dead out there?

[The Less Blob]

wow, not one bid on any of my auctions (ran about 10), started everything at 25-35% of OPG...what kills me more than no bids are the page views. i dunno how accurate they are, but one would hope that more than 13 people (which included me!) would look at a JLA 22 (I'm not saying bid, it was a reader copy, maybe people didn't want it....but you have to look to make that decision. TOS 73, Avengers 14, Hulk 105, Adventure 431...bids are one thing, but i would have hoped these would get more than the 10-13 views ebay said they got. these were 7 day auctions!

[dupont2005]

My last eBay auction went alright. Got $46 for something I was hoping to get $50 for so can't complain. I still don't like listing on there too much though.

[Shark]

I'm actually a bit enthused with some of the current comic auctions I currently have on eBay. For the longest time I thought "Just dump stuff in my eBay store, list comics at 65%-75% of guide with the best offer option and see what happens." Well, most of the time they would just sit in the store and I would get the occasional BIN or an offer. So, this past weekend, I decided to convert a lot of store stock to auction format with a starting price of 99 cents with no reserve and I've already got a bunch of bids.

 

The way I see it is:

 

a) I could use the money (now strictly on unemployment)

b) I unload a bunch of duplicate issues

c) I have less comics to haul to Oklahoma later this year

d) It gives some of my higher priced store stock some needed visibility

 

(thumbs u

 

[TSwift25]

Consumer studies do show that a no reserve low starting bid auction will always realize the highest possible return for the item. (thumbs u

[dupont2005]

Consumer studies do show that a no reserve low starting bid auction will always realize the highest possible return for the item. (thumbs u

I have done best with 99 cent auctions. If I'm feeling confident I'll throw in free shippping and :wishluck:for the best.

[slym2none]

My auctions don't get bids either. I have three of the same thing I have been listing for months (I don't even post here about them, if no one bought them before, I doubt anyone wants to buy them now.) At least my "views" were better, though...

 

 

 

 

-slym

[Boozad]

My latest batch of slabs that I listed at 99p starting open auctions finished at 50% of GPA at best. One book only finished at a quarter of the price I bought it for raw. My eBay auctions have been taking a hammering for a while, but last week was enough for me so I've listed some BINs to see how they do.

 

Maybe being in the UK makes a big difference, but I never used to get reamed this much.

[Shark]

My latest batch of slabs that I listed at 99p starting open auctions finished at 50% of GPA at best. One book only finished at a quarter of the price I bought it for raw. My eBay auctions have been taking a hammering for a while, but last week was enough for me so I've listed some BINs to see how they do.

 

Maybe being in the UK makes a big difference, but I never used to get reamed this much.

 

Yeah, I have the same attitude towards slabs. I'm afraid to list them at 99 cents with no reserve because of what happened to you. One time last year, I listed a bunch of slabs that way and only realized about 1/3 of GPA for many of them. Part of the problem was that I listed them for only 3 days (was told I got burned because of this).

 

I have no problem listing raw stuff that usually sells for under $10.00 at a 99 cent starting price with no reserve. Right now I'm just in the mood to get rid of a lot of my raw duplicates....just want to unload them. But I want to at least get my investment back out of slabs. I'd rather keep them than just give them away.

[Wally's Comics]

Consumer studies do show that a no reserve low starting bid auction will always realize the highest possible return for the item. (thumbs u

 

I wonder what would be the percentage of losing in a 99 NR auction...

 

One thing is for sure you better have everything spelled right and listing being air tight...

because it would be hard to see a $100 plus item go for a small percentage of that.

 

 

 

 

 

[Norrin_Radd]

eBay can be a dead zone for non-high demand comics. I've had some 99 cent auctions that had one or no bids.

[ashrael]

As a frequent eBay buyer, the biggest thing that keeps me from bidding on single issues is shipping costs and not listing discounted shipping costs for additional items. I don't want to pay $1 for a comic and then pay $5 to ship it. Now if I can pay $10 for 10 comics and only pay $5 for shipping, then you got yourself a deal!

[FlyingDonut]

It is definitely dead. Everybody should just stay off eBay to sell comics now. I will take the bullet and stay out there for all of us, just to keep the flag planted. How I suffer.

