ebay BIN epidemic

Is it only me, but has anyone else noticed that larger and larger percentage of the decent specimens on ebay are now mostly listing as BINs?

Even crappy-grade specimens are super-overpriced... For the prices being asked for these, one can go over to other auction venues and get much better for the same price...

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

what are BINs?

 

Buy It Now

 

Use that 'Bing' cashback as much as you can....it ends July 30th!

With that said, yep, I've noticed way more BIN's....people are afraid of losing money in a 'true auction', and it IS the summer now, typically the slow time of year.

 

It's gotten nuts in the last several months...
yeah, that's crispy all right...!

 

Why? - because they don't know any better.

When we put up items on ebay we research what they have been doing on several venues. Depending on what we have into it and how much the boss "respects" it we use BIN and reserves a lot.

Offer FREE SHIPPING on a BIN and you'd be surprised how fast some items go.

Ebay can be a very silly place. We've had items with no reserve go way over retail while some really nice items won't even hit a reserve at or sometimes less than Greysheet bid.

 

Prices realized for regular no reserve auctions have been very low .
Using a Bin or Best offer is the safest way to sell your coins so you don’t risk a large loss on a no reserve auction . The down side to the Bin is coins can sit for months and not get sold. EBAY is no longer a desirable site to sell coins.

 

Justify it all you want, but I see the same specimens over and over again, being relisted, revolving through ebay like ratty pieces of luggage forever stuck on airport baggage belts...

That may work for onesie and twosie buyers, but in the end, it doesn't pass muster for collectors who purchase again and again... and because it doesn't, that's why the same crapola keeps getting relisted.

 

And fast becoming an undesirable place to buy coins too; At least, for the specimens I'm interested in.

 

I agree with you !! There are good coins but you have to filter through so much garbage to find them .

 

Exactly!! I have stopped looking at the bay as much as I used to.I am seeing much more BINs and getting alot of second chance offers for lost auctions as well as notices that things I bid on are being relisted.

 

I cannot speak for coins that people on CT collect but I have noticed a lot of BIN's on ebay on silver art bars but the problem that I see with BIN's on silver art bars is that the ebay sellers price some of them at way too high of a price and they will not sell. It is a risk using BIN just like there is a risk using a regular auction style format.

If an ebay seller prices a coin or bar at too high of a price using BIN, then that ebay seller takes the risk of that item not selling the first time around and will have to keep re listing the item at maybe a lower BIN price than before which might result in a loss for the ebay seller before ebay and paypal fees are taken into account.

If an ebay seller uses a regular style auction to sell a coin or bar, then there is that risk of the winning $ bid will either 1.) Be lower than what the ebay seller paid for the item or 2.) The winning $ bid might be higher than what the ebay seller paid for the item but it may not be high enough to offset the ebay and paypal fees and as a result, end up being a loss for the ebay seller.

DISCLAIMER: I have never sold anything on ebay. I just buy on ebay but not very often because I get outbid on almost every auction that I bid on. I mainly just lurk on ebay to study the price action of silver art bars.

 

I think this is probably what's happened. It seems to me that the cycles of buying and flipping, re-buying and re-flipping coins ad-nauseum has finally elevated such items on ebay (in particular) to untenable prices.

okay.. time for me to stop the belly aching now.

 

I have no problems with BIN that have a "Make Offer" usually because it mean I can received the coins I want without waiting until the end time of the auction and then being sniped at the last minute. Some of the bids I have seen lately on ebay auctions have been ridiculously high (imho) for the coins I need and want, especially the raw coins.

I have had very good luck making offers.

 

Seller's are crazy.

I've see the same coins listed and relisted, but after the usual steps down, sometimes the seller jacks the price UP after it doesn't sell at the lower price. You'd think that Ebay fees would give sellers an incentive to price the products to sell rather than act like a simple overpriced storefront with dead and dying inventory as sellers refuse to acknowledge that they might have to take less in a down market.

 

Ive noticed it for two coins ive wanted. It floored me some piece of #*&! VG was almost double then red book/online guides would give it.

Ive stopped with buying coins on ebay, not worth it anymore unless its a crap world coin I need.

 

I agree the BIN option works for buyers that find the auction process frustrating. It also protects an coin from being sold at a low price, but I too see many coins with "wishfull thinking" prices hoping for a newb with silly money. The coins that loop monthly are doomed to do so as when they don't sell quickly as they get some kind of odor that works as a repellent no mater what the price. Why would I buy the coin if if nobody else wants it. At least the auction process shows a person that others are willing to pay something for the coin and builds data as to the coins actual worth. JMO, matt

 

Exactly. In the majority of cases, auctions will indeed squeeze out the market price for a specimen...

And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see something's wrong if a specimen sits and sits and sits with no bites. Then again, if I understand correctly, sellers can now post an item with a stoooopid-money BIN price and just let it sit and rotate through the recycle process without any real cost...

 

In my opinion 99% of BIN's are clearly overpriced. Some exceptions are BINOBO (which you might get 10% off giving a serious and reasonable offer) and coins that are slabbed. I say coins that are slabbed because lets say you buy a coin for $30 that is slabbed. This means in 50 years when the coin is well worth more than that, one wouldn't have to go out of their way and spend the money to get it slabbed.

Also, I think probably 75% of BINs are people that just buy coins for cheap, and try to sell them for more to make some easy money. And another thing I notice is people that have BINs and ONLY BINs have an insane power rating which gets me to think, do a lot of people fall for these overpriced coins and just BIN?

 

You should make an exception and just buy coins that are slabbed because there is absolutely no way to get baited into a scam or a bad deal if something is slabbed correctly by a top tier grading service