When I first started collecting coins in general I used to see a lot more eBay auctions of world coins open with relatively low starting prices. However the vast majority of world coins that are listed on eBay, save for bullion, are usually listed at fair market value. This makes little sense to me. If a coin is worth $50, then why list it for 49.99? Why not just have it in a buy it now? I also used to deal quite a bit with Great Collections, but noticed the same issue, opening prices are the same as fair market value.
Because this way you have a chance that multiple people bid and it sells higher than just putting it up as a B-I-N
It might be a sign of times - buyers are less willing to pay more than they used to. Therefore in order to avoid a massive loss, sellers would prefer to wait it out if they can afford to do so. My question is, if you are a seller and have a coin that is valued let's say 100 dollars for argument sake. In this market where you have buyers only wanting to buy it at a bargain, you might end up less than half the value. If you are not in a hurry to sell it, would it make sense for you to sell it at a big loss?
On eBay if you list it as a Buy It Now you can end the listing early if your coin/item sells at a different venue without paying a final value fee penalty. If the coin/item was listed in an auction format you have to wait until the number of days the listing expires before you can sell it anywhere else. Ending an auction style listing early you pay the final value fee as a penalty. It is another way eBay has become a seller unfriendly site. eBay is no longer the true auction site it used to be. There was a time where you could put just about anything on there and have several people vie for it. Now everyone is looking to buy everything as cheap as possible. The sellers have come to realize this and are not willing to risk selling at a loss.
Absolutely true. I collect UK. There are still a few sellers that list good coins starting at $.99. I picked up one yesterday and one today. Paid nowhere near what almost exact coins are listed at a BIN price. Sometimes it works out for the seller if you get 2-3 bidders that really want the coin. Sometimes it works out for me (not usually). 1739 shilling (almost F) and 1817 1/2 crown (VF) btw. I'm getting close to having a complete type set (crown - farthing) from George II - Eliz II. Just a few really tough (i.e., expensive) coins to go.
To me, sellers who list very high are trying to have the best of both worlds. They wish to protect themselves, but they also know many buyers only search auctions, and ignore BIN's. It works for me at times, but only if the "high" starting price is truly a bargain still.
I mainly only sell buy it now. With auctions usually nobody bids, and you end up giving away the store. Imo buy it now customers are more sophisticated, most of the unhappy people i deal with are auction buyers, who either foolishly overly bid, or bid last second and didnt know what they are bidding on. What works best for me is to list a realistic retail price for a coin, and if someone wants to negotiate, im willing to work it out with buyer. Starting a auction at .99 cents is silly imo. Nobody bids until the last few seconds, and your just hoping 2 people are interested in your coin and remember to log in and bid before time runs out.
I have tried, and still do use all 3 formats. If there is a coin I purchased dirt cheap to flip, I will usually start the bidding at a decent profit and see how high it goes from there. You never know how much people are willing to pay for some items. If I am selling at a rock bottom gotta-move-it price, I use BIN. If neither way sells the coin, then I reluctantly start an auction at $0.99. I am doing that now with several coins I can't move. I am just baffled at how people will pay $130-$140 for the same coin I have, and when I start the bidding at $99, I can't get a single bid. I am starting to wonder if more people ignore the higher starting bid auctions. They either want a BIN or a $0.99 auction.
I really feel like it's a buyers market right now. I am able to buy coins at great deals (at the cost of the seller losing out), but when I go to sell, I have to give it away.
Sometimes it takes time to find the right buyer. I have had items listed for over six months before it sold.
I agree that true auctions on US eBay are hard to find. This is my opinion about why. My comments are about ancient coins. I think that fixed-price sites have many dealers pricing coins very optimistically (much higher than just a few years ago), leading to few coins actually selling at those levels, but causing other sellers think coins ought to be worth about that much. So eBay sellers set unrealistic opening levels by looking at prices of coins that do not sell. It is not that actually selling prices on eBay are low because coin prices are going down, rather that the apparent increase in prices over the last few years is true for prices -- but that is an impression about listing prices, not a fact about selling prices. Coins that actually sold have not gone up much less than coins that have been listed for sale (in my opinion). Whether you think coin is a "good deal" or not depends upon what you think it is worth and regularly sells for. It is easy to be mislead by checking out fixed-price sites and thinking those prices are realistic and those prices are what the coins sell for. Often they are not. Even the ones that sell may not sell at the listed prices. Some actually sell at a show for some percentage off, or at a lower price offered by the buyer. Sure, there are some "good deals" listed on fixed-price sites and many of those will sell very shortly after being listed. But, they are far less common than they used to be as sellers raised prices faster than the market buys coins. There are other factors. One is that eBay does not make seller's pay if the coin remains unsold, so there is no financial incentive to price the coin so it is likely to sell. Just relist it later, again and again (I can cite one ancient coin listed for over $200 that has not sold in about 40 eBay listings, but the "price" has not come down.) Another factor is psychological. When someone first becomes a collector his standards for "good coins" are not as high as they later become. So, someone collecting, say, Roman Republican coins, thinks they used to be able to buy coins they liked at, say, $75 and now those types are $150. True, now the coins they like cost a lot more, but they are looking for better examples of those types than they used to collect and those better examples that cost $150 now would have cost well over $75 back then. Prices have gone up, but a big part of the apparent increase in in the better quality demanded by the collector, not just the price rise for a comparable coin. So, I don't think that in general prices have gone down or are even weaker that they were a while ago. I think they never really went up as much as the increase in listing prices suggests.
