What Happen To Ebay ?

Went to a member of our local stamp club home over the weekend . He was buying some of my excess bulk material to sell on E-bay .He is now quitting as a seller {around 11,000 feedbacks in ten years }.
He tells me the traffic is no longer there ,and the items are not getting competitive bids like in years past . I buy all my purchases at major stamp auctions and give him a decent amount of duplicates to sell but now he is quitting ,he even gave me all his inventory to be include in the next consignment to the auction house .Has the market changed ?

I can only tell you from my personal experience of late, and the sales are down 50%-60% and traffic (watchers) is equally down. Auction items sell for opening bid with rarely another bid and BIN sales lately are (1) in 70-100 listings. Started about a month or two ago and hasn't improved. Maybe the stock market dive, maybe the time of year...no clue, and I've also cut back on my purchasing too.

There are a lot of sellers complaining about decreased visibility and sales. ebay is playing so many games with search results, trying to feed buyers items that ebay thinks are relevant or sellers that ebay wants to promote, rather than what buyers are actually looking for, that many buyers are just getting fed up.

Talk about killing the golden goose...

As a buyer, my challenge has been the severe move from an all-auction site to an 80% buy it now site. The buy it now lots for the most part are priced at current retail trends, so for philatelists ebay has become one giant retail price list. For material at retail, I'd rather buy at shows or from mail order sellers I already know where there is mutual respect. I think if a larger proportion of lots offered were auctions, we might see more buyers gradually coming back.

The other issue I see is the loss of standards in how sellers do their business. I've been criticized on SCF about my return rates on stamps bought sight-unseen, however the reality is sellers frequently throw a "hail mary" pass with descriptions and hope for the best. Maybe the buyer won't see or care about the flaws that were skipped over. Or maybe they will just keep the stamps anyway.

The long-term effect of lax policies relating to the representation of quality is a sense of disenchantment with all online sellers. I cannot say for sure this is a contributing factor to reduced activity on ebay, but maybe we should set up an SCF focus group to explore the matter :-)

it not like it used to be thats for sure why I generaly just do buy it now. we used to have a lot of buyers that wanted to resell but if you sell too much now paypal will send you a 1099 for the amount you sold.

What makes you any different than a store? Your sales amounts are less but income is being generated unless you can show you're reselling at a loss or cost. ebay just got too big and now they're also beginning to collect sales tax for states. I don't think Stamps2 Go is in the same position as ebay.

Ehh?

Some individual sellers collect sales tax for certain states, but that's nothing new. How is ebay collecting sales tax?

ebay actually fights efforts by lawmakers to collect sales tax on online purchases. They've sent me requests to sign anti-sales tax petitions more than once. ebay knows that they have an advantage vs. retail stores because most sellers don't collect tax and they're loath to give that up.

Be careful of sellers looking to collect sales tax... if you cannot
verify them as a licensed business authorized to collect tax, do not
pay it to them... they need to PROVE they have a resale license...

Conversely, resellers in the same state as the seller DO NOT HAVE TO
PAY sales tax *IF* they supply the seller with a copy of THEIR resale
permit...

ebay allows legitimately authorized tax collecting sellers to collect
sales tax (for lack of a better way to put it) when they are legal
registered businesses with resale permits within their respective
states (and not some guy working out of his living room), where their
states REQUIRE the collection of sales tax, whether it's internet or
brick and mortar...

We have been collecting sales tax on ebay since day one, going back
to November of 2006 when we began on ebay... we are a brick and mortar
company... (we sell hard drives, not stamps)...

In real competitive products, I can tell you beyond the shadow of any
doubt (from actual knowledge) there are companies who steal sales tax
as their profit....

I have been very worried about ebay traffic and sales for stamps especially in the past 18 months.

So much so that I have started selling a total different item than stamps with a new ID etc.

Coins have been selling very well and I am very low on stock but do not think I will replace it.

The cashed up buyers for stamps have been just falling out of the piture.

Best match destroyed stamp sales on ebay in my opinion. Yes there are other reasons as well that have been mentioned here but best match is a huge pain for the buyer and seller.

Best match is ebay telling I can not do a search for myself. Pretty insulting really!How insulting is it when you go to search for your own listings and can not find them.

We have been surviving on kiloware sales outside of ebay.

Have put a lot of $ into another venture that will start maturing in another 12 months. This area has far less competition.

I'm hoping it's the time of the year. I too have noticed a decline in sales of items that always used to get bids.

I've said this before and always get shot down. There are too many free listings! The seller has no incentive to price his items to move and we keep seeing the same overpriced lots time and time again. Charge a listing fee and lower the final value fee.

Shill bidding appears to be at an all time high too. That has to turn off many buyers.

