Given that many of you are sellers as well as collectors....



How do EBay store owners come up with their prices?  Do you have a formula in mind?  A judgement of what the market will bear?



Do some store owners price their items not to sell?  (Which sounds dumb, but maybe they want to keep their items unless they are going for a certain markup.)



For example, consider the EBay listing here:



http://cgi.ebay.com/STORMBRINGER-YOUNG- ... dZViewItem



High Quality Comics knows that this booklet is only part of a boxed set.  (I have asked them if it is a set or just a booklet.)  They also have to know that full boxed sets sell for as low as a quarter of their asking price, and that this booklet is not particularly rare or desireable by itself.  (Even a collector needing to complete his own set could find this booklet for much less.)  What is High Quality Comics thinking?



Given that EBay provides a list of all products of a certain type, and that it is therefore possible to compare all similar products side-by-side, why do some sellers persist in their pricing and/or marketing decisions?  Even a totally new EBay shopper, even one with limited mental capactity, would be capable of looking at side-by-side listings and seeing that one was less than the other.  Right?



Even a new seller, who just discovered EBay, would be capable of elementary price research.  Right?



What gives?  What do you think people out there are thinking?



Mark  

Is it possibly a lack of technical ability?

Getting an idea of the going price for an item would seem to take only a click or two.

I imagine that getting the shipping just right is probably the most difficult aspect of a listing.  I know there are some that just cut right across it and charge a slightly-too-high price for all shipping.  Generally, these sellers also provide almost no break in combined shipping.

Mark  

The way I see it, if you want to shift product quickly and you don't have  stacks of the same thing, the best thing to do is place it in open auction.

EBay Shops are for people who have dozens of the same thing to shift at a low price, or items they can afford to sit on for a long time. You set your price as high as the market will bear, and then you sit on the product for as long as it takes.

You then have the assurance that whenever anyone does a search for something like Starstone, yours is there and still available for the impulse buy.

These items being a constant presence on eBay helps keep the market boyant. They may also influence price in an upward way accross the board, but that remains to be seen. But sure as egs is eggs, sooner or later someone will pay the price you're asking for and the item will be gone.

I pretty much guess prices for anything in my ebay store. I try not to go over the top and generally everything will go sooner or later, and at 3p a go it really doesn't matter anyhow. Much of the stuff I list in my shop I want to keep hold of briefly to read anyway so it just gives me a bit of time (Also I can genuinely say to the good lady ' yes darling it's currently up for sale' - Though that excuse is quite redundant when the sale item is residing in the smallest room in the house with a book mark in it!!)
The other thing is that, I don't really do ebay for a profit - I basically just do it so lots of games and stuff pass through my hands pretty much for free in the long run) (Mark - that Stormbringer lot that you tried to BIN would be a great example - it's just about gone now and I think I made about £2.00 total on all 8 books, which made it easy to send one over the pond to your goodself).
(The one really irritating thing about shop items is when they sell immediately upon listing - you just can't help but feel that you've lost out!!)
So - I like my ebay shop - it's cheap - it ticks over - and it means I don't have to stress too much about my stuff - Everyone's a winner

MShipley88 wrote:Given that many of you are sellers as well as collectors....

How do EBay store owners come up with their prices?  Do you have a formula in mind?  A judgement of what the market will bear?

Well, I live in a different country and I own and operate a traditional brick and mortar store, so my thoughts shoulòd be considered with a pinch of salt by Americans. Anyway, here are my two (euro)cents...

I operate an EBay store which is mainly devoted to current products in Italian language. At the monent Italy lives a deep economical crisis and many fellow retailers (usually the comic/game store variety) stock virtually only 'guaranteed sales' products and have very little, if all, backstock. This usually means, for RPGs, Dungeons & Dragons and Vampire (barring local preferences and trends); for boardgames products such as Carcassonne, Puerto Rico and an handful of titles (usually the ones translated into Italian) and so on; this opens a viable market, albeit small, for second and third rank (in sales terms, not quality!) products, especially the Italian language but out of print ones.

