Are eBay sellers having problems recently?

I'm wondering if people here who sell coins on eBay have been noticing a drop in sales recently? I have sold one coin in a week, and while I don't have my best inventory at the moment, I've been doing this long enough to know that I should expect a few every day. I looked on the eBay discussion boards and a lot of people are complaining about a sharp drop in sales recently, so I was wondering if any other coin sellers have noticed this?

 

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I've noticed that prices for the stuff that I buy have dropped considerably.

This ISN'T enticing me to bid or BIN.

Perhaps that's the problem? People are low on cash? Economic uncertainty?

I can't imagine it's a "problem" of some sort with Ebay....

 

My sales have been great lately, especially since pms dropped.

 

Some of the people on the eBay message boards are blaming the economy or Chinese sellers, but I'm noticing a sharp fall off from one week to the next. It seems much more likely to be a problem with the site than everyone suddenly started cutting back on their spending in the past week.

 

My sales have been good, but have been confined to Victorian jewelry and pocket watches, not coins.

 

I've seen you post this a couple times now. So... you are selling more, or what you are selling is going for more money? PM prices being lower is DROPPING coin prices, so how are you doing better?

 

I can't sell my foreign coins fast enough! It's one-day auctions and everything moves, moves, and moves some more. I haven't sold any individual coins in a couple weeks but didn't see anything odd. I sell low-to-mid grade old foreign coins. They move.

 

I'm selling more coins. I sell mainly fixed price auctions and my prices dont change. I dont sell much bullion. How does the price of silver affect a nicely toned morgan, or a 1908 S indian cent?

 

I buy and sell mostly old gold, and I can tell you that I am winning TONS more auctions at a lot cheaper price than normal. That also means I am selling coins cheaper than normal. I do no reserve auctions. People freak when PM prices are down, so the prices of these coins drop.

 

I haven't had any problem selling coins and bullion.

 

This is the same type of thing I'm selling and mine are gathering dust. Maybe it's just a weird lull, or maybe it's a problem that affects some people but not others.

 

No, but I also don't sell a lot. What *I have* been selling is going for more than I expected, though. I just start them at .99 and let it go for a week. Never any reserve. I hate reserves.

I might stop using the site because of HORRIBLE service. I was selling dups of liberty halfs I had and a $10 item got lost in the mail (and had tracking to show that). So, to keep people happy I just issued a refund. It was just a ten dollar coin, anyway. Ironicallly, two weeks later it was actually delivered to them, according to USPS... so they got the coin AND their money back.

The item was later listed as a "defect" on my seller's dashboard so I called them (since it was no fault of my own) and people kept agreeing with me but telling me "a different department hadles these issues" and then transferred me over and over (probably to the next cubicle). After 7 times I was told this "doesn't qualify for removal" even though they agreed it wasn't my fault and I did everything in my power I could to make the person happy (even went out of my way). USPS dropped the ball; there's nothing else I could have done.

If they are going to pull that kind of pedantic BS over a ten dollar item after I was on the phone for two hours (working, that's several hundred dollars) I'm definitely not going to sell any more of my rare stuff. Not to mention I've spent tens of thousands of dollars (if not more) in stuff on the site (mainly rare coins). I have a 20c up that's over Sunday. I'll honor that one but then, that's it.

Unles they do something... I emailed the CEO's office and will write a letter.

Otherwise, there are plenty of auction houses out there. HA is right in near my work, anyway. Their service has always been GREAT. Same with CNG; they've always gone the extra mile.

 

I can't sell a coin to save my life!

 

The Silver Dollar Show in St. Charles, MO was a complete bust last week, or so I have been told. I think what people are seeing is lag. The price of gold and silver have dropped significantly, yet a lot of dealers have not budged on their prices. There are a few exceptions, and for those dealers business has been great.

