Pros And Cons ... Auction Vs Fixed Price

Am I making a mistake by offering my 60+ stamps on ebay as Fixed-Price Buy-It-Now?

You're probably fine if you have priced them fairly. Check ebay's sold listings for stamps of the same type and condition to see what they have sold for in the past. That will give you a rough price range.

Auctions are better for large collections, high demand items and items where value is much harder to ascertain like postal history or other unique items.

Auctions are a bit unsafe nowdays, I only put things for auction when I have many of the same thing and just plain want rid of them. Back in the day you could put anything for auction and get the going rate but we seem to have less buyers.

A lot less buyers ......a lot less .....The fun days of selling to buyers who are buying enjoyment are over .....now it got to be CHEAP and at a small fraction of catalog to be worthwhile to a buyer .
Today you have buyers who have their three or four big sellers and I don't they look at the rest of ebay ,they bid again and again with the same few sellers .
It is a race to the bottom with 100 different stamps were $3.00 then $2.00 and now its $1.00 and waiting for the 69 cents for 100 stamps .
Prices at the big auction houses for bulk lots have been climbing over the last 15 years , I remember the days when $300.00 would fill the back of a SUV ,not the case anymore ,now it is $300.00 for one box . The profit margin has gotten so bad for ebay sellers now that I think their profit is buried in the shipping cost .
There are major ebay sellers that act as vacuum cleaners at large auctions ,I know for a fact there is one that spends $200,000 every three months and this has been going on for years ,when I first meet the owner back in 2004 at a Gregg Manning Auction .
There are dozens of sellers selling on ebay just to break even on their purchases because we have seen the five or ten bidders fighting for a lot ,now they are happy to get one bid because so much stuff is avaiable on ebay .

Battlestamps, I try to be fair and competitive by providing a link to other Buy It Now listings for the same Scott #.

As far a I know, no other seller does the same.

People are going to fix prices because of two reasons ---first they got serious money invested in their purchase of the item and can't afford to give it away at 99 cents . The second is buyers don't feel it is a bargain unless it is a small fraction of catalog or there is so much other material to buy on ebay they can look elsewhere for a cheaper price ,why bid it up ,next week it will show up again on ebay .

carlberky it depends on what you're selling. For example, if you're offering modern US stamps or common FDCs which are readily available, fixed price is the best format. However if you're selling items which are not common, auction is the best format.

Fixed price makes sense if you have allowed offers. But as few ebay users understand how offers work you might be wasting your time with that option.

It is the explosion in the number of sellers and the number of listings that has made the auction format almost untenable; an auction requires multiple bidders, and that requires that the seller somehow gets the attention of multiple bidders, and that is becoming impossible ... especially for new sellers.

As a result, ebay has come to look more & more like a classified ads venue posting dealer price lists, and the ability to quickly check multiple price lists has driven prices (and markups) downwards.

None of this, however, explains the scramble for new Bay Fodder at the auction houses, unless The Great Shakeout is yet to come.

floortraders point - "they bid again and again with the same few sellers" - is an entirely rational buyer response to the staggering number of listings & sellers. Some day, folks might call this the silo-izing of ebay, with groups of buyers gathering around sellers they have come to trust. Why risk buying from someone else?

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

CanadaStamp said 'Fixed price makes sense if you have allowed offers. But as few ebay users understand how offers work you might be wasting your time with that option.'

Actually, I do provide offers ... but only as a marketing tool. When I sell a stamp, I ask my new customer NOT to bid on my stamps, but to contact me with the Scott # ... and then I give them a discounted price. The stamp listing is then edited to automatically accept an offer at that price.

Several years ago I switched from doing auctions to solely doing Buy It Now with Best Offer. I have subsequently tried running weekly auctions on cheaper material in conjunction with my fixed price listings, but frankly it's more of a hassle than it was worth. With auctions you have to worry about scheduling and ending times, whereas with fixed price you do not.

1. With auctions the sky is the limit. All it takes is two bidiots and you can get moon money for an item... but the wrong sets of eyes watching during that week and you could take it in the shorts.

2. With fixed price you won't get moon money pricing, therefore you are limiting your upside, but you are also limiting your downside risk. YOU determine what the item sells for (and in the case of Best Offer can vet the buyer prior to purchase).

Conversely:

3. With auctions you (for the most part) control WHEN the item sells.

4. With fixed price listings you have no idea when something will sell. It depends when the right buyer comes along. If you need money urgently, auction is the way to go.


They are two completely different selling philosophies. I prefer the latter, knowing that I won't lose money on an item. Potentially selling an item for $10 that cost me $100 is something I am not personally comfortable with so I choose my format accordingly; others' comfort levels and risk tolerances will vary.

It's also sometimes a rational response to ebay's useless search tool within categories that are far too broad. Far easier to keep your eye on a few sellers who sell the kinds of stamps you are interested in than to have to wade through endless unrelated listings searching for a specific item.

To the OP, if you're newer and/or low feedback seller, you want to go with buy-it-now. The fact that so many buyers just buy from certain sellers means that your auctions won't get a lot of eyeballs, and the ones that do find it will bid low. Start a decent item (say $50 CV) item off at 99 cents and you just might end up with one bidder. That bidder might have been willing to spend $15 on that stamp, but no matter, without a second bidder, 99 cents brings it home. Some of the best deals I've gotten on ebay were auctions run by low-feedback sellers, to the point where I felt sorry for them. With BIN, you can just wait until the right person comes along who is willing to pay your price for that item.

One possible advantage of BIN is capturing 'impulse' sales.
Don

I'm not following this. Within categories, you search by "keyword." How is that any different than Google or Bing? I don't know about multiple word searches, but single word searches return results are what I would expect. Or maybe you are referring to searching by Scott #'s? Sure, if you search for "1710" within U.S. Stamps you will get some hits on things other than the Lindbergh stamp. But what else are you expecting in the way of search capability?

It's not just impulse buys. It's also the immediacy of Buy It Now.

Let's say I have $XX to buy stamps over the next week. If I shop auctions, I won't know whether I have won or how much I am paying for 1-10 days, depending on when the auction ends. If I tie up a chunk of my budget on an item that doesn't end for a week and something else comes along, I'm a bit hosed. Do I retract my bid (using a sniping service mitigates this issue as you can cancel bids up until about 30 minutes before listing end), or do I forgo the new item when it is possible I might not win the lot I first bid on, meaning I have ultimately lost BOTH items.

With Buy It Now, you buy it, you're done, you move on. No possibilities hanging over your head one way or the other.

Some buyers prefer the auction "game" whereas others prefer the cut-and-dried-nature of fixed price.

In my experience, deals and steals are more likely to be acquired via Buy-It-Now than an auction that has sat out there for a week for people to see. It's the freshly listed fixed price listings that can frequently prove to be the most bountiful harvest.

Hi!
I've been a buyer/seller on ebay for a very long time, and the auction results still tend to surprise me. I've had "worthy" auction items go for mediocre bucks, and items of relatively little value go for overboard prices. The fact is, the auctions are so dependent on timing (of potential buyers, season, time of day for ending, conflict with other events, etc).

I've bought a few albums at fixed prices that were obviously undervalued. But mostly, fixed priced stamp albums seem to be very much overvalued.

My advice............ do an auction type sale, with the starting price the absolute minimum you would accept.