[FlyingDonut]

wow, not one bid on any of my auctions (ran about 10), started everything at 25-35% of OPG...what kills me more than no bids are the page views. i dunno how accurate they are, but one would hope that more than 13 people (which included me!) would look at a JLA 22 (I'm not saying bid, it was a reader copy, maybe people didn't want it....but you have to look to make that decision. TOS 73, Avengers 14, Hulk 105, Adventure 431...bids are one thing, but i would have hoped these would get more than the 10-13 views ebay said they got. these were 7 day auctions!

 

Link?

[Dick Pontoon]

Blob's recent auctions.

 

My guess as to the lack of sales is that most of these books are very common in these grades, and often fetch a tad less on ebay than your starting bids. There's about 4 dozen JLA 22s currently listed. This last batch, with some exceptions, was sort of a mish mash of books, which can also tie in to shipping costs. As was mentioned, some people don't like paying for shipping for 1 inexpensive book. Maybe someone would have grabbed that Hulk if you had other Hulks for sale, too?

[Scrooge]

It is definitely dead. Everybody should just stay off eBay to sell comics now. I will take the bullet and stay out there for all of us, just to keep the flag planted. How I suffer.

 

That Jungle 6 of yours is still painful to ME. Had I known how it'd go, I'd thrown a low bid on it and won

 

Sorry Dan

[G.A.tor]

I had a great week on ebay...sold 5 figures of books (only 5 of them)

[RockMyAmadeus]

I'm done, for the most part, with listing books for 99 cents and then giving them away for 10-20% of OPG. Just not interested, because, of course, I paid more than that for them, and I do this to fuel my collection, not pay my bills.

 

So, fixed price works for me. I'd rather list for 75-100% of Guide, and get a 50% offer, than give stuff away. If it doesn't sell, it doesn't sell.

 

That said, there are a few problems with your auctions as they stand, Blob...if I may:

 

1. You've listed a book like Blackhawk #139 in Good for $7, with OPG at $11. This is a $1-$2 book at best. Nobody wants it.

 

2. Amazing Spiderman #326 in VF is a quarter book, but you're asking $3 for it shipped. That's not unreasonable in the grand scheme of things, but the listing fee (if you paid one) cost you more than the book is worth.

 

3. Several of your listings have no/bad pics.

 

4. There's too much text to read. People just don't want to read all of it, and will pass, unless it's a screaming deal. I know you need to have all that info in there, but it could be formatted better, with alternating bold, color highlights, etc.

 

5. Your auction listings are haphazard. I know this may not seem like a big deal, but having them listed in alphabetical order makes a big difference.

 

6. Your pics/scans are of lower quality. You should scan the books at at least life size, and outside of the bag, so buyers can see the flaws for themselves.

 

7. You have a special that is "good through 2006" on your Spidey #326 auction. That tells me as a buyer that you may not be as concerned with the details, which may reflect on your grading.

 

Those are just my observations as a buyer of 12 years on eBay. I know you've been doing this a long time, too, but this is what I see as a prospective buyer, and whcih would make me say "meh" when looking at them.

 

 

[The Less Blob]

Blob's recent auctions.

 

My guess as to the lack of sales is that most of these books are very common in these grades, and often fetch a tad less on ebay than your starting bids. There's about 4 dozen JLA 22s currently listed. This last batch, with some exceptions, was sort of a mish mash of books, which can also tie in to shipping costs. As was mentioned, some people don't like paying for shipping for 1 inexpensive book. Maybe someone would have grabbed that Hulk if you had other Hulks for sale, too?

 

I was less irritated about the lack of bids (though some of these had watchers, so I fugred i'd get a snipe or two) than seemingly nobody even looking at the auctions (according to the page views)! For all anyone knew these were all superb high grade books with starting bids of 1/20th guide. I understand too that somewhere along the line the photobucket account with the large pics died (it was one i had not uploaded to for a long time) so some of these auctions only had the small uploaded ebay pic.

[The Less Blob]

I'm done, for the most part, with listing books for 99 cents and then giving them away for 10-20% of OPG. Just not interested, because, of course, I paid more than that for them, and I do this to fuel my collection, not pay my bills.

 

I agree. I'm not in dire financial straights. I'd just like to generate a few extra bucks a month.

