Auction vs BIN... which is more accurate?

[1Cool]

I thought eBay made a policy change last year that for Collectibles (including comics) the number of BIN listings for each seller would be cut back to encourage more actual auctions. But when I search for nm Silver Age, over 95% of the listings are BIN. (and half the books are not even Silver Age, sellers, please list your books in the correct age).

 

There are a lot of over priced books that I see relisted month after month. Doesn't eBay charge the listers (you are not a seller if it never sells!) a fee for each of these failed listings?

 

If you have a large store then the charge for listing a book for a month is a few cents per book. Definetely worth it to list a book for a year rather then sell it at half price in an auction. Now I have to agree some sellers are asking crazy prices (2x GPA or more) but those same sellers almost always have a Best Offer set and since a ton of buyers are resorting to offering 1/2 asking price . .

[1Cool]

I thought eBay made a policy change last year that for Collectibles (including comics) the number of BIN listings for each seller would be cut back to encourage more actual auctions. But when I search for nm Silver Age, over 95% of the listings are BIN. (and half the books are not even Silver Age, sellers, please list your books in the correct age).

 

There are a lot of over priced books that I see relisted month after month. Doesn't eBay charge the listers (you are not a seller if it never sells!) a fee for each of these failed listings?

 

I'd also estimate 75% of the auctions are BINs in disguise where the starting price is what they are hoping to get via BIN. So using that math 98% of Silver-Age books are listed via BIN.

 

The days of having 5 people bidding up your books seem to be long gone with the only people bidding on auctions are other dealers who will have your books up via BIN a day after receiving them.

[Phicks]

"The days of having 5 people bidding up your books seem to be long gone"

**************************************************************************************

 

Since hardly any books are actually offered on auction, your point becomes a chicken and egg question. Under nm Silver Age, there still seems to be about a dozen books offered by auction that close on Sunday nights. The bidding seems to be very healthy and frequent.

[1Cool]

The Sparkle City auctions do seem to do very well via auction since they have developed a huge following. But look at the Daredevil 18 CBCS 9.2 (I know I said the word that can't be said) - it ended at $165 when GPA is in the $275 - $300 range. If a hot book like Daredevil 18 is selling for a steal then what do you think a Hulk 177 in VF would do.

 

High grade Silver-Age books may do well via auction since people are looking to press and slab them but 95% of books just do not do well via auction.

 

I do know there use to be a ton of Auctions (5 - 10 years) ago but those sellers have dwindled to a handful. If sellers could get near the typical BIN price you would see a ton of auction sellers. The lack of good prices came first before the exodus of auctions.

[Icculus308win]

I bet jaydog has the answer

[NP_Gresham]

If the book is a common book, like any modern 9.8 ASM variant-then bin is always better. Price it just below the last sale and cross your fingers. Think Del Otto, that stuff with high print and little demand will percolate to the surface over the next few years and then the bottom will fall out.

If it is rare as hell like a key pre code issue in high grade, then auction. The buyers will fall all over themselves to not let the book pass. Something like a JIM #1, that kind of book would set off a bidding war.

[fmaz]

Are you asking which is more "accurate" in terms of when you're looking at past sales to get a sense of a book's "actual" value?

 

Because if that is the OP's question that's not what people seem to be answering.

 

I think in assessing value of a book, while there ARE certainly a number of factors that impact the results of auctions (all of which have been discussed above), if there are SEVERAL auctions looking at them as a whole paints a good picture.

 

Similarly, there are major issues with BIN... as frequently you have sellers who don't know what they have and dramatically underprice a book... the kind that is listed and bought in nanoseconds... and THAT is not a true reflection of value at all.

 

So honestly, the best reflection of value is to take an aggregate of BIN, auctions and don't forget Best Offers.

 

I personally prefer to list all my books as BIN with Best Offers... and when I"m researching books for value I think the BO ones are those whose price was haggled between buyer and seller. That seems a fair snapshot of value.

 

But even so, I'd say why throw out any data? Use it all.

[Jaydogrules]

All sales data points are valid regardless of whether they are an auction or a BIN. A sale is a sale is a sale.

 

Although it does seem BIN's tend to yield slightly higher prices, particularly on mass produced movie hype books like Star Wars 1 after the bottom completely falls out on the prices once the movie comes out, the speculators move on, and the book loses 66% of its peak value virtually over night.

