My first experience selling coins on eBay

I’ve sold about 20 coins on eBay. I use the BIN and allow offers. I’m pretty satisfied with the results though my primary motive is moving out coins I no longer want or have upgraded. Buyer pays postage and return postage. No problems.

 

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Nope, the last one ended about... 60 seconds ago. Guy grabbed a VF Merc from me for under melt. :-/

 

Doesnt make sense. If you do a basic search for US coins or whatever, and filter for ending soonest auctions, your stuff should show up. I know there are tons of people like me who do that and will jump at any auctions that have a little meat left on the bones, which includes anything under spot or significantly underbid.

Unless Ebay is somehow preventing your listings from being seen.

 

Read through all the terms, it'll be more clear.

 

Clearly the shipping cost for the first item purchased ($4.35) was deterring bidders. I made it so high because I didn't realize eBay had a shipping discount. I was going from the USPS calculator. With the discount, however, I am actually paying at least a dollar less than that for 1-item buyers.

And then there's something else I just discovered that makes me feel like an idiot. Although my item descriptions say that each additional item ships free, somehow some of my listings' shipping options were entered with a $1.25 each additional item cost. (I'm not sure how that happened, and I thought I scoured everything thoroughly before posting, but I was wrong.) That may have deterred some bidders as well. Once buyers request invoices, however, I am of course honoring what I stated in the item description. Live and learn.

For those who enjoy looking at train wrecks , here are links to just a few of those crazy auction results:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/173839951648
https://www.ebay.com/itm/173840004061
https://www.ebay.com/itm/173839926291
https://www.ebay.com/itm/173838985369

 

Raw low grade coins are a tough sell on eBay.

 

When selling on eBat you also need to figure how these things from the buyer's point of view. A buyer who first looks at your listing wasn't getting 9 raw Buffalo's at one cent, he was paying $4.36. (Further, I'm thinking that you could have shipped 9 nickels at $1.50 or so cost to you).

Similarly, the Mercury dime you sold. It sold for $1.10 (slightly below melt value) but to a bidder (who wasn't combining purchases) it cost $5.45. A dime weighs almost nothing -- surely you could have sent that regular first class mail at under one ounce, no?

Now, if you are combing items with free shipping, that seems to be a strategy error that perhaps you can avoid in the future? Because, as you noted, after a purchaser won the first item, now he's bidding against folks who didn't win the first item, and those other folks have to bake your $4.35 postage into their bids. (I hope his makes sense).

 

And can be great for buyers who are on a small budget and want to fill some holes.

 

To get tracking on first-class mail you have to mail it as a package, so the minimum cost of that, even down the street, is about $3.70.

I guess I was hoping I would get a lot more bidders who had won one of the bigger-ticket items (Peace dollars) and would then compete for the smaller items as a throw-in with no additional shipping charge. Didn't work out that way. I probably would have needed to have hundreds of items listed to generate enough of a market.

 

It's like $3.09 coast to coast if you print off eBay and closer to $2 if its somewhere close, but if you're charging for shipping eBay takes fees from that as well

 

Yeah, the eBay shipping discount is nice - I hadn't realized there was such a discount, which is why I charged so much for shipping. Chalk it up to a learning experience.

 

If you shipping something worth less than $20, why not ship it as first class mail through the post office assuming it meets weight restrictions?

 

Be careful now as well. Something I just saw today is that you no longer have the option of not renewing your 30 day listings. Now they auto renew (I'm assuming so that they can catch people who are not watching their 50 free listings and can then charge them for the delisting fee) all of the listings that are B.I.N. they are good until sold. Fine details say that they renew after 30 days so you will get charged if you are out of the free bees.

 

Almost certainly a way of trying to catch extra listing fees out of people who mistime the listings and don't have enough sell.