 

So, fixed price works for me. I'd rather list for 75-100% of Guide, and get a 50% offer, than give stuff away. If it doesn't sell, it doesn't sell.

 

That's pretty much my philosophy.

 

That said, there are a few problems with your auctions as they stand, Blob...if I may:

 

My post was really more about "gee, nobody even looked at these auctions", not so much about nobody bidding. I knew my starting bids were not sure fire sales, if I re-list them all I might get a couple of hits. First, what you are looking at are my store items, not my auctions. Currently, 3 cents a month (but due to change). I don't expect a high turnover rate out of my store. I park stuff there, occasionally list some as auctions, send them back to the store if they don't sell, etc. Everything more than a few bucks has a best offer option as well. I wasn't complaining about my store sales. Actually, I'm amazed at how much I do sell out of my store given how little attention I've paid to it in terms of updating listings and keeping any inventory in it over the last few years compared to like 2005/2006 when I usually had 500-600 items in it and sold a few hundred $ in books a month. and yes, everything was pretty much priced the same way back then when i was making those sales... generally 60-75% of guide with flexibility via the best offer route

 

1. You've listed a book like Blackhawk #139 in Good for $7, with OPG at $11. This is a $1-$2 book at best. Nobody wants it.

 

Actually, this is one of the last of a bunch of similar Blackhawks that I sold in my ebay store to various buyers via best offers of like $2-$3 less than my store price. Basically, I sold a bunch of similar issues for $5-$10 or so. At one point I had about 3X as many in the store. Someone looking for these specific issues is likely willing to pay more than $1-$2 someone looking to re-sell them or who is amassing a collection of 100,000 books may not be. Nobody here wanted them when I put them up (for less $), but most of them were gone within 4-6 weeks out of my store. I was pleasantly surprised.

 

2. Amazing Spiderman #326 in VF is a quarter book, but you're asking $3 for it shipped. That's not unreasonable in the grand scheme of things, but the listing fee (if you paid one) cost you more than the book is worth.

 

I don't know where to find quarter books anymore. My LCSes have dollar boxes. Most shows are dollar books, occasionally 50 cent books. To you it is a quarter book, to some others it is not. I am not looking to sell most of this stuff to re-sellers. Shockingly enough, I have sold probably 10-15 similar spideys out of my store for that same $3 over the last few years. True, the economics of having a $3 book sit in a store for a long time don't make sense and it's probably never going to sell and I probably should have de-listed it a while ago. I have gotten rid of most these sorts of books though. If I'm going to have a $3 book (and under the new pricing structure I will no longer have them), it is likely going to be a BA book.

 

3. Several of your listings have no/bad pics.

 

Yeah, after I listed these I realized the photobucket account some of them were linked to had been deactivated and now I don't know where the scans are.

 

4. There's too much text to read. People just don't want to read all of it, and will pass, unless it's a screaming deal. I know you need to have all that info in there, but it could be formatted better, with alternating bold, color highlights, etc.

 

I feel full dislosure works wonders. It's easy enough to skip.

 

5. Your auction listings are haphazard. I know this may not seem like a big deal, but having them listed in alphabetical order makes a big difference.

 

That's true. The store is a bit of a mess. I did not subcategorize. So, while once upon a time I listed 50 straight spideys in there and it made more sense, 47 of those spideys have since sold and now it's a big jumble.

 

6. Your pics/scans are of lower quality. You should scan the books at at least life size, and outside of the bag, so buyers can see the flaws for themselves.

 

Hmmm, the big scans are better than average for ebay.

 

7. You have a special that is "good through 2006" on your Spidey #326 auction. That tells me as a buyer that you may not be as concerned with the details, which may reflect on your grading.

 

Probably because that particular spidey has been sitting there since 2006! I sold lots of others, just not that one. Uhg, it's such a PITA to revise a $3 listing...

 

Those are just my observations as a buyer of 12 years on eBay. I know you've been doing this a long time, too, but this is what I see as a prospective buyer, and whcih would make me say "meh" when looking at them.

 

 

[ComicConnoisseur]

There are over 100,000 comic books on Ebay and people don`t have time to look at all of them. To make your books stand out, offer free shipping, not only will more people look at your book but Ebay will put you up higher in the search results.

The other thing is people are either looking for low grade cheap priced readers or the other extreme is high grade cgc keys.