I don't think any of the auction formats discussed in this thread are actually "true auctions". To me, a true auction is one which closes when there are no further challenges to the highest bid, not when the clock runs down.
All goes back to changes eBay made in their fee structure over the past decade. At one time, it was very inexpensive to list a coin at 99 cents and then pay only 1 or 2 percent on the final winning auction bid in a "no reserve" auction. For anyone wanting to list a coin with a high starting price or reserve, eBay charged a huge fee upfront even if the item didn't sell. They (eBay) did offer free re-listing if it didn't sell, but it still was not price competitive with listing a coin at a dollar and letting the market decide what the item was worth. This was particularly true of more scarce items where a market price might not be well established. In those cases, coins often sold for multiples of what they were really worth. It was this very phenomenon that attracted so many sellers to eBay to begin with. The arrangement was vastly superior to what we have today, where it now costs nothing to list an item in Buy-It-Now for some outrageous price, and it costs almost nothing to continue having it listed that way. Instead of a wide assortment of coins starting cheaply and eventually selling for whatever the market will support, we now have permanent listings of coins that will NEVER sell for the listed price. This tendency has been made even more prevalent by the increases in commission fees on auction-sold items, where it now costs 13% in combined fees between eBay and Pay-Pal to complete an auction for the seller. eBay was vastly superior 10 years ago compared to what it is today. As more and more traditional auction companies gear-up to handle liquidations with lower fees and more promotion of specific collections, you can expect eBay to fade into irrelevance. It's a gradual evolution of sorts, and most of these coins are never going to end-up at Heritage, but there are so many other competent auctioneers in this niche that more closely resemble what eBay once was, that it can safely be said surfing the eBay listings is quickly becoming a complete waste of time.
I finally broke down and did a true auction on two of my coins. I usually do a low BIN or start bidding at my break even price. Well, I lost my tail on both of them, especially after fees and shipping. Mine sold for less than any other of the same coin and grade. I won't be doing that again. It's a buyers market on ebay if you can find a true auction. Otherwise, most BIN's are overpriced. You hardly see any middle ground. I try to list my BIN's at fair market value or less. People want coins for next to nothing though. I get stupid offers on coins all the time. I just set it to autoreject those.
Ebay has become a flea market. The reason people post BIN is because of the fees and the types of buyers that hunt for bargains. I frankly can not find any coins of quality on ebay anymore. I believe that eBay's policies protecting seller's of misleading/fake offerings has driven away serious collectors. I also find that buyers in many cases do not follow through on payment. Ebay is essentially becoming Amazon - a price sensitive, commoditized product offering. You want quality search auction houses.
I regularly buy from Great Collections. I have not bought from HA or SB because I haven't fully read their shipping fees and handling time. I have visited DLRC some. I have come to trust GC because of the easy and low shipping fees, and I usually get my coins 2 business days after auction ends. I don't spend much money on ebay anymore. I usually just sell. I have not tried consigning any coins to an auction house yet. I am still only 2 1/2 years into collecting and have a hard time stomaching losses.
I poked around in the bullion section today...I noticed tons of one ounce government issued rounds (maple leafs, silver eagles, etc) going for $22-$24 with non-free shipping, clicked over to the bin's, and saw tons for $20-$22 WITH free shipping. I have no clue why bullion brings more in an auction vs BIN.
I am a big fan of both Lyn Knight and Stack's-Bowers, you can find plenty of truly rare coins and the reserves are low enough that you will be getting a great deal on the coin if no one else shows-up to bid. Which, though not frequently, does happen often enough to convince me my highest bid is not automatically taken without any other "real" bids having been submitted; -something I am fairly certain occurs at some of the other large auction houses, and if you read the fine print in the user agreement it is their "right" to do that. Of course that doesn't make it "right" - and after a few transactions like that at other sites, I find myself more and more drawn to LKCA and SBG. Shipping is reasonable, and like any traditional auction house it takes a couple days to get your coin because thousands of lots have all sold within a few hours the same day you win your coin. I may not be buying as many coins online as I once did on eBay, but the coins I am buying are vastly superior to most anything available on eBay these days.
