fuelmyfire

I have never used Ebay before, nor do i know anything about it.

When you sell an item, do you start it at the price you want for it, then let people bid on top of that??

if the time runs out on your item and the current highest bid doesn't meet what you asked for, do you have the power to cancel your item? Or are you, at this point, forced to give up your item to the buyer for an unsatisfactory price??

expect further questions regarding this because i want to see how people respond before i ask anymore.
thank you!

longjohns

there are essentially two ways of guaranteeing that you get a certain price. you can either set the opening price at your minimum acceptable offer, and let the bidding go from there,

OR

set a reserve price (which nobody can see during the auction, except indirectly - when that price is surpassed)

there are pros and cons to each method. with a reserve in place, people don't have to initially bid at high prices, but it can be a turn-off not knowing what the reserve is. with no reserve, you know exactly what you're dealing with as a bidder, but there isn't that feeling that you might get lucky and hit a bargain. your call

arch13

The answer is yes, you are in contract to release the item to the highest bidder. Ebay takes every opertunity to point this out to sellers, and both ebay and buyers have won court cases on this many times.
Ebay is based on free market economy, where an item is never going to be sold for more than the public, not the seller, thinks it's worth.
Reserve price has it's own issues, but experiance buying and selling is that reserve prices tend to cause people to lowball bid on purpose and more items with reserves go unsold than without.
If your selling, try to remember that what you think an item is worth is possibly not what the buyers will see as it's worth.
As a good example, a car placed on ebay for it's keely blue book price will never be bought. Why? Because you haven't offered the buyer anything they couldn't get in the local classified.

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HeyAgain

Another tip, just check out what the prices people are selling similar items for. I usually use this to determine what prices I should set for my items.

longjohns

yes, good idea. check both active and completed auctions

fuelmyfire

Thanks for the responses!
can i give an example and maybe you can help me out?

i came across this guitar that was clearly worth thousands.
however, i look at the starting price and it's only $100.
obvisouly, the seller would want MUCH more than $100 for the guitar.

now, lets say the time runs out and the highest bid ends up being $200.
does this mean the seller HAS to give up his guitar for a measly $200??

that sounds horrible!! i just can't believe that!!
Is Ebay all about risk?

one more question:

what is the point of a Reserve when you can just set an appropriote starting price??
Reserves sound pointless to me!

arch13

1.Yes, the guitar MUST be surrendered or the seller has broken a legaly binding contract. To be honest, it doesn't sound horrible to me at all. That's why i enjoy a free market economy.

2.Ebay is in fact all about risk. It was never designed to be a livelyhood, but rather a place to get rid of what you may not want or need. There is little profit margine on ebay because it's not a high class auction site. For that, things end up on sotherbys.

3.Reserves are there to ensure that sellers don't up in the position you speak of.

4.Remember that if the begining price is to high, people just ignore the item and wait for another to bid on. The bueaty of ebay is in that stament. Supply often exceeds demand, thus creating a fairer market value for the consumer.

Try to remember that just because your example guitar is worth $xxx.xx in you town/city, that has no bearing on it's value in a marketplace where many are availible. Ebay tends to "correct" price gaps from local markets due to the nature of it's marketplace availibility. In a market where many are availible, price inflation for a given market loses justifacation.
And since it ties in, the ability for sellers to withold items for a while to increase there value via demand is called rackatering, and is illegal in nearly all contries.

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hotzot

I love Ebay! I once bought a video camera for the kids for only $35. plus shipping and handling

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89transam

The thing is, like someone said before. THe item will generally go for what it is truly worth.

A 3,0000 dollar guitar will not sell for $200. Why? Because someone will pay 300 and 400 and 50 and so forth.

And, if by some miracle it only goes for 250$ its only really worth about that...or your lising really sucked