I once asked a pawnshop owner if he was running a store or a museum. He wouldn't budge on prices of items that had been on the shelf for, at least, 3 years. I was told to get lost. He went out of biz shortly after.
There's a flea market in Ontario where there are a couple of vendors who have many items that have been there for 40 years. I think they're just there for the social interaction more than the business.
Watch kitchen nightmares. It's a common theme where owners get too big for their britches and decide they know what the customer will get instead of just providing what they want.
@@peterlittlehorse5695 , I prefer outdoor flea markets, where sellers are somewhat motivated to sell items so that they won't have to pack them up to take home and then unpack the vehicle in the garage. All too often, indoor flea markets are just like rented storage bins.
@@goodun2974 Local annual tractor show has a huge flea market. Guys haul in heavy iron.....most of it has come back each year for 30? years. I guess it's good exercise??
I wish I would have been there, that's sounds like something I would have said, especially after not negotiating. I've been banned from a couple of ebay sellers *instantaneously* after submitting an offer they thought was too low (apparently they were "offended"). I wish there was a site dedicated to rating sellers on Ebay and Amazon of both good and bad, especially ones the just reject offers and never counter, they are the worst. I have returned to sellers that were good and know how to negotiate, some many times and spend hundreds of dollars.
Recently had an interesting experience. I was looking for an IC for a vintage TV, and found a vendor on eBay selling 10 at £2 each. I decided to by them all, made payment and eagerly awaited delivery. Nope, vendor contacted me stating they had made a stock error, and they were all sold out, and refunded my money. A day later, they were relisted, but this time at £19.99 each!!!! Needless to say, even though I need one, I'm not prepared to pay that. Also, 6 months later, they've not sold one, surprise, surprise. Stoopid greedy A-hole.
Yeah, I've had that happen with some Curtis Electromusic chips, order 20 because their price was OK (and they were listing "more than XX" available) and you might as well have spares if you're going to pay shipping anyway, 'sorry we made an error, we don't have stock, here's a refund', next thing same seller has a listing at twice the price... I ended up paying slightly more than the original price from a different seller. Cutting off one's nose to spite one's face...
The seller (probably layman, so no idea of what's a realistic price) might have interpreted your order as scalping. He would have been wiser to sell you maybe two or three if he thought that was the case. I'm currently building a webshop with vintage parts like that, set my prices reasonable enough that I would buy the item myself if I'd need it and set a limit on the number a single customer can order. That way, more people can make use of the offer, preventing hoarding and scalping.
@@mjouwbuis Thanks for that insight, I'd never heard of that term outside the obvious historical reference. Indeed, had the vendor did as you say offered two or three, we could have entered into dialogue, and he would have then discovered I was in genuine need. The reason I wanted so many was due to the i.c's fragility. The TV is a particularly rare Thorn 4000 TV in the UK, I probably have the only two specific models known to have survived. This particular i.c. was in the line stage and, was notorious for frequently dying back (1975) in the day. As I'm attempting to repair two of these sets, I thought best to get stock. I also have a vast stock of vintage TV spares as well, but typically none of these i.c. I did manage to track some down in the end, but only managed to get 3. Going to have to be very careful with them.
For me there's 2 different issues. 1 - People have emotional attachments to the objects and they price them based on that. 2 - I blame tv shows like Pawn Stars and storage wars. The items are always presented in such a way that they appear to be worth much more than they are actually worth.
I see the second point all the time with vintage or antique spinning wheels for sale. So many people are convinced they have an extremely rare find and usually they are not.
Data has shown that by nature, items sold online are 40-80% more than you should expect to pay in the wild. Buyers dont see the constant barrage of ebay selling fees, such as the newly added percentage of shipping charged to sellers as a tax.
eBay is a nightmare these days. Not sure if it's the same in the US, but over here in the UK eBay is flooded with sellers that are based in China, but because they have some kind of warehouse address in the UK they can get away with showing the listing to be in the UK, when really it will ship from China. Before this became a thing it was easy to filter your search results by location, but now that is simply useless. You have to check the individual seller details now, and on so many occasions even though the listing says the item is located within the uk, the seller is really in China. Occasionally you may get lucky and the item is actually shipped from a location within your country, but more often than not it will ship either directly to you from China, or get shipped from China to the UK warehouse, where they then ship it on to you. Admittedly the postage is very quick, but the problem comes if you need to send something back, all of a sudden you are faced with a postage fee back to China that is ten times what the item is worth.
eBay has largely become a mass junk selling market to compete with the likes of Aliexpress and Banggood. There are still some bargains to be found on eBay, but you must spend time sifting through the "dirt" to find the "nuggets"!
It's not just the UK. I got an item that unexpectedly shipped to the US from China. When it stopped working (because it was Chinese crap), the "warranty" proved worthless - emails to the "service" address were just ignored. eBay already got their cut, so they don't give a damn: their only job is to enable the seller to screw you.
For the seller it's an extra step in the listing process to enable combined shipping. Although they are likely using third party listing tools so can probably set that gloablly but they chose not to because it ultimately creates a greater return.
As a seller, you now get charged a percentage of the shipping cost which comes out of profit, so one can't ship for actual retail pricing without losing money.
As if it couldn't be automated for large-volume sellers. I mean, they surely have, or at least can afford, ERP / CRM systems with possible mail or messenger service integrations.
@@frogz sometimes I feel old-ish now being 36, but generally I still consider myself young. Maybe because my perception of time, social expectations, roles and milestones is drastically different than most people. Oh damn, am I getting philosophical again?
To the point of "high prices", in our eBay store, we enable "best offer" on almost every listing. When dealing in hard to find, obsolete parts, collectibles, etc... it's often difficult to know what an item is "worth". So we are sometimes "forced" to price high and evaluate received offers. We are also constantly sending out offers to watchers. Many times it's negotiation. And sellers know that if you start "too low", all offers will be even lower. So we (and many other sellers) start at what we feel the item may be worth to the right buyer and are willing to negotiate down from there. While our eBay store IS a business (and our sole income) to my wife and I - and we absolutely treat it as such - I do agree that some sellers don't get it. We are out to sell merchandise, not store or collect. We try to focus more on industrial, HVAC, larger electrical / electronic parts, automation and other items that actually do have value. But we are in the business of selling and paying our bills. I just wanted to present the side of the average seller, who isn't in the camp you're describing. I don't want your commentary to steer buyers away from the platform we rely on, based solely on your experience will stubborn pie-in-the-sky sellers who think every item is a treasure. We sell low value items every day and understand that it's ultimately the buyers that determine the true value of our merchandise.
@@rebeuhsin6410 old parts are not antiques. They’re just old parts, hopefully, new old stock. Sometimes they’re very expensive, if they’re hard to find, and sometimes they’re very cheap, if nobody wants them. But ever since eBay began the buy it now vs the auction, sellers price things they way they want. Even with auctions, minimum bid can be very low, or very high. The point folks, is that you don’t have to buy it, and you see the item price and the shipping first.
@@melgross exactly, but because of the current pricing trend, I search ebay far less than I used to, as per my market field more than 70% of Items are priced above new market retail in other locations.
I'm a seller that has recently pretty well shut down my old parts store. I tried to put together deals that I shop for and would buy, small lots of 10-50 parts capacitors and resistors mostly ideally keeping the shipping weight under 4oz where the minimum price increases on first class package service. The last couple of years ebay fees and shipping have eaten away at my share. To the point I was almost giving stuff away and if anything went wrong end up losing money. I quit offering free shipping because the post kept raising prices that caused my listing ranking to drop, less traffic and sales to plummet so I pulled the plug on all my parts listings except one that had consistent sales, a commonly failed resistor in Peavey VT amplifiers that is hard to find. (shameless plug) Which by the way came into my possession via a pallet load of resistors that I bought where else but ebay.
We used to build entire custom cars and motorcycles from eBay. And at some car and bike shows there were actual eBay classes or competitions where you build a car or bike out of all eBay bought parts and kept the receipts as proof. Those days are long gone. And the people who sit on their treasure. They're mostly hoarders that would probably have an anxiety attack and nervous breakdown if someone actually offered them what they want. And they're lonely so people contacting them about their overpriced junk is their dose of human interaction. And I've figured this out over the years all from building cars and bikes.
eBay definitely has quite a few examples of people thinking they are sitting on a "gold mine" with something. There is a particular brass HO scale model steam engines that typically sells for about $300 that somebody has been listing for $10,000 for a very, very long time. It reminds me of the joke where somebody makes some simple product and prices it at one million dollars. A friend asks, "How many do you really believe you can sell at a price like that?" The guy says, "I only have to sell one !!!"
@@Kevin_40 What is the marketing reason? Just to show up at the top of the list if sorting by price with highest first? To maybe get a "click" and then a click on "See other items"?
I remember a Dennis the Menace cartoon where Dennis had a lemonade stand and the price was $1. The captions was "I only have to sell one." Of all the cartoons, that's one that stuck.
eBay History 1997: *Beanie Babies Craze* Beanie Babies, Ty Warner’s line of cuddly stuffed animals, take the world by storm. $500 million worth are sold on eBay alone, representing more than 6% of our total volume.
The eBay sellers you're talking about are no different from landlords who kick out businesses and hold onto abandoned buildings and storefronts waiting for Citi or Chase to buy their property
I used to sell quite a bit of vintage camera equipment on Ebay. Ebay policies have caused this (mostly). Their continual rise in fees is a big one, now hovering at 15% for an individual (it was around 5% in the early 2000s). Their interface has effectively pushed out casual sellers in favor of "powersellers". They make it even hard to see what any individual listing is doing, short of going directly to the page. They discourage description writing in favor of pre-filled fields. Somewhere along the line their algorithm told them it was more profitable to have millions of listings that do nothing for months or years than to have a handful of real listings that sell in a week. Make no mistake this is a calculated benefit to Ebay and has nothing to do with profit for the sellers. That's why I now look to all other avenues of selling before going to Ebay. But mainly I think it's something psychological, and you've touched on it; the existence of Ebay itself, as it has grown as a platform, has created its own sort of inertia and/or entropy. People once saw it as an extension of the yard sale but now see it as an investment platform-- a showcase of potential rather than an real productive entity. It's a victim of its own success. Plus, if you look at the last 20 years, we've been in an unrelenting pattern of real wages sliding backwards, and I think this just makes everyone a little bit tighter when it comes to pricing.
Yeah I have one item that I have on continuous sale on eBay - a part that I machine on an as needed basis. I sell them for $50 including shipping. At this point even with really cheap shipping, I only get to keep about $35 of that, gross. eBay fees are way too high for what they do. If I were trying to make a living off it I'd have to raise my prices. Friends tell me that Etsy is pretty bad too, one that spins yarn says she's not even really covering the cost of her materials, and is working for free.
Bah... Ebay is what it is because it doesn't view its sellers who pay their bills as their customers. They are nothing more than a listing service... like MLS in real-estate, but want retail profit margins, and to dictate to sellers what and how to sell their products, while eBay itself sells nothing at all. They routinely support scammer buyers because eBay makes money on every sale whether the actual seller does or not. Buyers can be committing outright fraud eBay will side with them, force the seller to refund while keeping its own fees or even charging a penalty. A lot of the decent sellers jumped ship a long time ago. The site has become a haven for buyer scammers. Hell, I had a lady rip me off on a tablet. Claimed it didn't work, then sent me back a different tablet in a (no joke) brown paper bag. The device I received was smashed. She had HUNDREDS of negative feedbacks. Despite photo documentation and a police report, eBay refunded her money from my account, charged me additional fees, and allowed her to continue buying.
@@oldestgamer Not to mention, many sellers don't reach the threshold for sales tax in most states and should not have sales tax withheld to begin with, which eBay pockets.
As you mentioned, they are holding out for that one buyer who needs that specific part and can't find it anywhere else. But eBay has changed pricing on lots of stuff that used to have value. Coin collections and antiques, except for a handful of specialty items, are basically worthless. When the local coin show used to drop by twice a year, coins had value. With the Internet, we found out there were millions of them. Some eBay sellers have not figured that out yet.
Some guy has dropped by our shop three times trying to sell some pennies to me and he wants $20... Well that's an easy $20 for him! Where is his information to back up their value? If the pawn shop didn't want to give you anything why do you think it's worth my while?
It's the same with brick & mortar shops - secondhand shops, scrapyards, antique shops etc. They'll look for the best market value and refuse to budge, because they haven't calculated the cost of keeping it unsold forever. Real retailers don't do this : they know when it's worth having a sale and dumping unsold stock. It always amazes me that scrapyards seem to have more security than real metal stockholders.
Scrapyards tend to know exactly what the stuff is worth, and also want to have as little stock on hand at any time, as that represents money held up in inventory, and also that it is a massive risk, because of price fluctuations in scrap that might cause the stock to become slightly lower in value than what you paid for it. They buy it in, process it into bales or bulk, and sell it up the chain as soon as they get enough in to warrant the truck load or the bale, only tending to keep less than that on hand. Often if new stuff comes in they will keep it aside for a month and try to sell for a bigger profit, as often they will get overruns that are dumped, so can make a profit by selling for half new price, instead of the 10% scrap price. Will admit a lot of my metal stock has come from yard this way, it is economical for the small buyer who has time on hand, just take the scrap pile there, turn it in, get money and do shopping.
I knew a woman who ran a photography store and she just could NOT ever take a loss on anything. She was still trying to get her cost plus a profit on 8mm camcorders 10 years after they were obsolete. Still trying to sell it for $1000 when you could buy a much better camcorder for $400. Not only did she never sell it, she paid inventory tax on it every year. In effect she paid a hundred bucks or so to put it on her shelf, plus the cost of the camcorder which was never recouped. She'd have been better off giving it away at some point.
Your mention of Canal St. brought back memories. I decided, back in the sixties, to build my own stereo amp. A friend and I headed down to Cortlandt St. in Manhattan and picked up a boatload of parts (for a song). I got most of my resistors and caps from locally sourced discarded old radios and TV chasises. Power transformer and out put transformers came from Cortlandt St. Bought a blank chasis from Lafayette Radio and punched it for the octal sockets. Getting the negative feedback where I wanted it for the bass and treble (many neighborhood dogs howling at two in the morning from the squeeling while I was working on it. The final result was an amp that was incredible - Mullard Master M EL84s. The only problem I had was, on one occassion, I forgot to turn the thing off. The 5U4 rectifier exploaded after about twenty hours. I have such fond memories of those times. Hat's off to you and your work, Fran!
