Is this the new trend in the hobby? (EBAY)

[Hawaiian BamBam]

Hey guys,

I started a similar thread awhile back about the same thing happening on COMC and now it seems like this hobby trend has spread to EBAY. The problem is, when i list cards, buyers ALWAYS make an offer for 50% of what my asking price is. With COMC, I realized that, it is just common practice on that site for someone to lowball you, as sellers on that site 99.9% of the time will accept a lowball offer. so by sellers accepting such low offers, it has caused lowball offers to become "the norm". EBAY on the other hand, has always been pretty decent in regards to sales. so im not sure why the increase of people are now offering "exactly" 50% of what i am listing a card. ive had two offers in two days from two different buyers each offering exactly 50% off what im listing. my prices are actually fairly priced to begin with, so its not like i am listing my cards too high as a matter of fact, the prices im listing my cards at, i will only be breaking even on the sale. i know some people would say on ebay list your card at a higher price with room to wiggle down to a more reasonable final sale price, but if you list a card too high, no one will use the buy it now option. i know the economy is bad and affecting card sales, but i think the deeper issue is people are starting to get use to offering 50% of what a card is listed(example i list a card with a buy it now price of $50, some one offers me $25) anyone else noticing this disturbing trend happening? how do i get the most dollar out of my sales? because of the bad economy should i just be happy with any card sales and accept all 50% off offers? or is it simply just that i over paid for these cards when i bought them (as 99.9% of my cards for sale, i list at the price i bought them for) your thoughts on this please. thanks

 

[greyminis]

Some sellers are simply looking to move the card. Others have an idea of what they would like to get for the card and would rather hang onto it rather than let it go too low.

If your start price is reasonable, then simply send a counteroffer at the price you would let it go for. Or decline the offer so the potential buyer can make a more realistic offer now that they know you're not just looking to move the card for the first offer that comes along.

 

[otgoal]

You can also set your Ebay offers to automatically decline offers below a certain amount so you don't have to send a response.

 

[jackatl]

With functions like Best Offer now available on eBay and similar sites, I have seen a trend towards more haggling, like in buying a car. The dealership has its price, the buyer comes in with a low offer, then the two try to agree at a price in the middle. I would not view the 50% offer as a slap in the face or anything discouraging. Like greyminis said, send a counteroffer if you feel like you would be willing to go lower on the price. If not, then just refuse the offer. But I do feel like when sellers list their auctions with a Best Offer option, that tells me they are willing to go lower than the price they have set.

 

[valediction]

Hey guys,

I started a similar thread awhile back about the same thing happening on COMC and now it seems like this hobby trend has spread to EBAY. The problem is, when i list cards, buyers ALWAYS make an offer for 50% of what my asking price is. With COMC, I realized that, it is just common practice on that site for someone to lowball you, as sellers on that site 99.9% of the time will accept a lowball offer. so by sellers accepting such low offers, it has caused lowball offers to become "the norm". EBAY on the other hand, has always been pretty decent in regards to sales. so im not sure why the increase of people are now offering "exactly" 50% of what i am listing a card. ive had two offers in two days from two different buyers each offering exactly 50% off what im listing. my prices are actually fairly priced to begin with, so its not like i am listing my cards too high as a matter of fact, the prices im listing my cards at, i will only be breaking even on the sale. i know some people would say on ebay list your card at a higher price with room to wiggle down to a more reasonable final sale price, but if you list a card too high, no one will use the buy it now option. i know the economy is bad and affecting card sales, but i think the deeper issue is people are starting to get use to offering 50% of what a card is listed(example i list a card with a buy it now price of $50, some one offers me $25) anyone else noticing this disturbing trend happening? how do i get the most dollar out of my sales? because of the bad economy should i just be happy with any card sales and accept all 50% off offers? or is it simply just that i over paid for these cards when i bought them (as 99.9% of my cards for sale, i list at the price i bought them for) your thoughts on this please. thanks

Without knowing specifics, it could be any number of the above. If you bought the cards in the late 80's, early 90's, yeah, you probably way overpaid in terms of the value today, if you bought in when a product was new and hot, you probably paid more than it is worth now. If you have the same cards as everyone else is selling, yeah, the market is flooded with many of them, it's tough to get much for a lot of those cards, no matter what you price it at. I had a shop down the block from me from the mid 90's to around 2007 or so. They had a 'drop zone', they'd put $50-$100 cards in there at full book (usuall minus .01, a $50 BV card would start $49.99, every Tuesday they dropped the price $5 until it sold or got to $4.99, if it got to $4.99, they'd leave it a couple more weeks or pack it up and send it to a different location. I was picking up dual autographs from Ultimate collection /25 for $4.99, David Robinson shoe cards from the early days of GU, Peja Stokavic autographs /50, $40 Dan Marino inserts, a Yastrzemski autograph was $9.99,Sean Casey Gold parallel autograph /50, etc. They had bargain boxes with cards from .29 to 2.99 and I was pulling a lot of $10-20 BV cards in the higher end of that price range, and the .29-.49-.99 cent cards were usually $3-10 cards, Mantle and Ichiro inserts /499, David Justice X-fractors, Topps Retired autographs of guys like Madlock and Darrell Evans, Heritage SP's, Bowman Chrome gold refractors, a fair # of inserts and parallels of decent names Nomar, Ripken, Griffey, etc were often 10-20% BV and many of them just sat there, and that was when the economy was better than it has been. Almost every dealer at the local shows has a display case full of 50% off cards, and if you express any interest at all, the price often goes down significantly. Unless it's high grade vintage or a tough auto, or maybe something /10 or less, 10-30% BV is about what I pay for stuff that catches my eye, and 50% is getting to a point where I just keep looking lately

