Ebay style auction houseq

[Al C.risafulli]

The key to making a competing venture work is the same as the key to making ANY online venture work: traffic.

Just putting it up and saying "here it is" isn't going to drive the traffic to the site that it will need in order to generate A) enough listings to make it worthwhile, and B) enough bids to satisfy the sellers.

This community, while a GREAT part of the hobby, is just that - a part of the hobby. When you start looking at the dollars that change hands on eBay in the card category alone, I think the magnitude of it gets daunting.

So basically I'm saying that the winner will do a LOT of marketing, pre-launch, will secure a decent amount of sellers, pre-launch, and will have people chomping at the bit, waiting to bid when the service goes live.

Once that's done, next comes the hard part of keeping the traffic steady after the launch is done.

I wish the best of luck to whoever tries it. I know that I'm barely looking at eBay anymore since they eliminated the "pre-1930" category. But I also know that there are lots of other, well-capitalized companies that have already tried to go head-to-head with eBay and thus far have failed.

-Al

[uffda51]

Reasonable, published bidding increments, as all of the legit auction houses do. Percentages or dollar amounts.

In other words, 100, 110, 121, etc., or 100, 125, 150, etc. BUT no cents, and no bids other than those published by the auction house accepted. No more losing lots by one dollar - or one cent.

[CTDean]

The biggest drawback for me as a seller would be sportscards only. I've been a picker/flipper of antiques, Americana, vintage sports, etc for over 40 years and would need an auction site that is not limited to just sports for selling. As a buyer, I want the chance to search for ephemera, Americana, photographs, Civil War, political, etc. It's the chance for a discovery that draws a buyer to an auction site and in turn that draws the sellers. Mastro/Legends, Huggins & Scott, Heritage, etc have non sport lots in their catalogs, so please consider catagories such as Ephemera, Americana, etc.

[BobbyVCP]

Incremental bidding would in essence eliminate snipe bidding and the buyer would have to enter a max like they do in regular auction houses. I think this takes a lot of the joy out of using an eBay type service. I like the rule that a end buyer has to have a bid in before the last 24 hours in order to be able to bid at the end. This will make there be some action on the lot before it comes to the last day.

[Potomac Yank]

That means that I'll have to crack them OUT.
I don't feel that I'm alone in this.
There are still a few of us left from the old school.
We can do our own grading, and we're not bad when it comes to authenticating.
All my sets are raw, and in binders.

As much as I will root for a competitor to the current eBay ... Graded Only is NOT an inducement for me.

tobacco-r-us

[BobbyVCP]

I look at it this way by having only graded cards by the 4 majors eliminates a lot of chance for the scammers to prey in the novice collectors and makes for a safer buying and selling marketplace. Yes you are experienced in detecting which is bad and good but for everyone of you there are at least 500 that don't know.

[slantycouch]

Graded only could also serve to alienate novice collectors as well. And collectors like Joe.

As Al said... the key to this whole thing is traffic. Cutting out groups of people (i.e. raw collectors) from your target market might really hinder the success of the venture.

[Oldtix]

22 posts in and no one has mentioned fees. I think that gives you a pretty good idea of our priorities...we just want access to the broadest base of collectors and dealers to give our stuff the best chance of success.

[mcap100176]

In my first post I thought about mentioning fees but didn't care enough about them to say anything. I think it just comes down to a flat fee or percentage fee and then pricing models.

I think that fees could be an interesting poll...do you prefer flat fees upon insertion and sale regardless of price, flat insurance fee & percentage of price, no insertion fee and percentage of price, etc

[Potomac Yank]

Originally Posted by BobbyVCP

I look at it this way by having only graded cards by the 4 majors eliminates a lot of chance for the scammers to prey in the novice collectors and makes for a safer buying and selling marketplace. Yes you are experienced in detecting which is bad and good but for everyone of you there are at least 500 that don't know.

*

Graders are great with corners and sides, but as to their authentication, they are a crap shoot.
Many of them are too inexperience with the different card sets in their hands for a couple of minutes.
Contrary to hopeful belief, they don't spent hours studying a card.
Time is of the essence.

Simply stated, the group that comes out with graded, and non graded offerings ... gets my vote.

[darkpoet]

I stopped using eBay because of the PayPal monopoly. If a competing website allows checks/money orders for buyers and sellers as a payment method, and also allows sellers to post negative feedback for deadbeats, then count me in. Also, it would be nice to have categories for every type of collectible and have a collectibles auction site.