I am no longer an eBay virgin.

[GA Russell]

I've got a bid on the first auction! This is an eBay Seller who it looks like buys a lot on eBay as well. I guess he bids the minimum on lots of things planning to resell them later.

It's great that I will sell something so that I can have a positive feedback record when I sell the Mosaics.

[connoisseur series500]

I always add the items I am interested in purchasing into my watch list. I lose buyer's interest over a 10-day auction. It's a psychological thing. When you first view a desired item on ebay, an emotional thrill is there; as the auction lingers day after day, the emotion wanes. Sales people are taught to close the sale as soon as possible, while the emotional element is strong. Every extra day that an item lingers for sale weakens a buyer's interest. That's just how human's work. The purchase impulse weakens. A lengthy listing weakens a buyer's sense of urgency. I don't see why this is difficult for some people to understand. As a seller, my best sales have occured with three-day listings.

[mellowT]

But a 10-day auction has never and would never keep me from bidding on an item I really wanted. Just out of curiosity, would it keep you from bidding? And if so, why?

To be honest I shake my head when I see a 10-day auction on a Mosaic set. I think, I don't have the time or inclination to watch this that long. Serious buyers watch the eBay listings daily, and get email updates.

I suppose if you were trying to catch someone who's only a periodic shopper, having your listing spread out over 2 weekends is better. However, I've seen 1- and 3-day listings get just as much as 7- and 10-day listings, sometimes more. I think shorter listings make happier buyers, and that eventually drives the end price up.

I don't use a sniping tool, mostly because (1) it used to be against eBay policy (so I guess you could call me a purist), and (2) I used to whine about others doing it (not anymore, it's so widespread).

Don't forget to pack properly. Err on the side of caution. There's nothing that ticks me off to get something that was not properly or safely packed. When I get ready to ship something, I shake the box. If I hear movement, I repack.

Good idea, Brad. At Sandy's suggestion, I have spent $50 at Bags, Unltd. for packing materials, which I intend to pass on in the form of handling charges.

Yes, that's an excellent idea. I think it's especially important to batten down the big booklet. I've gotten booklets brand new from Mosaic and after a year of handling the shipping box in and out of my closet, there will be a wear mark on the back when coming into contact with the edges of the jewel cases. Looks like strap marks.

I now take a 12x12 sheet of the small bubble wrap and use it to separate the two. I usually can still easily close the box (depending on the thickness of the booklet). This keeps the booklet from banging around the inside of the box.

[GA Russell]

Yes, that's an excellent idea. I think it's especially important to batten down the big booklet. I've gotten booklets brand new from Mosaic and after a year of handling the shipping box in and out of my closet, there will be a wear mark on the back when coming into contact with the edges of the jewel cases. Looks like strap marks.

I now take a 12x12 sheet of the small bubble wrap and use it to separate the two. I usually can still easily close the box (depending on the thickness of the booklet). This keeps the booklet from banging around the inside of the box.

Great idea, mellowT! I'll do it.

[Dan Gould]

Anyone who is seriously interested in an item will follow it to the conclusion of the auction. In fact, if the day and time an auction ends is important, then by the same token, "in the know" buyers should be motivated to follow 10 day auctions in hopes of getting a "bargain".

I can't imagine how three day auctions can be successful except in the limited situation of selling something like a Mosaic set that has a built-in audience of regulars searchers/buyers. And even then, why limit the time that individuals may find your listing? I don't know what ebay usage patterns show but I have to believe that there are more users who visit occasionally than go on the site and do their favorite searches every single day. Getting a couple of people to battle it out over three days doesn't mean that more people wouldn't have seen the auction and bid it up in a standard seven day auction.

Which brings up the final point: All of this has to do with luck and timing. A three day auction may work because you caught the eye of two Japanese buyers who throw money at something with reckless abandon. A ten day auction could work because the right person comes along on the eighth or tenth day and bids it sky-high. You simply never know.

[blake]

I completely agree with the watch list comments. Anyone remotely serious about bidding on an auction is either going to A) immediately place an initial bit (thus keeping the auction on their radar until its conclusion) or B) add it to their watch list and keep an eye on the price.

So it becomes a matter of getting your auction noticed. The luck is in attracting two or more people who will bid the item up because they really want it, versus people who will place a minimum (or very slightly above minimum) bid because they are hoping for a great deal.

When I consider auctioning CDs, I'm particularly paranoid about another seller listing the same item for sale before my auction closes. You see this a lot with Mosaics, right? I theorize that bidders will back off a potential bidding war on the first auction because they know there's another auction they can fall back on for the same item.

Do any others sellers share my paranoia or conversely think it doesn't make any difference?

[GA Russell]

Take as many pictures as possible. It never ceases to amaze me when someone wants several hundreds of dollars as a starting price but then only has one picture of the item. Each picture is only a dime extra. I'd even pay extra for the zoomed in version.

mellowT, I like your idea. for my next trial auction, I will experiment with having six photos.

Well, now I need your help again.

