What happened to people making offers and asking questions on ebay?

[Lucas00]

I have an ebay account I occasionally sell a few things on every once in a while. About 40 listings. I'm not a typical collector/seller of run of the mill same old same old cards (nothing wrong with that of course). I have lots of unique and cool things that are often the only examples listed for sale online.

My question is, why do I never get any questions or offers on listings? I definitely used to get several questions a week just a few years ago. Now there's seldom a peep, and never any offers.

How bad has it gotten? Why are people so scared to make an offer?

My thought process is people just don't do BiNs anymore. If it's not an auction there's zero traction. Probably some kind of algorithm suppression is my assumption. The views are terrible. My posts here on n54 with a gazillion less people get 50x the views in a day compared to ebay with a huge audience. It's really unexplainable and
Extremely frustrating.

Let me know your thoughts.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Concur. I think people just assume all BINs are just museum prices and don't even bother to look. Try running an auction with your BIN as an opening bid, bet you get more views.

[JustinD]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Concur. I think people just assume all BINs are just museum prices and don't even bother to look. Try running an auction with your BIN as an opening bid, bet you get more views.

Yeah, I am in this boat the last few years of crazy BINs too. If it’s not in my saved searches, I likely miss it. I have been using auction only search most of the time to avoid useless overpriced clutter in the results.

[icurnmedic]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Concur. I think people just assume all BINs are just museum prices and don't even bother to look. .

This is me. I filter to auctions only for cards.
Tired of sellers wasting my time with 30%+ markups.

[BigfootIsReal]

Was checking out 1976 Shakey's Pizza Jackie PSA 9, seller has 799.99 LMAO sent offer of 105 and showed him where an SGC 9 sold for 42 in Feb....his reply...."what a joke, good luck in finding another 9"

[NiceDocter]

Maybe if your items are very unique or unusual people arent finding them.... Im not really good at perusing eBay so I just use a few key phrases every once in a while..... but occasionally I will run across something great by accident.... so maybe you need to have more "mainstream" headings? I speak as a total novice here......

[Snowman]

It really depends on what you're selling. Low end stuff or cards with average to below average eye appeal just doesn't move well on ebay unless it's an auction. But if you have strong demand cards with great eye appeal you'll get a ton of messages and offers. Almost all of my cards are perfectly centered HOFers and my inbox gets bombarded every day.

[Lucas00]

Thanks for the answers so far everyone.

I will say I am far far more on the memorabilia, ephemera and photo side of vintage baseball collecting. I know that is less popular than cards so that is another thing to add. Still doesn't explain much about so little views as I do title items (I believe) very well.

I think the kind of stuff I have caters more towards single player collectors who want something really rare/cool that sets their collections apart from plain old Topps card runs. Maybe this kind of collecting is becoming less popular somehow? To me it should be the opposite and very sharply at that. But who knows.

[Snapolit1]

I think the market has been so all over the place on pricing of cards and memorabilia and so hard to predict that many people, myself included, assume that the only smart was to buy anything these days is an auction so you at least have some idea where the market is.

Many BIN prices are based on what some dude bought something for three years ago at the height of the market.