Hey everyone just wanted to get some input on when it’s a good idea to send your items to auction. I’ve narrowed it down to try to keep things a bit “organized” and to try to stay on topic I know there are many factors that go into having your auctions get the best profit but maybe there is a way out there to “increase” your odds. Would love to hear every ones input! Thanks.
My preferred listing strategy is a 7-day auction with 0.99c start, ending on Saturday or Sunday night around 10pm EST. Designed to maximize availability during the ending time, most people throughout the US (primary market) are usually free at that time and its an easy enough time to remember. I don’t do too much auctioning but common sense tells me that having an auction end at 10am on a Tuesday is not ideal.
I echo Ethan’s sentiment, but would like to add one thing for readers to whom this might be new or unfamiliar: never auction an item unless you’re okay with it selling for an undetermined amount of money.
For the majority of cards right now, it’s a buyers market when it comes to auctions. While the market demand has increased dramatically for most cards, supply is catching up. There are very few items that are consistently unavailable and would really thrive under auction conditions.
Too often I see people on different groups posting things like “My auction sold for almost nothing, so I’m canceling it.” Or, “I am so upset! I just auctioned X card last week and only got $7! What a rip off!”
Auctions are one of the riskiest forms of sale for a seller to participate in and you have no control over what those who see your auction will or will not pay. You’re trading the lucrative price control of a fixed-price listing for the convenient sale timing of an auction.
Whenever I plan on auctioning an item, I ask myself if I’m okay with it selling for half of what I think it to be worth, because that’s normally what auctions give me.
So true. I’ve never sold anything with an auction myself, but I’ve been on the buyer’s side quite a lot. Sometimes auctions end where you might expect them, sometimes you’ll have to overpay by a pretty large amount to win, and sometimes you win it for a steal of a price. Take the auction I won from Japan Yahoo last night for example. I casually bid on it because it had some interesting things, but I wasn’t expecting to win at all. I woke up and won the auction with little over 300 mint Japanese cards for 99 Japanese Yen (± 0.80 USD in total…) :S
It can end good or bad, but be prepared for the worst is my advice.
I also agree to have it start and end in the weekend. Perhaps on a time where both US and Europe people are awake if you support internationally shipping.
I think they’re great as cards sell for whatever they’re worth at the time, rather than asking people for loads of money. I’m quite enjoying listing mine and seeing what happens. It’s a bit of a fun buzz in the last few minutes. Similar buzz to gambling.
It is an extremely easy way to send tons of items to auction all at once. Instead of sending each to auction and taking about 30 seconds each you can check the boxes and send as many to auctions as you want all at once. I used to do it this way exclusively until I got a few messages from folks asking me to spread them out. I asked them to use the proxy bidding instead of manually sniping, but some people don’t understand it I guess. I don’t really do nearly as many auctions as I used to anyways, but in the past that was part of the reason that I did it, to manually send 100 or more items to auction took way too long one at a time.
Lately I usually try to send my items to auction in batches of 2-3 or so grouping items that likely don’t appeal to the same buyers. I would prefer to be able to send them all to auction at once still, but due to the way some people bid it can definitely cost you money.
As far as end times I almost always end on a Sunday between 7PM and 10PM eastern ideally. If not, then any night between the same times is what I shoot for.
If selling cards that form a set, don’t have them end at the same time. I realized this when selling my Chinese goldstars. Two ended at the same time and went low, but the third was much higher as the buyer wanted the whole set. Also, people may not have the funds for all of your auctions at once. Sometimes you have to resist the urge to list them all at once and instead space them out over a month. Be sure to include in the first listing that you will be listing the others from the set soon, encouraging bidders to follow your account.
Try to have them end on a Sunday afternoon in a USA timezone.
Send them to auction once you have a high amount of viewers/watchers as I believe they are notified via email?
Promote your auctions via social media where possible.
Be prepared not to get the best price. ‘Lowball’ your own prediction so that you’re more satisfied with the price it gets in the end.
All of the above are things I’ve learned from letting items go cheaper than I’d like. You live and learn!
I know there are many factors that go into having your auctions get the best profit but maybe there is a way out there to “increase” your odds. Would love to hear every ones input! Thanks.