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BIN Prices are getting out of hand on eBay
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45 posts in this topic

On 9/7/2020 at 1:38 PM, James J Johnson said:

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. 

Are you making a comparision or claiming more sellers should be Comiclink then ebay?

 

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4 hours ago, 1Cool said:
On 9/7/2020 at 10:29 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.

This essentially. If you dont have a build in audience auctions are just plain stupid, but on hot books. Every week I see a seller lose their shirt on a book
and some a pick up dirt cheap.

My business has at least doubled maybe tripled by the end of the year on ebay this year. There is no where else you will see that type of growth.
Maybe Amazon, but the format isn't as good for comics. 

The markup on comics if you know what you are doing is very good. Paying 13-15% is no issue for me.

 

Edited by fastballspecial
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1 hour ago, fastballspecial said:

Are you making a comparision or claiming more sellers should be Comiclink then ebay?

 

I'm stating my observation that the number of CGC graded Gold, Silver and Bronze age auctions have steadily declined over the past decade, the sheer number of pages of them at least halved. Whie over the same past 10 years, the average number of pages of auctions in the comic link focused and featured events have at least doubled. Draw your own conclusions.

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2 hours ago, James J Johnson said:

I'm stating my observation that the number of CGC graded Gold, Silver and Bronze age auctions have steadily declined over the past decade, the sheer number of pages of them at least halved. Whie over the same past 10 years, the average number of pages of auctions in the comic link focused and featured events have at least doubled. Draw your own conclusions.

 

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2 hours ago, THE_BEYONDER said:

 

646358D4-4DF5-4972-93AD-3582FE3B55CB.gif

No exotic math is necessary at all. Currently there are 1095 ebay search hits for CGC graded Silver age super-hero auction listings. That's about average at any given time witin recent history. That amount has been stable, varying from 1000 to 1200 over the past 3 to 4 months, down from an average of about 1500 at any given time this time last year and down a few hundred from the year before, and so on. 

Conversely, Comic Link auction listings of Silver age CGC books has increased proportionally to the decrease seen on ebay. The last Focused and Featured auctions had an incredible amount of listings that I've never seen the likes of before, one of those auction events numbering well over 200 ComicLink pages of material! Both summer auctions went on for almost a week, where 10 years ago, 2 days was the norm. 

You don't need to be a prophet or John Forbes Nash Jr. to read the hand writing on the wall. 

 

Edited by James J Johnson
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12 hours ago, James J Johnson said:

No exotic math is necessary at all. Currently there are 1095 ebay search hits for CGC graded Silver age super-hero auction listings. That's about average at any given time witin recent history. That amount has been stable, varying from 1000 to 1200 over the past 3 to 4 months, down from an average of about 1500 at any given time this time last year and down a few hundred from the year before, and so on. 

Conversely, Comic Link auction listings of Silver age CGC books has increased proportionally to the decrease seen on ebay. The last Focused and Featured auctions had an incredible amount of listings that I've never seen the likes of before, one of those auction events numbering well over 200 ComicLink pages of material! Both summer auctions went on for almost a week, where 10 years ago, 2 days was the norm. 

You don't need to be a prophet or John Forbes Nash Jr. to read the hand writing on the wall. 

 

If sellers could make more money on E-Bay doing a $0.99 auction - they would.  The market pretty quickly switched over to BIN once the buyers started gravitating to only keys which made it foolish to put up nice but not key books up in an auction where almost no one is bidding.  The ComicLink format is perfect for a low starting bid auction since there is a ton of eyes focuses on a single book that is closing at that moment.  There could be 10 books ending on E-Bay at any moment in a ton of different categories which makes it tough to compare the two venues.  As a buyer I can see why it seem obvious that the sellers on E-Bay should just follow the ComicLink format but the fact that a lot are not speaks for itself.

Edited by 1Cool
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1 hour ago, Keys_Collector said:

There's so much new money being dumped into the industry that some sellers know that there are people willing to pay anything for a hot book and the uninformed or lazy buyers who don't check sold listings or GPA/Gocollect.