For example, I regularly sell copies of the Call of Cthulu Italian rulebook, along many books for it: CoC is not in good health here, so it's getting harder and harder to find (the Italian publisher told me once that because I ordered six copies of new CoC books in Italian I was a "very important" customer for such a line   ) in stores. Retailers simply have no desire to stock such 'unsafe' titles. This is where I enter in the picture... I sell current titles at the MSRP with no discounts, but I offer free shipping. This is an important psicological advantage on competitors which sell current products at MSRP plus shipping and other (usually amateurs) which offer discounts but ask for shipping charges.

Then there are customers living in small towns and so unable to find anything near them, unless they special order or such. There are anyway amazing phenomena: I sold many copies of the Battles of the Third Age expansion for the War of the Ring boardgame (proudly made in Italy   ) in large cities such as Milan or Turin which are well served by many stores. I have no clue about this, but I'm happy nonetheless  

About collector pieces, there is a need to divide Italian language items and English langiage ones. The market for vintage games here is clearly on the rise, especially for RPGs and boardgames. The problem here is supply: is very hard to find copies of some Italian titles, especially the old ones, so pricing is virtually a bet. It took me alonst TEN YEARS to find a good copy of Magikon, an Italian semi RPG published in 1983... I found for example a couple of copies of some old Italian RPGs in an used bookstore, paying them 2 euros apiece and selling them for 25 euros each. I was happy, but I wondered if I could earn more...

TSR Dungeons & Dragons is another matter: I have bought a LARGE inventory of D&D items for a very small price and I sell them for a low price (shrinkwrapped modules 5 euros apiece) because the publisher still has a lot of some of them. Some titles have sold out, usually because I bought the entire remaining stock for them so I price them more. For example, I have the entire remaining stock (well, almost...) of B1-9 In Search of Adventire and I sell them at 25 euros (still a good price I must say...). If I had the warehouse space, I'd have bought everything the publisher still had (and if I finalize an agreement, I'll do it!).

About English language items, I gauge interest using the auctions in the US and UK websites, but I don't price items following final bids. The reason is: shipping costs! I usually price items 50%-100% more and I list them only in the EBay store. They sell slowly, but I'm not in a hurry...

As most of you know I run a medium sized ebay store (generally 500 items up at any given time) and have a turnover of around 40 - 50% of my items every month.  I price competitively, however over time I will often be undercut and it looks like I'm sitting on a crazy price, when in reality it's just that I haven't gotten that particular item caught up to the new price trend.  I sell mostly NON-dungeons and dragons products, though I have quite a bit of d20 stuff so my market is a generally to gamers rather than collectors. I do this "full-timeish"  as I do not have an outside job, however I'm not the one paying the mortgage every month either,  I make enough to give our family some nicer things while still staying at home with our child.  My prices are all individually researched when the item is listed.

MShipley88 wrote:
   Of the full-time store owners, I do understand a professional with astronomical prices.  For instance, a store like Valhalla Games, over in Australia, is pricing things out of sight on the off chance that someone will be suckered.  If they make one $2000 sale for a re-shrinked copy of B-2, they have made their month.

 

I've heard similar sentiments voiced a couple of times . . . I think you guys are giving them too much credit.  I don't suspect that a brand new ebay store owner who has only earned 4 feedbacks in two months (two of them for pajamas) qualifies as an insightful business owner who is simply putting up a storefront on the "off-chance" that someone buys one item . . .

Please . . . if your business is going to be helped by a one measly sale then you are in deep trouble already.  The $1,000 items will NEVER sell.  NEVER.  The ebay store fees are more than they're making.  Two weeks . . .  no sales.

More likely they are just clueless.  I bet they thought this stuff would actually sell.  


(P.S.   NEVER )

But how ignorant could he be?  The information for comparisons is right there....  

No change. I absorb it into my proffits.
That is actually the second price hike this year in the UK. I assume the same applies to the US.