A Little eBay Experience

As I note from time to time, I both buy and sell items on eBay. I've been buying since 1998, and selling since 1999 or 2000. It's been a rewarding experience on both ends, as I've gotten comic books I no longer want out to people who will appreciate them, and added many nice items to my own collection. It's not quite to the point that the former pays for the latter, but it's pretty close.

My feedback is almost entirely positive. I've never gotten a negative piece of feedback, and the one neutral piece I received (as I recall) was from someone who ignored my inquires for several days, and then got huffy that I'd kept writing to ask whether he'd shipped the item or not. There are people like that out there - that's life.

If you're not familiar with eBay, Wikipedia's article is not bad.

Buying on eBay can be an adventure.

Bidding on eBay in a nutshell works like this: People bid what they feel is the most they would pay for an item. So in theory this means you only need to bid once - unless, of course, the most you'd be willing to pay changes. At the end of the auction, the bidder who bid the most wins the auction, and the sale price is a nominal amount (usually, a dollar or less) higher than the second-highest bid. So if you bid $500, and the second-highest bid is $100, then you'll owe around $101 - far less than the most you'd have been willing to pay.

A common bidding practice is called sniping. In it, a bidder places what he feels will be his winning bid mere seconds before the auction ends, in theory shutting others out of the auction. In most cases, this behavior is irrelevant: People are already bidding the most they'd want to bid, so the fact that they got outbid at the last minute or three days earlier is immaterial. They weren't going to outbid the other person anyway.

Of course, if a person decides at some point that he's actually willing to pay more than he originally bid, he can up his bid. There are some natural, human reasons for doing so: You come into some money and up your bid to make sure you get it. You realize you really want it more than you thought, and therefore it's worth more to you. Less plausibly, you may decide that you misjudged the market and you need to bid more to win the item. This last is "less plausible" because you ought to be bidding based on what the item's worth to you, not based on the market: The buyers should set the market, not the other way around.

The most common scenario in which my judgment regarding an item changes is this: Several related items are up for auction, and I have a pool of money which I'm willing to allocate to buy as many of the items as I can.

A concrete example: Some years ago I was buying the 1970s Marvel Iron Fist comics. Someone was selling many of these as individual auctions. I knew they tended to run anywhere from $8-$15 each, and I had $50 I was willing to spend for as many as I could get. So I started by bidding $8 on each of six issues. As some auctions ended and I got oubid, I upped my bid on the remaining auctions accordingly (but not bidding over about $15 on any single auction, or over $50 total). I think I ended up winning about 5 auctions, and losing a few others.

The thing that makes this scenario annoying is not the sniping, it's the sellers. I wish sellers would stagger their auctions so none of them ended at the same time, but instead there were 5 minutes or so between each auction's end. That would make it easier to manage my budget in this scenario. (Of course, I really wish they'd offer items with the ones I want least ending first, and the ones I want most ending last. But that's obviously too much to ask for!)

These days I pay almost exclusively through PayPal, since it's just so easy. If I don't have a reserve from my own sales in my account, then I can charge to my credit card. But I'm willing to pay by check if necessary. Money orders are not generally worth it to me.

I rarely bid on an item which doesn't have a good scan or photo - it's too easy to get burned on the item's condition. I also rarely bid if the seller has any negative feedback which makes me uncomfortable. One seller had some negative feedback and his responses to it kept referring to the buyers leaving that feedback as "deadbeats". This name-calling combined with the fact that he didn't accept PayPal dissuaded me from bidding on some of his auctions. (I bid on two inexpensive items, and lost both auctions. I wasn't bothered.)

I always have items shipped to me at work (and get the occasional comment on the Apple address). I rarely pay for insurance, as I rarely buy anything expensive enough that I feel it's worth it. I buy lots of things costing $20 or less, really.

