Collector to Collector Auction Site

Someone mentioned an auction site with no fees.

I could build this (I work full-time so it would take several months).

I figure there could be a rating system but the trust issue is important, especially if the collectors are responsible for the sale and logistics. A site-sponsored money-back guarantee may not be feasilble and it takes a bit to develop a reputation. Maybe I could look how Ebay hodlds the funds through PayPal.

The only question is business model to fund the site? Ads? Subscription-based? I like the latter or you need to get around stuff like Adblock. If there were ever mass numbers it may be worth it.

To try and get people on the site it makes sense to promote the first xxx people to register is free. Peronally, I would pay for a subscription service for this.

Anyone has input? Opinions? Ideas?

 

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In my humble opinion, I think there are too many sites out there that you would have to compete with that I think you would have a hard time getting it off the ground. One major issue would be verification of sellers and buyers. How do you confirm their legitimacy? That's the big reason we pay those darn premiums we do. I can only think of one site that does what you suggest and they do it well, but at a small level. It's an online coin club called WINS (World International Numismatic Society). I'm a proud member of the club and enjoy our auctions. If you have any interest, try this link: http://winsociety.org/

 

This thought has crossed my mind as well. But I never pursued it for the following reasons:

1. I'm not a professional coder, you need to build an auction site that handles credit cards so you need cryptographer skills
2. Difficult to persuade people to use your site instead of eBay even if there are no fees. I can sell a coin on ebay in 24 hours, with a small auction site it might be months, time is money.
3. If there are no fees then how will you be able to keep the site running? sure a subscription is great BUT very few people will pay good money for something virtually untested.
4. How can you differentiate a collector from a dealer? in most cases they are the same thing, sure you can decide who can sell and who can bid but you couldn't call it collector-collector.
5. To have a money back guarantee you need a lot of working capital to cover the cost of the coin(s) and then pursue the credit card company or seller to get the money back.

 

He's right. But you have to show them that such an idea is a big opportunity for THEM. If you have the skills to do this then go for it.

Take the risk and RESPONSIBILITY to reap a reward.

 

Not to be funny but what are you gonna do, have volunteers working there? It's a good idea but not a logical one. You'd have to charge somebody and if you're setting up a site that accepts PayPal or a third party payee company how are you gonna pay them? You'd have to have a ton of start up money and the backing of investors, if you have all of that then it's a start. If not, then it's just a pipe dream. Just being real here.

 

If you require a subscription then the site has fees.

 

Interesting link, thanks for the reply :3

Yeah, numbers are important. I would just like this to exist for the benefit of myself and other collectors but I'll check out that link. As far as validity, maybe stcick to certfied coins but I don't really know. I was just tossing out an idea.

I don't sell much on eBay (I'm more of a collector) but when I do, they hold the funds until the transaction is processed. Maybe that's part of their API? I'd have to look.

???

Paypal has an API.

I've worked on PCI level-1 compliant eCommerce sites.

I'm pretty familiar with the web aspect.

Well, that's the thing. There *has* to be something funding the site. Ads might be enough; hosting stuff in the cloud doesn't cost that much but it depends on bandwidth. If it actually became a heavily-used site (which I doubt) funding would be an issue.

 

The cloud has recently been hacked and several well-known ladies out there are paying the price with their personal photos being placed online. I highly recommend avoiding using the cloud. Personally, I would not partake in any site run on the cloud.

 

Cloud = internet

 

I've also thought about this but figured I would use my time to work on something with less competition and more interesting. Don't currently have any good ideas but working on it.

You really don't need to overthink this. A forum model for buying and selling is very inconvenient. Just adding a feedback system would make the process so much better. Make sure that sellers don't have the ability to leave feedback. Or figure out a way to ensure that there is no feedback extortion.

You need to validate the idea before thinking about money. Build something basic, then get 1000 members to sign up and go from there. You'll have to pay for hosting etc out of pocket for the first few months/years. That's your investment. Or, you can always try to convince someone else to put up the money while you develop the website.

 

"The cloud" is just an industry buzzword for API's or IAAS (infrastructure as a service). To be honest, I think it has lost its meaning and vpr is right in that it generally refers to darn near-anything online these days. I have a pretty strong background in web security, though.

One could agure no web application is 100% secure. To say it is implies there are no bugs, since bugs inherently are potential secutiry threats since their nature is unknown. That's why good penetration testing on a routine basis is important for an eCommerce site, but fuzz testing doesn't always capture everything.

Not to mention Ebay itself was recently hacked *shrugs*

I wasn't thinking of using forum software but there might be some similar transactional systems that are open source I could leverage. That, or write it from scratch (in which case I'd probably use Spring Roo since I'm most familiar with a J2EE stack and Tomcat, and baked-in stuff like JAAS and
Tiles are created with a simple command.)

