The eBay Buyer's Market

April 29, 2007

The eBay Buyer's Market

When the hammer fell on this De Lorean owner's manual auction, it also brought to a close my days as an eBay seller.

During the past five years or so, I've sold more than a thousand pieces of ephemera (and other stuff) on eBay. My feedback rating is 99.9%, and I've received more than 780 positive comments from buyers.

In all those years of selling, I only received one negative comment--from some crank who bought a backpack (of all things). The backpack had only been used once and was virtually new. The buyer left negative feedback without cause and without ever communicating that he had a problem. I'm still bitter about it, and the incident happened four years ago!

From my vantage point--the savvy and patient buyer gets the better end of the deal. And that's why I still recommend eBay as the venue for purchasing ephemera.

It's a buyer's market.

Apr 29, 2007 7:31:22 AM | paper chase: buying, selling, & collecting

3 Comments

Sorry to see you go Marty... but don't leave us hanging. What are your ongoing future plans?

You can't just disappear altogether... we enjoy your blog and your insight to the ephemera marketplace.

Tom

EDITOR'S RESPONSE: No worries, Tom. I'm not stopping the blog or any of my other ephemera-related activities. In fact, I may browse eBay today for some bargains...

Posted by: Tom Murphy | April 29, 2007 at 10:10 AM

I agree with you completely, in some categories eBay is strictly a buyer's market unfortunately more and more, sellers are finding that they just can't sustain a business on eBay.

Good luck with your future endeavors.

Posted by: Randy Smythe | April 29, 2007 at 12:07 PM

Marty FeeBay is not even really a buyer's market anymore. I can't blame you for quitting it because frankly as a *buyer* it's not so great either

I did a little test buying at ebaY recently under a new account and I can say that between all of the changes ebaY is making to its site (the worst being messing around with an already broken search algorithm) and how angry, mistrustful and upset ebaY sellers are (and the biggest mistake is they are taking out their frustrations with ebaY and PayPal on their buyers), it's just not worth it anymore.

So where will you be selling?

Posted by: VDO Vault | July 01, 2007 at 10:57 AM

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