I'm hoping the cool weather will warm things up in the stamp area.

I certainly believe that the Buy it Now environment has been counterproductive. Further, shermae may have been criticized for his returns; but sometimes it is justified. I received a hinged duck yesterday that was advertised as MNH. $100? You can bet its going back. There is no excuse for this kind of behavior.

Jack Kelley

This I don't get:
That's just an option for displaying search results. You can still sort by time or price--my saved searches sort by newly listed.

I am a buyer, not a seller (though maybe some day?), so I will not have the same perspective as those of you who sell. But I also don't understand the criticisms of BIN. For common items, there will usually be enough BIN offerings to keep prices reasonably competitive. For uncommon items, they still seem to mostly be auction listings, and bring good prices. One seller has, for the past few months, been listing Gladys Adler hand painted WW II patriotic covers at a starting auction price of $9.99, but if you want one, be prepared to bid a couple of hundred dollars (or more).

So cream still rises to the top. But if sales are off, maybe it is because not a lot of new, desirable, material is coming on the market.

And are those who sell philatelic material at shows, or at physical locations, doing any better? Is this a problem with ebay, or the market as a whole?

And despite government stats to the contrary, the economy feels like a recession to a lot of people, and inflation to a lot of others, and that has to put a crimp on discretionary spending.

So maybe sellers are seeing the effects of factors not specific or limited to ebay itself.

And, one more thought: ebay probably has a typical life cycle, so that as it matures, sales growth will level off as it saturates its market. Maybe some of you are remembering some halcyon days of the past that could not go on forever, because nothing goes on forever.

"And, one more thought: ebay probably has a typical life cycle, so that as it matures, sales growth will level off as it saturates its market. Maybe some of you are remembering some halcyon days of the past that could not go on forever, because nothing goes on forever."

I find ebay LESS interesting as it matures because ebay squeezed out all the small folks who use to offer unique items that have since disappeared from sales. I rarely go to ebay anymore except for stamps and post cards and even then I only go the "Time Ending Soonest".

I rarely use BIN, although I don't mind BIN offerings esp if they have OBO.

I find scrolling through all the repetitive duplicate offerings from a single seller (13 offerings of the same CD, etc.) very frustrating and a huge turn off.

Every so often, I search ebay for my home town name.

Each time, I see the same postcards at very optimistic BIN prices, waiting for the buyer who can't live without them.

Yes, the seller could get 10% of that price at auction - right now - but where's the fun in that?

If I were selling a postcard of North Wingding High School, I would rather wait for the motivated buyer (is the reunion coming up? is a favorite teacher retiring?) than catch whoever happened to be browsing that week.

So much of ebay seems to have turned into an over-priced collectibles shop ... is it surprising that some people are missing the flea market garage sale?

If you were the landlord, would you go back?

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

There's probably a number of factors out there that's slowing ebay sales. Some are named above. I do not blame free listings. The 40 free listings per month everyone gets is such a puny number of listings it's barely worth having. The odd 100 to 1,000 free listings on special offers isn't much either, but may allow sellers to take a lower risk on listing items for lower amounts. If you want to charge people fees they'll just wrap that fee into the listed price. If you want seller's to sell for less then remove the risks and costs involved as well as bring in the customers. The refundable listing fees on auction items should help as well. The free listings allow me to start everything at 99 cents and it works. I get sales and buyers can get bargains on a wide range of items.

Some sales to other countries might be a bit slow due to a strong U.S. dollar. That hurts the sales of exports. Half of my sales are overseas so it's going to see a ding until the dollar drops. Also if you are not willing to selling internationally, unless you are just selling U.S. stamps, you just lost half or more of your customers. Collecting is probably on the decline in the U.S., but it's still strong and even increasing in other countries.

Some seller can also only blame themselves - bad photos and lame descriptions with few keywords don't help you to be found in the vast sea of listings. The more work you put into your photos and descriptions the more attention you will receive on ebay. Also the scale and diversity of listings is also a factor. Size and variety can help bring in buyers through greater diversity. Unless you are selling items in high demand, if you're just listing 20-40 items per month don't expect activity as the few listings will just drown amongst the millions and millions of other listings. It's the one reason I usually don't have auctions until I have about 1,000 or more items ready to list.

As for material, there's loads other there. The auction houses still have plenty.

As for local stamp shows I can only speak for my local show in the Troy/Albany, New York area. It's a monthly show, but it's a dead zone. Attendance is next to nil at times and some dealers don't even bother to attend anymore. I spent 75 cents at the August show and zero at the September show. Of course I was looking for covers and the dealers just didn't have any. They need to either switch to a quarterly show or advertise the show outside of a few philatelic publications. They don't even bother with the local newspapers.