BIN Prices are getting out of hand on eBay 1 1

[Xenosmilus]

Anyone else notice that sellers on eBay are asking 2-3 times more then GPA and recent auction prices? I mean I’ve seen it in the past but it’s getting much more common and abused lately.

Edited September 5, 2020 by Xenosmilus

[Robot Man]

Same thing with their opening auction “bids”. Unless it’s a book I really want bad and would pay up for I just move on. 

Not to mention the terrible lack of grading. In the month of August, I bought 6 GA books on eBay. 4 of them had serious defects not mentioned in description or shown in photos. One had centerfold out, one had 3 pages obviously torn out. One that was pretty cheap and showed “some light water damage” had severe black mold inside. The 4th one was two grades over graded. Hey, I’m “not a professional grader” either but real obvious they wern’t even opened before put up for sale. All were returned after I had to file to make THEM pay return postage. 

I don’t care how good the deal looks, I only buy from a few good known sellers there. My options to buy books has gotton real limited. No shows, so that is out. I have NEVER been unhappy buying right here on the boards. 

 

[Conacon]

There's always those guys who list BIN at a crazy price, either hoping to catch a big fish or they have no concept about how it works. 

I have noticed an uptick in fake buys to inflate market value. 

[James J Johnson]

19 hours ago, Xenosmilus said:

Anyone else notice that sellers on eBay are asking 2-3 times more then GPA and recent auction prices? I mean I’ve seen it in the past but it’s getting much more common and abused lately.

That's been ongoing. I stopped surfing BIN listings altogether years ago. I just browse the auction listings, which as you and others have noted, can be found opening bids that range from sane to insane, the latter being the same listings over and over again, sometimes for years in many cases. 

[THE_BEYONDER]

BINs are priced to the moon, and auction starting bids are crazy.  EBay has become more of a comic museum than a selling platform.

[Xenosmilus]

14 minutes ago, THE_BEYONDER said:

BINs are priced to the moon, and auction starting bids are crazy.  EBay has become more of a comic museum than a selling platform.

I don't necessarily blame eBay on this one.  It's pure greed.  Case in point see below.  I collect Conan's CGC 9.0's because I feel it's a decent grade, aesthetically pleasing and most important relativity cheap!  This guy's listing is insane though!  I emailed him about the price and he was nice and we had a very respectful dialog.  He doesn't sell  a lot of comic's and is basing it off of GPA where there was 1 outlier sale which personally I think was a bogus sale.  I personally think the book is worth $85-125 range.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Conan-the-Barbarian-14-CGC-9-0-OWW-1st-Elric-of-Melnibone-1973/324262892455

Edited September 7, 2020 by Xenosmilus

[THE_BEYONDER]

20 minutes ago, Xenosmilus said:

I don't necessarily blame eBay on this one.  It's pure greed.  Case in point see below.  I collect Conan's CGC 9.0's because I feel it's a decent grade, aesthetically pleasing and most important relativity cheap!  This guy's listing is insane though!  I emailed him about the price and he was nice and we had a very respectful dialog.  He doesn't sell  a lot of comic's and is basing it off of GPA where there was 1 outlier sale which personally I think was a bogus sale.  I personally think the book is worth $85-125 range.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Conan-the-Barbarian-14-CGC-9-0-OWW-1st-Elric-of-Melnibone-1973/324262892455

I miss the days of $.99 auctions.   What happened to letting the market decide?
 

Would be great to have a platform like EBay, where only $.99 auctions are permitted. 

[Ryan.]

I get deals on ebay all the time. 

The true auction format on eBay has been dead for years. They are often heavily tilted in favor of the buyer. 

[James J Johnson]

3 hours ago, THE_BEYONDER said:

I miss the days of $.99 auctions.   What happened to letting the market decide?

