Hey all
First time selling on eBay and I have some pretty high ticket items up. What should I look out for as a seller? How can I get scammed/taken advantage of?
For instance this morning started off with someone making an offer that was my buy it now price with a phone number. I texted and they asked condition and I said “PSA 10” and they said “Ok it would be a pleasure to buy these from you. Please send me your paypal and I would be happy to pay from ebay.by”
^^ I assume this is a scam.
but aside from the obvious ones, what else should I be careful about? Thanks!
If you’re content with the ebay fee and want to minimize risk of scam, message only on ebay and accept payment only through ebay. Print shipping label, insure your package, only send to the address that ebay provides for the buyer.
Higher the feedback the better, however I personally rarely ever have issues selling on eBay. For the most part.
I doubt this isn’t already in mind, but I personally recommend to expect a few returns. I don’t do many discounts on eBay as in the past few months I have had three of my higher cost items get returned due to people buying out of their budget. I can’t forecast much for scammers, but I hope this helps keep in mind that people are taking more risks lately (IMO).
I follow you on IG and need to also applaud your collection! Respect my man!
But it will be the chap selling the card who will have to deal with the hassle of someone wanting to return it when they realise theyve overpaid and its equivalent to a 6/7.
Yea I mean mine are all PSA 10 so there shouldn’t be a significant question on the condition. As a buyer of raw from eBay I absolutely understand the importance of correctly describing the card condition, have seen soooo many instances where it’s just been wildly off
1. Ignore buyers that message you with “best price?” or “whats the cheapest price?”, 99.99% of these messages are time wasters.
**2.**Don’t deal off ebay if you listed on ebay. If you list it on ebay, keep the transaction on ebay.
**3.**ALWAYS send with signature tracked shipping.
- Personally, insurance for the package is a coinflip for me. I heard horror stories of already opened packages received by buyer due to declared value (aka insurance). On the flip side, if item is lost during transit, you and the buyer are covered.
4. If you have “Offers” turned on and receive an offer, I screen possible buyers by checking their feedback. (Fun Story: I told a potential buyer I didn’t want his business due to negative experiences from previous sale, said he reported me for discrimination)
5. I normally take a picture with the contents inside the packaging with address clearly visible and then a second picture of the fully wrapped package once processed by the post office.
This may be a bit overkill, but if you wanna be extra careful you could always list your stuff above market value and only take offers. When someone sends you an offer, you can take a look at their profile/feedback to see if there’s anything fishy about them and can decide from there if you want to sell to them or not. This usually won’t give you too much info on the person, but sometimes looking at the feedback a buyer gives to sellers can tell you a lot about them.
I’ve been doing that as well. It doesn’t guarantee anything but it ensures that I can see who is making the offer before I accept. It also helps that if they’re making an offer there’s a greater chance they’re interested. No guarantees for sure but it’s worked out okay so far for me.
I’ve sold a ton of stuff on eBay over the years, but it’s all been raw. There are a ton of issues you have to be aware of as a seller of raw cards, but if you’re only dealing in graded stuff, a lot of it doesn’t apply to you.
Keep a record of the cert number of every card you sell. Get tracking on all items over $20 (which I assume all of yours are). The biggest thing I would say you need to worry about is to make sure you keep those tracking receipts for a looooong time. In any dispute, eBay and PayPal will almost always side with the buyer (and may not even be willing to hear your side of the story) unless you can provide tracking information. Keep in mind that the statute of limitations for a buyer to open a dispute on eBay is 30 days, but on PayPal it is FAR LONGER: 180 days. This means you need to keep your tracking receipts at least that long.
In regards to conducting transactions outside of eBay: if someone contacts you through eBay with contact info in an attempt to get you to sell privately or on a different platform, ignore it and/or report it. Engaging in the exchange of contact info via eBay messages will get you warned and banned. There is no incentive for them to take the transaction outside eBay unless they intend to scam you, since they lose out on eBay’s buyer protection and the shitty fees you’d avoid aren’t their problem to begin with. That said, if someone you know personally sees you have something up on eBay and messages you about it on a different platform, knock yourself out.
Oh, and prepare to get fisted with fees at every step of the way. Best of luck!
Just out of total curiosity, what made him an unusually good buyer? In my experience pretty much all buyers are either (1) “fine” (pay promptly, don’t bug me constantly about shipping updates and shit) or (rarely) (2) actively problematic hahaha
I agree with the comments about not worrying about low feedback buyers. I’ve had a lot of new ebayer’s recently and haven’t had any issues. You have to start off at 0 at some point
