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Looking for advice on new ebay pricing issues.

7 posts in this topic

Hey guys I thought some of you might have some info on this.

 

Over the last two years or so my dad has been starting to sell his old comic collection of mostly 60-90s marvel, dc and others. Many cgc graded. A few would go for hundreds of bucks on ebay.

 

What he would do is set a auction and a reserve price with say Xmen 75. Then if it didn't reach the reserve he would not have to sell it. Simple as I have always used ebay this way. Then about a month ago he got a huge charge on ebay. It seems that they changed the pricing policy and now if you do a reserve auction you get charged a lot even if the book doesn't sell. And if he had a high reserve such as $500 ebay would charge him a large amount.

 

He called ebay and it seemed they just changed the policy and they did reverse the charges but told him from now on he would have to set his auctions to a high price. Meaning if he wants to sell something at 350 then he has to start it there instead of a starting price of 9.99.

 

Does any sellers have info on why they changed this pricing policy as he has started to think of not selling his books when he has a large collection. We live in ND so there is not many places to sell a collection of that size and since he is retiring he wants to sell them rather then just letting them sit there.

 

Any other ebay selling tricks rather then the suddenly high price of reserve auctions?

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I think you could just set the selling price at the minimum you will accept for the book. I'm pretty sure you get a certain number of free listings per month. You might not get as many bidders, but you also won't lose money on the book.

 

ALSO, since you're already here and have to do price research and pictures and grading for ebay anyways, you could try selling here on the boards (there's subforum), as you don't have to pay ebay fees and are less likely to get a fraudy buyer (but also less likely to sell to impulse buyers above market prices), OR if your books have some value ($50+ per), you could consider consigning them to mycomicshop, where you can set 'buy-it-now' prices, or have them auction for you.

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I agree that reserve prices are off-putting and annoying to buyers. I almost never bid on an auction with a reserve price. Just set the price minimum you want.

 

With a hot title such as Batman #1 New 52, New Mutants 98, etc you can easily get away with a $0.99 start price and it will gravitate towards its highest price. Unless you have it ending at some oddball time it will sell just fine.

 

I'd be tempted to use a free local ad in one of the new apps for selling stuff, especially on CGC graded stuff which should take away a lot of questions and issues. That way you keep your ~13% that Feebay and Paypal would take off the top. Cash is king.

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Man Ebay just has to get their share dont they ? Regardless if you actually sell anything....

I agree with what everyone is saying. Just do a Buy It Now for your books . Look up the price the books are selling for in comparable grades .(not ended , actually SOLD for)

Give free shipping and you will be good to go .(add the cost of shipping into the price).

So if you check sold listings and the book sells for say 48 bucks with 5 shipping

Make it a buy it now of $53 and wait til it sells .

You get 50 free listings per month without an Ebay store . Several times per month I get an email from Ebay for anywhere from an extra 50 to as much as listing 1000 more items for free .

With an ebay store you get many more listings free for their store fee .

If you have any other questions feel free to PM me. I have been using Ebay since near the beginning .

Im not an expert. Im not a giant in the comic world. Im aways learning myself. but I would be happy to aid in anyway i can .

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Any other ebay selling tricks rather then the suddenly high price of reserve auctions?

 

The only "trick" necessary is to dump the reserve and start at whatever the free insertion fee listing is ($.99 ?) and let the book sell for what it sells. That's the point of an auction, it ends for whatever the final highest bid is. If he feels he's entitled to a particular price, start the auction at that price or list is as a BIN sans 'best offer' feature.

 

All the previous responses have echoed this sentiment, this one particularly well:

 

I agree with what everyone is saying. Just do a Buy It Now for your books . Look up the price the books are selling for in comparable grades .(not ended , actually SOLD for)

Give free shipping and you will be good to go .(add the cost of shipping into the price).

 

(thumbs u

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