Decline in eBay listings?

[iowadoc77]

Seems like big time auction house listings are the new way to go with the way eBay is changing, how hard they are on the seller and the fees associated. Auctions seem to attract the right audience and seem to command pretty good prices. And I think high end cards look even better in those catalogs than a picture in eBay! And, one more thing, the risk of losing a high end card in the mail through eBay.

[jefferyepayne]

Ebay continues to become more and more seller unfriendly so people are looking for other avenues to sell their cards. With all of the small auction houses out there, you don't have to look very far, either!

jeff

[ullmandds]

totally agree!

Originally Posted by iowadoc77

Seems like big time auction house listings are the new way to go with the way eBay is changing, how hard they are on the seller and the fees associated. Auctions seem to attract the right audience and seem to command pretty good prices. And I think high end cards look even better in those catalogs than a picture in eBay! And, one more thing, the risk of losing a high end card in the mail through eBay.

[lharri3600]

I agree also! It was not a matter of if, but when with ebay. The chickens have come home to roost!

[t206blogcom]

It's a shame too because many collectors aren't aware of the auction houses and soley rely on ebay. When I started putting together my T206 set, I only knew about ebay. Halfway through I stumbled upon Net54 and auction houses. I then realized I overpaid for most of my set.

[pgellis]

There are several issues that have hurt eBay in recent years.

1. BINs - When I started to put together my T206 set about 10 years ago, there were at least a couple hundred eBay AUCTIONS for graded T206s ending every week on Sundays. Now, you get maybe 10-20 AUCTIONS ending each week. Everything is an over-priced BIN that just keeps getting listed month after month after month.

2. FEES - It seems that whenever a rare piece (card or memorabilia) is listed on eBay, someone reaches out and contacts the seller in order to hammer out a deal outside of eBay. It has happened to me with leather football helmets so many times I can't remember them all. I once told a seller to let his auction run it's course and I guaranteed him that I would be the high bidder. He let it run 7 days and then pulled it off of eBay within only hours of it's ending. Sellers would rather cut a lesser deal off of eBay to save on the seller's fees. I wish eBay made it harder to pull an item from an active listing once there was an initial bid by a bidder.

3. SHILLING - Once eBay hid bidder's IDs, it made it harder to prove shilling. Once a bidder suspects shilling, they will usually stop bidding on an item and if it becomes a pattern, they begin to ignore a certain seller altogether. Now, there was always shilling from the beginning of eBay, but now they make it so easy to do without any recourse.

I think eBay should go back to 100% auctions. You can have a BIN also, but the item must be an auction to begin with. In other words, you can have a card with a BIN of $500, but it must be listed as an auction with a starting price less than $500, for example. Don't allow sellers to end an auction once a bid has been placed and let's see member ID's again.

[Joshchisox08]

Originally Posted by t206blogcom

It's a shame too because many collectors aren't aware of the auction houses and soley rely on ebay. When I started putting together my T206 set, I only knew about ebay. Halfway through I stumbled upon Net54 and auction houses. I then realized I overpaid for most of my set.

I agree with that Jason. There's only a couple of auctions that I'm aware of that regularly has t206's.

Sterling and Joe's vintage. Other than that I don't know about any but eBay. Which like you said are almost always overpriced.