Ebay sellers are leery of doing that. A book may actually sell for a reasonable price (it's market value). Interesting to note that while the sheer number of slabbed Silver and Bronze age comics listed on ebay for auction have steadily declined over the past 10 years, decreasing by approx. 10% in total number yearly since say, 2010, Comic Link's sheer number of total books offered for auction with $1 openers has inversely increased by about the same proportion, at least 10% more offerings each year since 2010. The numbers don't lie. Obviously. Link is doing something that ebay sellers aren't doing. Ebay's page count of listings cut in half over the years while Link's has at least doubled. 

[90sChild]

8 hours ago, Xenosmilus said:

I don't necessarily blame eBay on this one.  It's pure greed.  

I have no problem putting the blame on ebay, because it benefits them to run their platform this way.  
They took several steps that has allowed this to snowball over the past 20 years I've been on there.  The first and most obvious was removing all fees to create listings, now they offer something like 200 free listings a month, every month.  Certain types of add-on's have cost but the important ones like high fixed starting prices and high buy it now prices do not.  The more open listings ebay has sitting on it's website the more traffic they are going to pull in through external ads or whatever methods they use.  Bottom line they get more listings and don't care if stuff sits there, neither do the sellers.  Sellers will gladly take their free listings with no fees and relist the same book over and over again for years on end.  Sellers had real incentive to actually sell the items they listed when it costed them money.

If I was running a comic store with overhead costs, do you think I would waste an entire wall's worth of space that had astronomical prices I knew nobody was going to buy anything?  Well most likely no because that would be money out of my pockets as square footage I have to pay for retail space.  When you do this on ebay however with your 200 free listings per month you are doing essentially just that.  There's no overhead and no expense to just putting up a wall of crazy prices and letting it sit there forever.  You can argue that's one benefit of the internet, and to what end will this continue?  Eventually everyone, everywhere will be able to do something similar be it creating their own website for $10 a month or whatever.  eBay has made it so that I now have 200 items worth of free internet wallspace with zero cost to me.

Edited September 8, 2020 by 90sChild

[Comic Consortium]

9 hours ago, Xenosmilus said:

I don't necessarily blame eBay on this one.  It's pure greed.  Case in point see below.  I collect Conan's CGC 9.0's because I feel it's a decent grade, aesthetically pleasing and most important relativity cheap!  This guy's listing is insane though!  I emailed him about the price and he was nice and we had a very respectful dialog.  He doesn't sell  a lot of comic's and is basing it off of GPA where there was 1 outlier sale which personally I think was a bogus sale.  I personally think the book is worth $85-125 range.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Conan-the-Barbarian-14-CGC-9-0-OWW-1st-Elric-of-Melnibone-1973/324262892455

i dont think you can call it greed. its business and sometimes sellers are not motivated to sell unless a deal blows them away. The flip side of this is the buyer who messages the seller saying " I know a friend who bought the same 1000 dollar book for 400 so ill offer you 500". why waste both peoples time in this scenario. There definitely overpriced books out there but that between the seller and their pocket. To each his own. 

[Xenosmilus]

1 minute ago, Comic Consortium said:

i dont think you can call it greed. its business and sometimes sellers are not motivated to sell unless a deal blows them away. The flip side of this is the buyer who messages the seller saying " I know a friend who bought the same 1000 dollar book for 400 so ill offer you 500". why waste both peoples time in this scenario. There definitely overpriced books out there but that between the seller and their pocket. To each his own. 

I phrased it more like "if it doesn't sell in a month or so I'd give you $XX for it".  

[Cruzin' Thru Comics]

I rarely do bids on eBay. Usually sellers get reamed on prices. I wouldn’t mind if a $100 book sold for say $75 but quite often you see books selling for 1/2 or less of value. I put my books on bin and usually listen to reasonable offers.  As a buyer, of course, buying on auction is usually best. Also, there are deals on bin as well. Just hard to find sometimes. 

[Larryw7]

16 hours ago, THE_BEYONDER said:

I miss the days of $.99 auctions.   What happened to letting the market decide?
 

Would be great to have a platform like EBay, where only $.99 auctions are permitted. 

I don't do that many auctions anymore, but whenever I did, whatever the book's value, I always started at .99.

