My first experience selling coins on eBay

I've sold some other stuff on the 'Bay over the years, mostly books and music, but this was my first time selling coins. I thought I had a strategy all figured out to get some good bids. Alas, it didn't work out that way. Because I offer free shipping on 2nd+ coins, one buyer nabbed an early coin and then grabbed lots of extra coins at below melt prices! I have to tip my hat to the guy's eBay skills despite my losses. I guess I was hoping that there would be more than one buyer competing for these coins, but I suppose you don't get that if you're not one of the big sellers and use only the 50 free listings.

It's been a chastening experience. I still have a lot of coins I want to sell, but I may just sell them at next month's NH coin show for melt. The big sellers really have an advantage on eBay! And as a buyer, I guess I need to look out especially for the small sellers to buy from.

 

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Yes they do. Everything from lower fees, to a following, to better listing placements, coming up in more searches etc.

It's much safer for smaller sellers to either do BIN listings or start auctions at the lowest acceptable price. The days of little sellers being able to start 99 cent auctions and get good prices are over

 

Or, you could adjust your selling tactics based on what you learned from this experience, and give it another go on ebay.

You can also post them for sale on CT, in case you didn't know.

 

I have sold one coin item on eBay and all my other feedback are from purchases, because it's such a pain and the fees were hefty. I'm sorry for your negative experience. You might try making a listing here.

 

Good advice from @baseball21 ! I am not a big seller but I do want to make some extra money to fund my *coughs* "Habit" (coins!). I don't list any auction at a price under what I would be willing to sell it a coin for at the lowest price and if I'm pretty sure I have the price nailed, I will do a buy it now. If nobody buys it then so be it but I'm not going to let it go for 99 cents either. The fee's have to be calculated in to the pricing and if a buyer cannot understand that then the coin is not for them and they are free to buy elsewhere.

 

I might sell the rest here on CT, but I do like eBay's feedback feature, and I feel as if there's more protection for both buyers and sellers there. But it all comes at a price, of course!

 

Exactly. I would rather have 1 bid at an acceptable price than 50 bids that fall well short. The bid increments are insanely low on eBay for auctions on the low end.

0-99 Cents is a 5 cent increment
$1-4.99 is a 25 cent increment
$5-24.99 is a 50 cent increment.
$25-99.99 is a $1 increment.

No increment should ever be under a dollar. It's pretty absurd you have to get to 25 dollars just for the $1 increment to kick in.

Granted a lot of people won't just do an increment bid, but if they were it takes FAR to many bids to build up any sort of real price on an item

 

Ebay will eat your lunch and make you like it.

With that said it's hard to beat 'em. Good luck with your sales.

 

That's absolutely correct about the protection coming at a price. The fee's used to really bother me and then I realized that you pay for what you get and it's no different when you sell.

 

I have sold on Ebay for years and unless an item inspires a bidding war I almost always lose money because they take 10% of the selling price and also charge listing fees (although free listing "deals" do come up often, but these are likely psychologically intended to make it seem like you're coming out ahead).

So selling something for $10 on Ebay isn't a tremendous problem because you only lose $1 (discussions of extended profit margins not withstanding). But selling something for $400 means a considerable loss of $40. That can hurt, again, unless your item goes into bidding war mode.

I find Ebay best for selling collectables that don't have price guides or prices that one can look up. For instance, I recently sold a small figurine for $175 that I paid $50 for years ago. Turns out that it has demand, but nowhere could one find a "going price" for the item on the internet or in a magazine. Ebay's 10% fee didn't hurt too much there. But I have not listed a coin that I purchased for $400 because one can easily look up and see that it's worth $400, so the chances of getting much more than that don't look too promising, especially with the 10% thrown in. I would just lose money unless someone wanted to bid more than $40 over the known market value. Of course, some people do, but I'd rather find someplace else to sell lower margin items.

 

At one time, early on, eBay was like a swap meet. There was no competition for feedback points. People looked on eBay for stuff they needed or wanted and the sellers posted extra stuff they had. It was friendly and fun. Not so much anymore. Therefore, I don't use it much. I sold a lot of coins on eBay over the years, but, not anymore. I can't sell something for less than I have in it and provide free shipping. Fortunately, I'm at the end of my collecting days and just working with coins I have accumulated over my lifetime.

 

I'm not one of those who really like to drag eBay, because in my view it's a more rational place to sell than other alternatives, like Amazon (where I've also sold books & CDs). I guess I'm just disappointed *I* rarely find the sorts of deals my buyers have gotten off me today. Ha!

 

As long as you use Paypal (the goods and services option, which carries a 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction fee), the buyer and seller still have some protection even if the deal is done via the forums. A label can be printed after the buyer pays directly from Paypal (so there will be tracking). The buyer and seller both have Paypal protection (as well as some of the same risks as on eBay, like item not as described cases).

 

Good point! Something to think about.

 

The problem is that a lot of the eBay changes have been drifting over towards Amazon style policies. They seem to think they can compete head to head to with Amazon and Walmart.com and have been shifting things that way to do so at the detriment of sellers.

At least Amazon actually carries their own inventory and takes on much more of the burden themselves. Not to mention Amazon ships things for pennies on the dollar, a seller on eBay most likely pays more for bubble mailers than amazon does for some actual boxes. eBay seems to want to have their cake and eat it too getting all the revenue and benefits of Amazon style polices with none of the risks or overhead to themselves.

 

They're serving different market niches to some extent. If you're Prime and buying all sorts of stuff from Amazon itself with free, lightning-fast shipping, it works great. But if you're buying multiple marketplace items priced below Amazon from the same seller, you can't combine shipping costs. There's much less flexibility for the seller at Amazon. The feedback system is clunky too.

 

"Free" The cost of shipping is built into items and Prime has a significant cost.

You seem to have missed my point about the misguided negative changes that have been happening for quite some time in an effort to get more for eBay where the one shouldering the burden and is the seller

 

You're right that Prime is costly and TANSTAAFL. However, if you're really using it a lot, it pays off. I just hope eBay doesn't get killed by the competition, as despite the problems you identify (which I don't disagree about) I still think they're better for certain things.

 

LOL *snort* The same guy just won 27 Buffalo nickels from me for three cents. THREE. CENTS.

Never, ever again.

 

Before you never out of eBay, do you have any more of those under face value deals?