[nittany13]

I thank everyone for your feedback, opinions and good points. I decided to sit back for a week and read what others had to share. The topic of eBay selling strategies has interested me as of late since the BIN option has seemingly become much more popular than the old fashioned auction method, unfortunately IMHO. I am going to attempt to systematically respond to all or at least of everyone's comments now.

Here is the wrinkle in your theory. This seller does not have an eBay store. Therefore insertion fees apply. You claim that the seller should have tested by starting the auction at a high opening bid price. If he did not have any free listings, which is quite possible seeing how many items he has up for the offering at the moment, and he has no eBay store, just listing it for sale would have cost him. Say he started it at $60 it would have cost him $6.30 to list, if he started at $100 it would have been an even $10.00. That is quite a bit of cost to absorb to test the waters and not sell it. eBay fees are high, yes, but you will not find better traffic to sell your goods. Just as PayPal fees may seem high, but are truly competitive to me, as it is a no nonsense, easy way to get paid securely. Kerry Collins was a mediocre quarteback at best. You think he knew somone out there might pay over $100 for this card. For a seller that does not sell many items, do you think he was willing to risk up to $10 to test it out? Food for thought.

You make some very lucid and enlightening points there.

I did not realize that having an eBay store may help to absorb the costs at the sellers end. This may explain why some of these items have been continually listed online for years now - literally.

As an option, excluding the simple auction route, perhaps an auction with a reserve or a high BIN with a make offer could have been viable alternative strategies as well. Of course then again there may be a risky eBay fee loopholes that I am not aware of pertaining to those two options.

In this case though it would have been beneficial for him/her to list this card at a higher introductory price, but I understand that he/she like most sellers in this instance would not be aware of the market price beforehand for certain players who are not as popular to most collectors. Although I would not consider Collins HOF worthy, I would not deem him mediocre, but that is an immaterial discussion for here.

At the end of the day it is the seller's prerogative to do what he/she wants anyway, I get that.

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I'll remember this... :p Haha, but at the same time, nice job by the seller for not trying to screw people on a player that is retired and not a HOF guy!

Did I really state 3X? Umm...I meant hypothetically...yeah, that's the ticket! (Jon Lovitz reference).

My thoughts concerning your second point, I do not have a problem personally if someone is trying to sell a card of a non-HOF type player at a higher price. I am of the belief that a seller has the prerogative to try and sell a good to the masses for as much as he/she can get through ethical means. On the other hand, if such chicanery is used such as doctoring cards, shill bidding, purposely lying about defects then that is a different story altogether.

True story, someone was trying to sell a 1998 Curtis Enis Upper Deck 1/1 parallel on eBay last year for $2,500 - no lie. I sent him an e-mail making an offer which was significantly less, but one that was slightly better than fair market value from my perspective. I also provided my reasoning to the seller. My offer was predictably dismissed but I am okay with that. He probably did not want to get rid of it anyway.

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Well, the way I look at it is this:

If I got a card out of a 2.99 pack, that I have no idea on the value of, and there really isn't a way to know the value without hours of research, sometimes you just throw up a price to see if people will pay it. In my example, if you paid 3.25 bucks after tax, and you sold the card for 40, after fees and such, probably bring home around 23 bucks of profit. Not bad, right? Now, yeah, you might be able to get 60-80 for it, but you might also not sell it at 40. Still, it comes down to what you have invested in it and how easy it is to figure out the value that determines if they lost money or not. I've sold a number of things for probably less then what I could have gotten for them, but I still made money off of them when they sold so I was happy.

I understand. If one wants to play it safe and sell something off with perhaps less hastle and pocket some money sooner, which is probably what the seller in question had in mind now that I think of it, then I cannot fault anyone for that.

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Just had a similar thing happen. Saw a big lot of in person autographs I was looking at picking up just to get a few of the players and then probably relist the rest as a lot. Was in an auction format with a few watchers. Went back to check on it today and the seller switched it to a Buy it Now listing and someone bought it within 20 minutes or so. Would have gone for way more had they left it as an auction. Of course, I'm mostly just miffed because I wasn't there to snap it up when the seller decided to switch it from a week long auction to a BIN.

Same thing a few months back with the Jim Leonhard 8-Auto I'm chasing. An auction would have netted the seller more $. Again though, if I had come across it first and bought it with the BIN, I probably wouldn't be complaining.

