Ebay Sales Slump, Interested To Hear From Other Sellers How They Are Doing, Sales Up Or Down?

Hi angore Dutchman1948 is not a seller he quoted my start of this post which states I am the seller

To carry this a little further, I used to buy a lot on ebay and have cut way back due to too much being misdescribed for the worse. Not saying you are like that, but many are, and some are very large dealers.

I will be spending the next while sorting what I have here and putting it where it belongs, rather than buying more. I have already discontinued countries that I used to collect and will do more reducing once I get everything sorted out.

I have been a buyer on ebay since 1999 and a seller since 2003, not selling stamps however.

ebay is becoming a tough racket from both a seller side and buyers side. As many other sellers are finding out, ebay can pick and choose who gets to sell and who does not and collectibles are really not doing well these days as they do not fit the mold of big box stores or the Chinese sellers..

What I find as a seller is that you have to list accurately every day to stay on top of Cassini. Its a very tough market but many buyers keep coming back to me so I must be doing something right? Stamps on older covers seem to be more popular that loose common stamps, where there are too many of the same common loose stamps sets listed. Old covers are unique you get the postmarks and can see the routes. GB Queen Victoria stamps on covers very popular I am always selling out of them. Hard to keep up with demand sometimes.

That's more of a specialty area but not everyone collects covers.

But like covers, the older stamps in good condition are also in demand.

Many sellers are also finding out that good quality material is becoming difficult to pick up for resale unless you have deep pockets and buy large quantities at actual auction houses.

I personally quit buying stuff for resale some years ago for exactly that reason. And of course now, everyone can be a seller and it is becoming more of a race to the bottom which hurts legitimate business sellers.

Thanks for the clarification.

Lots of interesting post ------Yes buying is way down on ebay . What we have now are the deep discount buyers ,we have those who have front page listings as control by ebay , We have the bottom feeders and long time listers who have their regular customers . Those 4 types maybe account for 80% of all stamp sales .
If your someone trying to sell your duplicates or your collection it is going to be a hard row . If your not willing to sell at deep discounts like 10% of catalog or one cent per stamp and postal history covers for 99 cents then it becomes a struggle to sell.

you paint a beak picture which relates to less collectors

Yes I did SDTOM . I wish you could sit with me while viewing large collections and bulk accumulations at some of the major stamp auction firms . I can show you stuff people like me spend a lifetime to put together and all written up and others all mounted in fine expensive albums ,this is not common stuff but stuff that shows up once every few years, I now seeing stuff that's once in a life time material . But now it is going for opening bid or selling for 10% of catalog for the stamps ,never mind that you can't find it next month even at full catalog .
I spend all my funds at Kelleher on June 2,2016 during the CAPURRO COLLECTION ,during the first 1/3 of the country collections part and then sat thru the rest of the sale upset because of what the collections were going for . I really thought with the big stamp show going on with thousands of collectors ,that lots would be fought over .

Hi floortrader auction house like Kelleher now charge a huge buying premium some over 20%. I used to buy from Golden Valley auction house but when he ads that 20% buying fee at the end its really a put off. In some cases and I seen some buying premiums at 25% these fees are higher than ebay selling fees. Auction houses also charging sellers the same fees. I think what your saying is collections are selling to cheap at auction house. I tried an experiment and sent some USA stamped older covers 1860s into an auction house. They got sold for less than what I can sell them for on ebay. Has there been a major decline in auction house bidding as well?

Out of curiosity I looked at ebay sales in the US Stamps category. In the last 3 months 483,000 items were sold. Of these 306,000 sales were by auction and 177,000 were fixed price. I looked a little further and was astonished to find that the median sale price for the auctions was $3.85 and $5.00 for the Fixed Price. For those that are not numerically inclined the Median Price is the price where 1/2 the sales are below this amount and 1/2 the sales are above it.

I also looked at the number of items that sold for more than $25. For both the auction and fixed price items slightly more than 12% of the items sold exceeded $25. I was very surprised at how low these prices were. I did the same analysis for the Worldwide Category, the results for both are shown below;

KRelyea that's very intereting & I am glad I sell pre-stamp, stampless and stamped covers the numbers seem to be better than loose stamps. Auctions $3.85 and $5.00 for the Fixed Price seems like a lot of work for little result. You have to powersell at those prices. See if you can check the figures for world wide Stamps category the terms, Entire, Pre-stamp, stampless & cover. It would be interesting to compare to loose US stamps.

I would guess many are just disposing of collections (not really a full time dealer) or getting supplemental income.

MOst of my sales are between $5 and $10 per item. I don't understand how someone can sell items for less than $5 on E-bay and not lose money. Between PayPal fees, E-bay fees, and shipping, a $5 sale nets me less than $1. Shipping is the big expense for me, I use rigid photo mailers and it is $2.60 to mail those. Of course, I am selling sheets of stamps, and not a single, but E-bay does require tracking, and I don't think there is a way to get tracking for a first class envelope.

Are you offering free shipping? I would expect a surcharge for sheets mailed flat. I can see a first class letter as part of free shipping.

ebay doesn't require tracking - sellers choose to do it to protect themselves. I usually offer free postage, which means anything less than £2.50 isn't really worth selling as a single lot. I send items by second class post, which arrives in a couple of days. If someone's spent over a certain amount, I use first class. I send high-value lots signed for. I tend to charge for postage where there's a risk of a heavier item selling for very little. Here, postal costs zoom upwards once you go above 2 kilos.