I'm a ham radio operator that used to buy a few things off ebay and over the last few years the sellers and bidders too seem to think much of what they have is worth more than what a new item would be. I think much of the problem is because of TV shows like American Pickers and Storage Wars that make people think that what should be a donation item to a thrift store is some rare collectable. Even plastic model kits on ebay (many of which you can buy a brand new rerelease at a hobby shop, if you can find one of those) selling for 3 or 4 times the original (or current new) price. Part of the problem is the buyer is willing to pay way too much for an item. If the average ebay buyer would be a little smarter I think the prices would come down to a more realistic range but I don't think that is likely to happen.
Seems to me, that it doesn't matter what they sell: Electronics, NYC luxury condos, gold, Bitcoin, whatever. Everybody wants to be an investor. It's sick.
Well, you could have a business model like some pinned comments where you clearly take advantage of overseas sellers in the eBay shipping program to provide free items for your TH-cam channel, knowing that eBay is doing the poor packing and sticking the seller with the bill.
Thanks Fran I feel your frustration! I quit eBay more than 5 years ago but against my better judgment started selling again to liquidate a collection for my mother-in-law. My opinion is the problem started when eBay dropped the listing fee. These "store" sellers have subscriptions with eBay where they can list 1000-100,0000 listings a month for a subscription fee. They can relist theses items over and over again without cost (except the store subscription cost) with the hope that they will make big profit on a few sales. You'll notice that this is why eBay is mostly no longer an auction site and most items are BIN. These "stores" only get free listings as part of their subscriptions for "fixed-price listings". Back in 1998 when I started selling on eBay if I posted 10 items with the starting bid set too high or the reserve price set too high and the items didn't sell I was still stuck paying the listing fee and the relisting fee if I wanted to try again. That was something to think about when I set my prices. My 2 cents and I'm completely open to other thoughts if I'm not seeing this correctly.
6:52 I can't believe you mentioned *Canal Street, New York City* (Manhattan). I was born & raised in Manhattan, and I used to take the subway down to *Canal Street* in the 70s & 80s to rummage through tons of parts stores to purchase electronics and parts. It was pure fun and gold. 😊
Fran it's like this for just about anyone who has a antique booth also. I've been to antique malls where the sellers have had the same stuff there for over 10 years. They pay rent on basically holding their treasure and a few of them have passed away only to burden their family with getting rid if the stuff. It comes down to people being horders.
I've also noticed this. Lately I've been finding that ebay sellers are just reselling things they can get from Amazon or electronics distributors like Digi-Key. It's been cheaper for me to buy from anywhere but ebay because of that. And like you, I used to buy from ebay often. Sometimes I get lucky and it's an individual, and those have much more reasonable prices. If they have a "store" with a large variety of trashy objects then I avoid them because of their business practices.
I searched ebay for a part for a DeWalt drill. Found it listed for $42. Right after it was a listing for a whole tool minus the chuck, which I didn't need, for $15. One wanted to sell, the other wanted to hold.
Definitely sympathize -- I see this all the time. So, imagine my delight when a seller actually refunded me the difference _automatically_ when I bought from them this week. Their policy was something like $3.20 base shipping and $0.25 for each additional item. I bought three items, and just paid the listed shipping price, because it was still cheaper than I could source locally. After the items shipped, I got a notification that the difference in shipping cost (from their stated policy to what I paid) was being refunded. 😱 So, if you should be looking for parts and hardware to rewire light fixtures, have a look at "thestonedoor"'s eBay store. (They're based in Tennessee.) I normally don't call out specific eBay sellers, but felt this one deserved the plug (pun intended). 👍️
I found that with vinyl record buying, people automatically assume their Elvis or Beatles records are worth a fortune when the reality is these sold in their millions so there is a lot out there! Another thing is non-expert sellers just looking at the top buy-it-now price on EBay and automatically taking that as the price they should get. Literally I have been at a car boot sale looking at a record and I asked the price to which the seller whipped the album out of my hands and searched for the best unrealistic price online, I just laughed and walked away.
I've been in my local charity shop that sells Hi-Fi and the second thing they do after checking it works is go on ebay and find the highest price non of it sells even for charity
That's why I like to look at eBay's sold listings. That shows what people are really willing to pay, and how often those sales occurred. Maybe eBay should have a "Buy It Never" button to give pricing feedback to sellers.
A similar Phenomenon occurred in the late 1990s for Lionel Trains, Some guy who knew a bit about collecting them wrote a book about how to invest in them, went on all the day time talk shows, sold a gazillion books. then all these folks who didnt read the book, or didnt understand what they read went out and scarfed up old junk form garage sales n such and suddenly a worn out piece of junk was worth 3 times the top dollar price in any of the trading guides. And you couldnt even talk to these folks about it. killed that collector and resale market. crazy!. love the videos.
@@loganq It represents money spent that you can't get back until it's sold. No sale, no cost recouped. The longer there's no sale, the longer the money is just sitting there tied up in something you're not using instead of being put to work earning interest or being liquid or whatever you'd prefer it to be doing besides nothing.
@@wasd____ In the business you run, you can sell your stock at 75% off instead of "losing" out on the 0.01% APY of interest. But when I do the math, it makes sense to wait for the right buyer(s).
@@loganq "The right buyer" is the one who's actually interested in buying the item you have. If you're passing up fair offers, you're turning away the real-world right buyer in favor of a fantasy that might never come along.
@@YensR When I buy stuff on AliExpress (I've long since given up on eBay) from a seller that doesn't offer combined shipping, I buy one. Then wait until it's shipped. Then buy another. For as long as it takes to obtain the amount required. No bloody way am I going to pay full shipping & handling on every single item, just to see them save expenses by sending it as a single shipment.
That makes sense Juan and Kim - I have previously had a situation where I bought two items from the same seller and they came in two separate but identical packages on the same day. It seems some sellers do not even combine shipping when it would benefit them! (I don't think they came from different warehouses, but who knows!)
I had two whole stores full of capacitors,transistors and vintage tubes and many more items still in boxes. The county jacked my property taxes up so high that I was forced to sell everything for pennies on the dollar to pay my property taxes and wound up losing both stores as the county threw most of my inventory in the land fill as they were ignorant of the value. I was able to save a garage full of my electronic inventory but the county taxed me out of business.
This is happening on Amazon Marketplace too. Sellers are engaging in large scale arbitrage as a get rich quick scheme. In some cases it is set up in a Ponzi structure as well, with goods instead of money. That is what most of those youtube ads for "make money with Amazon/Ebay" ads are/were about. Another term people use for these shady operators is "gators"--short for "aggregators". They buy and sell anything and everything from everywhere and simultaneously re-list on their own channels. They do this with bots and they often even list the items before their purchase transactions close. Sometimes gators even buy from other gators and it is gators all the way down. These aren't businesses...they are pure scams. And like all Ponzi type scams, they ALWAYS collapse. At some point there are no greater fools to sell to. But Amazon and Ebay won't purge them until they are held accountable or it hits their bottom lines.
I used to buy £1000s worth of items from a seller each year; the last order I made was for 4 seperate items each with £40 postage; I asked if they could combine ship and they said 'no, the items are already packaged ready to ship'; I paid the £160 shipping charge and a few days later, the items arrived - all packed in a single box. I complained to them and they said that they never stated they would do combined shipping. They lost a buyer and several £1000s of business that day.
I tried to sell some stuff on ebay a few months ago, even some of the buyers turned out to be scammers, I was getting messages from people claiming to be the winners of the auction, and buyers messaging me to buy it from a different account, buyers who had "already got one", and buyers who said they couldn't buy until a certain date - a sign that they were a scalper, I'd message them and eventually communication would just break down. In the end I gave up and did it offline. Just a general bad experience with ebay. Lots of people who didn't know what "collection in person" meant. It didn't used to be like this, just a couple of years ago, people were pretty reasonable and happy to buy from me. I suppose it depends what you're buying or selling as to the type of customer you're dealing with.
Buyer fraud is an epidemic on eBay. My eBay return rate on consumer electronics was 15%. On Amazon, 5%. Bonanza 0%. ECrater, 0%. My own site, 2.5%. In person 0%.
The problem is eBay cannot get anything from the scammer only the poor old seller, I only do cash on collection on large or valuable items. Recently I tried to sell a fender guitar, got repeated silly offers if I posted from scammers, it was listed at 350 and they offered up to 500. I decided to end the auction as one of them had bid. EBay tried to charge me for ending the listing and demanded to know how they would not pay cash despite all the messages to the contrary. Cheers eBay now I only sell low value stuff and use gumtree. Takes longer but no problems.
I've noticed the same thing in the ebay bookseller market. It really seems like in 2020 things went haywire. Rarer books I bought in 2019 for $40 are now tagged at $600+ and are just SITTING there.
Generating scarcity by buying cheap and then selling for a much higher price. Meh. Seeing it in Poland (Allegro, OLX) too. Ha! Even antique sellers at flea markets IRL do that. To think about how much some of them wanted for used, untested tubes... I think they got too much of the "audiophile hype".
I have a giant, foot-long battery-powered "toothbrush" (Rubbermaid branded) that I bought for $12 at Aldi here in the US a few years ago, which we use for scrubbing dishes and sometimes for cleaning vintage electronics. I looked online for another one recently; most sites are "out of stock" but some sellers are asking $100 for these things!
Today's "vintage" collectable market is insane, I'm completely priced-out of it now so I just gave up. In the early 90's I bought a pallet of 12 working Tektronix scopes at a GSA auction for $10.00, sold them to engineering students at my college for $50 each. At the same auction I bought a pallet of Bell & Howell 16mm sound projectors for $5.00, but was outbid on the pallet of Bolex 16mm cameras and lenses, it went for $50.00 which was a steal even at the time.
Similar experiences here in the UK. I collect vintage equipment from the video production equipment company Quantel and right now there are listings on ebay that have literally been there for YEARS for crazy prices with no intent to negotiate on their price. Recently i have found sellers in the far-east will piles of stock of old stuff, we're talking hundreds of thousands of listings on Ebay with prices 100x what they are worth who seem to not care if your not willing to pay their asking price! I guess storage of these things is not a concern to them, because they are going to be storing them for a very very long time if they continue doing what they are doing!
One other thing I am finding is that an order for an item on eBay purchased but fulfilled through Amazon instead, without notice to the buyer prevents us from being able to see the terms of the original ad, presumably on Amazon... or in other instances, elsewhere. So, in this way refurbished items and risky, as-is warned ( flood or fire sale type) offers may be omitted from access or visibility into being offered by sellers with terrible feedback. These are delivered by Amazon in an Amazon box and sometimes a gift receipt with some unknown company name. They might get in trouble if they advertise on eBay as shipping from their own account's location though, when it is actually being sent from another location entirely ( or in other instances when they report as being a US seller/shipper but their items come from a foreign place. As to the future, with the sanctions we are now seeing, I wonder how many desperate or convoluted efforts may be put into place to sell goods and exchange cash, especially if other excuses may ,]make use of any potential shipping delays in the future.
i know my dad sits on a load of classic land rover parts, he talks about the 1999 to 2007 times where he went from holland to the uk by boat to buy job lots of parts. The UK was a defender market, the old parts got often given for free, while in holland defender cars were taxes by the kg and 25 year old (now 40( were tax exempt so the older series 1, 2, 2a and 3 were in high demand. prices sky rocketed, dad got a disability and sells bits here and there to get the parts he needs and helps others keeping theirs on the road. He did say, ebay golden days are over,
FYI similar stories, My old boss, when he was younger, had a boss that would be selling item he did not own. He would go to estates sales, moving sale and newspaper ads to find items to sale and might post an ads in the paper and in the old day the had want ads also in the paper. He contact the seller and offer them to buy item but he wanted a cheaper price. Most of the time he get it cheaper and he would have a list of buyer looking for a used item because of the fake ad he had in newspaper. A buyer would call about his ad, and he would say that he just sold the item but he had a friend that was selling a similar item and he said he would call his friend to see if he still have the item for sale. Telling the caller he call him about the item, He go find the item and tell the buyer his friend did not want to sell it anyone but him, so he would tell the buyer that he should go to his house and pick him up and he would tell his friend that the buyer was just helping him to move the item. Please keep in mind this was the late 1940 and early 1950. His boss was a manager of a movie theater with extra time to do what he wanted to do. FLIP items mostly, picking up items cheap. The placing of ads to sell items you did not have or own (Amazon Sellers) was the big rub.
I've run across such situations before, Fran. That's one of the reasons I never use "buy now" in any online marketplace. I always do it manually: add items to cart, go to checkout, then _thoroughly_ scrutinize every aspect of the transaction (prices? taxes? shipping costs?) before hitting the "Place Order" button. If I don't like what I see, I press my browser's "Back" button then remove the offending items from my cart. As for the Ebay Smaugs, they'll lie on their treasure under Erebor until they die. (Everyone eventually does.) Then, after their landlord breaks into their apartment and disposes of their corpse and their possessions, their "precious bounty" will eventually end up in one of two places: local auctions, or landfill. So when looking for vintage stuff, I suggest also scouting local auctions to see if anything interesting is available. (Dumpster diving can also be fruitful.)
I agree with your sentiments about Ebay. There were bargains years ago, even on test gear (HP, Tek, Keithley). Now, with sites like Worthpoint, everyone asks top dollar for "as is" equipment that looks like it was thrown off a loading dock. And don't get me started on inadequate packing and the resulting shipping damage. "Pulled from a working environment", anyone?
To me, “pulled from a working environment” means it fell down a shaft in a mine, someone carried it to the workface and then brought it back up top. And usually it arrives in a similar condition. I got a power supply once with actual coal dust on it and in it. No idea how they pulled that off, but there you go.
Haha the only time holding out would have worked for me was when I was selling a planetary gear reducer. I got a frantic call from the buyer to do a sell it now and not an auction because the entire east coast was shut down with a blizzard, the said planetary drive failed in their process plant, it was costing them $$$$/hr to be down, and would I take it to UPS for next day air? I had just dropped the price a few days before. They would have paid anything for that gear reducer! But that was a fluke. I got it to them at a fair price, and they were very happy!