Oh well...

Yeah, I can think of a few times where I decided to not buy something at that moment thinking that no one else is going to buy this item. I will just wait until the seller lowers the price a little, until I come back later and find that someone else has bought it.

As I stated briefly in my OP I have also been the beniciary of a few good deals because I got there first. Probably my biggest steal was an O.J. McDuffie 1997 Flair Legacy Masterpiece 1/1 listed for under $8 if I remember correctly. It was actually on COMC, but still.

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Now is your chance to work it out with the buyer and offer "2x" versus "3x" . BIN give the sellers what they want (regardless of whether you thinks it's high or low). In addition, there isn't any accusations of "shill bids" etc.

Thanks for the advice jaderock. I would not mind negotiating with the new owner, pending on the fact that there is a safe and reliable method to paying him/her.

Alanch is correct though. One can no longer see who the purchaser of a certain item is. Back then I knew who my friendly rivals were. We had fun trying to sniper one another and if you did not win a certain item you could see the username of who did. Those days are gone.

Perhaps it will be listed again some day, if not oh well.

[nittany13]

I feel like he got just want he wanted to out of the card regardless if YOU and only YOU would have spent 3x more than what he got it for but there is also the chance he could have had it up for auction and not even gotten what he wanted and theyd get less yet(unless ofcourse they have a reserve on it anyway)

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no offense to anybody commenting here but you guys are PCing leonhard and Collins.. its not like those players are on everyones top priority have list lol
I PC derrick morgan(who?) and have paid more for some of his cards than anyone else would,dont get me wrong

Well, I look at it this way. There may not be a deluge of Kerry Collins collectors, although I know that I am not the only one, but this card could easily overlap other collector needs. For example, there are also Penn State alumni collectors, Titan collectors or perhaps there are a few people out there who collect 1/1 patch/auto cards for the sake of the fact that is what they like to collect. After all, there is only one 1/1 (except when it applies to all those sham Pinnacle/Score cards, among a few other examples, from yesteryear. Also exclude printing plates and cards with the "prestigious" 1/1 stamped on at dealer shows - do not get ripped off with the latter).

Back in May BTW, a graded kerry Collins 1998 Metal Universe Precious Metal Gems Masters (# 1m) sold for nearly $380. For the record I didnot bid anywhere near that much. Even I am not crazy.

[GoStros]

FYI. I just tested your reserve price theory. I have an eBay store so listing in regular auction form was free. I get 200 listings a month and a heavily discounted rate on any after the initial 200. When I added a reserve price of $100 to an item with an opening bid of only $1 my cost came to $3. I am pretty sure for a non-store owner it would have been about $5. Not a whole lot. But look at what he sold it at. $5 is a pretty big percentage of what he preceived the value was on this card.

I too love discussing strategies. It is a lot better getting other perspective that vary from your own. I opened my eBay store abot 6 months ago. Just about a 2 weeks ago I switched to doing almost 100% Buy It Now listings, with a few auctions for variety. I figured it was a store so I should have the asking price clearly marked. You do not haggle at the grocery store or Walmart. Anyway, I also started offering free shipping on all of my listings at about the same time. I went from selling 33 items in July, to currently having sold 79 for the month of August, and we are only halfway through the month.

I have been doing online retail for about 18 years now. I am now 45, and can honestly say, I feel very confident in my latest strategy. Good luck to all who love to sell. If ya ever wanna chat more about it, just PM me.

[nittany13]

I just love the OPs Bednarik pic. That's my comment.
Nittany, if you have Bednarik, contact me please.

Thanks man. I was inspired when he passed away recently. He was an amazing man, not just for his football career but for his service during WWII and all the dangerous bombing missions he undertook in Germany. That guy was as tough as they come and the greatest player in Eagles franchise history.

The only cards of his I have are in vintage team sets that I compiled. I remember seeing some of your scans and your collection is impressive. His RC, even a poor condition one, is very pricey to say the least.

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FYI. I just tested your reserve price theory. I have an eBay store so listing in regular auction form was free. I get 200 listings a month and a heavily discounted rate on any after the initial 200. When I added a reserve price of $100 to an item with an opening bid of only $1 my cost came to $3. I am pretty sure for a non-store owner it would have been about $5. Not a whole lot. But look at what he sold it at. $5 is a pretty big percentage of what he preceived the value was on this card.