I was really posting this to see if there would be interest. It seems like there would, but I'm very hesitant just because of potential scams. I've bought coins from dealers on eBay which were cleaned/tampered with on several occasions myself and sold as uncirculated (though I always got my money back). That's the biggest roadblock I see. I have the income to back it up in an infintile stage. 1000 people wouldn't be *that* much traffic.

It would also be a lot more niche than eBay

There are also transactional concerns and race conditions to take into account just by the nature of bidding (for example, everyone seems to bid right at the last second).

Also with regard to subcriptions = fees, I see your point but if it means 10 or 20 bucks a month vs. 15% you are talking about a big difference depending on the amount you are trading. Personally, I'd be willing to pay for something like that but I'm not sure everyone buys and sells at the rate it would matter.

 

Well, you learn something every day.

 

Not interested in the idea you are trying to sell here. If it's collector to collector, just come to an arrangement here on CT. Auctions will not be fruitful due to the low number of users. Sounds like you're saying you build, you advertise what a great idea it is then you charge. If it's about you, it won't be a success. If it's about me, CT works for collector to collector transactions with no fees, it also works for dealer to collector transactions with a fraction of the fees.

 

Yeah, you are probably right. The ads would be used to fund the site; I would build it as a tool for myself and others but I would't want to pay out of pocket if it were to become big. Resources like that aren't free and high traffic sites cost a lot to host and maintain. Auctions are pretty pointless unless there are a lot of people. The selling forum is nice on here but it won't help me complete my collection of PF/MS65+ 20c pieces

You can actually find the stuff on eBay though.

 

I still think you're overthinking this. You don't have to do it auction style. Buy it now would do it to start with. You could add "Ebay feedback" for people just starting off. Manually verify their Ebay accounts (with messages) and let them use that feedback to start with. Then they can build feedback on your system. Also, facebook verification might work. If someone has a legit facebook account, they are less likely to scam others. Beyond this, users have to use at their own risk. There will be issues, but there will always be issues no matter how hard you try. Just like I did when I started on CT, new people are encouraged to pay first or ship first. Of if they're too scared, use PP regular. It's a small fee for the peace of mind.

I'm not a developer by training but over the past couple of years, that's what I've been doing. Low latency Spring web apps. Spring has too many layers. Have you considered other languages/frameworks? I'm currently tinkering with NodeJS and Bootstrap for front end design. Node has so many cool packages/modules that abstract away so much crap that generally makes full stack development a real pain.

 

And don't worry about "getting too big". That's a problem every website would love to have. It's not very hard to figure out how to monetize the site. In today's environment, you will have investors throwing money at you, if you can show user growth. Worst case, you can't afford hosting costs and you shut down the site. Your big problem is getting enough users.

If you want validation for what I'm saying, try to find what twitter looked like when it first came out. Or Airbnb or pretty much any multi-billion dollar internet company. They were very basic and filled a need that they saw in the world. They worried about that. Not about ads and features etc. Pick 1 thing you hate about transactions on forums and fix that. For me, that's the feedback system. And another is the "Hey, Interested in the coin. Is it still available?" issue. A buy-it-now with best offer feature would solve that.

Once you've validated that 1 fix you've made (with user growth), then you can add more features like auctions, new categories etc.

 

No offense, but if an auction site is something that a better-than-average coder can work up over a few months, why do you suppose there aren't a thousand such sites nibbling away at eBay's market share? Come to think of it, how do you know that there aren't a thousand such sites, every one limping along in obscurity?

Mostly, I think, it's a variant of Metcalfe's Law -- as the number of participants in a venue increases, the desirability of the venue increases even more sharply. When there's a venue like eBay available, there's a strong disincentive to list on a venue with fewer buyers, or to shop on a venue with fewer sellers. That's how eBay killed its large competitors; small competitors would be at even more of a disadvantage.

Of course, if everyone thought this way, no progress would ever happen. There are certainly niches where it's possible to compete with eBay; just ask HA. But they don't compete by underselling.

 

I'm just trying to get my hands on one XF 20c piece, I couldn't imagine trying for a series run at PF or MS+

 

At most ebay takes 13%. With power sellers I understand it is less. I have buyer protection against fraud and great customer service the three times I needed it. There are over 150,000 us pcgs and ngc coins available at any time I don't know any other coin site or dealer who comes even close to the selection. I can look at a database of past sales. I even get ebay bucks.

I like buying coins online. I like filtering through thousands of coins in seconds and probably spend 70% of my coin dollars on ebay.

Why should I use your service? If a seller sends me an empty box with a tracking number what are you going to do about my $1000 purchase? If the seller did this on purpose then you have two guys pointing fingers at each other. Now what?

There are always to make a better mouse trap and always possibilites to create a revolutionary product. But I'm the guy spending and I'm the kind of guy you are looking for. So exactly are you going to do better then ebay can now? Just doing things cheaper is not necessarily better. My experience is you get what you pay for. Can you have smaller margins then ebay and also provide the customer protection and service that they do? Something to think about.