The days of "Atlantic Surplus Sales" or "Fair Radio Sales" are mostly gone. Give up on eBay for parts, and just go to DigiKey. There is a local electronics/hobby friendly store in the Eastside Seattle area, near Microsoft campus, where I bought an entire roll of 10uF 25v electrolytic caps for $5. Same for a roll of NPN transistors. Deals are out there, but more legwork is needed.
The guy who holds on to a load of film for a long time waiting for that elusive buyer, eventually those films will deteriorate under poor storage conditions, or just give up and throw them out for space. Then those films are lost forever.
And lets not even start on the sheer amount of Chinese fake semiconductors flooding Ebay today. Ebay has become very difficult to navigate for genuine parts.
I have seen a seller on ebay who had obviously gone to a scrap yard and desoldered/ripped off components from old valve (tube) gear. He was charging crazy prices because these were 'original vintage'. I am talking about wax capacitors, selenium rectifiers, and very smashed up looking wire wound resistors. All the stuff you throw away during a restoration.
I’ve been experiencing the same issues in my business, which is vintage clothing. Lots of new “dealers” in the market asking crazy prices for relatively common items. They are all convinced the market only goes up, which is obviously not the case for anyone who’s sold things for more than a few years. The bubble will inevitably burst. Cant cash in with no buyers.
Thousand and thousands of items listed? Sounds like a Scraping Robot: an automated script that harvests other listings and then creates new listings from that data. You buy from them and then the automated script tries to buy from the original listing (which is probably gone). Best Case scenario: you get your money back. Worst case scenario: a different item is shipped and you're out the shipping charge.
There's also a lot of fake components for sale. Many times it's duds dressed up as the part you need I rarely buy off eBay. The last order, the items were shipped loose rattling around in a box and had a fun time salvaging a nearly broken one. Those couriers drop the boxes, throw them sometimes, & paying big price on top of how poorly they are handled...
I, too, have been caught paying a reasonable price for an item, but finding that shipping was 3-5 times the price, or more. I believe high shipping is one way sellers make the price look appealing for their product, but still make a large profit. I ALWAYS look at the shipping to avoid getting caught again with this scam.
Fran, you are correct. And you are more than welcome to ramble. Some of them have zero clue about moving product and you have to wade through these eBay sellers to find good bargains. I got a very decent Rigol oscilloscope on eBay back in 2018 but I spent several days looking for that bargain gem to show up. Like buying a used car or going to a flea market (which I love doing to get electronics, old music, and especially tools), you gotta know the value of things and you gotta be patient. Eight years ago, there was this woman trying to make extra money as a reseller on eBay and that was a joke. She was selling some Levi's 501's for $50 which was ridiculous. You could get them at the time on either Amazon or Sears for $27. I figured out what she was trying to do was buy all of these jeans at full price and then resell then on eBay for $20 more and that was her profit. Probably hoping that there would be enough idiots out there who did not know how much Levi's jeans cost or simply would not comparison shop. In essense, she was looking for people as dumb as she was. Her shop closed in less than one year. "Who is more foolish? The fool or the fool who follows him?" Obi-wan Kenobi
Gone are the days when you could pick up old computer parts too. Even things like keycaps, screws, and cables are all "WOW VINTAGE R@RE!" collectors item nonsense. It really is disheartening- like you said, so many people are listing things on eBay with no real intention of "selling" them, which is only making things worse for those of us who actually need parts and things.
I have fond memories of Canal Street. Made a "religious" trip there twice a month. They're all gone. Outrageous rents put them all out of business. E-bay- only pay through Pay Pal. You will not negotiate with these resellers.
I was reading one book there was a guy who collected something pretty specific like fancy antique cigar humidors or something, but has plenty of money to do so and he personally likes doing it and having them around. He admits that he is at the very top of the market for the trade in this item. He doesn't intend to attempt to resell them since there is no-one who can offer more money than himself. Therefore, every one of this item that changes hands among dealers and collectors ultimately tried to get sold to him at the end of the chain. And if he doesn't buy it, because it is a duplicate to his collection or not his taste, then the poor sap who paid good money for it is now stuck with it when he realizes that without a sale it's worth zero.
That could be fixed up by not buying the box but taking pics first. I saw Lou Costello's humidor in a tiny swank cigar store in S.F. in the 80's. Blonde wood, about six times normal size. Hollywood had stuff for rich people you never saw advertised.
As an eBay seller, it’s great to get a buyer’s perspective. I sell obsolete components and have found that best offer and combined shipping (I.e request total) to be the best features for generating sales. Setting prices is definitely a challenge though and I have to sometimes resist that “miser” instinct :).
If large items can't be combined or be able to be shipped as freight, yes we do have to pay shipping per piece as a matter of necessity. I always ask if they "combine shipping" on smaller items, and yes if they don't reply, this is a basis for a complaint later in in the process... just in case you do order from them and then they won't reply to an= needed inquiry about a sale. Not sure if they can isolate emails of buyers from those of prospective sellers and respond accordingly
It's something I saw with the last vestiges of the local electronics shops. "I haven't sold this in months so I need to increase the price to make up for my losses from holding it so long." This is an actual argument I got from one local shop about six months before he closed up shop. He was also asking $40 for a PiZeroW.
Haha. The counter-offer is, "Oh, so you need to raise prices? That's okay, I'll just wait a couple months until your unreasonably high prices put you out of business, then fish what I want out of the dumpster for free when you shut down and have to toss out all the stuff you couldn't sell." When I was a kid, this scenario literally happened to two different local computer shops near where I lived. Got a ton of interesting parts for free because they wouldn't sell at realistic prices, then just threw everything out when they shut down.
Prices on ebay are all over the place. I have bought perfectly functional oscilloscopes for $50. At the same time, I have seen vintage one board 4K computers go for a couple of hundred. In fact, I sold a 1980's vintage HP calculator at auction. It went for $300.
Had this happen so much! I'm involved with an open-source project, and we're trying to generate video signals for satellite receivers, including the scrambling. Getting hold of receivers and viewing cards is a pain. The folks selling the receivers are convinced they're "classic" and worth thousands, while the people with the cards seem to be convinced that their 20 year old expired Sky card must have some secret hack to get free TV.
As a "collector" of many things, I find the word "collector" is a trigger word for "high value." I think of my collection as things meaningful to me. Most of it is unique to my interest, not of general interest. It's *my* collection of interesting things, not a hoard of valuable items. Every specialty item has its groupies but all together, they're usually of interest to a small group, not a wide audience. Collecting does not equal value.
Watch out for mega sellers who have exactly the replacement part you need, but long lead times. What they're doing is taking your order, then buying the cheapest part they can find n Ebay (that you already passed over), and reselling it to you. This is RAMPANT with motherboards. Some of them aren't even up front with lead time - they just take 2 weeks anyway. If you try to return it, they'll try to charge you restocking and shipping. If you leave negative feedback, they'll offer you $30 to retract it. Generally, I just stay away from the mega sellers unless I know exactly what I'm getting.
I’ve been stung by the hidden high shipping rate too. My last purchase, I received a partially non-working device. When I left a dissatisfied feedback - the seller claimed it was advertised as such.
I once asked a seller about shipping regarding a rare SCSI SSD that was actually reasonably priced. The seller seemed to be a bulk reseller from industrial sources. I got no answer but instead the price of the SSD jumped up ten times as high, making it uninteresting as a result. Another thing was that once i bought a part for testing and found it working, i would ask the seller for more parts only to see a new auction online with several times the original price. I suspect that there is something automatic happening in the background.
Some product categories are going crazy on the resale market. I am a Honda minibike enthusiast. I'm not a hoarder, I just have maybe 5 (I've seen people with scores of them). 8-10 years ago you could pick up Z50 or CT70s for no more than $1000 for the nicest examples. Now people are asking $3500+. I recently saw a 1986 "chrome special" and they were asking $8000+. Fine. Keep it. I never paid more than $600 for my nicest motorcycle. Crazy.
I been on eBay since early 2000's. I 100% agree. I used to casually sell on eBay and now I just can't be bothered. I find it's mostly sellers who are not passionate about what they sell and pretty much sell what ever is popular on TH-cam or social media. On the other side you have huge china warehouse networks. I'll order stuff from a china seller and 2weeks later a package from a logistics place 40mins away delivers my package. Combined shipping is customer service 101 however it doesn't exist on eBay as so many TH-camrs are pimping out "get rich". I literally have items on my watchlist that have obscene prices and they have sat on my list for years. Sadly certain items sell as some buyers are too anxious for instant gratification, and don't care or realize they being ripped off.
Similar problem exists with retro video games and eBay. Everyone thinks they can make themselves a fortune listing old games way over price, even games that were far from rare. The problem is there are people just getting into gaming that don’t have the history of prices and will go out and buy these overpriced games thus feeding the sellers to justify their prices if they seen even just one sold listing for the hiked up price. It’s longtime get rich quick fantasy for so many “sellers” that like you said are not business people.
Yup, seen this style of seller on ebay and other sites too. General term is 'flipper' buy something and sell elsewhere if for much more. Be it houses, 'look rare' items, vintage cars, old electronics etc. These people are useless, all they do it increase the prices on things, I consider them parasites/leaches. A real seller either makes the item, fixes it, tests it thoroughly or upgrades it. Simply buying something you know almost nothing about, and selling it as untested often doesn't make financial sense anyway. Yet because these people exist, anyone who wants old stuff to fix, cannot get it at a price that makes sense.
It really depends. Some stuff isn't worth the time to test or can't be reasonably tested. Example: I buy a truckload and on it comes an LCD screen for a specific laptop. All I can do is a physical inspection and throw a warranty on it. I'm not going to buy a stock of old laptops just to test this screen. Item is listed and priced accordingly. Large retailers don't individually test their stock before sale, either. I think some buyers have unrealistic expectations about what sellers will do before sale. If you want brand new reliability, then buy it new(and pay for it). I used to sell tested returns and nearly new used items. Countless times I would get returns on used items "oh, it has a ding on the corner" I mean, gimme a break. Listed as used, with photos, descriptions, etc. "Well I thought it would be perfect like a new one." Good lord. Nobody pulls this crap when they buy a used car. Only on eBay.
The only circumstance where one should be expected to pay a premium price is if the item has had "value-added" by the seller having cleaned, repaired, and tested the item.
@@equid0x I'd disagree, the used car market is one of the worst for this. I've had loads of flipper types come knocking on the door for my classic 1973 Landrover with a smirk offering 20% of market value, and not even aware of the unique features when you talk to them. I'm not offering it for sale, and boy do they take offence when you politely decline their "Oh so Generous" offer. Arseholes the lot of them
@@luviskol I've sold things I don't want to just skip, like vintage oscilloscopes, computers, and consoles etc, as not working / for spares repair because I genuinely would rather it go to someone it may be of use to. I would usually start this as low as is allowed with the 'actual' real cost of P&P. Even then it's always in the back of my mind that this is going to be bought low by a flipper who wil then list it at ten times what they paid for it, artificially driving up the perceved value. Honestly I'd rather just give stuff like this away to someone who needs the parts. I've barely covered postage before in some cases, but that's fine if it's going to someone who needs parts or genuinely want's to fix it. That's why I haven't sold on eBay for a while now... But how do you avoid flippers nowadays unless you are giving equipment to someone you already know?
Selling agents often build their per-item commission into the "shipping" (shipping and handling) fee, so that's likely why you're seeing this. They don't like to give "discounts" on either the item or shipping because it either comes out of their commission or reduces their commission, and they're not very concerned with "stale" inventory because it wasn't paid for with their money.
Also, eBay's shipping calculator isn't configured to support combining variety and quantity, and eBay's mentality is "free shipping" which means shipping cost is built in to the item price. eBay: "Who'd ever buy more than three toasters???" -- that's reflected in eBay's "quantity discount" mechanism that only supports buying up to three pieces of an item. And then eBay "invented" their concept of lots...all with the same shipping cost instead of supporting the cost or weight of each lot and then calculating the shipping. And, eBay's calculator is based upon PACKAGED weight, not ITEM/LOT weight, so the seller-specified weight of each item has to include the box/mailer. Maybe your item weighs one gram and the mailer weighs 0.75oz...and eBay's weight graduation is one ounce, which makes the "shipping weight" of each item one ounce: Buy one and the "shipping cost" is for one ounce; buy 100 and it's for 100oz.
And another angle: It's not just the packaged weight, it's also the packaged dimensions that has to be entered into eBay's shipping calculator. To illustrate, if you sell single 0201 SMD resistors then their "dimensions" on eBay are the dimensions of the bubble mailer envelope...so when you buy 10,000 pieces the combined "package" is as big as 10,000 mailer envelopes. BRILLIANT! Complain to eBay and they tell you to just offer free shipping... Even more BRILLIANT!
I'm frequently amazed by Ebay sellers, when I order some sort of (not obscure) component, like 10 x AtTiny85's, and out of curiosity, I look at other items for sale by the same seller, expecting to find other similar items - but I find out that they sell false moustaches, ladies underwear, bicycle inner tubes, children's marbles, amonites, cheap LED flashlights, china egg cups - just a wild miscellany of totally random stuff. I don't understand how they make money. Building up a clientelle evidently isn't a part of it.
I gave up on selling on eBay a couple years ago due to the rampant buyer fraud. If someone wanted to return a non-returnable item after eBay’s dispute window closed, they’d just start a chargeback through PayPal, which has a 6-month window. I’m not Amazon and can’t afford to float payments for 6 months because people buy items they don’t want or can’t afford. There’s literally zero seller protection despite what eBay and PayPal claim, and it’s just not worth it to earn $0.60 (maybe and half a year later) on a $10 sale.
I'm just getting into watch repair and restoration and the same thing happens there. In this case though, there is a small element who actually are paying these insane prices for a timepiece that is not working and is in very poor cosmetic shape, and I'm pretty sure they are collectors with deep pockets, not watchmakers interested in restoring vintage watches. I've also seen ridiculous prices on very old movements that are little more than a solid corroded block with wheels visibly disintegrating into dust. Just because it's 150 years old does not mean it's worth anything much. At that point it's little more than a curio. There are also sellers breaking down watch movements and selling them as individual components, and that's the saddest thing in the world in many ways. The bits that are needed are usually limited to a small handful for most movements (balance complete, escape wheel, pallet forks, reversing wheels) and it's unlikely they are going to be able to sell most of the rest. Actual spare parts are new old stock, and those are normally only made available to larger houses, so you only see a dribble available on free markets, usually retiring watchmakers and businesses liquidating stock when they shut down. Then you've got the insane prices for some of the tools. A set of mainspring winders costs thousands of dollars. You can buy the Chinese version for less than $100, but the problem is they were made by someone who doesn't seem to understand what a main spring is. The frustrating thing is I'm a metal worker, so I know it wouldn't cost very much more to do it properly.
