Ebay 0.99 Auction Start: Stupid Selling Strategy?

I notice that some people start things selling at 99 cents, 99p or whatever. I do this myself for certain lots.

I can think of two good reasons for doing this:

1. You know it will sell for much more than 99 cents and this is a great way to attract attention to your lot -- people are curious to look at something that has 35 bids on it.

2. You have no idea what it is worth, so start it at 99 cents and let the market decide.

On the downside, I can also think of reasons not to start something at 99 cents:

1. Its a less popular field and maybe only a few interested people will see it in the week its listed.

2. Instead of being lazy and let the market decide, do some research and find out what the item is really worth.

3. People might assume that your lot is defective in some way, and that's why you started at 99 cents.

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

Especially if it is heavy, such as an album or stockbook. The commission on the POSTAGE alone will wipe out the selling price if it actually ends at 99¢. I did bid 99c on a Jaguar once Unfortunately for me, it ended up at $12,000. I was hoping.......

Starting auctions at 99 cents can be good for some items.
But you are always taking a chance that the item can sell for a low price.
I wouldn't list any very unusual items at a low starting price.
Sometimes it can take time for the right buyer to see your listing.

Some big sellers on ebay do this but they have such a massive amount of people following them that nothing they list goes cheap,

nystamps and momenstamps are just two that I follow who do this.

A problem I find if listing things for auction at prices other than 0.99 ...

let's say I'm selling an album that I think is worth $20. Maybe on a good day it could get $30, but on a bad day I could start it at $0.99 or $4.99 or whatever, and maybe that's all it will get. So I list it at $15, figuring this is the minimum I would find acceptable. Well, if I do that that's almost certain to be what I get for the album, but if I started it at 0.99 it would have gone much higher.

This really does happen quite reliably .. I have had this experience with a lot that remained unsold at $14.99, re-listed it the next weekend at $10.99 and then it made close to $20.

If you look at auctions that end for less expensive stamps, you will sometimes see that stamps that start low sell much better than stamps that start with a price closer to the true value. Say a stamp usually sells for about $10. List it at $10 and will probably won't sell. List it at .99 and it will probably sell at around $10.

The trick though is this only works for stamps where there is an active market. So you need to know your market. An expensive more rare stamp will usually have a smaller number of potential buyers. List it for .99 and you are likely to be disappointed. Have a popular commemorative worth about $10, a $.99 auction might be a good bet.

There is an out on ebay. You can cancel an auction, even with active bids, as long as it is prior to 11 hours before the auction end. So, it is possible to take a chance, and then make a judgement. You may make that one bidder unhappy, but you won't sell it cheaper than it really should be sold for.

Edit: I just learned that ebay will now sometimes charge a fee for ending an auction early. You get one for free and then they start charging, so ending early is no longer a good option.

Many people have learned the hard way that this strategy is used by sellers of low quality material to entice bids from less experienced buyers. As such, some buyers avoid these listings. On the other hand, P.T. Barnum was right so sellers like Nystamps and Anthony's use it often.
Don

I agree with this. Some shady dealers, often those who don't give detailed descriptions, hide behind auctions. But auctions are a perfectly good way to sell stamps if you are legit. I for one always try to describe all faults, no matter how minor and no matter the starting price.

I use to do 99 cent auctions all the time when ebay use to give out massive numbers of free listings and would have auctions of 1,000 to 6,000 items at a time. It's now $1.99 to help covers fees and store subscription costs. Of course some material just sold for 99 cents, but I've also had items escalate into the hundreds and even over $1000. Most of the high priced items were sleepers in which I didn't know it would go that high either - just luck of the draw. I've always relied on the fact that overall the total sum was high enough incentive to keep going and buy more for sales. I have found it's better to sell postal history and any item in which it's hard to ascertain a value via auction. If you're selling stamps in which there's already 10 to 100 like items already listed then BIN is probably a better choice. Either way you choose to go - always write a well developed description if you want your items seen.

I suggest some of it may be a legacy issue.

Previously, the listing fees were cheaper for a $0.99 item than for a $1.00 or more item.

I got in the habit of simply using $0.99 to save the nickel or whatever it used to be. Now, I pretty much only list when I get free listing offers from ebay, but I only sell dupes once every several months at best and am not running a "business".

My thought (however misplaced) is folks are willing to do throwaway bids for an item at $0.99 and if several folks do it, it may increase my chance of selling the item(s). Again, I want some cash out of my dupes so I can buy more material for my collections, I am certainly not making a living at it...

The other aspect of starting low to attract bids is using the psychology of FOMO, fear of missing out. Some people will see an item attracting bids and will bid on the item themselves.

Lets not paint all 99c sellers with the nystamps brush. I do it sometimes, although less than I used to and I'm not trying to trick people.

Note the context of the thread, " ebay 0.99 auction start: Stupid selling strategy?". I was making the point that this strategy has an undesired effect for some buyers. I am unsure how anyone could have read 'all .99 sellers are like Nystmaps' in my post.
Don

StateRevs is correct. At one time, ebay encouraged everyone to start auctions low. The strategy stopped working in stamps after the marketplace was glutted with defective and off center stamps from long dormant dealer stocks. Sellers who switched to free shipping to satisfy ebay requirements for Top-Rated seller (TRS) status stopped listing auctions at 99 cents. Later, ebay lowered Final Value Fees in the Stamps category for sellers with ebay Stores and cut the discount for TRS in half. TRS on ebay who must pay for tracking, eliminating any incentive to list anything likely to sell for less than some amount between $10 and $25.

The number of Top Rated Sellers in the Stamps category is low and likely to decline once the full impact of "Guaranteed Delivery" erodes margins further. Sellers who opt to avoid giving stamps away for free whenever the USPS fails to deliver on time may also drop out of the TRS program and possibly start listing 99 cent auctions again with buyer paid shipping.

On the other hand, moving everything to APS StampStore could be simpler and more profitable. I am almost done writing software to transfer descriptions from Excel to the StampStore PDF forms.