Selling on eBay. I wish there was a better venue

Looks like there are multiple factors affecting you:

Selling a set of items to a sight-unseen buyer is always going to result in a low sale price. Buyers are going to focus on the keys in the set and then use generic pricing for the rest. You may have a bunch of nicer examples scattered throughout the set, but buyers aren't going to spend the time to try and grade every coin online and then come up with a price.

If you have the $21.95/month store, the eBay fee is 8.5%. They also provide a certain number of free listing insertions.

Sounds like some of the stuff you're listing is generic. eBay is horrible for generic stuff. Way too much competition.

Think you'll do better melting the Walker than selling it? Think again. That Walker that melts for $8.72 and you got $7.96 wasn't below melt. You're not melting UNC Walkers. You're going to melt VF Walkers. They'll have ~10%+ less silver due to wear. Dealers almost never pay melt. When they item goes to the smelter, the dealer is going to be paid a percentage of spot. The smelter doesn't work for free. So you're going to get about $6.50-$7 for that Walker.

If you don't charge for shipping, that is your choice. One of the keys to charging for shipping is to have enough items up for sale that a buyer doesn't factor in the shipping cost. If you charge $3 for shipping and have 10 items for sale, a bidder may only be interested in one item and they will subtract the shipping cost from their bid. Have 100 items for sale and charge a flat rate shipping and the bidders will generally go after several different items and no longer factor in the shipping charge into any of their bids. I generally run 200-350 auctions at a time and I charge a $5.95 flat rate for shipping. Around half the auctions will be sold to a person who only wins one item, but I guarantee you that person bid on several items and most likely never factored shipping into their bids because of it.

If you're really apprehensive about charging shipping, charge a nominal price, try 99c shipping. Most people will ignore a low cost like that.

If you don't have one, get a postage printer with an online postage account. It's 10% (?) cheaper than mailing at the Post Office and you can hide the postage value to reduce the chance of a buyer complaining. Put in the listings that the shipping charge includes full insurance. Never buy Post Office insurance. Self insure the packages. It's an extremely small percentage of packages that will get lost.

You got screwed by a buyer. Welcome to the world of business. You will continue to get screwed. People will steal from you. The Postman will forget to scan the item as delivered and the buyer will claim never received. They will return a different item to you. They will return a rock to you instead of the coin. They will claim counterfeit and eBay will allow them to keep the item and give them a refund. The credit card company will rule in their favor even though you followed all the rules. It sucks. Deal with it. Every business on the planet encounters this. Factor it into your business model or go out of business.

 

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I hope you don't actually think that sellers pay an auction house a 10%-20% sellers fee and the auction house charges the buyer a 20% buyers fee. They don't. The sellers fee is negotiated with the auction house. Practically all auctions houses start off negotiations at "we'll waive the seller fees" and anyone with brains and a decent consignment will easily get between 105%-110% of hammer.

Jeff charges 20%. Your 15% eBay fee number is way higher than the actual 8.5%. For some people that additional 11.5% is worth not having to deal with any of the issues. Fair enough. However, if the consignment is decent, a major auction house would be charging you 10%-15% (from the sellers fee).

 

You could always list numismatic items for sale here, or on other such sites. No fees.

 

I would like to thank everyone for all of the post. I will go over all the post and take from the post all the good advice. Thanks again for sharing and taking the time to answer my post.

 

I just went on coinbook and typed in Vermont. Just one of the colonials i am looking at right now. I probably have 6 in my watchlist on ebay. Theres god knows how many more on ebay.....pages.

Coinbook results 80. Scroll down and its 80 vermont state quarters for sale individual auctions.

Did a couple other searches.... all junk quite frankly.

 

I can sympathize with you, Ricardo. I have had the same problems selling on ebay, so I basically gave up on selling there. I tried another site called EBID and it was even worse. I bought a coin from some guy "Rudy Van Sebroeck" in Belgium and it never came. He said it wasn't his fault as he had mailed it. The site EBID would do nothing about it, so I was just out the money. I quit using that site immediately.

 

Just a suggestion, try the BST on this site. I avoid feeBay like the bubonic plague. I have bought from several members here, even a poster or two on this thread.

And there are no fees associated with using this sites BST.

 

I looked at this recommendation and can you comment on the requirements
https://discover.proxibid.com/seller-application/

 

There is a better venue. It's called Instagram. Once you build up your following you can start selling items over $1k to guys who will pay you feeless.

 

usa coinbook, free to list any amount of coins and a 2% seller fee iffin ye sell, they utilize paypal...check it out

 

Thanks, good tip. The site looks good and I done signed up on there as coin8nut, they would not let me use my same handle like I use on here. Maybe I will start peddling coins again!

 

While it is true all fees are negotiated its not even remotely close to true that they will start off waving the fees. Congrats to you if your consignments are of such a significant value that happens, but thats not even close to the norm

 

I'm not sure who you deal with, but practically any US auction house that charges the typical ~20% buyers fee will instantly waive the sellers fee for any acceptable consignment.

