBay's rules have been enough to pry many people away.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
A model like TCM can work for that because you can list a card on TCM for less than it sells for on eBay, the buyer pays less and since there aren't any fees the seller makes more. . . Unfortunately neither that nor the ability to get away from eBay's rules have been enough to pry many people away.

So, this sounds like a good idea(TCM)and begs the question why didn't it "pry more people away (from Ebay)?? I suspect that the main culprit here is 'apathy' as in "I don't know enough about TCM and as much as I hate Ebay I can't be stuffed trying to find out more about TCM"

[QUOTE]Originally posted by webjon:
Scoundrel was pretty strong for sketch collectors, but when Scoundrel died nothing rose to take it's place.
[QUOTE]

No-one told me Scoundrel died. All those people I still deal and correspond with there for sketch cards must also be in a state of ignorance.

it would need promotion and the power sellers to list but a not for profit model that had no share holders to pay and any spare money reinvested with enough dedication could build a reputation. A new month seems to see a new restriction be it fees, postage, customs charges etc which wasn't the case before. It not about killing ebay its about offering the original service that made it successful in the first place. The main problem would be insurance against claims. Currently running my own business means i don't have the time right now to build it.

I know the magic mtg players and pokemon have their own meeting places to buy and sell that they prefer to use so it can work.

quote:

Originally posted by Graham:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by webjon:
Scoundrel was pretty strong for sketch collectors, but when Scoundrel died nothing rose to take it's place.
[QUOTE]

No-one told me Scoundrel died. All those people I still deal and correspond with there for sketch cards must also be in a state of ignorance.

LOL. . . obviously some people still use Scoundrel, but not nearly the numbers that used to.

I fought the non-ebay fight for a long time. I had my own auction site that was able to go at least give it a good go for several years (1996 to a few years ago). Sadly, I think between my lack of skills at being a good business person and the power of ebay, I lost the war. And, goodness do I still miss it. I know of several people that have tried to do various things, but I don't know that any will take off, the grip of ebay, for good and bad is too strong.
Ebay made the world a smaller place and put cards in front of us we'd never seen before, it just also took a little of the soul out of it, too. So many of my transactions are limited to list, buy, ship, done. I miss the chatter.

quote:

Ebay made the world a smaller place and put cards in front of us we'd never seen before, it just also took a little of the soul out of it, too.

And that my dear friend sums it up in a nutshell.

If anyone wants to give starting our own card trading website a go, then right here would be a very good place to start.

Maybe if we could invite in the Sports card and MTG groups it would give us much more clout. As someone else has stated it would have to be funded for promotional purposes, but how much? and where would you promote it? (hey! we could advertise it on Ebay!!)
Anyway, if someone wants to make the first step then count me in with both feet.I would happily pay an annual membership as I suspect most people on this forum would.

quote:

Originally posted by STCardGeek:
I know of several people that have tried to do various things, but I don't know that any will take off, the grip of ebay, for good and bad is too strong.
Ebay made the world a smaller place and put cards in front of us we'd never seen before, it just also took a little of the soul out of it, too. So many of my transactions are limited to list, buy, ship, done. I miss the chatter.

It took a lot of the soul out of it, in fact I would argue that eBay destroyed more collectible markets than it helped. It brought prices down to the level of the lowest seller across the board and made once very hard to find items instantly available to any location. It wiped out all of those small local card shows and most hobby stores went off the map.

If you take a look at what were once the established pricey collectibles like coins, stamps, hummels, barbie dolls, plates, comics, etc., the bottom fell out of those markets when eBay auctions opened the flood gates. All of those rare items turned out to be not so rare when you suddenly could look beyond your physical area to any area. And because sellers were competing against not just local competion for sales, but against competion from anywhere in country or outside of country, the lowest price was going to take the most business. These old established markets are still there, but they never recovered.

As for shows and stores, the internet in general and eBay in particular seemed like a better idea to businessmen than trying to maintain a brick and mortar store with all the overhead or wasting weekends at a show table hoping for good attendance. I can remember very clearly when card dealers starting telling me that they could make way more money sitting at home than they were making all day at a show. And sure enough the dealers started to stay home and the local card shows that ran somewhere close every weekend dried up and died.

Same thing with the hobby stores. There were over 20 comic/card stores in my metro area within a fairly easy distance from my home in the day. There are now 2.

And yet there is still no better feeling than going someplace to look at cards and hold them and buy them on the spot. Wasn't it better when you could have conversations with dealers and other collectors? Same thing with Netflix, wasn't going to the video store on a Saturday night with lines of people better? Wasn't walking bookstore aisles and findings books you didn't know about better than Amazon?

People would say no, because the internet is easier and cheaper and has no physical limitations. And all that is very true. But it has no soul and it is not satisfying and it has taken away more than it gives IMHO.

Nevertheless no one is going back.

I agree with every word you've posted here Raven but the question is, what can we do about it.

The Trading Card business forms such a small element of Ebay's business model that they probably barely know we exist. If we pulled our entire business away from them it wouldn't make a blip on their share price. They simply couldn't give a monkey's wotzit about what we think and even less about what effect their Draconian rules have on us.

Again the questions - where to we go from here? Is it business as usual and a continuation of the bitchin' and whinging? what can we do about it? How many of us would be prepared to bite the bullet and tell Ebay to shove it?

Come on people join this thread and give your 10cents worth!

quote:

Originally posted by btlfannz:
If anyone wants to give starting our own card trading website a go, then right here would be a very good place to start.

Why create something new when TCM (which is actually pretty new), and Trading Card Auctions already exist? Why not use what is already there?

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:It wiped out all of those small local card shows and most hobby stores went off the map.

In a cool local development small local card (and comic) shows have comeback with a vengeance in the last 10 months or so.

Unfortunately the ones I've been to are still very much finding their way, but I think, at least in my local area, we'll see more shows in the coming months/years.

Much as webjon said above, at least in the North Texas area, some smaller shows are making a comeback. Yes, there is still the mega-convention with their mega-crowds and mega-prices, but there are now at least 2 newer contenders, one even monthly, and another that is taking off just a few hours to the east. So maybe there's some hope out there for those of us who prefer to actually hold the item in our grubby little paws before we buy it!

quote:

Originally posted by btlfannz:
I agree with every word you've posted here Raven but the question is, what can we do about it.

Well here's what I do. I am lucky enough to have 2 hobby stores in my area and I support them. I order my boxes from them whenever they are carrying the product I want.

I support dealers that I have met in these forums and also through eBay. I contact them directly and if they have what I want or can get it, it's a deal.

I have not bought one thing off eBay since the end of last year. Have I lost out on some stuff? Yes. But there is no shortage of other things to spend the extra money on, so it just means that my want list grows and I have learned to be more patient. So I don't like eBay and I don't use it, simple.

Webjon, the idea behind The Card Market is good and I would use it as a buyer, but you need more sellers. All the sets are listed, but little is available for sale when you clink in. It is a work in progress, but it could become an alternative if the sellers join up.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
Webjon, the idea behind The Card Market is good and I would use it as a buyer, but you need more sellers. All the sets are listed, but little is available for sale when you clink in. It is a work in progress, but it could become an alternative if the sellers join up.

Thanks for the kind words about TCM. . . I agree with you, and I've approached dealers to sign on. . . Universally everyone says it's a great idea, and they all want to get away from eBay for various reasons. . . unfortunately I've never been able to get many dealers listing stuff. . .

When postage rates rose, and eBay's policies for shipping overseas became less friendly I thought that would push more people to sites like TCM and Trading Card Auctions, but so far I haven't seen that happen either.