At the local monthly coin show here in Kansas City a few weeks ago, I managed to pick-up an 1910-D gold $10 Eagle in NGC MS-62 for $750, --would have been about a $875 coin a few months ago. So, for buyers the price action has actually been a good thing.

As for eBay, I really don't think the coin side of their business has much of a future, all the BIN fixed priced coins are listed for 40%-75% more than they are worth, and very few people have the time to scour the site looking for the 0.5% of listings that are a great deal or sold in no-reserve auctions.

The one wild card in everything is, --and it's hard to believe it affects even the coin market as much as it does-- would be upcoming changes to everyone's healthcare expenses. A lot of companies are rolling out new health coverage for 2015 that will rip the wallet right out of a lot of people's pants. Nearly every person I have talked too has mentioned the same thing about their coverage for next year, that it will have a primary component that involves an HSA (heathcare spending account) with just catastrophic insurance coverage. The money that will be needed
to fund that account has to come from somewhere, and like or not, for a lot of folks the money is coming out of their hobby budget.

 

I totally agree that the bulk of the ebay coins are way overpriced. however you basically just said the exact same thing about the dealers at the show you just went to.

(I'm experimenting with the colors)

my experience is almost all coins offered in any venue are overpriced. now I don't mean over grey. I mean over the over grey they would sell at in another venue.
so we are totally on the same page about many coins being "overvalued" by the dealers.

and I cant say with 100% confidence that ebay will lose its coin market. but I do know a couple things. the number of us coin lots and the number of pcgs/ngc coins has risen considerably over the last few years. but what I would debate is that it doesn't take a huge amount of time to find no reserve auctions. you can filter your search to only show no reserve auctions. further, when I want to find a pretty ihc I filter for only proof, toned pcgs and ngc ihc. I said proof because they usually have better toning then the mint state. but call me a coin bigot if you want. my point is the 150,000 pcgs and ngc coins can be pared down to a couple hundred in seconds. a few hundred is like maybe 3-4 screens at 50 each. takes me about 3 minutes to look over all the toned graded ihc that ebay has to offer. if I want to add mint state add another 5 minutes.

if you had to go over each and every ebay listing I would never login. but like I said you can filter down to what you want and search a whole lot more coins then at a show. right now I can look at 182 proof ihc in pcgs or ngc and do it in about what 3 minutes. how many proof ihc were at the show? my point is that with the right tools the online markets offer more varity with greater ease of access. and that is just ebay. there are a lot of secondary coin markets like gc, ha and dlrc.
so yes online line coins are usually overpriced but as you said so are the show ones. the reason I like online better is I can look over more coins at a greater speed at my own time table then at a show. yes there definitely is something to say about holding the coin in your hand first but with return privileges online buying has a lot to offer. just my opinion though.

 

In my experience as an an avid eBay buyer / cherrypicker the market really ebbs and flows based on the week or even the day. Sometimes there will be stretches where coins are definitely trading on the cheap side while other days almost every coin in a no reserve auction ends at retail or better. I don't necessarily know if there is a way to predict it or the exact forces that drive the market. I have noticed a few wild inconsistencies here and there, especially with 19th century US coins.

eBay with search parameters is the key as others have mentioned. In total there 750,000 coins up for sale right now on eBay. When I apply my search parameters it cuts that to about 10,000 which makes browsing it much more manageable. I think if you cut out unsearched wheat rolls, and modern clads you probably just about cut the number of auctions in half

 

I use the filters to identify specific coins I am interested in, if I added filters to identify those that were also no reserve, most of the time my search would display nothing.

 

I haven't been selling much lately, but I have been buying.. a lot. I only get low-ball deals with BIN now-a-days when I used to get them with auctions too. So in my experience... either the potential deals have dried up, or the bidding has gotten more competitive, or both. I only do world coins though.

 

I received one bid on a Zombucks copper coin....watch it be the only bid..lol

 

I remember reading some talk on Ebay message boards that there was some issues with Ebay search results not showing up on Google.