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

I visited Kelleher's CT office and was completely surprised how run down it was. Looked like something from the late 70's early 80's. Based on what they told me I decided I was better off selling my collection myself on ebay.

Also the building they're in looked run down as well. Took me a few min's to confirm I was at the correct address.

When I use BIN on ebay it's almost always for cheaper items (under $5-$10 or so retail). For most items with a CV of much over $20 or so, I'll look for an auction.

Being an active ebay seller, I've really found this topic interesting and helpful. My listings are all fixed price and usually sales month to month are rock steady, but not so the last few weeks. I'm hoping it's a case of just needing to list new stuff more regularly, which I must admit has been sporadic lately.

I'm also wondering if there is a 'Donald' effect, which has people holding onto their wallets until after he settles into office next week.

KRelyea, I was very interested to see your ebay sales stats. Can you point me to where this info is available?

Thanks, Rod

It takes a bit of work to find the median but I'll try and walk you through it. Duncanver asked for the median for postal entire so let's do that. First go to the ebay category for "Stamps" and search for "entire"






This shows that there are 5357 entires for sale on ebay. Next go to the criteria column and choose "sold"




Now it shows 4307 entires have been sold on ebay, this number is for the last 90 days.





To find the median we have to find the price at which 2153 were sold below the price and 2154 were sold above the price.

I go back to the criteria field and for starters use 5;





This shows that 1716 were sold with a price greater than $5 so obviously this is too high, I now try a few lower numbers until I find the one that is close to the median











I got pretty close using $2.70 which shows 2135 covers sold over this price the right answer is slightly less but I ran out of time.





I'm not sure how significant the median sale price is but it does indicate that a LOT of low price items are sold on ebay. I tried it for Unused 19th C US stamps thinking this should be pretty high and it was higher, about $10, but not as high as I thought.

Thanks KRelyea for your time and effort here does this idicate that postal history covers sell more than loose stamps?

ebay SALES ----What happen to the Stamp Section ? Less buyers ,stronger dollar and too many listings . I think a lot of decent sellers are exiting ebay because of the big effort to list stuff with reduce sales .
I need to post a new story about the increase at stamp auction firms starting to list bulk lots which contain unsold written up ebay LOTS . These are boxes of stuff that have been listed but unsold on ebay for a few cycles and finally dumped on to the auction firms looking for a new person to relist them.

Thanks floortrader, for some time when it comes to postal history stamp auction firms were selling dealer rejects in bulk. You could tell the whole lot you received were picked over already and the better stuff was taken out. Its no surprise if lots of ebay unsold stamps are now being offered this way as collections at auction firms. I stopped buying from auction firms for that very reason that in reality most times your buying rejected material from dealers or unsold ebay seller lots. Worse is the auction firms charge you a high % just for the privilege of buying from them. Not worth even looking at auction houses these days. I think you can find the best material direct from estates and ex collectors. Once anything has passed through dealer hands they will take the best stuff and sell at premium prices.

Thanks KRelyea, very helpful. I'm trying to get a grasp on ebay's total revenue from stamp sales, month to month. If anyone has any additional tools for gleaning this, can you post here? Then we can get a chart going as a useful guide to the general health of the hobby.