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I have postcard that I just started auction today. I left in the Make offer option in it. Starting price $75. I get an offer for $85 two hours in. I think about it for a an hour. I could except the offer and make $10 over or let it ride and risk selling it at $75. So I raised the starting amount to $85. The buyer could then bid on it at his offer price. An hour later, he comes back at $125, so I raised the starting bid to $125.
Is this uncool?
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I started seeing the Make Offer feature on my auctions a few months ago. It is something that can be turned off. I tend to keep it to get a better gage of how I setting prices on very unique items. Most offers are below the asked starting bid price. Only one other time have I had were someone offered me above the starting bid and I did the same thing. Ended up that postcard sold for 4x what the offer was.
I see as like reverse best offer. If someone sends you a best offer, you change the price of the item. You tell the person who made the offer the price has been lowered to what they asked but they better buy before someone else does. This is a way to reduce the unpaid cases.
The risk is annoying the buyer, but I also want to maximize sales. -
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If I were the buyer, I would conclude that you probably aren’t going to accept ANY offer, and that it makes no sense for me to make offers that you are then going to turn into opening bid amounts. So, at this point, I’d probably just sit back and wait to bid at the end of the auction. What you are doing is effectively creating a situation where the buyer is bidding against himself. As a buyer I wouldn’t be happy about that. But if I really wanted the item, it wouldn’t prevent me from bidding at the end of the auction.
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Right, so instead of offering, they should just bid. Now with the 2nd offer I did reply with a sizable counter that if I got would be great.
Taking the money offered is okay, but then you are left to wonder what you could really have gotten. One of a kind real photo post card RPPC so it’s not like that I am going to find one again. If the current buyer does not buy, there will be another. This is a long tail item that can sit in a shoe box with 500 other cards. -
Sounds like you didn’t do the research, and are faulting the buyer for utilizing a feature of Ebay it is well within his reason to use. As a fellow postcard seller, I really hope you didn’t turn this guy off of buying postcards on Ebay!
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Question:
–I run an auction with the “make offer” feature turned on,
–The potential buyer can make me an offer to Buy It Now.
–Can I then counter that offer at a higher price? Or do I just accept or deny the offer?Basically we’re having an outside sale while the auction is running.
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All due respect, I did my research and based it on past eBay sales. RPPC baseball player from 1900s, so could be $35 or could be $800. It one of a kind, but we all know that it does not mean high dollar.
Not my fault that the seller just does not bid and let it ride.-
Some of those RPPC postcards can sell for quite a bit. Especially if there’s a collector who is hungry for the rare image of a certain area or person.
Why not list the postcard as for a high price with “Buy It Now” + “Make Offer”?
So start at $800, and see waht offers come in.
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I can do either way. I start a postcard at price around what my research suggests. RPPC can be tricky because you might have something that is similar to other RPPCs but may have some that really makes it stand out. For example, I had one with people posing around an old car. I thought that the car would be the draw. Nope; it was a lady in the picture who was mentioned on the back of the card. Turns out the lady was the great grandmother of winning bidder.
After an auction, I raise the price of the cards 25-30% and put best offer.I could put a card up for $800 and best offer, but why not start an auction at $800 then see if it might get bid up?
The card in question did not have anything written on the back. The brand of the postcard maker gave me an approximate date of when it was taken. Nothing on the front gives good indication of the location of the photo. So I list the card at similar cards sell for and hope it strikes someone’s fancy.
I have just put a high price on cards because it’s age and not finding anything out about it. I take a best offer for around what I want; sometimes it’s for it will do and get it out of my inventory.
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Makes sense. With postcards and photos, sometimes there’s only one person on the planet earth who might find it valuable because of family connection. So often I find that an auction on those cards isn’t helpful because its only one person bidding. It’s tough to know if $75 of too low, or better to take the money and run.
But it sounds like you specialize in postcards so may have more experience.
Your original question about whether it’s wise to keep changing the bid price based on a potential buyer’s offers seems like a recipe for frustration.
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