Parting with a prized possession & anxiety

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csxengineer

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May 16, 2003
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Due to the need for space and cash, I have to sell some of my scratchbuilt buildings from my now dismantled Union railroad layout. I spent tons of hours on this, but as I put it on Ebay, I fear my starting bid is too low ($25.) and thats all I'll get. At the same time, if I start it too high, and it doesn't sell, I'm out a couple bucks and a week of time. What do you think? It's auction #160180677141

Can I change starting price in a few days if there are no bids?
 
csxengineer said:
Can I change starting price in a few days if there are no bids?
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Personally, I feel that $25 for something of that size and apparent quality is a steal. It all depends on how badly you need the cash I guess. I would not judge if it is going to sell by the bids you receive over the week. If there is one thing I've learned from ebay, the best way to get a good price is not to bid until the last few seconds. Otherwise, you needlessly drive up the price. I realize that as a seller, this is exactly what you want but at the same time, if you do not get any bids, this could be why. Clear as mud?
 
I'm not an ebay guru, but ... i would say take your auction down before someone bids on it. These suggestions are meant to be constructive. I think you don't have enough photo's of your item and your description is hard to read, the text is all one block

I would suggest you use FREE eBay Auction Management, Auction Templates, Auction Tools, and Unlimited Image Hosting it's free and very easy to use, i use them on all my auctions, an example: Team Losi JRXS JRX-S Pro Roller Xtras TC5 HPI Xray RDX - (eBay item 230180511874 end time Oct-13-07 07:09:35 PDT)

You can store up to 15 photos for free as well. Use some white space to break up the description. Take more photo's, auctiva doesn't charge you so snap away!!!

Most action on auctions usually takes place in the last couple minutes of the auction on desirable items and yours surely is. I've actually gotten some great deals on ebay but for the most part the whole process of competing for an item brings out the idiot in me and i end up overspending because i want to "win" so entice people to want to win :).

I've actually bid on items that don't nearly look this good that have sold in the hundreds of dollars. They were custom assembled kit items that looked great.

The problem of value vs needing money is something i grapple w/ all the time when i sell my rc stuff. Unlike train stuff rc car stuff goes down in value quickly until it becomes "classic" which is rare anyway. So allot of the time i leave it up to the market to decide what the price will be but sometimes i stack the deck so to speak.

I schedule the auction (also free on auctiva) to begin and end on a sunday evening between 8pm and 9:30pm (5pm 6:30 pm pacific), which is what i refer to as AOL hours where all the folks w/ dialup are online looking at stuff :). The other thing is be sure it doesn't end on a vacation or a day when there is a big sports event where people watch tv. Sell to people in canada.
 
I agree with YmeBP. I know from experience that more pictures give you a better chance of selling the item. I think those of us that sell stuff have the idea that everyone SHOULD know something about what we are offering (just like we do), but that is not the case. So the more you can show will give the buyer a better idea of what you are offering and hopefully entice him/her to purchase it. Good luck..!!
 
IMHO.

More pictures = good

More pictures + fluff = annoying

I'm more interested in the item itself, not the pretty graphics of the auction listing.

You can always set a reserve price, the bare minimum you want your auction to sell for. If users don't bid over that amount, you don't loose it for less than you really want.
 
I've helped my father out before...when he has many lurkers on something like a number plate...I'll make a bid on it and then things will get moving...with the common 3x in price in the last 2hrs.
 
Interesting. I did not know that. I thought the only downside was that he'd have to pay ebay fees without making any profit...didn't realize that it was against the policy...I'll avoid doing it.
 
nkp174 said:
Interesting. I did not know that. I thought the only downside was that he'd have to pay ebay fees without making any profit...didn't realize that it was against the policy...I'll avoid doing it.
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That is almost universal whether it be an Internet auction or a live one. I once attended an auction where they let the seller make one bid at any time during the bidding. The idea was that if they thought the bidding was too low, they would be the high bidder, leep the item and just simply be out the fees. If someone outbids them, they at least got the bid up one notch. I've never seen that before or since, and I've been to a lot of auctions.

If you want to protect your selling price, you put in a reserve, or the lowest price you will take for that item, but is not reveled until the bidding is done.
 
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