 

In those cases it might be best to price a BIN at slightly above the last auction and hope nobody else decides to liquidate their copy at the same time in another auction.

 

-J.

 

 

[Vger7]

Thanks for all your comments. It is definitely a complicated issue with many variables and factors to consider. The spirit of our discussion sprang from the discrepancy that both my buddy and I recognize... that auctions in general tend to end lower than BINs. This set off a debate as to which was the "true" or more "accurate" value of a book.

 

"True" or "accurate" in itself is a moving target... but I guess we can loosely define it as number that is common or that consistently shows up in completed sales.

 

I'm also assuming that most sensible people wont drop $1,000 on a book without doing some research. However, we all know that this is not always the case.

 

If both auctions and BINs are too nuanced and varied, then how do we determine a books value? I stopped using Overstreet many decades ago and GPA tends to be the "go to" resource for many but sometimes GPA can reflect poorly and requires interpretation. A couple of odd numbers up or down and it can skew the average. As such, I try to read into all the numbers in order to get a "sense" of value... but I also look at asking price online and completed final sale price from sources that GPA does not track.

 

All this to say... it's very time consuming process

[the blob]

if it is a book with a fair number of sales when i am trying to figure out how to price i look at the top few auction results of similar condition copies and the bulk of the bins, ignore the crazed auction price and/or divad sale and come out with some sort of average.

 

i don't think auctions are hopeless, but sometimes you need to be strategic. several months ago i listed 75-100 or so very sharp BA/early CA batmans and did well, even with non-keys. i happened to get several people looking for multiple high grade raw copies of these books. mind you, i didn't do 99 cent auctions, i priced the books at a price i was comfortable with as a minimum and had some BINs on any of the keys or semi-keys above that. several BINs were hit, including for amounts higher than I had seem any raws sell for on ebay in the last 60 days, but they were keys/semi keys and absolutely stunning books.

 

did the same with WD books a few years ago. similar results.

 

i have a hard time thinking auctions are more "accurate" for gauging FMV if you have 3 auctions that end at $5 and 12 BINs averaging $12, for example, but every book is different.

[bababooey]

I've probably given away a few dollars by hitting BIN's on something started with a reserve auction - it was a new listing search & I figured it might appeal to others and an auction probably wouldn't cost me more but it wasn't worth risking not getting it by a snipe or getting pushed above the BIN.

 

I think the first bid removes the BIN option so rather than let it become an auction I just bought it.

 

 

[dupont2005]

Auctions. I have a feeling a lot of the higher BIN's are either fake or outliers, and when one accepts an offer there's no way to see what the offer was. It's true that an auction can result in a stupid low price, but I typically search from highest sold to lowest and stop where I see a lot of results and consider that what I should expect to pay.

[kav]

there is a way to see what the best offer was

[bababooey]

there is a way to see what the best offer was

 

Yup

 

http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=9066679#Post9066679

[Phicks]

To go back to the original question, BINs are actually very accurate, in a way. When you see a BIN that is about to expire in 24 hours, you know that buyers have seen that offered price for at least a week, and decided not to buy it. Therefore, the accurate price is something less than the BIN value the would be seller has used.

 

e.g., say I have a CGC 9.6 copy of New Mutants 98, I know it is a hot book right now, and I want to maximize what I get for it, so I offer it as BIN at $600. And a week later, lots of potential buyers have seen the offering, the offer ends, and the book has not sold. We can then definitively say that book is worth something less than $600.

 

As opposed to then offering the same book as an auction, 23 people place bids, and at the last minute it gets sniped for $406.52. I submit the $406 is closer to the accurate price than $600, but as others have pointed out, there are lots of variables in a real auction. What is my shipping cost? What is my feedback? What time does the auction close? 9 pm EST on a Sunday when most people are home and awake is good; 3 am EST on a Tuesday is terrible.

[dupont2005]

I don't think prices vary all that much. If they did we could all quit our jobs and simply buy slabs Tuesday afternoon and sell them Sunday evening

[kav]

Conversely, I have had BINs that sat for 3 months then suddenly someone buys it.....

[1Cool]

Conversely, I have had BINs that sat for 3 months then suddenly someone buys it.....

 

Been there. I actually hate to have a book sell in the first day of posting it since it almost always means I left a bunch of money on the table.

[kav]

Been there too

[darkstar]

both auctions and BINs are too easy to manipulate on eBay so I wouldn't exactly trust either.