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E bay truth

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    Copper Head started this thread.
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    E bay truth

    I'd like to pose a question ?
    So far I have sold items on e-bay
    I have tried to sell items below cost with my reward being I lost Money
    & also I sold items at current value that is really not so great when you get all the fee's tabulated against your Pay Pal,The bottom line I never get the good BID wars for my stuff . Does any one think that MANY of the bid wars on Ebay are with the help of Shills (A shill, also called a plant or a stooge, is a person who publicly helps a person or organization without disclosing that he has a close relationship ) I feel if I put a silver round on EBay for a start bid of $1 - -
    I would lose compared to all the others that boldly put items out @ $1 start . I know I put 4 lbs copper on for $1.50 ( extra for shipping ) and sold it for $1.50 Big deal I am not a fool I feel some thing is up and it has a the look of a Shill.



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    I never use ebay. Once i figure out my time/gas/hassel im not even making minimum wage. i have a auction house that i take stuff to, other than that- Scrap it.

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    When I put stuff on ebay its for whats its worth to me plus 15 percent. Thats my starting bid. Then I also charge shipping plus 15 percent. That way if it sells it get what I wanted for it and the 15% markup covers all the fees.

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    Ebay is full of a host of scams, Ebay itself being the biggest one of all, but bidding wars are not necessarily initiated using shill bidders. There are countless factors involved with a successful listing, factors such as timing. Just one minor example of things you need to consider, as this is not intended to be an ebay manual. I've seen countless listings placed at 3 am, which will(needless to say) bring it to a close at 3am. 3AM is not a good time to expect to see a long line of bidders sparring over your item. The list of contributing factors, is almost endless.

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    The bottom line I never get the good BID wars for my stuff . Does any one think that MANY of the bid wars on Ebay are with the help of Shills
    I wouldn't doubt it, however, it has to do with demand. People can create hype and send their cronies out to jack up the bids, however, if nobody is looking for the item that they listed, or they aren't interested in paying over a certain price, there will be no bidding wars amongst serious buyers. If you have something worth bidding on, and it's something that is in high demand, you will see the bidding wars happen.

    One strategy that I use is to play "dumb" when I list something that's in high demand. While other people boast about the item being "very rare" or being an "awesome deal" or they say "hurry don't miss out" I will simply say, "I have this item for sale. I don't know what it is or what it does... blah-blah-blah...." and then the wars begin because everyone that sees it thinks that they are getting over on me until they realize that 10 other people have the same idea and then nobody wants to be "one-upped" by the other guy. By the end of the auction I end up walking away with 15% to 20% of what I expected.

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    Timing can be everything as said above. I try to end all of my auctions on Sunday mid to late afternoon or early evening. I have found that there are a lot more people poking around at that time.

    E-bay is NOT the evil entity that some will have you believe. There is no other way to get your item in front of soooooo many eyes and the fees are far less than you will ever pay at a local auction house.

    With that said. Why would you want to sell copper on E-bay. Take that to the yard. Shipping will kill that deal any day of the week.
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    Copper Head started this thread.
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    Since I did build a good rep on ebay - I wont let it go to waste 15% markup on item's and shipping sounds like a good foundation to start.

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    Quote Originally Posted by parrothead View Post
    Timing can be everything as said above. I try to end all of my auctions on Sunday mid to late afternoon or early evening. I have found that there are a lot more people poking around at that time.

    E-bay is NOT the evil entity that some will have you believe. There is no other way to get your item in front of soooooo many eyes and the fees are far less than you will ever pay at a local auction house.