I generally group my consignments with others for a better rate, but I can't recall the last time any major US auction house started off negotiations at anything other than 100% hammer. And I'm not talking large consignments here.

 

You're trying to move the goal posts here a bit eventhough you admit that you group with others to increase the value for better rates. Your statement of instantly waiving seller fees and "...anyone with brains and a decent consignment will easily get between 105%-110% of hammer." simply isnt true and is very misleading. It may be true for you from a combination of combining your consignments for increased value and the history of the account with the house, but that is far from the norm and far from easy

 

No moving the goal posts. And 100% accurate. I know you don't want to believe it, but when an auction house charges a 20% buyers fee, no one in their right mind consigns and also pays a sellers fee. 100% of hammer is just the norm. The fact that I prefer to group for better rates doesn't mean that 100% hammer isn't the norm.

I recently consigned with an auction house for the first time. It was a very small consignment - about $5K of coins. Their first offer was 100% hammer. No negotiation, just flat out first offer of 100% hammer.

First offer from another auction house was 105% on a relatively small (~$10K) consignment. Ended up grouping it and they went to 107% on coins under $1K and 110% on coins over $1K.

An auction house instantly offered 110% hammer on a $100K+ consignment. No negotiation necessary for 110% as that was their initial offer. They ended up throwing in no fees on coins that don't meet the reserve and TPG regrades were also at their cost.

 

Enough said.

Im not sure what seems so hard for you to understand, of course it’s easy on 6 figure consignments………..

 

If you want to be willfully ignorant, fine, but there are others on these forums who might be considering consigning to an auction house and may be hurt financially by your foolishness. They may actually believe that they should pay a sellers fee. They may actually think that getting 100% or more of hammer is unusual and only reserved for the large consignments. Congratulations of helping spread misinformation that will only hurt others.

Anyone who has any doubt about auction terms at the major auction houses should ask a dealer that consigns to those auction houses. They will tell you the typical arrangement is 100%+ hammer. No one (other than apparently baseball21) pays sellers fees at the US auction houses that charge 20% BP. A generic consignment will bring you 100% hammer.

 

Yes congrats to you. Sorry that what was being said apparently is to hard to understand while you come back with examples of over 6 figure consignments and self admitting that you combine things to get better rates. Congrats on your success where you clearly have no idea what an average consignment is living in the 1% of consignor worlds. Nice chest bumping about how great you are but sure

 

What I find astonishing is the lack of knowledge about the sites and companies we interact with. Read the terms & conditions before you bid. Read ALL the T&C before you bid. There are no clean lines in this business. Everybody can and sometimes does do everything - for a fee.

Some of the sites named above, e.g. ProxyBid, HiBid, SixBid, and the like are auction aggregators.

They host the auction catalog, collect the bids and forward them to the auction house. For all of this, they get paid a fee. The aggregator never gets close to the goods, unless they also provide other fee-based services. The aggregator may vet bidders with the auction house before accepting bids. And probably only offers best efforts at actually delivering your bid.

They may also host the actual auction platform when the auction is run. Or not.

Auction houses range from small to huge - Stacks Bowers, Heritage, Kagin's, Legend, Great Collections, DLRC, et al. The auction house solicits consignments from sellers, may buy and sell for their own account and may sell through other channels (e.g. Heritage runs big-ticket auctions, smaller internet auctions, sells coins on eBay, and also buys to resell on their own account).

The auction house has the physical goods in its possession, at which point you need to have climate-controlled and secure premises. Security, Insurance, rent, power, water, etc. - all of this costs money.

There's a reason Heritage moved out of the fancy office building to a suburban office park - they could get a lot more space, on a single floor, designed & built their needs. For lower monthly costs.

The auction house sets the terms and fees (buyer's premium, seller's premium, Internet premium, foolish buyer tax, etc.)

They may - check the T&C - provide shipping and handling. Or it may be local pick-up where they have a deal with the local UPS/DHL/xyz courier service to pick up, pack and ship the goods to the winner. For a fee, of course.

The auction house actually receives the bids from the aggregators, from their own platforms if any, by mail, by phone, via email, etc. (or they may outsource this for a fee).

The auction house might choose to list its auction on multiple auction platforms to increase visibility.

So when you are browsing ProxyBid and find that John Deere tractor you simply can't live without, check the actual auction house. You may find that it's Richie Brothers's site in southern Washington, as-is, where-is. When you win the bid, you have three days to get your self and a truck with tow platorm over there...

But also check the T&C, ProxyBid doesn't guarantee your bid will be made, they simply offer best efforts. And that's the secret - if it's important to you, make sure you are bidding with the auction house.

 

And the buyers fee may vary depending on which platform/aggregator you bid is submitted through.