How To Sell Quantities Of Items On eBay
Years ago I found a case of oil cans from the 1950s. Small
household oil like 3-in-One. I listed them on eBay one at a time
over a few months. The first few brought prices over $100 each.
By the time I sold the last one, they were only bringing about
$15 each.
This happened because I killed the market. The people who wanted
one badly got one when I first listed them, by the time I reached
the end of the case, the buyers were expecting more, and were
willing to wait.
That sucks.
There had to be a better way to sell quantities of items without
causing the price to drop so I started testing different methods
whenever I had quantities of items to sell.
The first thing I tested was waiting longer between listing each
item. I didn't do buy-it-now auctions or fixed price listings
because I wanted the bidders to fight over the items. By waiting
weeks between listings, I made the items seem scarcer. Potential
buyers didn't know I had lots of them.
This worked OK at first, but after a while, the prices realized
started dropping fast. I tried changing eBay selling accounts
and making the auctions look different, but that only slowed the
decline.
Another problem with listing items infrequently was it takes
longer to get the money back out.
About six months ago I bought a case of out of print books.
These books sell on eBay for $60-80 each. I knew listing one
every week would kill the price.
For the books I listed one every few weeks, and then did second
chance offers to everyone who bid more than $60.00. By doing the
second chance offers, buyers don't see quantities. Even better I
was able to sell 3 or 4 books every time I listed one.
This method is the best one I've found to clear out multiple
items while still getting higher prices. The one that ended last
week brought the highest price of all of them.
The last book brought $122! Proving I didn't kill the price.
While this does prove keeping the sales hidden helps preserve
the selling prices, the real reason this one went so high is I
had a lot of the items shown in the book on eBay at the same
time.
I was able to capture the attention of more bidders, and I also
referred to the book in the descriptions of some of my other
items. Basically I explained how the book had confirmed a
controversy surrounding one of the items I had for sale.
Now you don't want to do this if you are selling commodities.
Socks and underwear are examples of commodities. Things that
aren't rare and are constantly available on eBay.
You want to use this when you sell items that are not constantly
available on eBay. Such as the out of print reference books I
used as an example.
James Jones uses a similar method to sell public domain items.
How James does this is explained in "Selling Public Domain Items On eBay". That transcript is available for free in exchange for a promise of a future donation to the American Cancer Society on nalroo.com
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Terry Gibbs has taught over 7,000 people how to make a good living on eBay. Terry's most recent eBay instruction manual is The Auction Revolution . The Auction Revolution is your guide to eBay and beyond. Here on Iwantcollectibles.com, you will learn about buying and selling antiques and collectibles, and about eBay.
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