@rainbowgym ,
What about selling my card for maximum value make me exclusively a money hungry person?
“No and that’s not what I said.” - When you said that you “forgot that people were only in this for the money” in response to my previous statement about being capitalistic in nature that is exactly what you implied.
Money does not grow on trees (or at least my trees) so if I want to buy something else for my collection at least for me that means I have to sell off something I already own to fund it. I am not going to sell it for less than what it is worth.
“Did anybody asked you to sell for less?” - I am combining my response to this with what I would say to the shipping question below. I guess you have been lucky in finding buyers who do not care about the price of shipping. In my experience, all the buyers I have dealt with have only X to spend including shipping. Let us your $1000 example from below. Just for reference, I offer free shipping on my ebay listings as it attracts more buyers. I build the shipping into my price so it is more a psychological tool used more than anything else domestically but this is where the problem occurs with international buyers. I also almost exclusively deal with lower end items (more in the $50 - $400 range so buyers in that range I have found tend to be in very strict budgets). Pretty much everyone I have dealt with is ok paying $1000 for the item but paying that as the total cost. The US buyers go ok done and pay the $1000 cause shipping is built in and I have a sale. International buyers message me and go “how much to send to my country?” I tell them $X. The reply I always get is ok I only have $1000 so I will buy it for $1000-X. So yes for my experiences selling international I do have to sell the item for less to send it abroad. It does not make sense for me to do that as I make less money and have to deal with more work and pains on my end. Also for reference I do not use GSP for other reasons, I do not have any proof to back up my beliefs but I mainly deal with sealed product and I just do not trust someone else handling it and not damaging/opening the product in some way. Its just a risk I am not willing to make.
I am going to try to maximize what I can get out of that item because at least for me, after fees and everything I normally am still a bit short than where I’d like to be. For me shipping international means I would be even further behind of where I would need to be.
WHY. Example: If you sell an item for let’s say $1000 on ebay, no matter were the buyer is from you get paid the same amount of money (ebay fees are the same). You charge shipping/insurance domestic $10, international $50 which you use the ship the item. So the only thing you need to do is ship the item and for international to complete a simply custom form. “How does that make you further behind?” - see response above
We are no longer in the playground days of “I’ll trade you my blastoise for your venusaur” regardless of value. For your pure collectors sake comment, you should focus more on trading cause then there is often less to no money involved and then you are already off of ebay and therefore away from GSP all together.
“Have we ever been there? From the day those cards were released they were sold/bought.
While one person selsl a Charizard for 50 another does for 500 that’s not the issue. It’s about after you paid that 500 an international buyer is beside the shipping/Insurance punished with something weird, a fee for what??? That’s not a premium, that’s a punishment.” - You must be a lot older than me cause I sure as hell was a 6/7 year old on the playground trading with my classmates purely on which pokemon we liked. I’m not sure what the issue is about the fee. You are using a 3rd party to assist in a transaction that is separate from the postal service. You are paying them to use their service and to assist you in something that isnt easy, international shipping. If it’s that much of an issue I think it’s pretty simple, dont use them. Nothing is forcing you to use them. We also operate in a free market so if you dont like the options, there is nothing stopping you from trying to create a better alternative.
“Any collector outside N-america knows there are items/cards who are simply not released on their part of the world.” To this statement, then why do people not expect there to be a premium to acquire it?
“Who says there are not? They do expect (normally) to pay high shipping, high Insurance, custom fees and VAT.” - Unfortunately you and most of the other international buyers here are in the minority for this. The whole point of what us US sellers is trying to make is that from our experiences, the majority of international buyers don’t want to pay those and it either becomes a massive risk for us or we have to take less.
That’s economics at is most fundamental level. There is no supply by you so you have to pay more and in the case of buying on Ebay means paying for GSP.
“Not if it can be done without GSP. Pay more sure, shipping Always will be way more, just as Insurance. But the GSP fees are a bit to much.” - Thats on your end. As I stated above, this is a free market. Right now GSP is the best option for us to sell with so if you disagree then you can create your own alternative and hopefully change the way GSP works. Competition is healthy.
“Having to deal with a system like gsp or seller who don’t give a penny about collectors outside their comfort zone makes collecting difficult.” There is nothing stopping you from changing your collection goals based on what you can acquire. If you are that set on getting certain items, then you have to deal with these things and that’s life. If collecting was easy there wouldnt be a need for ebay or even a buy section of this forum.
“In a way internet made collecting easy. It opened distribution chains. Depending on your level of collecting you can stay local or reach outside your area. Dealing with things as shipping, VAT (in most cases for Europe 20% to be paid over item+shipping) delays sure that’s life. But when somebody says something about a stpid high fee which isn’t adding anything, it’s whining.” - Thats the price of doing doing business on a 3rd party site so yes it is whining. You do not have to use their site/product to get what you want.
To sum up: is GSP flawed? 100% but that doesn’t mean that there are better alternatives at this point in time. If you hate the fees, don’t buy on ebay. I also dont believe that the “phantom fee” goes right into their pockets. I have no idea about how ebay is structured internationally but if they have separate entities in the US and then more entities in each EU country/region, they are then spending additional taxes at varying rates. Ebay is US based meaning that they have to pay taxes in each other country of that they operate in to bring the money back to the US. When you as a buyer in Ebay EU location X buy an item from me in the US, you are buying the item from Ebay EU location X. Ebay then has to pay taxes to transfer that money to Ebay US in order for me to get paid hence the “phantom fee”. I am no expert in this field but my level of knowledge in accounting has led me to this belief (yes I am an accountant by trade though not a tax accountant).
