Buying from a BIN or waiting it out?
 

Frustration can happen a lot when looking at BIN prices on eBay....no doubt about it, however, I find that I buy from BINs more than I do waiting out an auction. Why?

1. Why wait to see if you're going to be sniped out of your bid with ten seconds remaining 4 days from now? I don't know if I'm going to win it or not, and I have to wait and see. Chances are....whatever I'm bidding on will not end up being mine! lol

2. If the price is reasonable, and I can have it right now, then why wait it out to see if I MIGHT get it?

3. Success with a dealer previously on eBay.....and again, his BIN price is reasonable? I'm buying it!

4. As a seller, too, I try to keep my prices reasonable. I look at past sales on eBay, VCP, and other auctions, and I remind myself that if I put this item on through an auction, it may only go for half what I put into it. But if I keep my prices reasonable and generally lower than others' BINs, I'll be selling my stuff before other people who have the same items sitting in their stores for months.

I realize this doesn't always hold true, and I DO bid from time to time on auctions, but I don't see a problem with buying BINs when prices are decent. A buddy of mine basically NEVER does it....in fact, he rarely even chooses the BIN option when searching from items. I get it....but sometimes you're missing out!

What are your thoughts?

Jimi

Its funny to see auctions where the bidder actually pays more for the same exact card with same eye appeal then a buy it now. that's still sitting there on ebay...sometimes after an auction like that you do see a buy it now snapped up from an underbidder though..

BINs I sort of look at most of them as 'make an offer'...I usually email them about a lower price though several of them are firm......even when given a 10% ebay coupon I struggle to find a BIN that's within 10% of market price if it were to sell on ebay though....but yes occasionally there are ok buys when the market goes up on a card....on Memory Lane's recent buy it now event..you will see that maybe 5% of the cards I actually bought but the ones bought typically are good deals.

You can also look at BIN as a convenience service..you are paying not to have to wait 4 months for PWCC to have the card......as long as you are willing to pay that service price then I guess who cares...you just wont be able to sell it back to close to what you paid but if its a hobby you are going to spend and lose money like all hobbies...

^ agreed.

I think if some BIN cards went thru an auction process they would at least match, if not get more than their BIN listing price.

The issue is that it's probably common perception to think a card with a BIN is overpriced, yet some of these cards are listed at actually good prices.

I've found some great BIN prices amongst the overpriced. In fact, I got one recently from you Jimi on an Aparicio RC :) I especially like Best Offers.

I too hate being beat out at the last minute on auctions. I thought I had snagged a nice RC the other day and was outbid with two seconds left. Very frustrating.

I guess I'm like your buddy I never use BIN. Now if they have the option to make an offer then I will do that. There are only certain sellers whom I deal with for that though. There's notorious ones at least in my book and sorry if you're a member but 707 or 787 sports doesn't even allow you to enter a reasonable offer.

I'll wait out auctions as well. I need to try and be a sniper because I don't have the money to BIN with those eBay prices. I've probably NEVER seen a price on eBay I thought was fair, on a BIN level. Just my two cents though.

it not frustrating when the same card with same eye appeal is listed on BIN and someone outbids you on ebay to a price HIGHER than the BIN..thats fun....

This phenomina seemed to start happening around 8-10 yrs ago when prices went through the roof and then came back down. Everyone always wants to steal a card in auction but it rarely happens. No one seems to want to pay a list type price because no one has bought it already :).
If you see a BIN and you have done your homework, and still want it, it might not be a bad buy just because it's sitting there. I bought my T213-3 Red Cobb from Mike Wheat on ebay because it was there for years with no takers and I got tired of seeing it (and I always liked red Cobbys too). I paid around 1300 for it. Even then it was a good deal but no one bought it because it was a "has been seen already for a long time" BIN........

Good points! And as I say it like Mike and Frank from Amercan Pickers, "Sometimes the time to buy it, is when you see it!"

Well, there is always THAT exception to the rule. I love that scenario too.

I always run searches as auction only by default because the BIN's were so overpriced. I admit this has gotten much better in the past two years or so and the prices have come down to earth.