For watch parts/accessories, try Esslinger online, they sell watch and jewelry repair tools and supplies. Prices seem reasonable, shipping was fast (I bought fiberglas-bristle scratch-brushes from them, great for cleaning and polishing electrical contacts, circuit board pads, and so on ---- they had German made ones, "EuroTool", that are higher quality than the usual Indian-made ones you see online, which they also sell. Most items listed include the country of manufacture).
I'm a UK seller of retro items. I roughly know what something is worth i start off with more than an item is worth. I always offer free shipping in the UK and factor that in the "the price". If i have more than one of an item i offer break discounts on that item only. I regularly reduce items if they dont sell, or if i'm having a slow month. I dont offer combined shipping or postage outside the UK as this was about 5% of transactions but caused 50% of problems. If its one of my "regular" UK buyers and they want a mix of items I make a special listing for them.
I've also run into many sellers that show a "Best Offer" selection but when I make a best offer its just refused with no counter-offer. Even if I offer $1 less than say a $40 part, they refuse it. So why are they even displaying a "Best Offer" option? I also actually got a seller to reduce their ridiculous price on a part. The seller was originally asking $70 for a certain type of flyback transformer. Just two months earlier the same part was being sold at $28 by the same seller. I informed the seller that he needs to know his market and, in all probability, I was the one who drove the sales of that part because I was a moderator of a certain FB group and recommended the part. The seller then dropped the price to $35 which is not as good as the original $28 but was much more reasonable than the $70. I've also noticed the shipping charges racket. That's why I firmly establish all details before I press "Buy It Now".
I make my living on eBay. The biggest issue with 'best offer' is that 99% of people will make their first offer to be exactly 50%. I think they do this on the basis that they think that the seller buys their stock for $0, so they should make an offer exactly half way between $0 and the selling price. They probably also think they're the first person in the history of eBay to make a 50% offer. If somebody offers me 50%, I ignore ALL subsequent offers, even if the final offer is $1 below the full price because I know I'm dealing with somebody who is going to be difficult to deal with (because their expectations are too high). To be honest though, half of the time they won't get as far as a third offer because they will be on my blocked bidder list (and they invariably open a new account within 24 hours and make more offers on the exact same item - and this account also gets blocked). If anybody wants to know how to make an offer, try pitching it at 75%+ of the asking price. And and an offer of 90% will secure the item almost every time. Offers of 50% NEVER result in a sale. Ever.
@@horsenuts1831 I've never offered 50% but if someone did, it seems the reasonable approach by the seller is to make a counter-offer at what you think is a fair price. This has been my experience. It only takes a few seconds of your time. I wouldn't call that being a difficult buyer. I call it negotiating a fair price. Blocking a potential buyer for trying to get a better deal is cutting off your nose to spite your face, but that's up to you.
@@littleshopofelectrons4014 If you re-read, you will find that it is not so much the offer of 50% that bugs me, but the fact that 99% of offers are for 50%. That means 'taking a few seconds of my time' amounts to quite a bit of my working day when I receive lots and lots of 50% offers. It is the sheer number of people who all think they're being unique that is the annoyance. Being 'unique' is offering something other than 50%, which on a good day will secure an instant sale. Today I had a first approach of 66% on a fairly obscure service manual, and because it had been hanging around, I accepted it without bothering to counter. I'm sure he would have paid 80%, but it was a slow seller, and he hasn't got my back up with yet another 50% offer, so he got a good deal. If that person had been so unimaginative as to offer 50%, he probably would have ended up on my blocked bidder list. (And once somebody is on the BBL, they are unable to even message me in future - its a very powerful tool).
Have you found that the search category changes have made it extremely difficult to find artifacts and exclude reproductions and fakes? These changes play into the hand of purveyors of fakes.
We have the same problem with used books. The used book stores sell them for four or five bucks, but then we'll see another title in the series from some individual seller for $70. Yes, it's rare, but it's in no way a collector's item. I've seen books in an obscure language for $120, when everyone who buys those books is dirt-poor and can't spend more than five dollars for a book. Most are in the $1-3 range.
I shop often on eBay for vintage computers and parts, the mentality is the same in that part of the market. Everything is listed as "rare" and for hundreds of dollars, but sellers almost never have proper pictures or specs listed. It's rare because it's beige, give me $300!
My wife recently bought an item and paid for it. Then the dumb seller turns around, cancels the order and re-lists it for more money. Now she has to go through the hassle of waiting for it to be refunded to her credit card.
Yes, I've come across the shipping scam. As a matter of course I always add the item to my cart to see what the shipping price is. If the item has a "buy it now" with no ability to add it to my cart then I don't bother with the seller. There are some that have ridiculous per item shipping I email them before buying if I've had a previous dealings with them and ask about the shipping, they tell me they'll refund and to this day all have refunded the balance of shipping. I've had some sellers refund a fraction of the shipping without being asked. I came across a guy that was selling some vintage transistors. Bare in mind there were other sellers listing these transistors for less than 1$ per piece. This guy had over a hundred of these and had a price of $45 each. I emailed him to find out whether the listing was for 100 as his listing looked wrong pointing out other sellers had these listed for around $1. He responded saying that, no it was $45 per transistor - indignantly so. Enjoy your transistors.
Hey Fran, If you're willing to do what the sellers do, you will find the deals, i.e., go out IRL and search and put the word out that you're a buyer. You happen to have the advantage of almost a quarter million subscribers, so it would be extremely easy for you to put the word out when you want something. I'm sure half the time people would send you what you want for free or close to it. Sourcing items is one of the many parts of the job of sellers that isn't really compensated. Or another way of looking at it is the time spent sourcing - which involves talking/emailing, traveling costs, time at sales/auctions, hauling (to say nothing of inventory, pictures, listing, shipping etc...) - has to be factored in to the ROI. And that is also leaving out the fact that seller's costs are increasing, but there is a limit to what an item will sell for, so there is more and more pressure for sellers to get every cent they can out of an item. As far as pricing high and holding onto an item, that is one valid way of selling. There is also the sell cheap and do a lot of volume. Those two methods are very old and are often summed up as the fast nickle or the slow dime...
I have similar observation regarding broken electronics that I would buy, fix and make little extra $$$. People are watching yt channels showing repair process that takes few minutes and looks soooo easy. So it's extremely hard to buy broken but fixable PS4 below 100 while I can't sell mine in great working condition fully serviced for 170.
I'm running into the same problem. A nothing, twenty dollar item, not at all rare, four hundred and seventy five dollars. Fortunately I don't have to buy, it's all optional hobby stuff for me. I can just laugh and move on. My saved searches still intermittently produce results, but it is slowing down. Thanks for the video.
Funny you say all of this Fran. I often try to buy bits for my physics channel and often sellers have no idea what the item is - I explain to them kindly what it is and how it would be good for educational video making to demonstrate to my pupils... Well as soon as they have this 'what it is' info, the price goes up and they refuse to even do a deal - had this happen a number of times. Certainly what we would call in the UK 'Very ungentlemanly of them'! Oh, by the way I have noticed items listed with an extra zero in the price of buy it now to catch people out - one to watch for. But, as you say, if crazy prices are on things they will never sell, so what a shame for people like us and our audience.
I've had exactly the same experience buying other things. The seller's say things like this is so rare and have prices that are absurd and yet they go unsold week after week month after month and I know for a fact that the items are not worth the price they are asking. I've come to the conclusion that these sellers have not seen the item before so they assume that they are rare and therefore worth a lot of money but in reality collectors have seen them at least occasionally enough so they know the price is not worth it.
I've had innumerable buyers try to convince me I am overpriced, then sell the item at my ask the next day. The fact is, lots of eBay buyers are pure cheapskates.
Totally agree. People are getting greedy. Just wish I`d got something I could sell to you at an extortionate price LOL! But seriously If I had something you want or need I would happily send it to you to support you and your channel. I`m decluttering or at least trying to LOL! Have a load of computer memory RAM, old sticks and I would rather just put the whole lot on ebay and give someone a bargain than trying to list it all individually and make about 50 trips to the post office for a profit of $1 etc each time. I see people listing old CPUs for silly money and other things. If I come across any old educational films on my travels I will let you know and I`d happily send them to you. Anyway take care and stay safe.
I've been seeing variations on this sort of thing for years... people having crap and claiming it's gold, and somehow managing to hoard of enough of it that they corner the market. They must have huge warehouses full of this junk they won't let go of. I do a bit of data entry for a friend that sells books on Amazon. She's always buying stuff based on what she sees it listed for... which means nothing, and loads of it ends up going back to the thrift store she found it in.
I remember the guy that ran ABC salvage in the fashion that you describe, I used to visit their brick and mortar a few times a year, watch the same things stay in the same places you're after year, solve it for 10-15 years, and I continue to walk out the door, and not pay anything for anything. It was just plain overpriced, and small got to sit on his gold and enjoy his "pile" . Yes I see this a lot on eBay, a lot of not too bright Myers running stores with stuff they try to sell for gold prices. Sad thing about it is that many of these Nublett heads are quite destructive when it comes to cool all the things. And those things just go to ruin and become landfill items defeating repurposing preservation and creativity, brainless greed runs rampant these days. I went to one of my favorite salvage places once and watched a man walk around and pointed things announced everybody in the place that every item that he pointed at was his, and then he was buying that even if you happen to have your hands on it. he was a rather big man, I informed him that I had seen him do this before a few occasions, and then I noticed that the things that he said where his were there for weeks, Remaining on purchased by him and then eventually purchased by others, I talk to the store managers told them his game, and he was banned from the store, not without a lot of yelling and shouting, intimidation was his game. There are all kinds of people in this world, and I've run into a diversity and swap meets. As you say friend there are many who managed to get a hold of a bit of cash, and basically get in the way through greed. Too bad, I don't see much of a solution
Like you I joined in the late 90's and it was brilliant. As a studio musician, I found amazing pieces of gear. Loved it. I think eBay have realised that it's easier to just be a middle man for cheap new products. Batteries, chips (often fakes), mobile phones and any old crap. It's dead.
As an Ebay seller I can tell you that we get it from the other side too. Almost every time I list something I immediately start getting crazy low-ball offers for it. Sometimes only within a couple of minutes of the listing going live. People send me messages arguing about why my price is way too high. Well then go buy someone else's similar item at a lower price, i tell them. But of course nobody is selling my item at a lower price because I did my research. My price is usually among the lowest on Ebay for similar items. People still argue and whine and complain and try to low-ball me all the time. I generally just tune them out. A lot of the sellers you are dealing with are probably just tuning it all out too. Basically, the value of an item is whatever someone somewhere is willing to buy it for. I try not to have emotional attachments to my items. Been selling on Ebay almost as long as Ebay has been around. Got over emotional attachments long ago. But I'm still not willing to just give stuff away. I list it for what I think (based on my research) is a fair price, and I stick to it. If after a while there is no real interest at that price, I'll start gradually lowering it until someone does bite, just to clear out the inventory and make space. However, I don't immediately lower my price or start negotiating big volume discounts just because a bunch of low-ballers jump on me shortly after the listing goes live. I keep my powder dry and wait. I often do sell for my opening price.
There is no negative feedback for buyers anymore, the only thing that happens when you don't pay is an unpaid item is recorded on your record, and supposedly if one gets too many of those in a given period of time they will be bounced off eBay (no one knows what the number is.) Sellers also can, supposedly, block buyers with more than 2 unpaid strikes in a given time period. If you want to haggle on eBay, now is actually great time, things are AWFUL there for many sellers right now given the current economic situation. I know I am really flexible right now, and am dying for some sales.
If you're selling anything, watch out for the people who offer more than you are asking. Then they say they made a mistake, and would like a refund of the excess - then they don't buy the item. In the meantime, your listing has timed out, and you have to relist, which makes it look like a sale has fallen through.
I once asked a pawnshop owner if he was running a store or a museum. He wouldn't budge on prices of items that had been on the shelf for, at least, 3 years. I was told to get lost. He went out of biz shortly after.
There's a flea market in Ontario where there are a couple of vendors who have many items that have been there for 40 years. I think they're just there for the social interaction more than the business.
Watch kitchen nightmares. It's a common theme where owners get too big for their britches and decide they know what the customer will get instead of just providing what they want.
@@peterlittlehorse5695 , I prefer outdoor flea markets, where sellers are somewhat motivated to sell items so that they won't have to pack them up to take home and then unpack the vehicle in the garage. All too often, indoor flea markets are just like rented storage bins.
@@goodun2974 Local annual tractor show has a huge flea market. Guys haul in heavy iron.....most of it has come back each year for 30? years. I guess it's good exercise??
I wish I would have been there, that's sounds like something I would have said, especially after not negotiating. I've been banned from a couple of ebay sellers *instantaneously* after submitting an offer they thought was too low (apparently they were "offended"). I wish there was a site dedicated to rating sellers on Ebay and Amazon of both good and bad, especially ones the just reject offers and never counter, they are the worst. I have returned to sellers that were good and know how to negotiate, some many times and spend hundreds of dollars.
Recently had an interesting experience. I was looking for an IC for a vintage TV, and found a vendor on eBay selling 10 at £2 each. I decided to by them all, made payment and eagerly awaited delivery. Nope, vendor contacted me stating they had made a stock error, and they were all sold out, and refunded my money. A day later, they were relisted, but this time at £19.99 each!!!! Needless to say, even though I need one, I'm not prepared to pay that. Also, 6 months later, they've not sold one, surprise, surprise. Stoopid greedy A-hole.
Yeah, I've had that happen with some Curtis Electromusic chips, order 20 because their price was OK (and they were listing "more than XX" available) and you might as well have spares if you're going to pay shipping anyway, 'sorry we made an error, we don't have stock, here's a refund', next thing same seller has a listing at twice the price... I ended up paying slightly more than the original price from a different seller. Cutting off one's nose to spite one's face...
me too, the tv is still sitting waiting for the voltage regulator IC.
