What drives me nuts about eBay...

[bjybjy]

I just sold 2 NES systems on eBay. One had ALL SORTS of cool accessories and controllers, gun, and a ton of games, most of em boxed. System came in original box, packing and had EVERYTHING. It sold for $35. That was yesterday.

 

Tonight I just had another system sell, this one just had the system, 2 controllers, gun, cords, and mario/duck hunt. It sold for $36.

 

LOL I still made money on the auctions, but its so unpredictable lately!

 

Here are the links in case you care. Lol

 

Tad

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=1361116734

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=1360941472

[Philflound]

What I usually discover is that people don't do a search all the time and somehow miss an auction. I personally haven't done a search on auctions for about 5 days now. Who knows what I have missed? I haven't had the time to actually bid on things. Though people have approached me afterwards seeing I'm bidding on a cart they own and I've gotten a few games that way.

 

One day I'll sell a sealed Int D&D for $10.50, but then my latest went for $19.00. You can never tell who's watching and when. That is why I always have my auction at least go 7 days, in case someone only bids on a certain day of the week.

 

Phil

[AtariKen64]

to me it seems some people dont care about the condtion of a game so long as they play it while others demand completion, usually the completists are people like us, while the "i just want X and Y game cuz i had it when i was, like , 3" are just along for the nostalgia trip (nostalgia, not retro!!! ) keep in mind also in searches people call things differnt names, ie dreamcast and dream cast or some will say 2600 cartridge and some (idiot) will say atari tapes

 

i also thought ebay had the option of 4, 7 and 10 day auctions?

[lonesome_pa]

eBay offers 3, 5, 7, and 10 day auctions. I found out that selling is all a matter of timing. Of course, if I or someone else could figure out the timing we would do good......

[Philflound]

Well, timing all depends on relativity. What I consider prime time for selling is Monday-Friday 8pm - 12pm EST for during the week. This gets both the east coast and the west coast people who are coming home from work. We usually will shoot more for the 10-11pm range. For weekends, you usually have a choice of afternoon and evenings. Depending on what time of year. I try not to conflict with popular shows, but again, that is relative to where you live.

 

If X-files was #1 in its time slot, I would probably put it before it. As for afternoons, most people shop during that time, but again, you have most people off from work. So you have increased activity, but not necessarily the same people.

 

Good luck in your sales.

 

Phil

[Mayhem]

According to some stats someone did... Sunday is the best day to sell, Tuesday is the best day to buy...

[glitch]

I'm not sure how acurate this is but somebody sent this to me when I asked about eBay timing:

 

After searching the news groups the general consensus varies depending on the items.

any time Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are the worst of Auction closing (therefore best for buying?)

 

The best times for closing all items is between 8-11pm EST. Placing the closing time between 8 & 11pm (10pm was the determined best because that is 7pm PST) allows the east coast to "snipe" or bid before going to bed and allows the west coast time to get home from work and start their casual surfing so they can also "snipe".

 

For semi-unique items the best days/times are Saturday & Sunday. Sunday seems to be eBay biggest day according to hit counters with Saturday being a close second.

 

For high commodity items (ones where there are a lot of other items with similar specs [i.e. Atari systems]) the best time seems to be mid week. Around 50% of all auctions are set to end on the weekends (whether intentional or not) so there is a lot more competition for common items. Ending between 8-11 EST on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday tends to yield higher prices from people that don't want to wait or don't know what the prices should be. One person stated that he runs 3 or 4 day auctions for common items that start on Saturday or Sunday (when people are looking) and close on Tuesday or Wednesday has yielded about a 20% increase in final cost. A few other people agreed with it.

 

Many people agreed that the auction start time is important because many of the regulars (I guess that would be me) primarily look at only new items so you want to get your items out while they are looking (again Saturday & Sunday). It takes eBay about an hour to make the item searchable. The reason for this is that they found half their hits come within the first few hours of posting and the other half come within the last few hours of closing with a small amount in between.

 

Interesting note (not sure if it's reliable be seems believable)

About 10-15% of all bids are within 24 hours of posting, around 70-80% of all bids are within the last 10 hours of the auction, about 30-35% (or half of the 70-80%) are within the last hour of closing.

 

 

"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky

 

 

[zraider]

There's a lot of good info here for anyone comtemplating buying or selling on Ebay. I have one main thing that bothers me on Ebay; that would be SLIMES that don't follow through on transactions, that cheat others, and that misrepresent items. The list could go on, but that says most of it.......