Discussion- thoughts on "What is your best price?"

Why do they do that??

Counter back with some stupid $1 or $5 amount.

To show displeasure? As a show of "revenge?" To piss you off? I dont know..

 

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I'm fairly reasonable when it comes to pricing, and I'm also pretty transparent. I don't say this is my rock bottom to say this is my rock bottom. It truly is.
You guys made me remember the time when i had a pretty cheap item up and i said 20 bucks was my lowest.
He offers me 15, i decline saying sorry my lowest is 20 wish i could help you
then i get offers for
14
13
12
11
until he ran out of offers.
What a waste of time.

 

All of the above

Some people are just hard to figure out. Sometimes the best thing to do if you’re angry/upset is write out a long reply, read it, and delete it (don’t press send as a famous coach once said).

 

Those people go on my block list

 

My feelings on the topic of, 'what's your best price' after they clearly see my list price is one of disgust.

I am a seller, you are a buyer.
I set a price that quite frankly is always fair but always negotiable.
When you ask me 'what's my best price' you are asking me to become both the seller and the buyer. Why on earth would anyone negotiate with themselves? Makes absolutely zero sense.
I will not only negotiate with a buyer if they make a bona fide offer, but I'll do it with utmost respect.
You ask me to dicker with myself without presenting an offer and my disdain for you as a buyer becomes really apparent. My time, and yours, becomes much more valuable not conducting business with you at all.

Some of you, maybe even many of you would find me to be obnoxious or arrogant handling prospective customers so brashly, and that's ok. I've been incredibly successful in my business dealings for the last 50 years. I've made more friends in business than most. I just find the query, 'what is your best price', without making an offer on my pre priced item to be one insult I don't appreciate, at all.

YMMV

 

Because that is a widely accepted practice in coin buying. Some people don't do it - they'll just pay whatever the sticker says.

In answer to the original question, @ddddd , I approach it primarily as a buyer. I very rarely sell coins, and then I usually submit to an auction house. As a buyer, I'll take one of two approaches. I think both are acceptable. The first, I'll make an offer on a coin. I try to research a good, fair price, and make an offer based on that research. With what I collect, there often isn't much good research and so I just offer a gut feeling. When I make an offer, the seller usually responds one of two ways - with a counter that I like, and I'll accept and pay, or with a counter that I don't like, in which case I'll politely refuse.

The other approach I'll take is the "What's your best offer?" question. This seems less confrontational, because it often allows me to get a better price than it's listed, but allows the dealer to tell me what his lowest price he'll accept is. Sometimes, their "best offer" is actually lower than what I would have offered! Again, I make a decision if their best price is good or not, and then respond accordingly. I've used both approaches many times, sometimes with more success than others.

The real killers are when you see a gorgeous PL listed for $4000, and the most recent sales on Heritage are $1600. I offer $2000, point them to sales history, and they say they can't take anything less than $3200. The thought I think is "well, good luck with that as you relist it over and over for the next couple of years. I'll make the same offer in 2022, and see what you think then!" My actual reply is "That's just too much for me."

 

When someone asks me what my best price is, no matter what I'm selling, I say the price I have listed/told you is my best price. I don't negotiate with myself. However, if you want to make a reasonable offer, I will consider it.

When I ask someone if they will take less, I ask if they would consider $......

 

I had setup auto-decline and auto-accept on one of my auctions (not coin related). The buyer submitted a bid that was automatically declined as per my auction parameter. The buyer kept submitting incremental bids until he hit my automatically accept figure. It was a clever tactic on the buyers part but I don't use the auto-decline feature any longer.

 

This has been an interesting read, and quite informative on the perspective of sellers. I myself would never come out with what is your best offer. I generally come up with what I would consider a fair offer. I haven't been turned down (on coins) yet. I'm on a budget with my coin purchases, so lower price means I could buy more. Sometimes I would be willing to play full price but try to haggle for what I would consider a reasonable discount, to try to stretch my funds. Other times I would have walked away if we didn't come to an agreement. Depends on how bad I want the coin and what I think it is worth to me.

 

In the end for me, it comes down to both parties showing each other some respect. What has really soured me on the people that ask the "what's your best offer" question is that most don't have the decency to even respond after I give a better price. If people asked the question and then courteously replied (either "yes I can do that" or "unfortunately that is more than I can spend") I would have a better view overall.

