advice wanted on selling on ebay

[willbrooks]

Thus far, I have been solely focused on educating myself, educating others, and collecting for myself. I have only ever sold one coin, directly to another forum member, because I needed the money. Anyway, I am starting to get to a point where I want to start to get rid of some of the duplicates and excess I have. I guess ebay is the way to go, but stop me there if you have better ideas. I think I want to make a seller account. I know we have many ebay sellers here, and I know some of you do well at it. I know you might not want to give away secrets, but heck, I give away my secrets everyday to help others, so I am reaching out for the same. What advice do you have for an ebay seller who is just starting out and making his first ad. What is the best way to sell? Auction/BIN? Shipping free or extra? Paper or plastic? lol.

What are they keys to writing a good, and honest, coin ad without breaking the rules. I like to follow the rules. Correction: I like to follow the spirit of the rules, so let me know where they can be bent. (I will run red-lights at 3 am on a regular basis if there are no other cars in view, because... "What am I, sitting here?") Point made. What other pitfalls did you experience that you didn't anticipate and how did/do you cope with them? I believe in putting my best foot forward, rather than leaping without looking. That's for dead people. What advice do you have to offer about advertising, selling, shipping, ebay rules, ebay fees, unforseen pitfalls, etc. I know, I don't ask for much. Thank you.

[jfines69]

I don't buy or sell but I think you would do excellent at selling on ebay... You are honest and straight forward... I wish you luck with your endeavor!!!

[kloccwork419]

I been selling on there for a while..seems like the fees went up alot. Listing fees. Final value fees. Shipping fees and then paypal fees to get the payment... your best bet is to sell to people that know what you have right here and trust you without the fees. Then whatever doesn't sell you can always post to ebay but add in how much the fees will lower what you really get in the end.. better off selling on here if you can..

[rlm's cents]

From the sounds of things, you are selling just a few coins.
Use paper. They are cheaper although plastic is easier to work with. Buy a year's worth or more. They are cheaper in quantity. I pay <10¢ each for mine.
Charge for shipping, but be reasonable. Charge enough to break even. Period.
Be honest and expect at least someone to be a $#%$#@%. Just let it roll off.

[GrumpyEd]

To get started and get a feel for how things go:
Start out with some cheap stuff (worth a few bucks tops) that you don't care about.
Start them at face value with free shipping, mail with tracking and no insurance.
If anything goes wrong give a refund, not much to be lost.

That will get you a few FBs as a seller and give you a feel for listing and selling.

After that try some stuff with value, ship insured.
Think ahead about the common issues like what payment you'll accept other than normal paypal (assuming you accept anything else, echecks, non verified paypal). Shipping out of the US...
Consider how you will accept returns, you might as well say you will because people can SNAD anyway if they want to return.
Think about how you'll charge or not charge for shipping.
You might want to start your blocked bidder list, you can go to forums like CU and ask about it and someone will give you their list but it's up to you if you want to base it solely on others findings.
For anything expensive you might use toolhaus to check out buyers, I'd rather cancel a sale or even get a neg than get ripped on a big sale.
Put some time in your seller settings, you can block all people with certain issues like no FBs or ones without paypal or non US if you don't want to mess with customs.

[Maineman750]

GrumpyEd has pretty much summed up my advice, and build up that rep before you sell the good stuff. As far as the listing itself, I always look at auctions that sold high and use them as my template for the actual listing.

[cranky]

There is additional sites you can sale on a some who may recognize you Will.

http://www.usacoinbook.com/

I have found a couple of Face Book Auctions that I have sold #2 and 3 Lincoln books at consignment.
E-bay is a hit and mess type of place and a sellers market. Competition is real. I sell mainly my 2nd and 3rd coins there.And not that many.
Fee's are high and getting some sales well You wonder if it is worth it sometimes. You figure it out I 'm confidant of that.

[Chugly]

As always, GrumpyEd gives great advise. Some points I can add include:

1) Take the best pictures of your coins that you can. Leave no doubt to the buyer as to what you are selling.

2) Try to describe any problems on the coin. Again, minimizing doubt. I think describing problems on my coins actually helped my sales not hurt them. People at least knew I was doing my best to be honest. As a result, my return rate has been extremely low. In fact, I have never had to process a return in several thousand transactions. I had many other problems, but at least no returns.

3) eBay doesn't have a selling category for variety coins. Therefore, most sellers are forced to list varieties under the "error coins" section. I always list my varieties there first, but I also recommend adding a second search category (with some additional fees, usually around .30 cents), as a way of listing the coin under its date and denomination as well. As an example: Let's say I want to list a 1909 vdb 1DO-002 Lincoln cent. I will first choose the "Error Coin" category, then click the "Add a second category" button, and select the "Lincoln cents, 1909-1919" category as well. This way, everybody will see your coin, not just people looking for errors. This leads to more views (and hopefully bids!!).

4) It will take time to get your first listings built. This is the hard part. However, once you have a number of listings started, you can use the "sell a similar item" tool which will duplicate all of your information. Simply select any of your created listings and select "sell a similar item" and all of your old information will populate on to a new listing. Then you just have to change the pictures and the descriptions and whatever else has changed. Depending on how you build your descriptions, all the information like shipping and return procedures will already be filled in and this saves a ton of time.

5) Try to end your auctions when a lot of people are looking. I found that Sunday, Monday or Tuesday evenings ending at 6 PM Pacific time worked well for me.

6) Go into this with a thick skin. High end varieties will sell for good money, but more often than not, machine doubled coins, garage jobs and spectacular zinc rotted coins will sell for way more than your accurately described, rare varieties. This is what got to me the most!! I could make a killing by giving up on selling varieties and just start listing machine doubled coins, but alas, this has been discussed at length before and I digress.

Best of luck out there, Will!! I am always here to help with anything more specific. I hope you make a million!!

John