The seller (probably layman, so no idea of what's a realistic price) might have interpreted your order as scalping. He would have been wiser to sell you maybe two or three if he thought that was the case. I'm currently building a webshop with vintage parts like that, set my prices reasonable enough that I would buy the item myself if I'd need it and set a limit on the number a single customer can order. That way, more people can make use of the offer, preventing hoarding and scalping.
@@mjouwbuis Thanks for that insight, I'd never heard of that term outside the obvious historical reference. Indeed, had the vendor did as you say offered two or three, we could have entered into dialogue, and he would have then discovered I was in genuine need. The reason I wanted so many was due to the i.c's fragility. The TV is a particularly rare Thorn 4000 TV in the UK, I probably have the only two specific models known to have survived. This particular i.c. was in the line stage and, was notorious for frequently dying back (1975) in the day. As I'm attempting to repair two of these sets, I thought best to get stock. I also have a vast stock of vintage TV spares as well, but typically none of these i.c. I did manage to track some down in the end, but only managed to get 3. Going to have to be very careful with them.
Complain to ebay. It's a mark in their record.
For me there's 2 different issues. 1 - People have emotional attachments to the objects and they price them based on that. 2 - I blame tv shows like Pawn Stars and storage wars. The items are always presented in such a way that they appear to be worth much more than they are actually worth.
I see the second point all the time with vintage or antique spinning wheels for sale. So many people are convinced they have an extremely rare find and usually they are not.
Data has shown that by nature, items sold online are 40-80% more than you should expect to pay in the wild. Buyers dont see the constant barrage of ebay selling fees, such as the newly added percentage of shipping charged to sellers as a tax.
@@zebunker I ditched eBay years ago due to their anti-seller policies. Why even sell there? Even Amazon backs its sellers on obvious buyer fraud.
I knew flea-bay was headed down the tubes some years ago when a new female CEO said "we intend to turn eBay into the online version of Walmart".
@@goodun2974 down the tubes? Ha. I wonder if prices for 12A*7, 6L6 or EL34 will drop. I need a decent supply.
eBay is a nightmare these days. Not sure if it's the same in the US, but over here in the UK eBay is flooded with sellers that are based in China, but because they have some kind of warehouse address in the UK they can get away with showing the listing to be in the UK, when really it will ship from China. Before this became a thing it was easy to filter your search results by location, but now that is simply useless. You have to check the individual seller details now, and on so many occasions even though the listing says the item is located within the uk, the seller is really in China. Occasionally you may get lucky and the item is actually shipped from a location within your country, but more often than not it will ship either directly to you from China, or get shipped from China to the UK warehouse, where they then ship it on to you. Admittedly the postage is very quick, but the problem comes if you need to send something back, all of a sudden you are faced with a postage fee back to China that is ten times what the item is worth.
Happened to me recently - location listed as UK, gave me an address in China when I attempted to return it.
eBay has largely become a mass junk selling market to compete with the likes of Aliexpress and Banggood.
There are still some bargains to be found on eBay, but you must spend time sifting through the "dirt" to find the "nuggets"!
@@AdamSWL Aliexpress and Banggood are much better to buy said junk anyway..
@@rkan2 And isn't that the truth!
Use Aliexpress for all my junk needs!
It's not just the UK. I got an item that unexpectedly shipped to the US from China. When it stopped working (because it was Chinese crap), the "warranty" proved worthless - emails to the "service" address were just ignored. eBay already got their cut, so they don't give a damn: their only job is to enable the seller to screw you.
For the seller it's an extra step in the listing process to enable combined shipping. Although they are likely using third party listing tools so can probably set that gloablly but they chose not to because it ultimately creates a greater return.
Or so they think ...
A theoretical gain is just that ,
As a seller, you now get charged a percentage of the shipping cost which comes out of profit, so one can't ship for actual retail pricing without losing money.
I don't sell on eBay anymore. However, the combined shipping function was broken for decades. I doubt they've fixed it.
As if it couldn't be automated for large-volume sellers. I mean, they surely have, or at least can afford, ERP / CRM systems with possible mail or messenger service integrations.
@@frogz sometimes I feel old-ish now being 36, but generally I still consider myself young. Maybe because my perception of time, social expectations, roles and milestones is drastically different than most people. Oh damn, am I getting philosophical again?
To the point of "high prices", in our eBay store, we enable "best offer" on almost every listing. When dealing in hard to find, obsolete parts, collectibles, etc... it's often difficult to know what an item is "worth". So we are sometimes "forced" to price high and evaluate received offers. We are also constantly sending out offers to watchers. Many times it's negotiation. And sellers know that if you start "too low", all offers will be even lower. So we (and many other sellers) start at what we feel the item may be worth to the right buyer and are willing to negotiate down from there.
While our eBay store IS a business (and our sole income) to my wife and I - and we absolutely treat it as such - I do agree that some sellers don't get it. We are out to sell merchandise, not store or collect. We try to focus more on industrial, HVAC, larger electrical / electronic parts, automation and other items that actually do have value. But we are in the business of selling and paying our bills.
I just wanted to present the side of the average seller, who isn't in the camp you're describing. I don't want your commentary to steer buyers away from the platform we rely on, based solely on your experience will stubborn pie-in-the-sky sellers who think every item is a treasure. We sell low value items every day and understand that it's ultimately the buyers that determine the true value of our merchandise.
Well Fran never said it was all sellers, just a niche few.
@@rebeuhsin6410 old parts are not antiques. They’re just old parts, hopefully, new old stock. Sometimes they’re very expensive, if they’re hard to find, and sometimes they’re very cheap, if nobody wants them. But ever since eBay began the buy it now vs the auction, sellers price things they way they want. Even with auctions, minimum bid can be very low, or very high.
The point folks, is that you don’t have to buy it, and you see the item price and the shipping first.
@@melgross exactly, but because of the current pricing trend, I search ebay far less than I used to, as per my market field more than 70% of Items are priced above new market retail in other locations.
I'm a seller that has recently pretty well shut down my old parts store. I tried to put together deals that I shop for and would buy, small lots of 10-50 parts capacitors and resistors mostly ideally keeping the shipping weight under 4oz where the minimum price increases on first class package service.
The last couple of years ebay fees and shipping have eaten away at my share. To the point I was almost giving stuff away and if anything went wrong end up losing money. I quit offering free shipping because the post kept raising prices that caused my listing ranking to drop, less traffic and sales to plummet so I pulled the plug on all my parts listings except one that had consistent sales, a commonly failed resistor in Peavey VT amplifiers that is hard to find. (shameless plug) Which by the way came into my possession via a pallet load of resistors that I bought where else but ebay.
My dad was an old Missouri farmer and he always said it simply “the price of a thing is what it will bring” and it really is as simple as that!
We used to build entire custom cars and motorcycles from eBay. And at some car and bike shows there were actual eBay classes or competitions where you build a car or bike out of all eBay bought parts and kept the receipts as proof. Those days are long gone. And the people who sit on their treasure. They're mostly hoarders that would probably have an anxiety attack and nervous breakdown if someone actually offered them what they want. And they're lonely so people contacting them about their overpriced junk is their dose of human interaction. And I've figured this out over the years all from building cars and bikes.
eBay definitely has quite a few examples of people thinking they are sitting on a "gold mine" with something. There is a particular brass HO scale model steam engines that typically sells for about $300 that somebody has been listing for $10,000 for a very, very long time. It reminds me of the joke where somebody makes some simple product and prices it at one million dollars. A friend asks, "How many do you really believe you can sell at a price like that?" The guy says, "I only have to sell one !!!"
@@Kevin_40 What is the marketing reason? Just to show up at the top of the list if sorting by price with highest first? To maybe get a "click" and then a click on "See other items"?
I remember a Dennis the Menace cartoon where Dennis had a lemonade stand and the price was $1. The captions was "I only have to sell one." Of all the cartoons, that's one that stuck.
Those people are going to wind up exactly how the people who were going to retire on their Beanie Babies "investment" did.
furbees
eBay History 1997: *Beanie Babies Craze*
Beanie Babies, Ty Warner’s line of cuddly stuffed animals, take the world by storm. $500 million worth are sold on eBay alone, representing more than 6% of our total volume.
The eBay sellers you're talking about are no different from landlords who kick out businesses and hold onto abandoned buildings and storefronts waiting for Citi or Chase to buy their property
I used to sell quite a bit of vintage camera equipment on Ebay. Ebay policies have caused this (mostly). Their continual rise in fees is a big one, now hovering at 15% for an individual (it was around 5% in the early 2000s). Their interface has effectively pushed out casual sellers in favor of "powersellers". They make it even hard to see what any individual listing is doing, short of going directly to the page. They discourage description writing in favor of pre-filled fields. Somewhere along the line their algorithm told them it was more profitable to have millions of listings that do nothing for months or years than to have a handful of real listings that sell in a week. Make no mistake this is a calculated benefit to Ebay and has nothing to do with profit for the sellers. That's why I now look to all other avenues of selling before going to Ebay. But mainly I think it's something psychological, and you've touched on it; the existence of Ebay itself, as it has grown as a platform, has created its own sort of inertia and/or entropy. People once saw it as an extension of the yard sale but now see it as an investment platform-- a showcase of potential rather than an real productive entity. It's a victim of its own success. Plus, if you look at the last 20 years, we've been in an unrelenting pattern of real wages sliding backwards, and I think this just makes everyone a little bit tighter when it comes to pricing.
Yeah I have one item that I have on continuous sale on eBay - a part that I machine on an as needed basis. I sell them for $50 including shipping. At this point even with really cheap shipping, I only get to keep about $35 of that, gross. eBay fees are way too high for what they do. If I were trying to make a living off it I'd have to raise my prices. Friends tell me that Etsy is pretty bad too, one that spins yarn says she's not even really covering the cost of her materials, and is working for free.
Bah... Ebay is what it is because it doesn't view its sellers who pay their bills as their customers. They are nothing more than a listing service... like MLS in real-estate, but want retail profit margins, and to dictate to sellers what and how to sell their products, while eBay itself sells nothing at all. They routinely support scammer buyers because eBay makes money on every sale whether the actual seller does or not. Buyers can be committing outright fraud eBay will side with them, force the seller to refund while keeping its own fees or even charging a penalty. A lot of the decent sellers jumped ship a long time ago. The site has become a haven for buyer scammers. Hell, I had a lady rip me off on a tablet. Claimed it didn't work, then sent me back a different tablet in a (no joke) brown paper bag. The device I received was smashed. She had HUNDREDS of negative feedbacks. Despite photo documentation and a police report, eBay refunded her money from my account, charged me additional fees, and allowed her to continue buying.
@@oldestgamer Not to mention, many sellers don't reach the threshold for sales tax in most states and should not have sales tax withheld to begin with, which eBay pockets.
As you mentioned, they are holding out for that one buyer who needs that specific part and can't find it anywhere else. But eBay has changed pricing on lots of stuff that used to have value. Coin collections and antiques, except for a handful of specialty items, are basically worthless. When the local coin show used to drop by twice a year, coins had value. With the Internet, we found out there were millions of them. Some eBay sellers have not figured that out yet.
Some guy has dropped by our shop three times trying to sell some pennies to me and he wants $20... Well that's an easy $20 for him! Where is his information to back up their value? If the pawn shop didn't want to give you anything why do you think it's worth my while?
Slowly crumbling pyramidical marketing.
Only ends at the last wannabee entrpreneur who still hasn't caught on ...
It's the same with brick & mortar shops - secondhand shops, scrapyards, antique shops etc. They'll look for the best market value and refuse to budge, because they haven't calculated the cost of keeping it unsold forever. Real retailers don't do this : they know when it's worth having a sale and dumping unsold stock. It always amazes me that scrapyards seem to have more security than real metal stockholders.
Hamfests are fun for showing people your stuff and not selling because the cost is too high.
Scrapyards tend to know exactly what the stuff is worth, and also want to have as little stock on hand at any time, as that represents money held up in inventory, and also that it is a massive risk, because of price fluctuations in scrap that might cause the stock to become slightly lower in value than what you paid for it. They buy it in, process it into bales or bulk, and sell it up the chain as soon as they get enough in to warrant the truck load or the bale, only tending to keep less than that on hand. Often if new stuff comes in they will keep it aside for a month and try to sell for a bigger profit, as often they will get overruns that are dumped, so can make a profit by selling for half new price, instead of the 10% scrap price.
Will admit a lot of my metal stock has come from yard this way, it is economical for the small buyer who has time on hand, just take the scrap pile there, turn it in, get money and do shopping.
I knew a woman who ran a photography store and she just could NOT ever take a loss on anything. She was still trying to get her cost plus a profit on 8mm camcorders 10 years after they were obsolete. Still trying to sell it for $1000 when you could buy a much better camcorder for $400. Not only did she never sell it, she paid inventory tax on it every year. In effect she paid a hundred bucks or so to put it on her shelf, plus the cost of the camcorder which was never recouped. She'd have been better off giving it away at some point.
@@michaelmiller237 They will sell you their 30 year-old radio for 80% of the cost of a new (and much improved) radio.
Scrapyard business model is in the metal. All the pickers are doing is stripping down the car for them for free.
Your mention of Canal St. brought back memories. I decided, back in the sixties, to build my own stereo amp. A friend and I headed down to Cortlandt St. in Manhattan and picked up a boatload of parts (for a song). I got most of my resistors and caps from locally sourced discarded old radios and TV chasises. Power transformer and out put transformers came from Cortlandt St. Bought a blank chasis from Lafayette Radio and punched it for the octal sockets. Getting the negative feedback where I wanted it for the bass and treble (many neighborhood dogs howling at two in the morning from the squeeling while I was working on it. The final result was an amp that was incredible - Mullard Master M EL84s. The only problem I had was, on one occassion, I forgot to turn the thing off. The 5U4 rectifier exploaded after about twenty hours. I have such fond memories of those times. Hat's off to you and your work, Fran!