As for the PL coin example, I can see both sides. First, if it is listed on eBay, I can understand the seller not wanting to take $2,000 on a coin that they may have bought for around the same $1,600 (it's $200 in eBay fees, $60 in PayPal fees, and some more for shipping/insurance). Also, for something like a PL coin (or a toned coin), there might not be enough comps to say whether or not the $1,600 price was high, low, or accurate. It could have been in a mid-week HA auction where less people were following it (so it went low) or it could have been a major auction with plenty of attention (so it went high). Plus, it depends if the seller is a dealer who makes a living selling or just another collector who is ok keeping the coin unless their moon money price is reached. On the other hand, if the coin has sat around and/or the person isn't too fond of it, then I think they should let it go, take the small profit, and move on to a new coin.

As an example (with lower dollar amounts involved), I have a toner that I really like. I bought it for ~$250 and put it for sale at ~$550. Some people have offered low-mid $200s and some have gone a bit above $300. I have no desire to come down much from my $550 as I like the coin. At $500-$550 I'd take the offer and can use the funds to buy a new coin that I like. However, at $300 it's not worth it as I can't replace it with something even remotely as nice. Another case was a toner I bought for $300. It slipped by in an auction and could easily have sold for $500-$600 (based on close enough items). I also wanted $500 for it (based on the market) but I didn't really love it. When someone offered $400, I was happy to let it go and not hold out for max money.

 

That's honestly a much better approach to make the offer yourself first. It's one thing to ask for the best offer standing cash in hand at a store or show, but when you do it on eBay with the fees and "free shipping" no matter the intention it generally just comes across as bottom feeding

 

That's just the nature of eBay unfortunately. Just like when people ask for more pictures you're almost always wasting your time doing it and they only then buy once in a blue moon if that

 

I agree with that. Cash in hand at a show is a different case as the sale is pretty much final. On eBay, outside of the fees, you also have to build in the possibility of returns and even USPS issues (even if they are fairly rare).

 

The more pictures is another pet peeve (unless of course it's one of those listings where the coin is photographed from the moon or you can barely make out what is in the picture-but those listings I tend to avoid or bid low as I also know they likely won't provide better photos). With my listings, I try to add at least one or two more photos, but it's true that it often doesn't help.

 

The 14 day return time is absolutely insane as well for coins.

I used to add more photos or send them when people asked but then you would just never hear from them or they would return it anyways because they're just looking for upgrades or whatever. Unless I just gooned the initial photos I just ignore those requests now especially if there's a TruView of the coin if they looked it up though I might point that out to them.

Realistically though I'm convinced the more requests they have the less likely they are to buy

 

Returns are another issue. Anything over a few days after receiving it for coins is too long and encourages abuse (shopping it around).

And I can see ignoring photo requests too (especially with people that I know never buy). I don't have much listed, so I'm ok with taking another photo (but would seriously reconsider if it became asked too often with no purchases).

 

Exactly which unfortunately does happen and just have to block them when you run into them. Really even 72 hours after getting it would be a generous return period. You basically always know within a day if you're going to keep something.

I actually had someone earlier this year return something after 10 days showing me they found another with a better price. Quality aside the "cheaper" listing had a shipping charge and with their cost to return mine they ended up spending a decent amount more doing that. Still hurts me with the PayPal policy but off to the block list they went.

 

I’ve sold hundreds of coins on E-Bay, and nobody has ever asked me for more photos. You guys really run into the crazies!

 

Oh you wouldn't even believe some of the stories. I'll just share one that happened around Christmas where I got a LONGGG email from someone about how my PCGS coin was fake for this and that reason and the entire time he was basing it off of the fake he had. I submitted the coin myself too so 0 chance of a fake holder. I got a good chuckle out of that.

The real horror stories have some absolute psychopaths. There's one person in Canada (not sure if they've finally been arrested or not) where a lot of people have said they just keep opening up different accounts and ordering coins and then claming the boxes were empty or returning empty boxes etc and selling their stolen inventory themselves on a different account.

Most buyers are normal nice people, the only real pattern I have noticed is that there seems to be more problem/demanding types on cheapish items over the more expensive ones. Which again the majority of buyers are perfectly fine and sometimes do unfortunately have to get blocked out of caution from some bad apples

 

Don’t sell on feebay but im in the antique business and I almost never sell for sticker price. Coin shows either I put $495 sticker cause I want $450 net and I’ll consider any offers between $400-$450 otherwise get screwed. And as to the offers it depends on a lot of things. If I like you I might say $435 to begin with the absolute bottom. Sometimes if I know you’re a hammerhead I’ll say $525 if I can knowing you’re going to offer me $375 and we’ll eventually get at $450. Or better yet (for me) $465. I know my customers and how to deal with them. As I’m known for quality for a realistic price and I like to git r done