I have been searching the BIN more often. Mostly my love for auction search is me just romantizing the days when ebay was an actual auction site and not Amazon. Sigh.

I will default to those that have a best offer option and send a reasonable offer based on recent sales. I absolutely hate when they auto deny my offer however and will often not make another as I do not lowball and that option is silly when people have it set for only a 5 dollar give and take on a 300 dollar card.

I've used BIN once in awhile for cards I really want. On one card I needed to complete a set, the owner slowly lowered the price over about two months time. When he finally lowered it to within $5 of what I was willing to pay, I bought it. You usually won't get any bargains, but it can work out if you are patient.

You aren't looking hard enough then. I CONSTANTLY have BIN's that are cheaper than everyone else. Hell, they are even cheaper than some of the auctions I have seen run to completion!

Shhhhhhh.....don't give away our secrets! 😉

I usually only look at BIN's on oddball items that I didn't find any up for auction. There is an item I want very badly with a BIN at $150 on eBay. I think the item is worth $120 max but because it is a very rare item I really want I offered $140 3 different times. It has been on eBay for months now and I don't expect it to sell anytime soon.

About a year ago I noticed my wife almost constantly would come home from shopping with random crap we or she didn't need. The near universal excuse was "it was on sale" or "if I spent $100 instead of $50 I got an extra $10 in (insert department store name) cash," etc. It dawned on me how people perceive the cost of something vs. the cost of missing out on something and I decided to use the theory on eBay. I canceled every BIN I had going and relisted them exactly the same but with additions to the titles such as:

"CHEAPEST ON EBAY!!!"
"10% OFF VCP!!!"
"LAST ONE!!!!"
"LOWERED FOR A LIMITED TIME"

No statement was a lie. If it listed as cheapest, it was the cheapest. If it was listed as lower than VCP or previous sales, it was lower. If it was listed as lowered, then the price was 10%-20% less than what I previously had it listed for. I also started sending extras with almost every purchase. If someone purchased a graded single I included a few raw commons from the same set. If someone purchased a newer high priced auto, parallel, or SP I included a pack of Topps or a team bag of base of the star player. I also removed the best offer option. The result was unbelievable. Items that sat in BIN purgatory for months with nothing but low-ball offers sold in hours and days. I was able to clear out crap sitting on my desk for years in a matter of weeks and most of it was priced the exact same as it had been previously.

Yeah, there is the occasional $30 card listed at $300 that you can shake your head at, but the vast majority are within range of a fair price, the main problem being the difference between what a seller wants to get for an item and what a buyer wants to pay for the same. If there is a discrepancy between the two it doesn't necessarily mean the seller is wrong, it means there is difference in the assumption of the item's value. This isn't Wal-Mart and there isn't a MSRP for most items we sell so transactions only take place when both parties shade into common ground. I discovered that when pressed with the possibility with missing an item they want to add, both the mentality and the amount a buyer wants to play can be manipulated. - Lord, that sentence sounds so evil when I type it.....:cool:

I mainly try to be patient, but I recently BIN'd 5 cards from the same seller. They posted a slew of cards at once, many with really good eye appeal but identified by the seller as being trimmed (presumably due to being undersized), and there were a few non-altered bargains in the mix. I'm vaguely kicking myself for not buying the Doyle NY that was trimmed on multiple sides but that looked nice for $22.

It's all the thrill of the hunt; with t206, I know if I miss out on a card, there will be another. :)

Tis true, although maybe not at the same fantastic pricing.

Leon, I did something similar with my 1907 Wolverine News Ty Cobb portrait. I had a continuing ebay search for this card, and, except for the PSA 5 which sold in the PWCC auction for just under $11,000, none of the portrait versions had come up in several years except Tony Arnold's poor to fair example, which had gone unsold over and over again at (I believe) $2,250. It was actually a pretty nice card, with a crease across it which did not really detract that much from the eye appeal, and nice corners. Still, believing the card was overpriced, I contacted Tony and we worked out a deal.