I'm a ham radio operator that used to buy a few things off ebay and over the last few years the sellers and bidders too seem to think much of what they have is worth more than what a new item would be. I think much of the problem is because of TV shows like American Pickers and Storage Wars that make people think that what should be a donation item to a thrift store is some rare collectable. Even plastic model kits on ebay (many of which you can buy a brand new rerelease at a hobby shop, if you can find one of those) selling for 3 or 4 times the original (or current new) price. Part of the problem is the buyer is willing to pay way too much for an item. If the average ebay buyer would be a little smarter I think the prices would come down to a more realistic range but I don't think that is likely to happen.
Seems to me, that it doesn't matter what they sell: Electronics, NYC luxury condos, gold, Bitcoin, whatever.
Everybody wants to be an investor. It's sick.
Speculator might better describe their behavior.
Well, you could have a business model like some pinned comments where you clearly take advantage of overseas sellers in the eBay shipping program to provide free items for your TH-cam channel, knowing that eBay is doing the poor packing and sticking the seller with the bill.
Thanks Fran I feel your frustration! I quit eBay more than 5 years ago but against my better judgment started selling again to liquidate a collection for my mother-in-law. My opinion is the problem started when eBay dropped the listing fee. These "store" sellers have subscriptions with eBay where they can list 1000-100,0000 listings a month for a subscription fee. They can relist theses items over and over again without cost (except the store subscription cost) with the hope that they will make big profit on a few sales. You'll notice that this is why eBay is mostly no longer an auction site and most items are BIN. These "stores" only get free listings as part of their subscriptions for "fixed-price listings". Back in 1998 when I started selling on eBay if I posted 10 items with the starting bid set too high or the reserve price set too high and the items didn't sell I was still stuck paying the listing fee and the relisting fee if I wanted to try again. That was something to think about when I set my prices. My 2 cents and I'm completely open to other thoughts if I'm not seeing this correctly.
6:52 I can't believe you mentioned *Canal Street, New York City* (Manhattan). I was born & raised in Manhattan, and I used to take the subway down to *Canal Street* in the 70s & 80s to rummage through tons of parts stores to purchase electronics and parts. It was pure fun and gold. 😊
Fran it's like this for just about anyone who has a antique booth also. I've been to antique malls where the sellers have had the same stuff there for over 10 years. They pay rent on basically holding their treasure and a few of them have passed away only to burden their family with getting rid if the stuff. It comes down to people being horders.
I've also noticed this. Lately I've been finding that ebay sellers are just reselling things they can get from Amazon or electronics distributors like Digi-Key. It's been cheaper for me to buy from anywhere but ebay because of that. And like you, I used to buy from ebay often. Sometimes I get lucky and it's an individual, and those have much more reasonable prices. If they have a "store" with a large variety of trashy objects then I avoid them because of their business practices.
I searched ebay for a part for a DeWalt drill. Found it listed for $42. Right after it was a listing for a whole tool minus the chuck, which I didn't need, for $15. One wanted to sell, the other wanted to hold.
I noticed that Jacobs chucks are quite expensive. I replaced the chuck on a Craftsman drill back in the '80s, and it cost almost as much as the drill.
Definitely sympathize -- I see this all the time. So, imagine my delight when a seller actually refunded me the difference _automatically_ when I bought from them this week. Their policy was something like $3.20 base shipping and $0.25 for each additional item. I bought three items, and just paid the listed shipping price, because it was still cheaper than I could source locally. After the items shipped, I got a notification that the difference in shipping cost (from their stated policy to what I paid) was being refunded. 😱 So, if you should be looking for parts and hardware to rewire light fixtures, have a look at "thestonedoor"'s eBay store. (They're based in Tennessee.) I normally don't call out specific eBay sellers, but felt this one deserved the plug (pun intended). 👍️
I found that with vinyl record buying, people automatically assume their Elvis or Beatles records are worth a fortune when the reality is these sold in their millions so there is a lot out there! Another thing is non-expert sellers just looking at the top buy-it-now price on EBay and automatically taking that as the price they should get. Literally I have been at a car boot sale looking at a record and I asked the price to which the seller whipped the album out of my hands and searched for the best unrealistic price online, I just laughed and walked away.
And now you can buy a new one at target for a modest sum.
for sure !
What's a record doing at a car boot sale?
I've been in my local charity shop that sells Hi-Fi and the second thing they do after checking it works is go on ebay and find the highest price non of it sells even for charity
That's why I like to look at eBay's sold listings. That shows what people are really willing to pay, and how often those sales occurred. Maybe eBay should have a "Buy It Never" button to give pricing feedback to sellers.
Just fyi many manipulate that
A similar Phenomenon occurred in the late 1990s for Lionel Trains, Some guy who knew a bit about collecting them wrote a book about how to invest in them, went on all the day time talk shows, sold a gazillion books. then all these folks who didnt read the book, or didnt understand what they read went out and scarfed up old junk form garage sales n such and suddenly a worn out piece of junk was worth 3 times the top dollar price in any of the trading guides. And you couldnt even talk to these folks about it. killed that collector and resale market. crazy!. love the videos.
I've been selling on there for almost 20 years. In my experience, the fast nickel is often preferable to the slow dime.
Inventory doesn't make money if its sitting on the shelf.
@@equid0x Does it eat?
@@loganq It represents money spent that you can't get back until it's sold.
No sale, no cost recouped. The longer there's no sale, the longer the money is just sitting there tied up in something you're not using instead of being put to work earning interest or being liquid or whatever you'd prefer it to be doing besides nothing.
@@wasd____ In the business you run, you can sell your stock at 75% off instead of "losing" out on the 0.01% APY of interest. But when I do the math, it makes sense to wait for the right buyer(s).
@@loganq "The right buyer" is the one who's actually interested in buying the item you have. If you're passing up fair offers, you're turning away the real-world right buyer in favor of a fantasy that might never come along.
It is like buying a couple of things from the same seller and says won't combine shipping, but then the items come in 1 package.
That will earn them a low rating on shipping cost feedback.
Have them shipped to two different addresses ;) I've thought about doing that but it felt too petty...
@@YensR When I buy stuff on AliExpress (I've long since given up on eBay) from a seller that doesn't offer combined shipping, I buy one. Then wait until it's shipped. Then buy another. For as long as it takes to obtain the amount required. No bloody way am I going to pay full shipping & handling on every single item, just to see them save expenses by sending it as a single shipment.
If they don't combine I'll just wait until the first ships to buy the next item :)
That makes sense Juan and Kim - I have previously had a situation where I bought two items from the same seller and they came in two separate but identical packages on the same day. It seems some sellers do not even combine shipping when it would benefit them! (I don't think they came from different warehouses, but who knows!)
I had two whole stores full of capacitors,transistors and vintage tubes and many more items still in boxes. The county jacked my property taxes up so high that I was forced to sell everything for pennies on the dollar to pay my property taxes and wound up losing both stores as the county threw most of my inventory in the land fill as they were ignorant of the value. I was able to save a garage full of my electronic inventory but the county taxed me out of business.
This is happening on Amazon Marketplace too. Sellers are engaging in large scale arbitrage as a get rich quick scheme. In some cases it is set up in a Ponzi structure as well, with goods instead of money. That is what most of those youtube ads for "make money with Amazon/Ebay" ads are/were about.
Another term people use for these shady operators is "gators"--short for "aggregators". They buy and sell anything and everything from everywhere and simultaneously re-list on their own channels. They do this with bots and they often even list the items before their purchase transactions close. Sometimes gators even buy from other gators and it is gators all the way down.
These aren't businesses...they are pure scams. And like all Ponzi type scams, they ALWAYS collapse. At some point there are no greater fools to sell to. But Amazon and Ebay won't purge them until they are held accountable or it hits their bottom lines.
my guess: they don't see themselves as sellers, they see themselves as """investors"""
I used to buy £1000s worth of items from a seller each year; the last order I made was for 4 seperate items each with £40 postage; I asked if they could combine ship and they said 'no, the items are already packaged ready to ship'; I paid the £160 shipping charge and a few days later, the items arrived - all packed in a single box. I complained to them and they said that they never stated they would do combined shipping. They lost a buyer and several £1000s of business that day.
I tried to sell some stuff on ebay a few months ago, even some of the buyers turned out to be scammers, I was getting messages from people claiming to be the winners of the auction, and buyers messaging me to buy it from a different account, buyers who had "already got one", and buyers who said they couldn't buy until a certain date - a sign that they were a scalper, I'd message them and eventually communication would just break down. In the end I gave up and did it offline.
Just a general bad experience with ebay. Lots of people who didn't know what "collection in person" meant. It didn't used to be like this, just a couple of years ago, people were pretty reasonable and happy to buy from me. I suppose it depends what you're buying or selling as to the type of customer you're dealing with.
Buyer fraud is an epidemic on eBay. My eBay return rate on consumer electronics was 15%. On Amazon, 5%. Bonanza 0%. ECrater, 0%. My own site, 2.5%. In person 0%.
The problem is eBay cannot get anything from the scammer only the poor old seller, I only do cash on collection on large or valuable items. Recently I tried to sell a fender guitar, got repeated silly offers if I posted from scammers, it was listed at 350 and they offered up to 500. I decided to end the auction as one of them had bid. EBay tried to charge me for ending the listing and demanded to know how they would not pay cash despite all the messages to the contrary. Cheers eBay now I only sell low value stuff and use gumtree. Takes longer but no problems.
I've noticed the same thing in the ebay bookseller market. It really seems like in 2020 things went haywire. Rarer books I bought in 2019 for $40 are now tagged at $600+ and are just SITTING there.
Generating scarcity by buying cheap and then selling for a much higher price. Meh.
Seeing it in Poland (Allegro, OLX) too. Ha! Even antique sellers at flea markets IRL do that. To think about how much some of them wanted for used, untested tubes... I think they got too much of the "audiophile hype".
I have a giant, foot-long battery-powered "toothbrush" (Rubbermaid branded) that I bought for $12 at Aldi here in the US a few years ago, which we use for scrubbing dishes and sometimes for cleaning vintage electronics. I looked online for another one recently; most sites are "out of stock" but some sellers are asking $100 for these things!
Today's "vintage" collectable market is insane, I'm completely priced-out of it now so I just gave up. In the early 90's I bought a pallet of 12 working Tektronix scopes at a GSA auction for $10.00, sold them to engineering students at my college for $50 each. At the same auction I bought a pallet of Bell & Howell 16mm sound projectors for $5.00, but was outbid on the pallet of Bolex 16mm cameras and lenses, it went for $50.00 which was a steal even at the time.
Those days are gone. Even the GSA is online now with all the idiots.
Similar experiences here in the UK. I collect vintage equipment from the video production equipment company Quantel and right now there are listings on ebay that have literally been there for YEARS for crazy prices with no intent to negotiate on their price. Recently i have found sellers in the far-east will piles of stock of old stuff, we're talking hundreds of thousands of listings on Ebay with prices 100x what they are worth who seem to not care if your not willing to pay their asking price! I guess storage of these things is not a concern to them, because they are going to be storing them for a very very long time if they continue doing what they are doing!
One other thing I am finding is that an order for an item on eBay purchased but fulfilled through Amazon instead, without notice to the buyer prevents us from being able to see the terms of the original ad, presumably on Amazon... or in other instances, elsewhere. So, in this way refurbished items and risky, as-is warned ( flood or fire sale type) offers may be omitted from access or visibility into being offered by sellers with terrible feedback. These are delivered by Amazon in an Amazon box and sometimes a gift receipt with some unknown company name. They might get in trouble if they advertise on eBay as shipping from their own account's location though, when it is actually being sent from another location entirely ( or in other instances when they report as being a US seller/shipper but their items come from a foreign place. As to the future, with the sanctions we are now seeing, I wonder how many desperate or convoluted efforts may be put into place to sell goods and exchange cash, especially if other excuses may ,]make use of any potential shipping delays in the future.
i know my dad sits on a load of classic land rover parts, he talks about the 1999 to 2007 times where he went from holland to the uk by boat to buy job lots of parts. The UK was a defender market, the old parts got often given for free, while in holland defender cars were taxes by the kg and 25 year old (now 40( were tax exempt so the older series 1, 2, 2a and 3 were in high demand. prices sky rocketed, dad got a disability and sells bits here and there to get the parts he needs and helps others keeping theirs on the road. He did say, ebay golden days are over,
FYI similar stories, My old boss, when he was younger, had a boss that would be selling item he did not own. He would go to estates sales, moving sale and newspaper ads to find items to sale and might post an ads in the paper and in the old day the had want ads also in the paper. He contact the seller and offer them to buy item but he wanted a cheaper price. Most of the time he get it cheaper and he would have a list of buyer looking for a used item because of the fake ad he had in newspaper.
A buyer would call about his ad, and he would say that he just sold the item but he had a friend that was selling a similar item and he said he would call his friend to see if he still have the item for sale. Telling the caller he call him about the item, He go find the item and tell the buyer his friend did not want to sell it anyone but him, so he would tell the buyer that he should go to his house and pick him up and he would tell his friend that the buyer was just helping him to move the item.
Please keep in mind this was the late 1940 and early 1950. His boss was a manager of a movie theater with extra time to do what he wanted to do.
FLIP items mostly, picking up items cheap. The placing of ads to sell items you did not have or own (Amazon Sellers) was the big rub.
I've run across such situations before, Fran. That's one of the reasons I never use "buy now" in any online marketplace. I always do it manually: add items to cart, go to checkout, then _thoroughly_ scrutinize every aspect of the transaction (prices? taxes? shipping costs?) before hitting the "Place Order" button. If I don't like what I see, I press my browser's "Back" button then remove the offending items from my cart.
As for the Ebay Smaugs, they'll lie on their treasure under Erebor until they die. (Everyone eventually does.) Then, after their landlord breaks into their apartment and disposes of their corpse and their possessions, their "precious bounty" will eventually end up in one of two places: local auctions, or landfill. So when looking for vintage stuff, I suggest also scouting local auctions to see if anything interesting is available. (Dumpster diving can also be fruitful.)
I agree with your sentiments about Ebay. There were bargains years ago, even on test gear (HP, Tek, Keithley). Now, with sites like Worthpoint, everyone asks top dollar for "as is" equipment that looks like it was thrown off a loading dock. And don't get me started on inadequate packing and the resulting shipping damage. "Pulled from a working environment", anyone?
