Do Sellers Know Bid Prices/ How to Sell on E-Bay

[Anonymous]

Hi to all! I have bought several trains on e-bay and never sold anything. Do the sellers have access to the bidders top bid?? If they do it would seem to me they could manipulate the bid--just a thought---
However I do want to sell a few things and I don't know the first thing about selling anything on e-bay or where to start---Any help getting started would be appreciated including up-loading pictures, I have a digital for pics.
Thanks very much![:)][:)]

[johnnyc]

Hi expogs6 , I sell alot on e-bay and the only thing a seller sees is the present bid , how many people are watching , and an optional hidden counter .
Selling is easy . Click on the sell link and fill in the blanks . Picture upload is done by browsing your hard drive and selecting the proper pic . Good Luck , johnnyc.

[tjsprague]

A top bid, which goes beyond the current bidder is only seen by the bidder himself. As johnnyc said, there are other useful tools, such as how many people are "watching" your auction, but no way of controlling bids outside of a shill (covered in previous forum) and I'm sure you don't want to get into that.

A few hints though;

For digital pix, works best if you use indirect sunlight, not flash. Flash reflects too much, cleaner peices actually end up looking worse than clean ones.

Describe as in depth as possible, the attributes and faults of the peice. Will save time and energy later.

If you're a TCA member, say so in your listing. You are bound to the rules of the TCA whether you state membership or not. Say it loud and say it proud.

get some good boxes and packing materials. If you've bought on eBay before, I hope you saved this stuff. Costs can add up a bit, but it's needed. Charge $1 over shipping if you must to cover those costs, just say so in the listing.

eBay is not very MAC friendly. If you use a Mac, try to get on someone's PC to upload photos, it offers more choices in services (photo packs etc)

Good luck.

Tim

[tjsprague]

correction:

For digital pix, works best if you use indirect sunlight, not flash. Flash reflects too much, cleaner peices actually end up looking worse than dirty ones

[Anonymous]

The responses so far have covered most of the bases. I sell a lot on eBay too, and it's a great way to move items that you need to get rid of.

tjsprague, I do all my uploading exclusively on a Mac. It works great, though you need to use Fetch to transfer the image if you're using a site besides eBay to host your pictures. eBay's size limits don't work for me, so I use web storage for larger images.

[Anonymous]

Hello and many thanks to all for your help!! I thought it was more difficult than that--[:)][:)]

[GPJ68]

Just a few other suggestions:

Posting the actual shipping cost (for light items up to a few pounds), or at least the weight and your zip code (especially for for heavier items), can take some of the uncertainty away from potential bidders on the total cost of the item to them, and can result in higher bids for your item over another seller that doesn't disclose shipping costs until the auction ends. At least it has worked for me in the past. Ebay also has a "shipping calculator" that you can add to your auction page, although I have no experience using it yet as a seller.

Priority Mail boxes are free from the Post Office in a variety of sizes. If you're planning on selling alot, you can (or at least could @ a year ago) get cartons of Priority Mail boxes sent to you instead of picking them up a few at a time from the Post Office. Of course this assumes you will use Priority Mail to ship your items. USPS web site shipping calculations have always been dead accurate for me, but you must know the total weight of the package to the ounce.

Be careful quoting shipping costs via UPS using the UPS website. I've been seriously bitten on big shipping cost increases between the UPS website and the actual charge a storefront comes up with. So bad that I refuse to use UPS anymore. That, and it's a royal pain to find and get to a storefront that handles UPS shipping around here.

Don't skimp on the packing tape, it's cheap "insurance" against rough handling. Same goes for the packing material, whether its newspaper, peanuts, bubble wrap, or whatever. If you need to charge extra for packaging, keep it realistic and state that you're doing so. Adding several bucks to the actual postage cost to cover a few square feet of bubble wrap and some tape for a small item (like a freight car) is milking the bidder and padding the total cost well beyond the actual cost of materials and postage, again IMHO.

Re-using material and boxes from previous purchases is ok, provided it is clean, intact, and serviceable.

As far as pictures, be sure the item fills the frame and shows clear details, ie. it's not a blurry ill-defined speck in the center of the kitchen table or floor.

Above all, be honest in the description and be careful about using "rare", "mint", "new", and similar hype descriptions without some extra commentary on the condition - all those terms are used way-too-often IMHO for items that don't really meet those descriptions. Don't over-hype the condition, be conservative and factual.

Make frequent use of the completed items search function to see what similar items have been selling for recently, to get an idea of what you might expect for a final bid on your stuff. You may decide to hold off on listing some items if other final bid amounts are low at the time.

[jimhaleyscomet]

One other thing. If you really do not want to sell below a minimum price, then set that as your opening bid. I usually make the opening bid low enough so that if it sold at that I would be bummed out but not devistated. The lower the opening bid, usually the more bids it will recieve (and it often goes higher than if you start with a high opening bid).

I had a friend who had a $500 viola and started at $.99. It sold for $50 and she was very disappointed! That said, most ebay train stuff goes for near or above book value.

Jim H

[tjsprague]

harpitect

Thanks for the info in images. I've been using the eBay photo hosting, but I notice that their sizes have gotten smaller. So next time I sell I'll use another photo hosting source.

Tim

[Anonymous]

Thanks to all for advice on selling on e-bay, I really do appreciate it!!
One question on pictures--I see some sellers have where you can enlarge the pics if you want to I like that feature cause it gives a better view, but don't know how--Thanks again![:)][:)]