What Happen To Ebay ?

Today I took some stamps to a show that I had not been able to sell on ebay, and I sold them to a dealer at the price the ebay buyers refused to pay (and no I don't have some crazy $2.50 shipping charge on ebay).

I'm not surprised at all. The dealers knew what you had. Obviously the ebay people didn't.

For me, way to many BIN "auctions". It feels like an outlet store, not an auction site.

stampcrow: you can blame ebay for that - they've been pushing the BIN format pretty hard for awhile now and even took away the vast majority of "free" auction listings from those with store subscriptions. I say "free" as they aren't free - have to pay a fee to get them.

I see that a dealer from which I have been buying from for some time, with admittedly a smaller inventory of 100 to 300 items, yet many of high quality, has just removed all his stamp listings from e Bay and moved to Stanley Gibbons Marketplace. Based on the policies discussed above, I wouldn't be surprised if more midrange dealers do the same. It's either that, or raise prices to account for the losses inherent in e Bay's Buyer Always Wins practices, and the costs it imposes on sellers with no way to avoid them.

Family,

With regard to the posting just above, I have been wondering for quite a while as to why The dealer in question is not identified. I have seen this occur quite often and always wanted to ask why. Do we have a rule about this?

Jack Kelley

Good Point!

I think it is more a personalised decision from the poster.

My view of this whole ebay market place . First the buying is down to 1/3 of what it was 5 years ago . There is very little fighting going on to raise the prices with aggressive bidding ,if you get out bid ,than just wait . Many items go for the opening bid . Everyone learned to place their bid in the last minute of bidding .
The "bunnies " are all gone ,they spend their money and have since quit ebay ,but the sellers keep listing junk at high prices looking for them.
To many collectors have established the mind set of only paying a very small fraction of catalog and if they don't get it then wait .
Another thing I learned here is some buyers only go to their favorite sellers and don't want to be bothered to go thru searches seeking new sellers .
I am puzzled by the remarks here that bargins are only found with overseas sellers .
Since so many items only go for the opening bid ,I can understand the whole move by sellers to use BUY-IT-NOW ,because it is the ebay sellers who are supporting the stamp auction market place and keeping some firms in the black.
This whole weakness in ebay sales of stamps will start to reflect in the stamp auction market place because sellers are not making the profits they hoped for ,so less aggressive bidding on the collections and end of auction bulk lots .

I think that there are less collectors also along with the fascination of ebay. Since they played a factor in many small stamp shops closing it initially opened up an avenue for a small dealer to sell, one who can't afford to have his own place for economic reasons. It now appears they are being squeezed out so they must seek other ways of selling their material.
Tom

Floortrader, you make some excellent points. I would agree with 95% of what you are saying.

I would say that for my "quirky" collecting areas, just about all of the reasonable prices/bargains come from outside of the U.S.A. There used to be a lot more "bargains" from Europe, before the German dealers decided to bail out 8 or 10 years ago. They were taking too many losses, as one of my favorite sellers "26juni" told me.

Once in a blue moon I find bargains on ebay from U.S. sellers. I think these items come almost exclusively from collectors.

The bargains found from foreign sellers on ebay seem to break out into 3 main categories:

1- Mass sellers who break down large accumulations and start most of their auctions at 99 cents or similar (in the same business model we all see NY Stamps operating). Some lots don't receive much attention and sell inexpensively.

2- Specialized sellers selling material outside their normal "comfort zone." For example, if you look for stamps from a Spanish or Portuguese specialized seller they tend to be high on pricing due to their native marketplaces and the catalogs they use, which tend to price material much higher than Scott (Michel, Yvert, Afinsa, Edifil). These sellers are very valuable to collectors as some material simply can't be found in the USA, although I must say that many Europeans don't reveal flaws on the gum side of stamps, which is maddening and frustrating. When these sellers acquire material outside their specialties, they seem to not have a sense of market pricing so at times bargains may appear.

3- I still find individuals internationally who sell off duplicates or parts of their personal collections on ebay. Compared to 1998, when virtually all sellers were individuals or vest pocket sellers, the number of individual sellers has vastly declined.

I would not be surprised if we see a long cycle where the philatelic marketplace on ebay continues a strong decline, followed by higher pricing outside ebay as dealers find steadier footing in bourse, mail, advertised, or internet selling. Buy prices will decline due to reduced competition, followed by a return of individuals selling because they can get more money on ebay, Perhaps this will take another 17 years to play out.

SHERMAE ---Surprised by your time frame . I would think those "pie-in-the -sky" and those who over-price their material on ebay will last 6 months to a year and then give up. If they purchase their inventory on ebay or from a public stamp auction they will get frustrated and dump everything and look for their pot of gold elsewhere .

Floortrader, I'm speaking in terms of general trends. We still see a glut of overpriced buy-it-now material so dealers haven't bailed en masse as yet. You may be right though, we may see a big exodus soon with market corrections to follow.

When you say "end of auction bulk lots", I assume you mean those being offered by non-eBay Auction Houses. If so, I disagree. Where d you think all this material is magically going to go?

Billie isn't going anywhere, and the other overpriced guys I am aware of have certainly been around much longer than a year.