To me, “pulled from a working environment” means it fell down a shaft in a mine, someone carried it to the workface and then brought it back up top. And usually it arrives in a similar condition. I got a power supply once with actual coal dust on it and in it. No idea how they pulled that off, but there you go.
Haha the only time holding out would have worked for me was when I was selling a planetary gear reducer. I got a frantic call from the buyer to do a sell it now and not an auction because the entire east coast was shut down with a blizzard, the said planetary drive failed in their process plant, it was costing them $$$$/hr to be down, and would I take it to UPS for next day air? I had just dropped the price a few days before. They would have paid anything for that gear reducer! But that was a fluke. I got it to them at a fair price, and they were very happy!
And they say there's no such thing as an honest merchant! :)
The days of "Atlantic Surplus Sales" or "Fair Radio Sales" are mostly gone. Give up on eBay for parts, and just go to DigiKey. There is a local electronics/hobby friendly store in the Eastside Seattle area, near Microsoft campus, where I bought an entire roll of 10uF 25v electrolytic caps for $5. Same for a roll of NPN transistors. Deals are out there, but more legwork is needed.
The guy who holds on to a load of film for a long time waiting for that elusive buyer, eventually those films will deteriorate under poor storage conditions, or just give up and throw them out for space. Then those films are lost forever.
And lets not even start on the sheer amount of Chinese fake semiconductors flooding Ebay today. Ebay has become very difficult to navigate for genuine parts.
If it ships from China, don't buy it. A simple rule that will serve you well in the long run.
I have seen a seller on ebay who had obviously gone to a scrap yard and desoldered/ripped off components from old valve (tube) gear. He was charging crazy prices because these were 'original vintage'. I am talking about wax capacitors, selenium rectifiers, and very smashed up looking wire wound resistors. All the stuff you throw away during a restoration.
I’ve been experiencing the same issues in my business, which is vintage clothing. Lots of new “dealers” in the market asking crazy prices for relatively common items. They are all convinced the market only goes up, which is obviously not the case for anyone who’s sold things for more than a few years. The bubble will inevitably burst. Cant cash in with no buyers.
Thousand and thousands of items listed? Sounds like a Scraping Robot: an automated script that harvests other listings and then creates new listings from that data. You buy from them and then the automated script tries to buy from the original listing (which is probably gone). Best Case scenario: you get your money back. Worst case scenario: a different item is shipped and you're out the shipping charge.
There's also a lot of fake components for sale. Many times it's duds dressed up as the part you need
I rarely buy off eBay.
The last order, the items were shipped loose rattling around in a box and had a fun time salvaging a nearly broken one.
Those couriers drop the boxes, throw them sometimes, & paying big price on top of how poorly they are handled...
I, too, have been caught paying a reasonable price for an item, but finding that shipping was 3-5 times the price, or more. I believe high shipping is one way sellers make the price look appealing for their product, but still make a large profit. I ALWAYS look at the shipping to avoid getting caught again with this scam.
That scam is rampant on Amazon as well
Fran, you are correct. And you are more than welcome to ramble. Some of them have zero clue about moving product and you have to wade through these eBay sellers to find good bargains. I got a very decent Rigol oscilloscope on eBay back in 2018 but I spent several days looking for that bargain gem to show up. Like buying a used car or going to a flea market (which I love doing to get electronics, old music, and especially tools), you gotta know the value of things and you gotta be patient.
Eight years ago, there was this woman trying to make extra money as a reseller on eBay and that was a joke. She was selling some Levi's 501's for $50 which was ridiculous. You could get them at the time on either Amazon or Sears for $27. I figured out what she was trying to do was buy all of these jeans at full price and then resell then on eBay for $20 more and that was her profit. Probably hoping that there would be enough idiots out there who did not know how much Levi's jeans cost or simply would not comparison shop. In essense, she was looking for people as dumb as she was. Her shop closed in less than one year.
"Who is more foolish? The fool or the fool who follows him?" Obi-wan Kenobi
Gone are the days when you could pick up old computer parts too. Even things like keycaps, screws, and cables are all "WOW VINTAGE R@RE!" collectors item nonsense. It really is disheartening- like you said, so many people are listing things on eBay with no real intention of "selling" them, which is only making things worse for those of us who actually need parts and things.
I have fond memories of Canal Street. Made a "religious" trip there twice a month. They're all gone. Outrageous rents put them all out of business. E-bay- only pay through Pay Pal. You will not negotiate with these resellers.
It was _awesome_ back in the '70's!
Definitely a highlight of any trip into Manhattan.
I'm curious how many of these films will end up in the landfill in a year or 2 because the seller decides well I guess nobody wants them
I was reading one book there was a guy who collected something pretty specific like fancy antique cigar humidors or something, but has plenty of money to do so and he personally likes doing it and having them around. He admits that he is at the very top of the market for the trade in this item. He doesn't intend to attempt to resell them since there is no-one who can offer more money than himself. Therefore, every one of this item that changes hands among dealers and collectors ultimately tried to get sold to him at the end of the chain. And if he doesn't buy it, because it is a duplicate to his collection or not his taste, then the poor sap who paid good money for it is now stuck with it when he realizes that without a sale it's worth zero.
That could be fixed up by not buying the box but taking pics first. I saw Lou Costello's humidor in a tiny swank cigar store in S.F. in the 80's. Blonde wood, about six times normal size. Hollywood had stuff for rich people you never saw advertised.
As an eBay seller, it’s great to get a buyer’s perspective. I sell obsolete components and have found that best offer and combined shipping (I.e request total) to be the best features for generating sales. Setting prices is definitely a challenge though and I have to sometimes resist that “miser” instinct :).
You can only sell it once, and if you're not feeling pressure to sell there is always next week, next month, etc.
If large items can't be combined or be able to be shipped as freight, yes we do have to pay shipping per piece as a matter of necessity. I always ask if they "combine shipping" on smaller items, and yes if they don't reply, this is a basis for a complaint later in in the process... just in case you do order from them and then they won't reply to an= needed inquiry about a sale. Not sure if they can isolate emails of buyers from those of prospective sellers and respond accordingly
It's something I saw with the last vestiges of the local electronics shops. "I haven't sold this in months so I need to increase the price to make up for my losses from holding it so long." This is an actual argument I got from one local shop about six months before he closed up shop. He was also asking $40 for a PiZeroW.
Haha. The counter-offer is, "Oh, so you need to raise prices? That's okay, I'll just wait a couple months until your unreasonably high prices put you out of business, then fish what I want out of the dumpster for free when you shut down and have to toss out all the stuff you couldn't sell."
When I was a kid, this scenario literally happened to two different local computer shops near where I lived. Got a ton of interesting parts for free because they wouldn't sell at realistic prices, then just threw everything out when they shut down.
Prices on ebay are all over the place. I have bought perfectly functional oscilloscopes for $50. At the same time, I have seen vintage one board 4K computers go for a couple of hundred. In fact, I sold a 1980's vintage HP calculator at auction. It went for $300.
Had this happen so much! I'm involved with an open-source project, and we're trying to generate video signals for satellite receivers, including the scrambling. Getting hold of receivers and viewing cards is a pain. The folks selling the receivers are convinced they're "classic" and worth thousands, while the people with the cards seem to be convinced that their 20 year old expired Sky card must have some secret hack to get free TV.
As a "collector" of many things, I find the word "collector" is a trigger word for "high value." I think of my collection as things meaningful to me. Most of it is unique to my interest, not of general interest. It's *my* collection of interesting things, not a hoard of valuable items. Every specialty item has its groupies but all together, they're usually of interest to a small group, not a wide audience. Collecting does not equal value.
Watch out for mega sellers who have exactly the replacement part you need, but long lead times. What they're doing is taking your order, then buying the cheapest part they can find n Ebay (that you already passed over), and reselling it to you. This is RAMPANT with motherboards. Some of them aren't even up front with lead time - they just take 2 weeks anyway. If you try to return it, they'll try to charge you restocking and shipping. If you leave negative feedback, they'll offer you $30 to retract it. Generally, I just stay away from the mega sellers unless I know exactly what I'm getting.
I’ve been stung by the hidden high shipping rate too.
My last purchase, I received a partially non-working device.
When I left a dissatisfied feedback - the seller claimed it was advertised as such.
I once asked a seller about shipping regarding a rare SCSI SSD that was actually reasonably priced. The seller seemed to be a bulk reseller from industrial sources. I got no answer but instead the price of the SSD jumped up ten times as high, making it uninteresting as a result. Another thing was that once i bought a part for testing and found it working, i would ask the seller for more parts only to see a new auction online with several times the original price. I suspect that there is something automatic happening in the background.
Some product categories are going crazy on the resale market. I am a Honda minibike enthusiast. I'm not a hoarder, I just have maybe 5 (I've seen people with scores of them). 8-10 years ago you could pick up Z50 or CT70s for no more than $1000 for the nicest examples. Now people are asking $3500+. I recently saw a 1986 "chrome special" and they were asking $8000+. Fine. Keep it. I never paid more than $600 for my nicest motorcycle. Crazy.
I always love the “Well, it’s old….” people. They can’t understand that just because it’s old doesn’t instantly make it valuable.
I been on eBay since early 2000's. I 100% agree. I used to casually sell on eBay and now I just can't be bothered. I find it's mostly sellers who are not passionate about what they sell and pretty much sell what ever is popular on TH-cam or social media. On the other side you have huge china warehouse networks. I'll order stuff from a china seller and 2weeks later a package from a logistics place 40mins away delivers my package.
Combined shipping is customer service 101 however it doesn't exist on eBay as so many TH-camrs are pimping out "get rich".
I literally have items on my watchlist that have obscene prices and they have sat on my list for years. Sadly certain items sell as some buyers are too anxious for instant gratification, and don't care or realize they being ripped off.
"Sadly" because you wanted the item cheaper, and someone who wanted it more paid a fair price for it?
You're one of the cooler people on YT. Great videos.
Similar problem exists with retro video games and eBay. Everyone thinks they can make themselves a fortune listing old games way over price, even games that were far from rare. The problem is there are people just getting into gaming that don’t have the history of prices and will go out and buy these overpriced games thus feeding the sellers to justify their prices if they seen even just one sold listing for the hiked up price. It’s longtime get rich quick fantasy for so many “sellers” that like you said are not business people.
Yup, seen this style of seller on ebay and other sites too.
General term is 'flipper' buy something and sell elsewhere if for much more.
Be it houses, 'look rare' items, vintage cars, old electronics etc.
These people are useless, all they do it increase the prices on things, I consider them parasites/leaches.
A real seller either makes the item, fixes it, tests it thoroughly or upgrades it.
Simply buying something you know almost nothing about, and selling it as untested often doesn't make financial sense anyway.
Yet because these people exist, anyone who wants old stuff to fix, cannot get it at a price that makes sense.
It really depends. Some stuff isn't worth the time to test or can't be reasonably tested. Example: I buy a truckload and on it comes an LCD screen for a specific laptop. All I can do is a physical inspection and throw a warranty on it. I'm not going to buy a stock of old laptops just to test this screen. Item is listed and priced accordingly. Large retailers don't individually test their stock before sale, either. I think some buyers have unrealistic expectations about what sellers will do before sale. If you want brand new reliability, then buy it new(and pay for it).
I used to sell tested returns and nearly new used items. Countless times I would get returns on used items "oh, it has a ding on the corner" I mean, gimme a break. Listed as used, with photos, descriptions, etc. "Well I thought it would be perfect like a new one." Good lord. Nobody pulls this crap when they buy a used car. Only on eBay.
The only circumstance where one should be expected to pay a premium price is if the item has had "value-added" by the seller having cleaned, repaired, and tested the item.
@@equid0x I'd disagree, the used car market is one of the worst for this. I've had loads of flipper types come knocking on the door for my classic 1973 Landrover with a smirk offering 20% of market value, and not even aware of the unique features when you talk to them. I'm not offering it for sale, and boy do they take offence when you politely decline their "Oh so Generous" offer.
Arseholes the lot of them
@@luviskol I've sold things I don't want to just skip, like vintage oscilloscopes, computers, and consoles etc, as not working / for spares repair because I genuinely would rather it go to someone it may be of use to. I would usually start this as low as is allowed with the 'actual' real cost of P&P. Even then it's always in the back of my mind that this is going to be bought low by a flipper who wil then list it at ten times what they paid for it, artificially driving up the perceved value. Honestly I'd rather just give stuff like this away to someone who needs the parts. I've barely covered postage before in some cases, but that's fine if it's going to someone who needs parts or genuinely want's to fix it. That's why I haven't sold on eBay for a while now... But how do you avoid flippers nowadays unless you are giving equipment to someone you already know?
Selling agents often build their per-item commission into the "shipping" (shipping and handling) fee, so that's likely why you're seeing this. They don't like to give "discounts" on either the item or shipping because it either comes out of their commission or reduces their commission, and they're not very concerned with "stale" inventory because it wasn't paid for with their money.
Also, eBay's shipping calculator isn't configured to support combining variety and quantity, and eBay's mentality is "free shipping" which means shipping cost is built in to the item price. eBay: "Who'd ever buy more than three toasters???" -- that's reflected in eBay's "quantity discount" mechanism that only supports buying up to three pieces of an item. And then eBay "invented" their concept of lots...all with the same shipping cost instead of supporting the cost or weight of each lot and then calculating the shipping. And, eBay's calculator is based upon PACKAGED weight, not ITEM/LOT weight, so the seller-specified weight of each item has to include the box/mailer. Maybe your item weighs one gram and the mailer weighs 0.75oz...and eBay's weight graduation is one ounce, which makes the "shipping weight" of each item one ounce: Buy one and the "shipping cost" is for one ounce; buy 100 and it's for 100oz.
And another angle: It's not just the packaged weight, it's also the packaged dimensions that has to be entered into eBay's shipping calculator. To illustrate, if you sell single 0201 SMD resistors then their "dimensions" on eBay are the dimensions of the bubble mailer envelope...so when you buy 10,000 pieces the combined "package" is as big as 10,000 mailer envelopes. BRILLIANT! Complain to eBay and they tell you to just offer free shipping... Even more BRILLIANT!
Why do you feel that you are entitled to a discount?
