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I just found this: https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/ebay-classifieds
I haven’t tried it to see if it works in the US. This page says there’s a flat $9.95 insertion fee. Guess I’d just use Craigslist for free.
“Marketplace” is us, yes. Elliot has a big stake and wants eBay to sell off StubHub and Classifieds to increase eBay’s value, sort of like when Carl Icahn wanted eBay to sell off Paypal, which it eventually did. This big investors like it when a company concentrates on its core business.
Classifieds is this weird (for eBay) hybrid they started on Gumtree in the UK, Australia, and South Africa, Kleinanzeigen in Germany, and Kijiji in Canada. I think it is available in select categories in the US, but I have not been able to find out how to do it. Seller creates a listing with price, buyer contacts seller, and transaction is finalized off eBay. See https://www.ebayinc.com/stories/news/integrating-ebay-inventory-on-classified-sites-for-consumers-globally/
I think one of these investors someday will want eBay to shed our used junk categories because it doesn’t make as much money for the corporation as the new stuff from China. That could be a good thing if someone who likes junk kept it going. Just think: no more catalog pages, UPC requirements, etc.; all that crap that makes selling used stuff harder.
I find that the Review Your Selling Costs display on my Seller Hub is inaccurate, overstating the percentage of selling costs to sales. If I manually add up my total gross (including what I received for shipping) for the stated period and divide the stated total selling costs into it (which includes what I paid for shipping labels), I get a lower percentage than what eBay says.
Looonnngg tail….. I love books, can’t resist free boxes of them, love to spend hours in used book stores, and have dabbled in selling them over the years. In one of our moves we had 100 boxes of books. The military moves you for free, if you meet the weight limit. Otherwise it’s about a $1/pound if you go over. That was a painful check to write.
Great advice here to you Liz from all above. One more tip: If the book weighs in at less than a pound, ship by first class package, or if it’s an expensive book and it will fit, encase it in cardboard and use a priority flat rate padded envelope. I think the faster delivery will give those listings an edge.
You need a scale! You can always get stamps.com scales for sale, cheap, on ebay and they work great. Since you’re selling books you’ll want the one that measures up to 25 lbs.
Tiki: The most desirable unit histories are the ones with all the photos and unit rosters so that militaria collectors can research names and families can find grandpas and other relatives for genealogy research but even those are long tail unless they’re $20 and they’ll go a reseller. So your Colbaugh book I don’t think will get the big bucks. That said, it’s not a common book and the 28th had a great history. Worthpoint shows a single sale in 2013 for $75. I usually put my military books in Militaria but I think those interested search Books as well. If I had it I would put it up BIN for under $100 OBO and add key words to the description such as Omar Bradley, Edward Slovik, Pennsylvania National Guard, Siegfried Line, Operation Cobra, Hurtgen Forest, Ardennes Offensive, Colmar Pocket, etc.
I think an auction would be a waste. You’ll have to wait for the right buyer but they are out there. I think you’ll at least get your money back.
I regularly use it and find it quite valuable as well, and only take any one particular sold price as single data point. Like Mike, I find that pricing is only one aspect of what the longer sale history of an item can tell you. Sometimes there’s little there but other times there is significant valuable intel in having more sold items to review other than just the price.
Additional information that would make Worthpoint more valuable to me would be whether an item was BIN or auction (though sometimes the sold price will suggest it was auction if it ends in an odd cents number) and whether the seller sold worldwide. Both of those things can significantly affect the final sold price, depending on the category.
I have the $19.99/mth version.
Thanks for posting about your experience. I always wondered whether eBay would take an eBay seller’s VeRO complaint as seriously as they do the manufacturer/retailer complaints. EBay may not give you any outcome information, but you can do a search of the offending seller’s listings and see if there are no listings (suggesting a suspension) or whether it says “no longer a registered user” which means they got the boot.
Marie, looking over your listings I don’t see any glaring issues. If anything, I think you could work on improving your photos, in general. I noticed that for many of your items, the main listing photo only depicts a part of the item. As a buyer I prefer to see the entire item framed in the main photo so I don’t have to stop and examine further if I’m scrolling through search results. Especially when you’re using numerous key words in your title (generally a good thing, I think) making it sometimes a bit unclear as to what exactly it is you are selling. Sometimes some of your other photos are out of focus and sometimes you don’t have a photo of the entire item at all in the listing. Sometimes you don’t really have good photos of all angles and parts of the item which is important for picky collector buyers. There is a Photography forum here with lots of good advice if you’re interested but thinking about the composition of the photos to best show the overall item and then all detail is the main thing.