I've just started a third auction, the purpose of which was to display a number of photos as mellowT suggested. But instead of getting the photos displayed below the text, which I have seen in other auctions, the photos are all over by the main photo, and you have to click on them to see them.

Please take a look at this, and tell me what you think. I suppose it's not asking too much of a Mosaic buyer to click on a photo, but I would prefer the photos to be right there where you can't miss them. Does anyone know how to do this?

http://cgi.ebay.com/3-AA-BATTERY-CASES-EACH-HOLDS-UP-4-COLORS-/130385635459?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e5b96e883

[GA Russell]

By the way, I made this third auction for five days instead of seven. Maybe the items I am doing now for practice are too trivial to make a difference, but I have the impression that you don't want to end an auction on a Friday or Saturday. Is that right?

[mellowT]

Take as many pictures as possible. It never ceases to amaze me when someone wants several hundreds of dollars as a starting price but then only has one picture of the item. Each picture is only a dime extra. I'd even pay extra for the zoomed in version.

mellowT, I like your idea. for my next trial auction, I will experiment with having six photos.

Well, now I need your help again.

I've just started a third auction, the purpose of which was to display a number of photos as mellowT suggested. But instead of getting the photos displayed below the text, which I have seen in other auctions, the photos are all over by the main photo, and you have to click on them to see them.

Please take a look at this, and tell me what you think. I suppose it's not asking too much of a Mosaic buyer to click on a photo, but I would prefer the photos to be right there where you can't miss them. Does anyone know how to do this?

http://cgi.ebay.com/3-AA-BATTERY-CASES-EACH-HOLDS-UP-4-COLORS-/130385635459?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e5b96e883

I'm sorry I didn't catch this until now.

I think the way you have your photos located is fine. When people click on the first photo for a closeup, they get a window that contains the others. All they have to do is click or hover over the remaining photos to see everything. Perfect!

eBay may offer other tools for embedding the photos within the description, I'm not sure. Most of the time when you see a different configuration, folks have used 3rd party applications to create their listing page, like GarageSale or Auctiva.

[Patrick]

I guess I shop eBay a lot less than others (So far in 2010, I've purchased 20 items from 14 different sellers). I don't search the listings everyday, probably about once a week. I do get Sunday evening spam alerting me to items from favorite sellers. Three day listings probably come and go before I've had a chance to see them. What fraction of buyers are in my category? I reckon quite a few are. I'm glad I did see the 3 day listing for a brand new copy of the Plugged Nickel box. It ended on a weekend, I was the only bidder, and paid $50 for it. ...I'd be inclined to avoid that possibility if I were selling potentially pricy items.

I have no opinion of 7 day versus 10 day, but I find the "getting bored" phenomenon a little odd. If watching it grows tiresome, go ahead and bid early. May get sniped later (or not), but then you don't have to worry about bidding later. Or don't bid.

[GA Russell]

I'm getting ready to offer my Mosaics. I see what is available now, and there are very few that are not Buy It Now, and there is very little bidding. Should I expect not much interest in Mosaics?

http://music.shop.eb...14&_sop=1&_sc=1

Do you think that I should go the Best Offer route?

Edited April 29, 2010 by GA Russell

[colinmce]

Bidding for Mosaics always escalates in the closing hours. It's pretty rare for them to go cheap.

Even so, I am always a fan of offering a Buy-It-Now price. If you set it up as an auction, it doesn't preclude people from bidding and if someone is intrepid it can be over and done with.

That said, I find that the Buy-only auctions are often majorly overpriced. Good luck to the guy selling that Kenton for $350 bucks.

[GA Russell]

To me, the use of an automatic sniping tool is another eBay "no brainer". I never monitor an auction end anymore, since I discovered the benefits of a sniping tool. But I think the majority of eBayers still do not use these tools, for whatever reason, so the start and end times still matter. I may be wrong about this, but that is my impression.

I see what you mean. Here is the auction of the Mingus Candid Mosaic which ended this evening where the winning bid was submitted four seconds before the end of the auction!

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=300413662341

[Big Beat Steve]

I don't bid or buy on eBay nearly as often anymore as I used to a couple of years ago (somehow the site has run its course for me; sure you can still grab good items, but with too many search tiems that used to yield potentially collectible items there's just too much supermarket junk at inflated Buy-It-Now prices) but there are certain listing details that still make or break the items with me:

- I agree with what's been said about 3-day items; good for buyers for snapping up things cheaply but you would have to scan the listings constantly for new items NOT to miss it. So maybe not a wise move for sellers.

- Checking the listings extensively at least once every 5 or 6 days usually will give you an overview of what's there as most items are 7-day listings, and I dont mind the 10-day listings one bit and cannot see how anybody finds this too long. Put the items on your watch list, consult the watch list occasionally to see what's happening and that's that. But 3-day auctions will fall under your radar, then.

