Poll: Are you ever a repeat buyer, with the same seller on Ebay? I'm trying to determine what percent ofEbay buyers buy more than once from the same seller.
There are a few sellers that i buy from regularly. I also have a bunch of buyers that keep buying from me.
Back at the peak of the silver boom, there were a couple of times that I found sellers listing a series of BINs at well below melt. I think there were one or two that I bought a dozen or more items from. After all, why turn down silver below melt? Just don't forget to do the "resell it at a profit" part before the market crashes.
Percentage-wise I cannot help you, but the fact that some sellers like GSC (among others) not only exist, but move large volumes of often questionable material at strong prices, certainly suggests that there indeed are many repeat buyers of coins on ebay.
I bought one coin from them. It was I believe a 1926 Lincoln that was described as RED BU UNC..... when I got it, it looked nothing like the picture. When I put it in my album it almost looked Brown. Sure with lots of lights it looked good, but it made me never want to buy another coin from them.
Not very often do i repeat buy, from time to time if a seller has a few good items up at good prices i will buy all the items!! But generally i don't go back and look at a sellers other listing !!
It is very easy to gain useful data about repeat purchases simply by reading eBay feedback in buyers profiles. Just be careful what you deduce from it. I don't want this coming out the wrong way, but I cynically discount streaks of feedback for many transactions left by the same buyer . . . I typically assume that such streaky feedback is from a shill account to buy back goods that were selling too low, and build up positive feedback at the same time . . . I almost always disregard those sellers as unworthy of my time and money.
I have a customer who has been buying an average ten coins a week from me, for the last 3 weeks. Not sure if he has left feedback, but i hope the trend continues. I think the key is to specialize in a certain area and regularly add new inventory
When I was actively buying European medals, there were three sellers in France that I used quite often during a 5-year period (at least 2-3 times a month.) There can be many benefits to this: > If one of the sellers listed an auction item for which there were no bids, I could make them an offer which was either accepted or negotiated. On one occasion, a Parisian seller notified me that he had just posted 60+ new listings and asked if there were any that interested me. I gave him a list of 44 items, we negotiated a bulk price, and he pulled all of the listings. > It's not unusual to receive a "heads-up" like the one above. > Even if a listing had a BIN, I was often able to negotiate a lower price because I was always dependable when it came to prompt payment. > Because I was known to them, I was able to negotiate good deals for friends of mine who wanted one of their listings. > I would exchange Christmas cards with these sellers, and they always enclosed a small gift of appreciation for my business. Chris
