Hi Larry,
Found your note interesting, specially when you mention that you " burned out on the eBay game..."
I' am considering selling some sets on e-Bay, they are all mainly ACW from Britains, trooping the colour from Britains and Trophy Zulu war.....what recommendations do you give to someone who is going to consider selling via e-Bay?
Cheers
Artillery_Crazy
I started out "watching" stuff first to get an idea of how long things would sit, what price would get sales or auctions started and to see how people listed stuff (what pictures they took and what they said about stuff.) It also helped me identify some of the speculators whose prices are not a good measure of value unless you want to speculate as well (i.e., hold inventory until you get the best possible price... usually from a uninformed individual.)
A friend had advised me to start with really low priced stuff to build my reputation, but he started selling refurbished electronics so I actually ignored this for 2 reasons, 1) I already had a pretty good record as a buyer 2) I decided to announce myself as a collector selling off his collection. It is hard to prove something that didn't happen, but I feel like I was able to jump in with two feet and sell both low priced stuff and some valuable stuff (tanks and other vehicles) and feel good about the prices I received. On the other hand, I donated a significant part of my BBG collection to my father and helped him get started and advised him to follow my friend's advice since he had opened a brand new account.
I only took pictures out of the box of stuff that I pulled off my display shelves. Anything already boxed up, I just photographed in the box. I also captured any stock photos off other listings or K&C's website, saved them to my HD and always used these as the main picture. My individual photos were supporting evidence of item and original shipping condition. For some lower priced figures I did not do my own photos (just used the stock pictures) and they sold fine, but this was after I had more than 25 excellent seller feedback scores. For high priced or rare, I always tried to take lots of pictures.
I find similar listings to what I want to sell and use the Sell One Like It or Sell Similar buttons/features to reuse some of the content. Some people have really good structures for payment terms and other policies that they abide by. Reuse, reuse, reuse!
I did accept international bids and I do think it makes a big difference. I have not had any issues. I did use the eBay Global Shipping Program, but will probably stop doing that. I would rather have the flexibility to work with the buyer.
One thing I might have done different is once I had sold a fair amount of stuff is accept the eBay store free-trial offer. Might have helped with the eBay fees of 10%.
Getting the first eBay bill is a real bucket of ice water. Man, 10% can really eat into your profits, especially with PayPal taking a little too. That is why a lot of us would rather do deals here with people we know rather than experience that highway robbery. Getting a decent price to a fellow collector and not paying eBay starts sounding more and more attractive with each eBay bill.
I have developed relationships with repeat buyers through eBay, and started doing side deals with them to avoid the fees. Two are now Cyber friends, and another lives near my sister and have actually met him in person!
It is a surprising amount of work to organize, photograph, list, haggle (things like payment timing, combining shipments, etc.), packing up, weighing, labeling and then shipping everything. This is a big part of my burnout with a demanding job and new baby on top of it.
Also, the area of the house where I have all the boxes I have saved over the years, what is ondeck, listed and ready to ship can be a source of contention with loved ones!
I started slow, but quickly got excited and motivated to do more. Part of that was not starting with "lemons" or low velocity items. I tried to keep about 10 items listed at all times and mix them between slow and fast movers, high and low priced stuff. I did list "groups" together to maximize the chance of group buys (not in a single listing, usually.)
I used the Auction format most of the time, but things I really thought I would get a good price on I would do buy it now. If I used the Best Offer option I always put the floor of what I would accept (and still got lots of silly low ball offers.)
If you have stuff to experiment with first, that is the best idea. May not be able to do that, though, and sometimes what you want to experiment with is an apple and you really want to sell an orange.