But I would also offer that a store like yours (and mine, for that matter) with miscellaneous antiques, collectibles, clothing and accessories all on BIN with aggressive pricing (aka the “Ryanne & Jay Patented Long Tail Store” format, LOL) will definitely have slow periods, and the smaller the store, a slow period can mean no sales at all for days. I was very slow before Christmas and picked up afterwards. It happens and is random. I see you’re putting things on sale but you could also add Best Offer to your listings to generate some interest, or pick out a few of your items that have many watchers and views and send them to auction with a low starting price to get you over the hump. And keep on listing, taking the opportunity to grow the inventory. Hang in there!
My theory is that those resellers with the stories are old-school antique dealers and pickers. The sob story was a common negotiating tactic when sourcing in person in the days before eBay. That they’re not quite sophisticated enough on the platform to realize that their use of the same account to buy and sell is transparent to others is another clue that they’re of my vintage or older.
I use a different account to buy on eBay but as a frequent sniper of often relatively unique items I don’t relist them right away to try and avoid any drama from the previous seller.
I have never tried to sell used software but my greatest concern is eBay’s VeRO program that prohibits selling “opened software subject to licensing agreements”. Commercial and home use software that is sold is usually sold with a license, meaning the purchaser only rents it and has no right to transfer it. The buyer agrees to be bound to the license by opening the package (read the fine print on the sticker that you have to tear to get to the disk) and once that occurs, the software cannot be further transferred. Jay recently reported that he and Ryanne had several software listings that were taken down under the eBay VeRO program.
It appears that high volume sellers can usually withstand a couple of those without being shut down but since eBay will never say how many is too many (and some types of violations they appear to be more worried about than others) to get you suspended or worse, I’m not willing to take the chance.
Awesome sale, Boozy! I know Jay and Ryanne don’t care for auctions but this was perfect auction bait with the widespread and competitive interest in these items.
I don’t know what it is but you Brits crack me up. Your translation to “mold” is appreciated.
Nadgers? Somebody’s been watching the Goon Show…
There are a couple things that are infuriating about VeRO. First, not all the companies that aggressively enforce their intellectual property are listed on the eBay VeRO page. The companies that own the Build Bonanza, Ringer, Elf on the Shelf, Suburu, and Lokai trademarks, to name a few that have come up, are nowhere to be found. And the companies that are there are listed by the name of the company, not their trademark. For example Gerber Childrenswear is there but you have click the link to their pdf to see it is for Onesies. So how would you know? It would be most helpful if Ebay created a searchable list of the trademarks for which they have received notices rather than playing Whack-a-Mole with sellers. It just creates hate and discontent with uneven enforcement and no prior notice of what they’re doing is wrong.
Second, even eBay admits that you can state the brand name of a brand-name product that you are selling and include photos of the item and you can’t suggest or say that you’re an authorized dealer if you’re not. It’s called fair use. And yes there are some caveats but if I legitimately obtain a physical item free and clear, the manufacturer has no legal basis to prevent me from reselling it. On eBay or anywhere else. These companies that are out to eliminate the secondary market in their merchandise need to be slapped.
I think you’ve done the right thing by contacting the company. I would keep bugging them if you’re absolutely sure the items are authentic and your listing didn’t imply that you were an authorized retailer for the line. (When in doubt I have listed even new with tags items as used and included a trademark disclaimer.) There are forum members here who have been successful in getting a company to back off by pursuing the issue when they were sure of authenticity and they were then able to relist the items. You don’t want to rack up multiple violations in a short period so if you sell current consumer items that are risky it might be worth it to try and get this one cleansed off your record.
Yup. Old school brick and mortar auction houses are totally caveat emptor situations. The ones online have all kinds of warnings that bidders should come to view the items in person and I guess they feel that lets them off the hook for their shyster ways. I have been lucky with them and made money on the occasional purchases I have made despite no in-person viewing but I assume the worst and won’t bid any more than lunch money on things that will be profitable even if damaged. I don’t win many bids so I try not to waste too much time with them.
My bad buy of 2018 so far (it’s not over yet… still time to screw up again) has been a vintage underwater video camera housing I found at an indy thrift for $30 that was pricing out in the hundreds for eBay sold listings. Until I got it home and realized that they made many models that were precisely set up for different cameras and without knowing which video camera it was made for (not even a model number to be found on the housing) it’s a $20 item at best. The manufacturer’s website even has a notice not to bother contacting them about identification of older models because they can’t help.
You mean this one?
https://imgur.com/sm3U5j5
It was a beret badge for 5 Commando, the mercenaries.Interesting route back to the UK for the one you had. There are period photos of Mike Hoare wearing it, and one of his famous officers, Muller. There were about 300 total soldiers though how many of these badges were really made at the time is unknown as period photos show a variety of uniforms and badges among the mercenaries. I understand he had copies of his patches and badges made up and sold at least in the US after the war to pay for his legal costs when he went to trial. Probably advertised in Soldier of Fortune magazine.
