Questions For Members That Sell On EBAY
 

I use EBAY mostly to support my card habit and I like to win auctions but sometimes, I like to use the ‘make best offer’ route. With that said, do sellers that have cards priced way over the average price of recent past sales expect to sell at the higher price? For instance, there is a ’56 Mantle SGC 3 on EBAY and the seller is asking $2400 but the recent past sales indicate that the auctions for a SGC 3 Mantle are going for $1100 to $1200. If I were to offer say $1200 to $1300 for the card, would that insult the seller? To be quite honest, I normally don’t even bother to look at cards that have an asking price that is grossly overpriced, but I really like this card. My questions are based on past experiences where I make a good offer and my offer is automatically rejected and that frustrates me.

Two things, if you send over an offer for an item at market price, you should care less if the seller feels insulted by your reasonable offer. Flip side is you shouldn't allow yourself to be frustrated when an offer at market price is auto declined....just means that deal wasn't meant to be.

Most cards I offer are straight BIN at or near market price. However, on items I choose to use the best offer option on, I will price above the market price (not 2x the price though) and gladly accept an offer at market or better.

Bottom line is you don't know the outcome until you send the offer.

I agree with Larry on both points, but now I find myself wanting to find one of his overpticed BIN auctions and make him an insulting offer :)

A card is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. And cards are not commodities like a carton of eggs or a gallon of milk where there truly is a set and established market and price for them. And where one dozen eggs or gallon of milk is exactly like any other dozen eggs or gallon of milk, two of the exact same card, with the exact same grade, by the exact same TPG, are not always exactly the same! When a seller includes an option to make an offer on a card they are selling, they should expect to get some low-ball offers. But insulted......no. Granted, they'll occassionally get some idiots offering like $1 for a card worth 4 figures or more, but so what? Why get mad about it, just say "no thanks" and move on. A seller should feel happy they got an offer at least and someone showed interest in what they were selling. And many times, the low-ball offer may just be a potential buyer's starting point for a negotiation, not an insult to the seller.

As Larry said above, he will raise the price he's offering a card at above what he feels is the current market, obviously expecting someone making an offer to go below his asking price then, but still get him what he feels is the market price. So why shouldn't potential buyers be able to do the same thing, make an offer below what they feel is the proper market price, and then maybe come up to what they feel is a reasonable market price after some negotiating with a seller? Think about this. A dealer trying to sell you something on Ebay possibly got the item they are offering to you by making or paying a low-ball, below market offer to someone else. You have NO duty or obligation to ensure that a seller profits and makes a living off of you.

Oh, and if some seller acts all insulted and put out because you're not willing to offer and pay what THEY think their item is worth, and they put you on their blocked list as a result, great!!! They just did you a favor because you don't want to deal with a---holes like that anyway. And trust me, there are a lot of them out there.

If you're talking about common issues in low grades, then my advice is to just move on. You'll find a similar item for the right price soon enough. If someone wants to hold out for 200% of the market for an item that sells 10x per day at the market price, then that's their right to be patient until some sucker comes along. And it's your right to not be that sucker.

If you're talking about rare items, then that's a whole different scenario, because your only reasonable options are:

1) Pay the man. Or negotiate for a deal that you can live with, which probably includes paying more than you might want to pay.

2) Wait patiently for it to come up for sale somewhere else, and hope it's less expensive if/when it ever does come up. Just realize you could be waiting for years or decades, and when it does come up, it might be just as expensive or even more expensive.

OR

3) Decide you never really wanted the item anyway, and move on to something else.

If sellers are insulted by lowball offers, its their own fault for not using auto-decline,

Good morning everyone,
I appreciate the opinions and information. There is some good insight on the board and that is why I posted these questions. I think I will just wait and win an auction or find one more closely priced to recent sales. Anyway, thanks for the replies.

Scott

Never be afraid to do a much lower offer. Most sellers have auto decline on if the offer is below a certain threshold. That’s what I do anyway. The other thing you can do (and apologies if this was already mentioned) is to send a note to the seller about the card. This can be done for bin cards that don’t accept offers. In my experiences they either ignore you or just as often they will come back and offer you something in the middle and on occasion they might even take your written offer. Check their feedback before approaching them though.

+1 agree never hurts to offer what you feel is market price. But since they have a right to sell at what they want do not be upset if they either reject or counter with a higher offer

I don't take offense to pricing, and I am not above occasionally making true lowball offers on certain items. More than a few times, I have been pleasantly surprised at the outcome. If a seller has an item they are interested in moving fairly quickly, and are willing to negotiate reasonably in good faith (i.e., not those just in the business of running an online card museum) - then if nothing else you can often come to a decent compromise on price via the offer feature.