I'm frequently amazed by Ebay sellers, when I order some sort of (not obscure) component, like 10 x AtTiny85's, and out of curiosity, I look at other items for sale by the same seller, expecting to find other similar items - but I find out that they sell false moustaches, ladies underwear, bicycle inner tubes, children's marbles, amonites, cheap LED flashlights, china egg cups - just a wild miscellany of totally random stuff. I don't understand how they make money. Building up a clientelle evidently isn't a part of it.
I gave up on selling on eBay a couple years ago due to the rampant buyer fraud. If someone wanted to return a non-returnable item after eBay’s dispute window closed, they’d just start a chargeback through PayPal, which has a 6-month window. I’m not Amazon and can’t afford to float payments for 6 months because people buy items they don’t want or can’t afford. There’s literally zero seller protection despite what eBay and PayPal claim, and it’s just not worth it to earn $0.60 (maybe and half a year later) on a $10 sale.
I'm just getting into watch repair and restoration and the same thing happens there. In this case though, there is a small element who actually are paying these insane prices for a timepiece that is not working and is in very poor cosmetic shape, and I'm pretty sure they are collectors with deep pockets, not watchmakers interested in restoring vintage watches.
I've also seen ridiculous prices on very old movements that are little more than a solid corroded block with wheels visibly disintegrating into dust. Just because it's 150 years old does not mean it's worth anything much. At that point it's little more than a curio.
There are also sellers breaking down watch movements and selling them as individual components, and that's the saddest thing in the world in many ways. The bits that are needed are usually limited to a small handful for most movements (balance complete, escape wheel, pallet forks, reversing wheels) and it's unlikely they are going to be able to sell most of the rest.
Actual spare parts are new old stock, and those are normally only made available to larger houses, so you only see a dribble available on free markets, usually retiring watchmakers and businesses liquidating stock when they shut down.
Then you've got the insane prices for some of the tools. A set of mainspring winders costs thousands of dollars. You can buy the Chinese version for less than $100, but the problem is they were made by someone who doesn't seem to understand what a main spring is. The frustrating thing is I'm a metal worker, so I know it wouldn't cost very much more to do it properly.
For watch parts/accessories, try Esslinger online, they sell watch and jewelry repair tools and supplies. Prices seem reasonable, shipping was fast (I bought fiberglas-bristle scratch-brushes from them, great for cleaning and polishing electrical contacts, circuit board pads, and so on ---- they had German made ones, "EuroTool", that are higher quality than the usual Indian-made ones you see online, which they also sell. Most items listed include the country of manufacture).
I'm a UK seller of retro items. I roughly know what something is worth i start off with more than an item is worth. I always offer free shipping in the UK and factor that in the "the price". If i have more than one of an item i offer break discounts on that item only. I regularly reduce items if they dont sell, or if i'm having a slow month. I dont offer combined shipping or postage outside the UK as this was about 5% of transactions but caused 50% of problems. If its one of my "regular" UK buyers and they want a mix of items I make a special listing for them.
I've also run into many sellers that show a "Best Offer" selection but when I make a best offer its just refused with no counter-offer. Even if I offer $1 less than say a $40 part, they refuse it. So why are they even displaying a "Best Offer" option?
I also actually got a seller to reduce their ridiculous price on a part. The seller was originally asking $70 for a certain type of flyback transformer. Just two months earlier the same part was being sold at $28 by the same seller. I informed the seller that he needs to know his market and, in all probability, I was the one who drove the sales of that part because I was a moderator of a certain FB group and recommended the part. The seller then dropped the price to $35 which is not as good as the original $28 but was much more reasonable than the $70.
I've also noticed the shipping charges racket. That's why I firmly establish all details before I press "Buy It Now".
I make my living on eBay. The biggest issue with 'best offer' is that 99% of people will make their first offer to be exactly 50%. I think they do this on the basis that they think that the seller buys their stock for $0, so they should make an offer exactly half way between $0 and the selling price. They probably also think they're the first person in the history of eBay to make a 50% offer.
If somebody offers me 50%, I ignore ALL subsequent offers, even if the final offer is $1 below the full price because I know I'm dealing with somebody who is going to be difficult to deal with (because their expectations are too high). To be honest though, half of the time they won't get as far as a third offer because they will be on my blocked bidder list (and they invariably open a new account within 24 hours and make more offers on the exact same item - and this account also gets blocked).
If anybody wants to know how to make an offer, try pitching it at 75%+ of the asking price. And and an offer of 90% will secure the item almost every time. Offers of 50% NEVER result in a sale. Ever.
@@horsenuts1831 I've never offered 50% but if someone did, it seems the reasonable approach by the seller is to make a counter-offer at what you think is a fair price. This has been my experience. It only takes a few seconds of your time. I wouldn't call that being a difficult buyer. I call it negotiating a fair price. Blocking a potential buyer for trying to get a better deal is cutting off your nose to spite your face, but that's up to you.
@@littleshopofelectrons4014 If you re-read, you will find that it is not so much the offer of 50% that bugs me, but the fact that 99% of offers are for 50%. That means 'taking a few seconds of my time' amounts to quite a bit of my working day when I receive lots and lots of 50% offers. It is the sheer number of people who all think they're being unique that is the annoyance. Being 'unique' is offering something other than 50%, which on a good day will secure an instant sale.
Today I had a first approach of 66% on a fairly obscure service manual, and because it had been hanging around, I accepted it without bothering to counter. I'm sure he would have paid 80%, but it was a slow seller, and he hasn't got my back up with yet another 50% offer, so he got a good deal. If that person had been so unimaginative as to offer 50%, he probably would have ended up on my blocked bidder list. (And once somebody is on the BBL, they are unable to even message me in future - its a very powerful tool).
Have you found that the search category changes have made it extremely difficult to find artifacts and exclude reproductions and fakes? These changes play into the hand of purveyors of fakes.
We have the same problem with used books. The used book stores sell them for four or five bucks, but then we'll see another title in the series from some individual seller for $70. Yes, it's rare, but it's in no way a collector's item.
I've seen books in an obscure language for $120, when everyone who buys those books is dirt-poor and can't spend more than five dollars for a book. Most are in the $1-3 range.
I shop often on eBay for vintage computers and parts, the mentality is the same in that part of the market. Everything is listed as "rare" and for hundreds of dollars, but sellers almost never have proper pictures or specs listed. It's rare because it's beige, give me $300!
My wife recently bought an item and paid for it. Then the dumb seller turns around, cancels the order and re-lists it for more money. Now she has to go through the hassle of waiting for it to be refunded to her credit card.
Yes, I've come across the shipping scam. As a matter of course I always add the item to my cart to see what the shipping price is. If the item has a "buy it now" with no ability to add it to my cart then I don't bother with the seller. There are some that have ridiculous per item shipping I email them before buying if I've had a previous dealings with them and ask about the shipping, they tell me they'll refund and to this day all have refunded the balance of shipping. I've had some sellers refund a fraction of the shipping without being asked.
I came across a guy that was selling some vintage transistors. Bare in mind there were other sellers listing these transistors for less than 1$ per piece. This guy had over a hundred of these and had a price of $45 each. I emailed him to find out whether the listing was for 100 as his listing looked wrong pointing out other sellers had these listed for around $1. He responded saying that, no it was $45 per transistor - indignantly so. Enjoy your transistors.
Hey Fran, If you're willing to do what the sellers do, you will find the deals, i.e., go out IRL and search and put the word out that you're a buyer. You happen to have the advantage of almost a quarter million subscribers, so it would be extremely easy for you to put the word out when you want something. I'm sure half the time people would send you what you want for free or close to it. Sourcing items is one of the many parts of the job of sellers that isn't really compensated. Or another way of looking at it is the time spent sourcing - which involves talking/emailing, traveling costs, time at sales/auctions, hauling (to say nothing of inventory, pictures, listing, shipping etc...) - has to be factored in to the ROI. And that is also leaving out the fact that seller's costs are increasing, but there is a limit to what an item will sell for, so there is more and more pressure for sellers to get every cent they can out of an item. As far as pricing high and holding onto an item, that is one valid way of selling. There is also the sell cheap and do a lot of volume. Those two methods are very old and are often summed up as the fast nickle or the slow dime...
I have similar observation regarding broken electronics that I would buy, fix and make little extra $$$. People are watching yt channels showing repair process that takes few minutes and looks soooo easy. So it's extremely hard to buy broken but fixable PS4 below 100 while I can't sell mine in great working condition fully serviced for 170.
This is exactly how the NYC real estate market works. They would rather sit and lose money then rent.
I'm running into the same problem. A nothing, twenty dollar item, not at all rare, four hundred and seventy five dollars. Fortunately I don't have to buy, it's all optional hobby stuff for me. I can just laugh and move on. My saved searches still intermittently produce results, but it is slowing down.
Thanks for the video.
Never contact the tyrants. Do not watch their items. It just reinforces their delusions. Let them rot in silence.
Funny you say all of this Fran. I often try to buy bits for my physics channel and often sellers have no idea what the item is - I explain to them kindly what it is and how it would be good for educational video making to demonstrate to my pupils... Well as soon as they have this 'what it is' info, the price goes up and they refuse to even do a deal - had this happen a number of times. Certainly what we would call in the UK 'Very ungentlemanly of them'! Oh, by the way I have noticed items listed with an extra zero in the price of buy it now to catch people out - one to watch for. But, as you say, if crazy prices are on things they will never sell, so what a shame for people like us and our audience.
I've had exactly the same experience buying other things. The seller's say things like this is so rare and have prices that are absurd and yet they go unsold week after week month after month and I know for a fact that the items are not worth the price they are asking. I've come to the conclusion that these sellers have not seen the item before so they assume that they are rare and therefore worth a lot of money but in reality collectors have seen them at least occasionally enough so they know the price is not worth it.
I've had innumerable buyers try to convince me I am overpriced, then sell the item at my ask the next day. The fact is, lots of eBay buyers are pure cheapskates.
Totally agree. People are getting greedy. Just wish I`d got something I could sell to you at an extortionate price LOL! But seriously If I had something you want or need I would happily send it to you to support you and your channel. I`m decluttering or at least trying to LOL! Have a load of computer memory RAM, old sticks and I would rather just put the whole lot on ebay and give someone a bargain than trying to list it all individually and make about 50 trips to the post office for a profit of $1 etc each time. I see people listing old CPUs for silly money and other things. If I come across any old educational films on my travels I will let you know and I`d happily send them to you.
Anyway take care and stay safe.
I've been seeing variations on this sort of thing for years... people having crap and claiming it's gold, and somehow managing to hoard of enough of it that they corner the market. They must have huge warehouses full of this junk they won't let go of.
I do a bit of data entry for a friend that sells books on Amazon. She's always buying stuff based on what she sees it listed for... which means nothing, and loads of it ends up going back to the thrift store she found it in.
I remember the guy that ran ABC salvage in the fashion that you describe, I used to visit their brick and mortar a few times a year, watch the same things stay in the same places you're after year, solve it for 10-15 years, and I continue to walk out the door, and not pay anything for anything. It was just plain overpriced, and small got to sit on his gold and enjoy his "pile" . Yes I see this a lot on eBay, a lot of not too bright Myers running stores with stuff they try to sell for gold prices. Sad thing about it is that many of these Nublett heads are quite destructive when it comes to cool all the things. And those things just go to ruin and become landfill items defeating repurposing preservation and creativity, brainless greed runs rampant these days.
I went to one of my favorite salvage places once and watched a man walk around and pointed things announced everybody in the place that every item that he pointed at was his, and then he was buying that even if you happen to have your hands on it. he was a rather big man, I informed him that I had seen him do this before a few occasions, and then I noticed that the things that he said where his were there for weeks, Remaining on purchased by him and then eventually purchased by others, I talk to the store managers told them his game, and he was banned from the store, not without a lot of yelling and shouting, intimidation was his game. There are all kinds of people in this world, and I've run into a diversity and swap meets. As you say friend there are many who managed to get a hold of a bit of cash, and basically get in the way through greed. Too bad, I don't see much of a solution
Ferengis have taken over eBay! Time for me to review the Rules of Acquisition.
Like you I joined in the late 90's and it was brilliant. As a studio musician, I found amazing pieces of gear. Loved it. I think eBay have realised that it's easier to just be a middle man for cheap new products. Batteries, chips (often fakes), mobile phones and any old crap. It's dead.
As an Ebay seller I can tell you that we get it from the other side too. Almost every time I list something I immediately start getting crazy low-ball offers for it. Sometimes only within a couple of minutes of the listing going live. People send me messages arguing about why my price is way too high. Well then go buy someone else's similar item at a lower price, i tell them. But of course nobody is selling my item at a lower price because I did my research. My price is usually among the lowest on Ebay for similar items. People still argue and whine and complain and try to low-ball me all the time. I generally just tune them out. A lot of the sellers you are dealing with are probably just tuning it all out too. Basically, the value of an item is whatever someone somewhere is willing to buy it for. I try not to have emotional attachments to my items. Been selling on Ebay almost as long as Ebay has been around. Got over emotional attachments long ago. But I'm still not willing to just give stuff away. I list it for what I think (based on my research) is a fair price, and I stick to it. If after a while there is no real interest at that price, I'll start gradually lowering it until someone does bite, just to clear out the inventory and make space. However, I don't immediately lower my price or start negotiating big volume discounts just because a bunch of low-ballers jump on me shortly after the listing goes live. I keep my powder dry and wait. I often do sell for my opening price.
There is no negative feedback for buyers anymore, the only thing that happens when you don't pay is an unpaid item is recorded on your record, and supposedly if one gets too many of those in a given period of time they will be bounced off eBay (no one knows what the number is.) Sellers also can, supposedly, block buyers with more than 2 unpaid strikes in a given time period.
If you want to haggle on eBay, now is actually great time, things are AWFUL there for many sellers right now given the current economic situation. I know I am really flexible right now, and am dying for some sales.
Fran, I love your eBay rant. One man's treasure is another man's junk. Keep searching! Love the Daffy Duck clips! Hilarious!
If you're selling anything, watch out for the people who offer more than you are asking. Then they say they made a mistake, and would like a refund of the excess - then they don't buy the item. In the meantime, your listing has timed out, and you have to relist, which makes it look like a sale has fallen through.
I put items on my Watch List and usually get a discount offer within a few days.
i do, too. usually on used books.
Same, but usually I just watch to see if anyone actually paid their idiotic price (spoiler alert: they go unsold and relisted ad infinitum)