is that their lack of sellers leads to no buyers, which leads to no sellers, which leads to no buyers, which leads . . . A while back I posted a dutch auction at the ( to avoid self-promotion) site for a complete type set of Japanese bronze ¥10 coins - 4 coins including a one-year type. The price is $1.74 including S/H for one set, with reduced postage for multiples. That site charges no listing fees (thank goodness ) and automatically renews the listing after 15 days. Today I got the email - although there have been no bids yet, my listing has just been renewed for a third time! I checked out the site, and mine was the only world coin listing. On the US coin side, there were four (closed) listings for supplies. There is no hit counter on the site, so I have no way of knowing whether anyone even saw the listing. So for a buyer, what's the point of visiting that site? And, for a seller, why bother listing there? You can draw your own conclusions about why EBay, with all its risks and dangers, remains No. 1 by a huge margin.
Oh, I've been saying it for years. The type of service that eBay provides lends itself to a natural monopoly -- buyers want to go where the sellers are, and vice-versa. Whichever venue could first reach a critical mass would dig a moat around the business that's almost impossible for competitors to get across. One always has to watch natural monopolies; they have a tendency to charge "whatever the market will bear" even as the quality goes downhill.
I've used a few alternative auction sites in the past few years. The idea of buyers following sellers is pretty clear. One of the sites was half-decent in the beginning with a decent offering of coins, but dried up rapidly. I believe the site originator was selling his own collection through the site. I did get a few really nice Indian Head Cents. Even Yahoo and Amazon usually come far short when compared to ebay in terms of number of items offered and the choice of grades and sellers.
ebay won its monopoly by flooding adwords on google,everytime you search for anything on google ebay items come up.They obviously have done a special deal with google to allow every item they sell to get high up the ranks. Ebay can however be easily beaten,the trouble with most start up auctions is they dont have the money to flood search engines like ebay does at a probable loss untill it reaches the point of lots of buyers/sellers.So what is needed is about a 500 million usd gamble by some company to flood the internet with its auctions like ebay does.But unfortunatly everyone with that kinda funds will feel its too high a risky venture with so much of there capital.They look around at so many failing without realising they failed because they never put in the big bucks to dominate. If a auction site comes along and total aggresive marketing i think it has a good chance of success.But i bet a stumbling block will be that google will protect its buisness with ebay by blocking/preventing and basically downright culloding to ensure ebay its bread and butter business associate stays in its prime location on its search engine.A nice mutually compatible and agreeable monopoly's will continue.
Ebay had a huge monopoly before any of us ever heard of google. I started selling on ebay in '97 and I've seen one site after another come out gunning for ebay, only to fall helplessly on their face. Ebay is where the masses are so that's where the sellers are. Nick
Monopoly or not, I think eBay is a FANTASTIC resource. For collectors it's a treasure trove, for dealers, maybe not so much. But in either case you might as well enjoy it now because it won't be long before the government figures out a way to get their tax hungry fingers into it.
Those who run the other auction websites could use the power of the Internet at www.youtube.com by uploading videos to promote themselves. Aidan.
ebay is a monster, it is not something that is going to be easily dispatched or replaced regardless of how horrible or well they operate
youtube is not a commercial base. It is a place for viewers to go to watch others make an a** (butt) of themselves. kung-foo videos (and the link) and other pop-culture items, but i ahev never seen a "pepsi" or "Snickers" or possibly "Survivor" .. basicaly i have never seen a 'commercial' that is trying to sell or solicit some sort of participation in another website. It might even be against the rules of youtube (if any rules exist at all) I just dont see it was a succesful vehicle what you propose either for an Ebay alternative or for cointalk.
Just looked, here's a few of YouTube's most viewed for today: - 5/17 Edition Of TNA Today - New Tag Team Titles - Playing basketball w/my head - 50 Cent Speaks on Imus and Oprah @ BET - Car Crashes Into Mall - 'Naked News' Picks Anchorwoman (CBS News) - Hot Babe - Las Aventuras Eroticas de Hercules - Extreme Cats - This one's for the Haters I can't see why anyone would consider putting a serious commercial on here, it wouldn't work.
Dopeuser,there are commercial ads up on YouTube.The U.S. presidential candidates for the 2008 election are using it to promote themselves. Some people have got themselves famous through having a video uploaded onto YouTube.Bands such as Motocade from New Zealand even post their own music videos up there. Aidan.
I enjoy Ebay as a buyer with just about any affordible coin available, but to a seller they are expensive. What eats me up is that they convinced the world that it is not safe to pay other than by Paypal, which they own. So as a seller you have to pay: $.35 to start the auction, $.50 for a preview picture, then around 3% of the closing price then comes Paypal and their fees. I loved it in 1998 when it cost $0.15 to run the auction and then 2.5%. Paypal???? Send me a money order or check. Speaking of Paypal. Ebays money machine Paypal is protected since Ebay prohibits the vast majority of online payments such as gpay by google. On a few common Morgan Silver Dollars it just isn't worth listing. When I sell coins on Ebay I generally dont accept Paypal. I haven't noticed a difference. As a buyer I made a claim about a defective item received and after waiting 40 days I was denied. So much for buyer protection. There will be a day when Google jumps into the arena and marketshares shift.
One thing that I have noticed in the past is that some other online auction sites are not easy to navigate. Because most have gotten used to ebay over the years, there is a level of familiarity with navigating through the ebay website.
Aberlight, have you noticed a difference in activity and final sale price when not taking Paypal? There are many in other forums I frequent who won't even look at an auction unless Paypal is accepted, so I'm wondering what your experience has been.
Ebay (and it's co, paypal) is getting disgusting overtime. First you have insertion fees, next is final listing fees and if you accept paypal, add another 4% and you CANNOT mention telling buyers to add that extra 4% or ebay will threaten to close your account. Right. Ebay definately bought paypal for a good reason - double surcharge. And to top it up, ebay has explictly mention that you cannot accept any other payments, i.e. google (another obvious reason that it wants to keep other competitors away) Who knows when they are going to raise their fees again. Easy to increase fees but rarely do fees decrease. Like it or not, I only buy on ebay simply because of the wide diversity of items that I am looking for. Why should I look at stuffs at a struggling site with limited sellers or on the other hand, why should I sell items to a limited market.
I have always received what I thought I would, but then again when I sell something it is usually unique such as MS63 Barber Half of other high grade coins with natural toning. People dont seem to mind sending a check and the bid reflects an item that you cant really wait until something else comes along. If I were selling GW Dollars it may be a little different, but $3.00 shipping like others charge would cover the fees. Paypal and Ebay combined is a racket. The next best thing is Yahoo auctions, but it is not user friendly and the quantity of items doesn't compare to Ebay so we are stuck. I have been wondering about something and it may worth a new thread because I am really curious and want peoples view on this. A few years ago around 1999-2002 or so it seems that the quantity of quality items such as MS 62-64 Barber coinage, Standing Liberties, and Seated Liberties were much more plentifull. If I missed an anticipated auction there was another right behind it as well as others that were so-so. Now it seems that the same quality is few and far between. I may see one coin every three weeks that fits my desire whereas 5 years ago I had more to choose from. Has anyone else noticed this? I do have a master advanced search that weeds out sellers that I dont want to see offerings from which speeds up my search time: tuesdaynightcoins,klondike95,ernie,greatsoutherncoins, heritagegalleriesandauctioneers,heritageauctiongalleries, anaconda.rare.coins,superior,scardinal,i-lgoldbergcoinsandcollectibles