I too love discussing strategies. It is a lot better getting other perspective that vary from your own. I opened my eBay store abot 6 months ago. Just about a 2 weeks ago I switched to doing almost 100% Buy It Now listings, with a few auctions for variety. I figured it was a store so I should have the asking price clearly marked. You do not haggle at the grocery store or Walmart. Anyway, I also started offering free shipping on all of my listings at about the same time. I went from selling 33 items in July, to currently having sold 79 for the month of August, and we are only halfway through the month.

I have been doing online retail for about 18 years now. I am now 45, and can honestly say, I feel very confident in my latest strategy. Good luck to all who love to sell. If ya ever wanna chat more about it, just PM me.

Thanks for sharing. Commerce, eBay not excluded, is always evolving. It is interesting to learn how and why sellers implement their chosen strategies.

[jonathani]

The strategy used by sellers in auctions has changed so much over the last 20 years. I find fascinating, though! Don't we all wish we thought of online auctions that charge relatively small fees wherein we never actually handle a product?

[GoStros]

The strategy used by sellers in auctions has changed so much over the last 20 years. I find fascinating, though! Don't we all wish we thought of online auctions that charge relatively small fees wherein we never actually handle a product?

Back in the day, showing my age here, Teletrade was the best way for card dealers to buy singles "wholesale." You would receive a very nice newspaper type of an auction guide with lot numbers beside each lot. You would call in, on the phone(hence the name Teletrade), and input your bidder number and the lot number with your bid. It was way cool, and high tech for it's time.

Back then the internet was far from what it is today. It essentially was just a bunch of message boards, not much different than how we are communicating on this forum, but without any graphics(text only). Back then AOL and Prodigy ruled the land. It would cost you, if I remember correctly, around $25 a month for 30 minutes worth of time. You were charged by the minute when your 30 minutes was up. I got the bright idea one day, to have "online auctions." I pretty much followed the Teletrade model, just online.

My internet bill every month was about $250, because I was on doing my auctions so much. I made so much money back then. I remember hoarding 1992 Bowman Cliff Floyd cards. I was buying them up at shows, individuals coming in my shop, and through Teletrade. At the time the BV was about $2 on the card. I was paying $1 each, and even full BV when it was getting harder to find them. When BV finally hit $10 I posted them in my online auction on Prodigy. They were flying out at as much as $25 each. I made a killing on Cliff.

Had I had the forsight, I should have patented my auctions. Now we have eBay. Much like what I used to do, only 1,000,000 times better.

[ugameck]

Thanks man. I was inspired when he passed away recently. He was an amazing man, not just for his football career but for his service during WWII and all the dangerous bombing missions he undertook in Germany. That guy was as tough as they come and the greatest player in Eagles franchise history.

The only cards of his I have are in vintage team sets that I compiled. I remember seeing some of your scans and your collection is impressive. His RC, even a poor condition one, is very pricey to say the least.

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Yeah, have a PSA 4 1948 Leaf. Have every vintage card graded....but one. The exhibition card!

[djohn]

Here is the wrinkle in your theory. This seller does not have an eBay store. Therefore insertion fees apply. You claim that the seller should have tested by starting the auction at a high opening bid price. If he did not have any free listings, which is quite possible seeing how many items he has up for the offering at the moment, and he has no eBay store, just listing it for sale would have cost him. Say he started it at $60 it would have cost him $6.30 to list, if he started at $100 it would have been an even $10.00. That is quite a bit of cost to absorb to test the waters and not sell it. eBay fees are high, yes, but you will not find better traffic to sell your goods. Just as PayPal fees may seem high, but are truly competitive to me, as it is a no nonsense, easy way to get paid securely. Kerry Collins was a mediocre quarteback at best. You think he knew somone out there might pay over $100 for this card. For a seller that does not sell many items, do you think he was willing to risk up to $10 to test it out? Food for thought.

The fee to list is only $0.30 after you are out of listings. I think you are looking at the final value fee. The final value fee is 10% of the sales price. If the card doesn't sell then there is no final value fee. Here is a link showing their fees:
http://pages.ebay.com/HELP/SELL/fees.html#if_auction

[GoStros]

Wow, they have really changed things over the past year. It used to bea percentage of you opening bid, and you were allowed to relist once for free if it did not sell. I do not fret over fees anymore. Having a store makes it pretty straight forward.