Generally speaking, however, if I feel that the BIN is within reasonable striking distance of the fair value of the card, I'll pull the trigger then and there, and not have to worry about snipe software should the item go through auction. I lost a really nice 1939 R303A Ted Williams Mike Wheat had that way, with 6 or 7 seconds left in the auction. Nothing quite pisses you off as watching the closing moments of an auction for a card you really, really want as having it so sniped out from under you.

If, on the contrary, the card I'm interested in is one which I believe is significantly overpriced at the BIN level, I'll put it on my watch list to see if it is relisted (as it often is) as a more reasonable price. This, especially, if the card's condition presents any significant eye appeal problems.

Good post guys,

Larry

Yeap, sometimes the BIN's need to be evaluated as they can be good deals (most still aren't though).... If you buy a vintage Cobb right it's hard to go wrong :).

I use BIN a tremendous amount of the time on Ebay. Being an advanced Yankee collector, its hard for me to find cards I still need and are affordable, and even if its over-priced, many times that high price is worth it to me (and isnt that the definition of the value of a card, what it is worth to you), and i jump on it right away before someone else gets it. This goes for other parts of my collection, the other NY teams and a few other misc things.

I will say if the price is insane then i wont buy it, or i will make an offer though.


Also i love BIN cards when i get the extra Ebay bucks offers. For instance i just got a 5-times Ebay bucks offer and got on Ebay and used it on a BIN that was around $200.

yes BINs is a convenience..if willing to wait it out you could get a card potentially for less but that's true in lots of things in life...

the ebay bucks is great incentive for me to ask for seller to take a little less.. to finally get close to market price....amazing though even with 10% off with ebay it still hard to find cards within 10% market price for early 1950s topps

With the cards we collect, when do you really ever get the chance to decide between a BIN or an auction? Even if you're after a Frank Owen t206 with a Piedmont back, the eye appeal is going to vary.

For me, its never a case of either or. Its just do I like this card at this price? And I do buy a lot of cards on ebay with BINs. I also list all my cards as BINs, and they sell.

for commons that come up every few months there is a large selection actually..

Well, then you're not "waiting out an auction". You're waiting for the next auction. Right?

If you look at a BIN and decide to pass on it, you aren't really waiting out an auction, you're just waiting for a future opportunity to buy that card. Semantics I guess, but you rarely have an either or situation with pre-war cards. I might pass on Nap Lajoie t206 portrait that's listed as a BIN and then buy one a month from now on a BIN from another seller.

right its a convenience fee...but you will see after PWCC auctions..all of the sudden, similar cards all of the sudden get sold on BIN that were sitting there for months..when the auction price was higher than the BIN price..

I haven't noticed that, but it makes perfect sense. That's a good example of when the either/or situation can happen.

If a BIN sells for less than an auction then that's a failure of the market, in my view. I have only ever done the BIN thing when I knew the listing was recent and the pricing was below market. Otherwise I will always make an offer before triggering the BIN.

Wait for a 2-5X ebay bucks offer.

Bin
 

I picked up a couple of nice cards at reasonable BIN's - and collected the 5X eBay bucks. It's win-win!

Yes, me too, and Ebay is so smart, everytime I tell myself I am gonna lay off buying for awhile they seem to know it and tempt me with a 4X or 5X Ebay bucks deal!!!! So nice to use BIN on these deals.

As a buyer/seller....I try to use BIN's, but EBay makes you set the BIN 30% more that the auction start price, basically those that use the start bid to make it lower and hopefully get enough bids to eventually get where they wanted in the first place, or just do away with the auction/starting bid, and just use BIN.
I did read about higher USPS shipping fees, so the increase in S/H is another issue, do folks just figure that into their price and offer free s/h.
Makes me wonder, just use PWCC or Probstein.

In my experience BINs, as a rule, are significantly out of line with VCP auction results. In fact, one of the most disappointing developments in the hobby in recent years, in my view, is the movement by the vast majority of sellers to BIN listings as opposed to auctions. And, even those few auctions frequently have opening bids that exceed VCP prices.