Do sellers really understand the market?

I haven't fired a off a good rant in awhile so here goes;

It amazes me that sellers/dealers act like what we collect can be treated the same way when it comes to pricing and sales as you would treat selling a trendy t-shirt or some other common mass produced item. What we collect is called a collectible for a reason. They are no longer made and there is a limited supply that will be replenished. You also need someone silly enough to buy the thing.

Dealers/sellers act like if they buy a card for $XXX.xx that they would be able to make a profit, no matter what. If you are in the collectibles are market, they need to understand that everything does not have a set price and when the economy tanks you had better be prepared to slash prices or sit on your inventory/collection for a long time.

Just because you are a dealer or think you are a dealer does not mean you are entitled to a profit. If you list something on eBay in an auction format and aren't getting the price you want, too bad. That's the reality of the market place. If you wanted a high price for your card then you should have listed it as a BIN and then watch the card sit there because no one wants to pay your ridiculous price.

Were you bidding on something that got pulled early due to low bids, Jay?

No, just annoyed with the ridiculously high BIN prices. All the cards I need to complete my Delong set are on ebay with BINs but at prices about two to three times higher than what they would go for if auctioned off.

I don't waste my time looking at BIN's. Just filter so there is a minimum of two bids on an item and you will get the real auctions. Cards like the Delongs aren't that rare that they won't come along eventually. Those dealers realize that there are idiots out there who will miscalculate the price or assume the price is fair. Since it's so cheap to list, they will always put them up there. Ebay destroyed everything with Buy It Now and therefore we are all forced to use auction houses. But try talking sense to a $20 billion company. It is large enough to have attracted plenty of idiots to work there. Sadly, there is no going back I don't think.

I know what you mean, Jay. I have a watch list full of over-priced BINs. And a number of them are about double what I think they would fetch in an auction.

I guess they're just counting on me eventually giving in, breaking down, and overpaying.

I am convinced that most of the sellers don't really care if those items sell. It is kind of like showcasing or showing off your collection. Check their completed auctions/BINs and see how often they sell something that is listed as a BIN. Ebay/Prewar has morphed into the world's largest virtual museum for the most part.

I've always found BIN to be a confirmation that the so-called 'experts' (Beckett, etc.) are merely guesstimating, and applying blanket formulas that don't account for all of the buying factors. For instance, Beckett makes very little adjustment, if any, for team desirability (I've always found Yankees and Red Sox and some others to be tougher cards to get, even if the player is a nobody), or for players from a team that won the World Series the season before. And the last few Beckett guides have made no noticeable adjustment for the depressed economy / depressed card market. If you can't get the same price you would've gotten five years ago for your house or your boat or your antique armoire, it follows that the complete set of 1961 Topps you've been sitting on might not fetch the same price, either. It's logic, but the experts and the sellers don't seem to follow that logic.

So what you end up with is searches where you find ten different sellers with the card you're looking for, and ten different BIN prices, even if they're all in the same condition or grade. And those prices may bear no resemblance to what the guides tell you the card is worth in that condition. Doesn't make a lot of sense. Some of the sellers are just plain greedy, I'm sure, but I think there's also a lot of fluidity and a lack of authoritative guidance to the market. And then, of course, there are the sellers (like a prominent one on ebay that I won't name) who charge more on ebay than they do for the same card on their own website. That can't mean anything other than they believe there are suckers on ebay. And as we all know, they're right.

I agree with Lucas about the guide pricing. I got a bunch of prices of hall of famers from some post war series from the Official guide, logged them to approximate a linear relationship, then picked three or four variables, two related to performance, wound up explaining about 60% of the price variation for some series, sometimes a little more, sometimes much less, and there is little change in Official prices between 2004 and 2008 Official guides. Makes me think there is little accounting for the economy between 2004 and 2008, but that is a fun regression for some other time.

LucasRiley wrote:And then, of course, there are the sellers (like a prominent one on ebay that I won't name) who charge more on ebay than they do for the same card on their own website. That can't mean anything other than they believe there are suckers on ebay. And as we all know, they're right.

If they want to net a certain amount from a card, then the item on eBay will always have to be priced higher than on a stand-alone website to account for the fees eBay charges. If you want to net $100 for a card, you can charge $100 on your website but you'd have to charge $110-$115 on eBay to build in the fees. I don't think it's the sucker mentality at all.

I confess that I hadn't considered that. Very valid point. Thanks for setting me straight.

I think some sellers have had so many cards up for so many years that they don't even realize how much some stuff has come down and now are stuck in a rock and a hard place. Here is a great example of one of the many sellers who saved me a lot of money by not accepting my offer, again this is only one of many many cards that I eventually ended up getting at a later time for a fraction of an original declined good offer.

Last January I offered $250 for this decent SGC40 T207-

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300265296722

Here is the response I got from seller in his counteroffer-

Seller message: Thank you for the offer. Based on what we paid for the card and the fees Ebay takes and the free shipping we are offering the best we can do would be $350. Hope that helps but if not thanks anyways for the offer

So I obviously passed and thought fair enough and no thanks and good luck with that. Now here is an SGC50 I won last week-

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&_trksid=p4340.l2557&rt=nc&nma=true&item=270753476406&si=taBNaKaBuw9tcL9Qg4y8V0aYdV4%253D&viewitem=&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWNX%3AIT

$132 less than my offer on a nicer card a grade higher. I was definately surprised at the final price as I put in a bid of 237 in the closing seconds and didn't think that would hold up. I think what has happened in many issues outside of T206 is all the flippers/dealers have stopped putting in token bids since they are already stocked full of cards and can't sell them so they don't want any more, especially since the ones they do have they paid more for them than they can get so they are not buying anything but T206 and maybe T205.
So T206 and T205 are still getting generous token bids from all the flippers/dealers but what would happen if that stops, although I don't think it will. But the bottom line is that is does create an inflated market price and once taken away goes to strickly a collector/demand price and right now that appears to be taking place and demand for anything outside of T206 and somewhat T205 is not that great. So a great time to find some great cards at a nice price and then left to wonder-
Will the caramels and other series demand come back or will the T206/ T205 start to slide and fall into the same situation as the E/other series ?????????

Did you forward the link to the auction you won. It always feels good when you get deals like that.

Here is a great example of situation I had to deal with:

A T202 I was interested in listed at $225 plus $15 postage. I offered $185 plus the postage for the card. The response I got was that it was a steal at the price and that he regularly gets $375 for cards of that grade on another auction site. Plus the SMR was $350.

Needless to say we did not work out a deal, but it was nice to know he was willing to leave money on the table for me.

By the way, the card never sold at his price.


Lee

Johnny,

That T207 Bender you got looks great - and a REALLY nice price!!!

I agree - really nice card for the price, Johnny.

For what its worth, every one of the prices on original seller's T207's were about 100% inflated if I recall. SGC 40 Johnson for $1500??? SGC 60 Chance for $900???

Maybe its just me, but ... really???

Bosox Blair wrote:Johnny,

That T207 Bender you got looks great - and a REALLY nice price!!!