    With that said. Why would you want to sell copper on E-bay. Take that to the yard. Shipping will kill that deal any day of the week.
    Parrot that depends on where you live. Scrap master J sends me large flat rate boxes of copper from alaska and I take them to the yard for him and paypal him the money. I take $10 a box for my time and trouble and he makes double what the yard will pay him for it. I have done this with brass for him as well. If his yard is only paying $1.50 a pound because hes way up north and no other yard around he can definitly make more selling it on ebay. I think my mail lady is starting to hate me. Shes is all of 125 pounds and when some of these boxes come in she back her truck up to my door so she can just flop the boxes out of the back

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    Quote Originally Posted by Copper Head View Post
    Since I did build a good rep on ebay - I wont let it go to waste 15% markup on item's and shipping sounds like a good foundation to start.
    I also always do a buy it now for around 10 to 20 percent more of my starting bid. Ide rather sell it now for a good profit than wait for a bidding war. Im all about averages. Ill give you an example. I buy an 80gb sata hard drive for $2.50 We all like to at least double our money so thats what I try to do. Ill list it for starting bid of $8 and a buy it now for $10. If it sells for $10 i have $2.50 invested into the drive. ebay and paypal fees will be about $1.50 shipping materials another $.50. So i now have $4.50 invested int he drive and I made $5.50. now if it only sold for 8 I would make about $3.50 profit. Average the 2 out over a single bid winner and a buy it now winner who didnt want to wait for the auction to end and I made $4.50 Doubled my money.

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    Quote Originally Posted by PartTimeScrapper View Post
    Parrot that depends on where you live. Scrap master J sends me large flat rate boxes of copper from alaska and I take them to the yard for him and paypal him the money. I take $10 a box for my time and trouble and he makes double what the yard will pay him for it. I have done this with brass for him as well. If his yard is only paying $1.50 a pound because hes way up north and no other yard around he can definitly make more selling it on ebay. I think my mail lady is starting to hate me. Shes is all of 125 pounds and when some of these boxes come in she back her truck up to my door so she can just flop the boxes out of the back
    Hope you gave her a nice Christmas gift!
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    You can do auction style 2 ways.

    1. Start low and hope for bids. Most likely you item will sell but is a risk. Could only get a few bids or many.

    2. Start at the minimum you would be willing to take. May only get one bid but it would be at the price you would be ok with.

    Always figure shipping and all the fees first.

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    Quote Originally Posted by parrothead View Post
    Timing can be everything as said above. I try to end all of my auctions on Sunday mid to late afternoon or early evening. I have found that there are a lot more people poking around at that time.

    E-bay is NOT the evil entity that some will have you believe. There is no other way to get your item in front of soooooo many eyes and the fees are far less than you will ever pay at a local auction house.
    Um, eBay not the evil entity people say it is? Yes, it is. Strongly disagree with you here.

    And my local auction house charges me 25%. This place is an hour drive from me, so I only go when I have a truckload.
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    Quote Originally Posted by parrothead View Post
    E-bay is NOT the evil entity that some will have you believe.
    That could certainly be debated Parrot ; ) There are precious few organizations one can google search, adding only their name and any one of a number of choice cuss words, and find not only a post or two containing these keywords, but whole websites named using them, and not only websites named using them, but websites named using them which are filled with posts containing them. I for one, do not believe all those websites and the posts they contain to be totally without merit

    But, as you also said, Ebay has the traffic, 75% of which are buyers, and too many of those are also there to scam, and are in many ways protected and even encouraged by Ebay policies. It's a lot like walking down the street in a mixed neighborhood of good folks and bad, as long as you stay completely alert and keep your guard up, you stand a chance of getting through it unscathed, because the ones looking to scam are actively searching for the weak, the unprotected, the vulnerable, the unaware, the ones they can easily take
    Last edited by Bear; 01-06-2013 at 11:32 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bear View Post
    That could certainly be debated Parrot ; ) There are precious few organizations one can google search, adding only their name and any one of a number of choice cuss words, and find not only a post or two containing these keywords, but whole websites named using them, and not only websites named using them, but websites named using them which are filled with posts containing them. I for one, do not believe all those websites and the posts they contain to be totally without merit

    But, as you also said, Ebay has the traffic, 75% of which are buyers, and too many of those are also there to scam, and are in many ways protected and even encouraged by Ebay policies. It's a lot like walking down the street in a mixed neighborhood of good folks and bad, as long as you stay completely alert and keep your guard up, you stand a chance of getting through it unscathed, because the ones looking to scam are actively watching for the weak, the unprotected, the vulnerable few whom they can easily take
    I wish I could give MULTIPLE thanks for this post Bear! It is way too hard to do anything with eBay. I even get screwed on small items, I certainly am not going to throw away an expensive item on eBay. The predators lie in wait for the expensive items.

