My Catawiki experiment

I didn’t know where to put this so sorry if its in the wrong spot.  I’m a micro seller, 99% ebay and the rest is Amazon and private specialty email lists.  Nearly always books and ephemera but sometimes trinkets and decor.  I’m always looking for new platforms and I thought I would give Catawiki a try.  I’ve been hearing about it as the ‘European Ebay’ catering to collectors and when I saw a big expensive two page add in Fine Books and Collections magazine I asked around in the bookseller forums I frequent and was told that is it legit. So I made an account and picked out a pretty little item with lots of visual appeal that I wouldn’t be too sad to lose out on if the auction went badly.

Here’s a spoiler, it didn’t go well.  Catawiki is a little weird.  They have specific categories with a paid ‘curator’ for each one.  You pick you category and write up your listing according to their format.  The item needs to be worth at least 100 euros.  You take the best pictures possible and submit the whole thing.  Then it sits while a ‘curator’ decided if it is good enough to go online and they push it through to the platform.  There is no ‘buy it now’, it’s all auction style and they all start at 1 euro with the bid going up in gradually larger increments.  You have to estimate your own shipping by world region and you do get some say in where you will ship.

My item was a little 1875 velvet covered Lutheran prayer book with a brass clasp, an engraved silver shield on the front and beautiful floral endpapers in the original box.  They approved it overnight and it went up in the Religious Items category.  It sat 10 days crawling up in tiny increments and despite what looked like some interest, the winning bid was 20 euros.  That was a bummer.  I could have easily gotten $75 on ebay.

When you sell something on Catawiki you ship it and when the buyer gets it, they approve the receipt and then you get paid.  So I shipped to the buyer in Greece on 12/14 and its been sitting in the Los Angeles international distribution center since 12/22.  Today the support center at catawiki sent me a message.  The buyer has not received his package and they are opening a claim. No kidding.  Also, through Catawiki the buyer has sent me a message.  It’s literally all in Greek but I suppose it says something like ‘where the hell is my 1875 velvet covered Lutheran prayer book with a brass clasp’.  So that’s fun.

To sum up.  I think Catawiki is best used by europeans in Europe.  If anyone on here has tried it with better results I would love to know. I’m trying to think where I went wrong.  The object was highly decorative and although written in German was of American imprint. My pictures were pretty good. I have no record of sales on this platform so maybe you need to build that up and gain a following.  There are very few American sellers on there as far as I can tell.  Plus the added ongoing shipping disaster was not a help.  Thoughts?

BookHawk