 

[mintman2]

This isn't anything new. It's been trending this way ever since ebay started encouraging fixed price over auctions. I do 6 regular searches and on 5 of those the first thing I do is click the "auctions only" tab. It's bad enough with all the "auctions" that have ridiculous starting prices but it seems like 99.999% of the fixed price are AT LEAST 50% higher than a cards' worth and it's simply not worth the time to try and sift thru several thousand items in hopes of finding that one mispriced gem.

The other search I do I look at all items 1) because there's just a few listed new everyday and 2) it's kind of a specialty area and people without the proper knowledge will do a fixed price listing at a bargain price so it's worth my time. It's kind of funny.......If ebay had remained mostly auctions (which I wish it had) I wouldn't be able to find those kind of deals.

 

[Hawaiian BamBam]

thanks guys for all your responses. the more i think about it, the more im starting to think, i just simply overpaid for my cards and maybe i should just throw in the towel and accept any offer i can get for them as the economy is really, really bad for selling sports cards. so, this might just be a case of me paying to much for cards!

 

[valediction]

thanks guys for all your responses. the more i think about it, the more im starting to think, i just simply overpaid for my cards and maybe i should just throw in the towel and accept any offer i can get for them as the economy is really, really bad for selling sports cards. so, this might just be a case of me paying to much for cards!

It likely is. I do the same thing. Some of the prices I mentioned buying for, I probably wouldn't get a bid that high if I tried to sell them. Ebay and the internet in general has turned most hobbies into a buyers market. I see the same thing with my dad's old tin toys from the 40's-60's. I pulled a Ken Griffey Jr Leaf Hats Off insert in 1996, a 1:72 pull, so every 3 boxes had a Hats Off card, 8 card set, so roughly 1:24 box chance to pull the Griffey, that was HUGE back then. I could go to card shows all the time and a dealer here or there might have one or two cards from the set, now you can pretty much piece together an entire set with ease between ebay, checkoutmycards, and sites like this. 1990 Leaf used to be a high dollar set, I remember winning an ebay auction in the later 90's for the 1990 Leaf Maddux for 10.50 shipped, I was stoked because it was a $15 BV card! Now the same card is $5 BV and may sit in a $1 box for months and there are 44 on checkoutmycards alone. Not much is hard to find anymore because anyone with an internet connection can toss whatever they have up for sale from wherever they are, and there is so much information out there.

 

[Droubaysports]

Try this one. I've offered full book on cards priced well over book (not new, hot rookies or anything) and do not even get a response.. What's up with that?

 

[Hawaiian BamBam]

hey visit my ebay store! ill respond!

 

[mrmopar]

As valediction said, specifics are needed. All cases are different.

I tend to offer 50% or around that area when it makes sense, because to me it seems that sellers who are willing to accept it expect that. This didn't just start. It was very typical to see sellers at shops and shows selling at "50% of Beckett". You might argue that the BV is $20, but that the real market value is $10 when sellers are offering their 50% of Beckett pricing. It just seemed to be a price point that stuck.

There is a seller of cheap TTM/IP autographs that I return to time and time again. He typically starts his cards out with a BIN/BO in the $3 range. I discovered after winning cards at a variety of prices below the BIN that he would accept $1 offers (or more, of course), but nothing less. Every $1 offer I made was accepted. Thus, I began only offering $1. To this day, he still accepts all of my offers and I have never offered anything above a buck since. That is about 1/3 of his BIN price, but again we are talking $2-3 cards anyway. He is obviously getting what he wants for the card and I feel like I am getting bargains galore! WIN-WIN.

I typically offer what I am willing to pay for something though. There are many auctions that I don't even bother making an offer, because the start price is well above what I would pay, typically more than 100% of "my" price. I noticed on COMC that you can't seem to offer less than 50% for anything and there are tons of overpriced cards that aren't worth 50% of their asking price. I also see a lot of sellers asking close to or over BV and maybe they are expecting 50% offers. I can only assume, as many of these are not what I would consider to be "hot" cards and 50% is MAYBE a decent price, often more than what I feel is fair.

My peeve, regardless of the perceived lowball nature of some auction offers, is when a seller ignores the offer completely, like Droubaysports noted. I've said it before and for me, even a counter offer of the same asking price is better than ignoring me. If I am not worth your time, you are not worthy of my money.

In your case, I am going to guess that you overvalued your items and that 50% offers are a fairly reasonable price, but again I'd have to see what you were offering and the prices you wanted to know for sure.

 

[rock99_1999]

Start the listing at a fair price and don't accept offers. Because when someone sees buy it now of best offer ......the first thought is I can get this card for less just because it says - Or Best Offer in the auction. Just my 2 cents.

 

[greyminis]

Best Offers

Start the listing at a fair price and don't accept offers. Because when someone sees buy it now of best offer ......the first thought is I can get this card for less just because it says - Or Best Offer in the auction. Just my 2 cents.

And you can always add the Best Offer feature if no one buys it fairly valued.