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    Here is my take on Ebay. They are a necessary evil for most people, like parrot said you get to put your otherwise useless junk in front of millions of potential buyers. With a higher rate of sucsess in selling your merchandise for a fair price and actually getting paid for it(anybody ever use yahoo auctions? hows that workin out?). I rarely use auction style bidding only if i have an item that many people are looking for. other than that set the price at the min you'll take and go from there. I do think EBAY is a greedy corporation but I have trouble finding any Corp. that isn't.

    As for Jg at least you didn't pay for that junk. I don't see why they are stressing you about that. they could just fill out a non-payment claim and get their fees back.

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    gustavus is offline Metal Recycling Entrepreneur
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    Pat found a really nice McLaughlin sleigh tag on a rotten piece of wood laying in the woods, which obviously had been part of a sleigh at one time. She hung onto it for a year then one evening she wondered what it would sell for on ebay. So she listed it without wanting to sell the tag with a $250.00 reserve.

    Within hours of the auction being posted some guy comes along and bids this thing up $5.00 a pop until he reaches the reserve the tag sat there at this price until the end when another guy snipped the tag.

    You just never know with an auction how its going to end., but then I've been selling since June of 98 and have plenty of weird and interesting ebay endings - stories.

    Here;s a similar tag to the McLaughlin.

    Last edited by gustavus; 01-06-2013 at 01:57 PM.

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    Personally, I find eBay to be a great outlet for the odd and unusual (like the item Gus showed). I think old, rare, unusual, discontinued and other hard to find items are best sold on eBay. I have not had much luck with items that are fairly common and in high demand, but if you can make a living out of selling those things more power to you. It would come down to volume and percentages, as PTS described. Ebay has its problems, but compared to other options it isnt so bad. I wish all my transactions on ebay and elsewhere were as easy as going to the scrap yard (bring in a pound of copper and walk out with cash), but that isnt reality. Good luck to you with it.

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    One thing I see is if the starting bid was $500 and he bid $900 the bid at that time is only $500. If someone else bids #1000 then retracts the bid does his bid return to $500 as if no one else bids???? I myself would have a big problem with this if that is the way it works.
    Chris

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    Quote Originally Posted by Immulmen View Post
    One thing I see is if the starting bid was $500 and he bid $900 the bid at that time is only $500. If someone else bids #1000 then retracts the bid does his bid return to $500 as if no one else bids???? I myself would have a big problem with this if that is the way it works.
    Chris
    There has to be another bid to challenge a bid. If the starting price is $500, bidder #1 bids $900, bidder #2 bids $1000, then bidder #2 backs out, the price reverts to $500 at which buyer #1 would win it at. Because there was no bid on the table to challenge the $900 bid. that is exactly how it works on ebay auctions

    The seller gets screwed, because of bid retractions. I was bidder #1 in this case and backed out of the sale accordingly, its only fair. Then the seller came back complaining because i did not pay the starting bid price. Which is a dead giveaway he knew that the item was worth less than the starting bid price and was an intentional scam.
    Last edited by jghilino; 01-06-2013 at 02:48 PM.
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    there are things I may make mistakes on here and there but it lets me learn how to work things out better and better prices. I try for quick sales on most things so I look for completed listings on there and other lower prices on websites like newegg and put on only what I am will to sell it for at a price that I can live with when it sells for it plus time and patience is key to. I list many things and mostly for 3 days unless I have a larger quantity then I list for longer and buy it now. the fees I look at as overhead costs and calculate it in for anything I may buy just like gas for what I may find and sell. there can be a lot of bad things to say about ebay but its reach is farther than the contacts I have. there are times when ebay may not be good for me and a trick I learned with clist is that if I have something that may not be in demand here look for were it is and post to those places. it can be tricky with trust sending me money but talking on the phone and tracking and so forth is a great way to help with that and sell stuff with no fees that way. just my thoughts...


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