Selling on ebay advice

[ausreenactor]

Agree 1000% ... I will not sell on Ebay...
My last sale there dates from 2015.
( even if Paypal is not mendacity in EU Ebay sites..)
Believe or not, I still sell... even to members here... and contacts ..

Listed six items last week. Sold two. Thought the out of production At The Front gear would have moved. As new, one brand new USMC jacket. They relisted automatically but i might yank them and put them away.

Coronavirus getting everyone down? Who knows..

 

[Pilot]

GLWYS.

 

[Micawber]

I guess we all do a bit of buying and selling, in my case since the 1960's, but don't make so much of a song and dance about it.
The basics remain the same as they were back then, well packed items sent via reliable means with backup and tracking if it should go pear shaped.

 

[Southoftheborder]

Listed six items last week. Sold two. Thought the out of production At The Front gear would have moved. As new, one brand new USMC jacket. They relisted automatically but i might yank them and put them away.

Coronavirus getting everyone down? Who knows..

Had a quick look at recently sold Eastman A2s on eBay just now and was surprised at how little most went for when they were listed in auction. A lot of high priced BINs but who knows how much they actually sold for? The contract ones as well not just house ones. A fairly new looking Monarch in Germany only made €325 last week and that is usually a country where Eastmans get a good price. Not a lot of confidence around. Just look at the oil price going down....

 

[ausreenactor]

Looking forward to the US stock market over night. Chinese market lost 8% today. Travel bans in effect. Australian economists are predicting a recession due to the restrictions on Chinese visitors.

 

[Pilot]

Looking forward to the US stock market over night. Chinese market lost 8% today. Travel bans in effect. Australian economists are predicting a recession due to the restrictions on Chinese visitors.

The Real McCoy‘s ... a safe and stable value

 

[Heisenberg]

The Real McCoy‘s ... a safe and stable value

The Real McCoy’s in Yuan or ... Yen ?

 

[Pilot]

The Real McCoy’s in Yuan or ... Yen ?

Deutschmark

 

[269sqnhudson]

I sell a lot on Ebay UK and rarely encounter problems. Mostly WWII - Vietnam-era clothing, helmets, patches etc, $5 up to $500+, some very rare and expensive+ . I have sold certainly over a hundred items this last year and have a few guidelines I would think might help;

1/Don't use only Buy-it-now for this kind of stuff (items just sit there forever - seems to put people off). I occasionally add a BIN option to an auction (the BIN option will disappear after the first bid) and sometimes the final bid is actually higher than the optional BIN price.
2/ Don't be afraid to start low. I try and list everything with a low start price. If you have a good, thorough listing and good photos you will not be disappointed. I've sold six or seven repro A2s over the last year or two with low starts (like 20-50 GBP). You'll accrue watchers as fast as you can count doing this and my last disappointing final price was in 2008
3/ Put effort into good photos. (should be rule number 1 really) You don't need a great camera, I use my iphone 8. You don't need studio backgrounds, I use my Victorian wooden floor or hang jackets on a wooden hanger on the back of a wooden door. I use white paper or light brown card for patches. Get all your household crap and body parts out of shot and use good natural light. Crap photos are a total waste of time.
4/ Ask Zero feedback bidders to contact you before bidding. I had a rash of non-paying/idiot bidders in 2018 and they all had zero feedback. I added a line at the end of my listing that zero feedback bidders must contact me or their listings will be cancelled. this small measure has absolutely worked but I have cancelled a few bids. It's the only warning I have on listings (don't scare people off with lots of crap about who's responsible if items get lost in transit-if it gets lost the buyer gets a refund, ebay makes sure of that).
5/ Use your blocked bidder list. This is where you add sellers who you want to block (I can never find it on ebay's site, it's deep in there somewhere, so I google it and get the link every time!). They then can't bid and can't contact you, hooray! In my early days I needed to add a few. One guy sticks in my mind - his item (an M1 helmet headband) didn't arrive in France (from the UK) in 2 days so he started deluging me with complaints. I've only blocked a few bidders and none recently but it's worth it.
6/ Be polite and use good English on your listings. Don't give potential buyers a reason to think you're an idiot and avoid you.
7/ Charge actual postage and do your pricing research. There are some quite fantastical postage charges on listings sometimes ($24 postage for a $9 WWII patch to the UK?!) If you can't be bothered checking for real, safe postage prices then just don't expect to succeed on ebay. I use Royal Mail Price Finder for all my listings. I list with tracking/signature when required (over around 30GBP) and Special Delivery over around 100GBP. Cheaper things I pop in an envelope and I have had zero lost items in the last 10 years.
8/ Use Templates. When you've figured out postage and general listing features for a particular type of item save a listing template so you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
9/ Post Worldwide. I post worldwide but sadly have a few exceptions (China, Indonesia, Ukraine) due mainly to the fact that all the zero-feedback non-payers I had came from the first two and the Ukraine is a postage nightmare (there's a war going on). Not posting Worldwide is a great way of limiting your sales! It's 2020, it's a global village. post Worldwide, it's seldom a problem and yes, it takes 10 mins to look up accurate postage rates but then it's done and you can set a template.

I may have missed some things but hope that helps!

 

[Brettafett]

Thanks for that. I'm considering putting one of my BK Dubows on Ebay. I don't see a lot of BK A-2s on there (though, there's one on at the mo)...