- As for bidding, having been outsniped a couple of times in my very early eBay days about 10 years ago (according to the user IDs it very likely was by people hanging around here, BTW, or else it was a huge coincidence) I made a point of bidding in the very last seconds too on all those items that I really, really wanted. Sorry but this is something the sellers will have to live with; most bidders usually aren't dumb enough or wading in dough just to push each other up in alternately trying to top each other in the middle of the auction. And sniping is the only way to cut out that vicious cycle. Things were a bit different a long time ago on yahoo auctions but thankfully eBy has never latched on to that.

- As for the time of ending the auctions, personally I have found on quite a few usual search words that I scan relatively often that many sellers seem to think like a majority here: End your auctions on a weekend (no big difference between Saturday or Sunday). At least I have found there has been a tendency that among the ever-decreasing number of really interesting items the share of those ending on weekends gets ever bigger. So the actual trend among sellers is obvious.

- As for the hour of day that the listing ends, the preferences are obvious from a seller's point of view. But if it was an item I really wanted and found rare enough to warrant the effort, I for one hardly ever shied away from getting up in the middle of the night at 2, 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning to place a last-second bid on a U.S. llisting, sitting in front of my PC for the last minute watching the "stopwatch" as the countdown went on (this was before automatic sniping tools but somehow I do not trust them anyway). It did not always work but often it did. So the "4 seconds before the end" winning bid mentioned above does not surprise me in the least; the key is to place a bid late enough to PREVENT anybody else from raising you after having seen you place a bid (except if somebody else went to his personal limit in the same way too, which does happen).

However, if U.S. sellers really wanted to get a maximum of FEASIBLE international bids then they'd be well advised to make their bids end LATE at night U.S. time (a bit before midnight) so they end very EARLY in the morning European time (which would be a feasible compromise for US and European bdders alike). What I've seen, though, is that many U.S. sellers seem to have a habit of letting their bids end at 7 o 8 pm local time which would be a bit early for this aprt of the world .

- About photographs: It would be nice and would help sales if sellers placed several and LARGE pictures of their items that showed all teh details that might be relevant. However, it seems that eBay listing practices or options have since been degraded on purpose (by eBay I guess) as these days you often have the kind of listing that GA Russell mentions: One pic that is hardly enlargeable to any significant degree and several others you have to click on to make then display in any useful size 8and then they won't enlarge too much either). Great were the days when pictures were REALLY large or SUPERSIZABLE on a huge part of the auctions. And you even would have been able to download clear pics for other purposes (label scans etc.).

Good luck!

[GA Russell]

Thanks for all of your input, Steve!

[mellowT]

I'm getting ready to offer my Mosaics. I see what is available now, and there are very few that are not Buy It Now, and there is very little bidding. Should I expect not much interest in Mosaics?

http://music.shop.eb...14&_sop=1&_sc=1

Do you think that I should go the Best Offer route?

Almost all of those Buy-It-Now auctions are outrageously priced. Some are being offered for prices never seen before, so that is why you don't see much action there.

You could offer a mixture of bid/BIN or BIN/Best Offer. If the former and you don't set a reserve price, then the first bid will cancel the BIN option. Otherwise, the BIN will stay active until someone meets your reserve.

I've always offered a low starting price and let the market decide, but that was before this crappy economy. It's an art form however you play it.

[Big Beat Steve]

Lest I forget:

Regarding SHIPPING.

If you are keen on a sizable number of overseas bids and are actually inviting international bidders to bid, then please do give them the accurate shipping rates beforehand. Please do NOT give them that "For international shipping rates, use the shipping rates calculator" blurb. By and large, these calculators are just crap as they go by weight or by "airmail" only and do not take in "global priority" options (which might be different) or "flat rate" options (which might make a HELL of a difference maybe not in the case of 12in vinyl but certainly if you were to ship magazines or books etc. - which does cover collectible jazz items too).

So please do take a moment to pack and weigh a typical LP or CD item (remember jewel cases are really expendable for international shipping of single CDs and most buyers can live without them if this saves them a bundle in shipping - and it often does), check all the rates available and select the best one, see what you can do in the way of reduced rates for combined shipping of multiple items and then please state all this clearly for European, Australien, Asian destinations or wherever you are willing to ship.

And please do refrain from giving them the "I have to queue up at a different post office counter for international shipping so I will charge XXX $ on top of the shipping for each item sent internationally" line.

Remember many international bidders tend to be willing to bid higher than U.S. bidders (especially in today's economy and for items that might be harder to come by outside the U.S.) so this might earn you extra money so if you are not prepared to go to that little extra effort in compensation of the extra money earned then SAY SO. This will avoid the seller unwelcome hassle and will spare the bidder the feeling of being given the "take it or leave it but don't bother me" runaround.

I do realize that in your case I am certainly stating the obvious and preaching to the converted but who knows ... maybe somebody prone to such practices might just read this and think it over. ;)

Again - good luck!

[fent99]

Some great stuff here. Couple of thoughts from the UK. Most buyers seem to be from the UK for my UK listings but I like to have them end in the early evening which gives US buyers a lunchtime option for the last second bids. Harder to do that for US auctions. Definitely better to have things end at weekends but I'd include Friday nights as a weekend time...

Anyone recommend a good sniping tool? Never used one to buy anything.