How much does Ebay affect bullion prices?

So it occurred to me today that Ebay does in fact move a lot of gold and silver.

A search for "bullion" turns up well over a quarter million transactions in the last 90 days, and "gold scrap" turns up almost 30k more. By the time you add in jewelry, coins, etc... There must be upwards of a half million transactions in the last 90 days, leading me to an estimate of ~2million transactions a year.

How much bullion influence does Ebay have on the market?

Any wild guesses as how much tonnage Ebay moves annually of gold and silver?

 

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In my opinion, none. They just act as a seller for numerous businesses. It's a place to buy and trade and eBay does not carry any inventory.

As for the tonnage they move, again, none. No inventory. What amount of precious metal is move through eBay, I wouldn't even take a guess. They have too many sources that use them to sell, buy and trade. I haven't bought anything through them in the last 3 plus years.

 

The biggest impact the sellers on ebay have on the market is driving the resale price down on a lot of items. Common items on ebay are a pricing race to the bottom to see who can sell it the cheapest so people buy that one instead of the hundreds of other listings.

As far as spot price the sellers there have a minimal impact at best. It is just another selling venue for them and the guys big enough to actually have some impact were already moving massive amounts on their own sites and through other venues. As far as bullion goes most people are just looking for the lowest price, sometimes it is ebay with ebay bucks other times it is their direct site.

The sellers on ebay certainly have a pretty noticeable impact on market prices for resale but I would say the movement of spot has a much greater influence on sales there than sales have on the movement of spot.

 

I guess the view I see is that they are the "source" per say for a significant amount of transactions - and do set rock bottom prices (in some cases) for retail.

They also open up gold and silver to a lot of folks that may not buy it otherwise.

It was just a thought - how much of the bullion trade routes through Ebay?

I saw about 50 1-kilo gold bars that were sold. How many were legit sales? Who knows. Could be money laundering, could be legit, could be shills.

At $43k a crack, that's $2.15mil in 90 days - just in 1 kilo bars.

Considering 1 kilo bars are the exception to the rule - which would range from grams to ozt bars/rounds/coins - that is a LOT of weight moving.

 

I remember back around Christmas I saw a video that said ebay was selling a million dollars worth a day of bullion, but that was then.

 

If your question is the impact on spot price, my answer is zero. On the infrequent occasion when I have looked in the last several years, all I see is disproportionately inflated ask prices. This is for bullion coins like ASE and ML + bars such as JM. I have never looked for "junk" silver.

Those who pay the inflated prices from eBay will just lose it on resale, at least if sold elsewhere.

 

In some regards, if one thinks about it, eBay is a glorified telephone company of old. They just provide a conduit for commerce.

 

I don't think they affect the spot or futures market at all. They do affect the retail and collectibles market, probably better than any place else I'm aware of for true price discovery.