Unless you are taking about ultra hard to find books or the scorching hot books (especially ones that people are projecting to pop in the near future) you will have no problem finding books for near GPA especially if you don't mind making a couple offers.  There will always be crazy people who ask for double guide or double GPA but in general there is always a few copies that are near GPA and even below GPA with a 10-15% discount offer.

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1 minute ago, 1Cool said:

Unless you are taking about ultra hard to find books or the scorching hot books (especially ones that people are projecting to pop in the near future) you will have no problem finding books for near GPA especially if you don't mind making a couple offers.  There will always be crazy people who ask for double guide or double GPA but in general there is always a few copies that are near GPA and even below GPA with a 10-15% discount offer.

This was my point of starting this topic. I believe that sellers are asking 2-3 times the price of non-hot books now also. I thought this has been more common recently.

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Just now, Xenosmilus said:

This was my point of starting this topic. I believe that sellers are asking 2-3 times the price of non-hot books now also. I thought this has been more common recently.

What books?  Can you post a couple links of books you can only find copies that are 2-3x the going rate?  Just curious since I do not see them and all my books are priced at maybe 10% over GPA which appears to be common when I look.

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On 9/7/2020 at 11:04 AM, 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

Why would you think it's worth $100?  This book is pretty rare in higher grades based on the number of books that have come up for sale.  There is some rumors floating around about Elric which has bumped up the demand for it - I'm grabbing as many as I can if priced right.  A 7.0 sold for $85 a bit ago and a 9.2 sold for $400.  If you have a 9.0 that you want to sell for $85 - $125 please send me a PM and I'd love to get it at that price.  The $300 may be a bit aggressive but I'd say $225 - $250 seems like a good price for the 9.0.

Your other examples are books with no other copies up for sale and none have sold on E-Bay in the last 3 months.  Hard to find bronze age 9.8s will always fall into that hunting to set the price category - 9.6s don't seem to be asking that high a price.

I see your point that people do seem to reaching for the stars when the book is hot or rare - but this is not new with the current market.  People have been trying to not leave any money on the table for awhile but now people are looking ahead and trying to gauge what the market will look like in 6 - 9 months and pricing at that level since they don't want to leave any money on the table in the future either.

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On 9/5/2020 at 6:38 PM, 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.

Well, I paid $8,000 for a Creepy #1, so there's that....

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On 9/6/2020 at 12:38 AM, 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.

Yeah! What gets me is someone may have the same copy in the same grade for the proper price and even that isn't selling, eg Avengers #58 9.6 @ $540 average, and then someone is asking $820 and $999 ? you have to wonder what some people are sniffing. 

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2 hours ago, Xenosmilus said:

FBF0A615-2B18-442E-8E11-3BDF4258B62D.pngThe #48 was the same book that sold for 200 a few months back that gave the price bump originally. These are just some examples.

Curious though if the 48 going for $200 a couple months ago was due to the COVID dip in sales prices that seemed to last through May. 

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1 hour ago, serling1978 said:

Curious though if the 48 going for $200 a couple months ago was due to the COVID dip in sales prices that seemed to last through May. 

I believe back then there were 2 in the census, now there are 9. I could be wrong but I think it was an example of someone wanting it and paid premium and since then a bunch more showed up on the census.

Edited by Xenosmilus
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This topic is kind of a double edged sword.
 

Buyers tend to benefit when bidding on books starting at $0.99 because they usually end up selling for well below GPA due to a lack of bidders and/or knowledge buyers.
 

As a seller, you want at least GPA, so starting at $0.99 won’t benefit the seller. However, I’ve also noticed that no matter what price I list my comics at for BIN, potential buyers ALWAYS message me with an “offer.” Even when “send an offer” isn’t an option. Some offers are laughable (50% or more off BIN/way below GPA), while others are within reason. Ebay has become a negotiation tool for selling comics in my experience and most of my sales come from reasonable negotiations.

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