I finally made a Ebay account

And I am sickened by what I see, so much lies and misleading listings its going to be difficult for someone like me who tries to be honest to get anyone to take me seriously being a new seller. Any advice for a new seller?

 

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Be honest, you will sleep better.

 

Start with small dollar items and slowly build your feedback up. If you buy with the same account, sellers may leave you feedback too. Some buyers don't go into a sellers feedback to check if its 100% positive so it helps.

 

Honest as I can be

 

Oh one more thing. Take good pictures of the things you are selling. Obviously you don't want poor pictures but don't alter your photos either. Thats going to lead to trouble really quick.

 

Don't even start selling as the fee's, will eat up any profit that you think you'll make. Besides unless you link your SS number as well as your bank account with PayPal you may not be seeing any money coming your way for as much as 90 days!
Haven't sold or made a purchase on e bay in years due to their one way policy changes . And at one time I was a power seller with over 6k @month in sales.

 

Ebay is a tough road. Lots of time and work. Good luck.

 

Try Amazon. It's much better.

 

The happiest day of my numismatic life was the last day I listed something on ebay ...

 

Accurate imagery is as important as any other aspect of your Ebay selling experience. Honesty and the willingness to make mistakes good are imperatives, but the accuracy of your listings is the greatest weapon against problems with sales. If you're not already capable of creating gradable images, it's a goal you need to accomplish.

I have had no problems on Ebay in seventeen years that I didn't create for myself.

 

Great post. That's the way it worked for me.

 

Image quality has defined both my success as a seller (not necessarily in terms of profit but in terms of satisfied repeat customers and favorable Feedback) and as a buyer (yes, in terms of profit ). My images are good enough to leave nothing to the imagination, and the skills acquired on the way to learning to create images that good enable me to cherrypick the "gems in the rough" from images of far lesser quality.

This is a "broken record" subject for me, I know, but there's nothing about becoming a good numismatic photographer which doesn't directly contribute to the quality of your experience as a collector, and the benefit to a seller is obvious.

 

I went to Barnes & Noble years ago before I started and skimmed over the book "eBay for Dummies." It had a lot of good advice, and I took notes. I didn't have to buy it, because they let you read it while you're there. Plus I got to relax and enjoy a coffee while I learned!

Here's a coin for the thread. And yes, as stated above, picture quality can mean a lot.

 

Good pics, listings with as much information as you have.

I'm not a fan of the boilerplate "I'm not an expert, so grade for yourself" nonsense in listings.

List it in the correct category.

Make sure you put the keywords in the title and the listing - the words you would be looking for if you were buying the item. So many people waste characters on fluff - "PQ" "Look here", etc. instead of actually defining the item.

 

I have had 1,128 transactions on eBay, primarily as a Buyer, and in all those transactions over many years, I have never had to leave a negative feedback. Look at the picture, read the description, and compare the price with other similar coins. Stay away from Sellers that leave little or no description and claim that "they aren't graders, look at the photo."

If the price seems to be to good to be true, it probably isn't a good deal. I do check a Seller rating, and it seems that the best deals seem to come from familiar Sellers that I bought from before.

There are an incredible number of Sellers on eBay and if they weren't making money they would sell elsewhere. On the other hand, there are Sellers that I sometimes wonder if they are for real. I questioned a Seller onetime about a $14 delivery charge and he e-mailed back that he charged that much to cover eBay and PayPal charges. Needless to say, I did not buy that Sellers item. eBay used to base their charges on selling price only, and it was common to see inflated shipping charges. When they started to include the shipping charge in their fee the shipping fee dropped dramatically (in most cases).

Shop smart, compare prices, look at the picture carefully, look at a Sellers or Buyers feedback and you shouldn't have any problems.

 

Quality images and if you can, host them OFF ebay and embed them in your description. The images that ebay hosts now are horrible and you can no longer get larger images so you can actually see what you are buying. (Yes they say "click for larger and more images" but the "larger" images are never more than slightly larger and you can't blow them up any further. 95% of the time they are worthless.)

So nowadays most auctions have lousy pictures, and the sellers have gotten lazy and either post in someone elses' boiler plate about the series that has nothing to do with the coin in the auction, or no real description and three pages of hype about themselves and their "terms or sale"

 

Keep in mind, I and probably you, have access to other ways of buying coins and currency. There are 6 coin shops in my town and there are several we buy and sell gold and silver "stores". Some people have no choice, they either buy from eBay or God forbid the TV coin shows.

The best thing I ever did was to join a coin club, my knowledge od numismatics went up more than I ever expected. Knowledge is power, I know this has been said over and over on this forum but, "Buy the book before the Coin."

AS far as pictures on eBay, I haven't had a problem. I have a new HD Compter and I get a pretty good idea of what the coin looks like, and I usually only buy graded coins, so that helps when deciding whether to buy or not.

 

Another vote for quality pictures. If you can't properly image something, it shouldn't be sold online. There are no excuses for crappy images these days. There are a million ways to take good pictures inexpensively.

 

I sold on Ebay for 9 years. At first it was ok but as time went on I got tired of working for them. Some of the buyers I had the last year also contributed to my exit.

Good luck to you.

 

I appreciate the advise everybody being a newbie on selling coins on ebay all advise helps, I never have sold coins on the internet because I never have fully trusted doing so but I figured I'd take a chance. I am starting off slow so hopefully it wont be too painful.