I've never had an item get lost in the mail, although just last week one arrived in poor condition: I'd bought a couple of sets of Legos, and the seller shipped them in a padded mailing envelope, rather than a box. As you'd expect, the flimsy Lego boxes got pretty well smushed, although the pieces were fine. I sent him mail expressing my disappointment. Most likely I'll end up leaving neutral feedback. I don't really want to use feedback to punish people - I want to be honest, fair, and hopefully help sellers become better sellers. That's in everyone's interest.

Selling on eBay is fairly straightforward.

The biggest problem with selling is that it's a time sink. I mostly sell comic books, so I have to scan the item, write up a description, inventory the comics to make sure I have everything I think I have, post the auction, answer e-mails from people with questions, send the total to the winner, process the payment (including depositing the check and waiting for it to clear, if appropriate), and finally pack and ship the item. Aargh! No wonder I put 4 or 5 items up at a time, and then don't do anything for a month.

Selling on eBay has forced me to grow up a little and take stock of what's important. For instance, I recently sold an item for which I received a check. The check took a week to arrive (delayed in the mail, I think). My bank is not the greatest at notifying me when the check actually clears (I had a problem with this once), so it can take a week or two. Then the buyer asked me to provide Delivery Confirmation, saying he could send me the 55 cents for the USPS service, but I'd have to trust him. I briefly considered saying no, I'd hold the package until his payment arrived. But then I realized how silly this is: 55 cents isn't worth getting bitchy with a buyer. If he sends the money, then great. If he doesn't, well bad karma for him. In fact, he did send the money (by PayPal), and I sent the item with delivery confirmation the next day, and got some positive feedback from him.

Then there was the fellow in Germany who had trouble getting me money, sent me cash, had to change the address to ship to, and it took over a month to complete the transaction. It took a while to work through, but he gave me some glowing feedback, and was really happy with the game I sold him. So it was worth it.

One fellow bid wa-a-ay more for a set of recent comics than I thought he really needed to, but for some reason it was in high demand. He was practically bouncing off the walls in his e-mail telling me when it arrived. That's one of the best parts of selling: Knowing you got the item to someone who's really appreciating it.

Finally, I sold a couple of items from a fellow from the U.K. who happened to be visiting family in the Bay Area. Debbi and I met him at Cafe Borrone one Saturday and the five of us sat and chatted for an hour. He and his wife and sister were both very nice, and I clued him in to both Worldcon in Glasgow this year, and Eastercon, as well as directions to a local comic book store he thoroughly enjoyed. I wonder if he went to Worldcon? It was this weekend...

I guess I don't feel like I'm going the extra mile for my customers; I'm just being reasonable and treating them like human beings. Of course, since I'm not cranking out dozens of auctions a month, I can afford to spend a little extra time per customer.

I think I get good prices partly because of my good feedback. I've also discovered a new trick which I suspect helps boost my sale prices: I list the original retail price of each set I'm selling. Comic books typically lose half or more of their value the instant they're sold, and typically only regain that value and start appreciating after 10-to-20 years. This is because it takes that long for enough existing copies of an issue to degrade in condition that the better-condition copies are rare enough to generate real demand. (For various reasons this window is probably getting longer, except for books which were underprinted and become surprisingly popular a few years later, i.e. for which the whole original print run can't meet demand.)

But, I suspect that, presented with the original retail price, all but the most savvy buyers feel that paying at least the original price is worthwhile - or maybe that losing an auction because they're not willing to pay the original price would be lame.

Or maybe it's been complete coincidence, and I get good prices because I sell good stuff. But hey, it's a theory! Can't hurt, right?

I know eBay isn't for everyone. I think the bidding experience is a little too intense for some people. And there's always the risk of getting ripped off. But with a little caution it's not really that big a risk. Bid amounts you're willing to lose in the unlikely event things go wrong, and/or be aware that you're making a bit of a gamble. But for me being an eBayer has been a tremendously rewarding experience, and I'm sure I'll continue using it as long as it's around, or until something better comes along.

Which reminds me, I have some more comics I need to put up...