[theCapraAegagrus]

Yes.

[comicginger1789]

Generally, I always put my price as the Buy It Now, but then encourage offers. I hope that doesn't discourage people. I recently sold a $150 ask for $80. I am usually always willing to budge. 

I tend to only sell keys or books I want eyes to see on ebay. Otherwise I avoid it and their fees like the plague by selling elsewhere

Edited September 8, 2020 by comicginger1789

[William-James88]

I don't think this is new, I've been noticing stuff like this ever since the MCU got big.

1 hour ago, comicginger1789 said:

Generally, I always put my price as the Buy It Now, but then encourage offers. I hope that doesn't discourage people. I recently sold a $150 ask for $80. I am usually always willing to budge. 

I tend to only sell keys or books I want eyes to see on ebay. Otherwise I avoid it and their fees like the plague by selling elsewhere

Where else do you sell?

[1Cool]

On 9/7/2020 at 11:29 AM, Ryan. said:

I get deals on ebay all the time. 

The true auction format on eBay has been dead for years. They are often heavily tilted in favor of the buyer. 

There just is not enough eyes on any particular auction (unless its a hot key) for people to go the $1 auction route.  And those that try the $1 auction for a month quickly move over to BIN with offers since they lost their shirt.  Guys like Dan seem to still do well but it took decades to bill up a bidder lists.  Most of us have found BINs are key on E-Bay unless you want to just start the auction at the price you want.

ComicLink is doing well since they have a reasonably small amount of slabs up for auction every few months which brings in a ton of eyes and even then I tend to do even better just sitting back and waiting for a buyer on E-Bay to come around a make a fair offer.  All books eventually sell even if it takes a year for them to sell - as stated earlier there really is no cost to me to just let them sit for awhile if I don't need the cash right away.

Edited September 8, 2020 by 1Cool

[comicginger1789]

1 minute ago, William-James88 said:

I don't think this is new, I've been noticing stuff like this ever since the MCU got big.

Where else do you sell?

Here, Instagram, Facebook marketplace. I have enough avenues that when I get books I want to move, I can move quickly, much quicker and efficiently and without incurring fees. I have a handful of people who buy keys and other stuff from me. If it is 50 cent or dollar bin stuff, I put together lots of 20-30 comics and sell them for $15-20 locally. Always some minor collector or people picking up stuff for their kids. 

I just bought a 1000 book collection and moved all but 200 books or so in a couple weeks. Ebay is too slow and too expensive for me to waste time on most of the time.  

[bb8]

3 hours ago, 1Cool said:

There just is not enough eyes on any particular auction (unless its a hot key) for people to go the $1 auction route.  And those that try the $1 auction for a month quickly move over to BIN with offers since they lost their shirt.  Guys like Dan seem to still do well but it took decades to bill up a bidder lists.  Most of us have found BINs are key on E-Bay unless you want to just start the auction at the price you want.

ComicLink is doing well since they have a reasonably small amount of slabs up for auction every few months which brings in a ton of eyes and even then I tend to do even better just sitting back and waiting for a buyer on E-Bay to come around a make a fair offer.  All books eventually sell even if it takes a year for them to sell - as stated earlier there really is no cost to me to just let them sit for awhile if I don't need the cash right away.

I troll the auctions on ebay a lot, and I'm not sure they do as badly as you say. I would never just list all my books at $0.99 auctions but certain stuff does well even if it's not a key. I'll throw up lots of bronze or silver books and auction them and I usually do ok. Not amazing but definitely made a little money. And keys do quite well. I kept missing out on an X-Men 14 at auction. I finally won one but unfortunately it was missing an ad page (why do so many sellers not know how to check page counts?). I ended up buying a consignment copy from MCS that had been sitting for a bit for probably right around what it would go for at auction on the bay.

Edit: one thing I've noticed on ebay is how pleased people are when your books are graded halfway decent with grading notes. It's so brutal buying there that buyers are pleasantly surprised when you don't overgrade everything or miss interior defects.

Edited September 8, 2020 by bb8