Selling Antiques on eBay: Is it a Dead End?

The basic idea of ​​eBay is simple: it’s about connecting buyers and sellers within the exciting framework of an auction environment.

Originally, it was a forum for people to trade or buy and sell items of relatively modest value. Over time, it grew and expanded into a major online auction site for just about anything you can think of, including antiques and sometimes high-value ones.

For many years, it served its purpose as an antiques market well.

Most of the professional buyers and sellers were happy because it was always possible for the former to get a real bargain while from the seller’s point of view, statistically, the overall trends/returns were good.

Many auctions were based on a true open bid with low starting values ​​and many buyers bid early to try to “reserve” the price range to the maximum they wanted to pay.

So buyers got occasional really good deals and sellers got reasonable sales overall, albeit with occasional and often unexplained losses on an individual item.

Advance bidding gave sellers some confidence and open bidding did the same for buyers. Generally speaking, everyone was happy.

What is happening today?

It is possible to make a compelling case that the former situation was very much the “happy days” of eBay as a forum for buying and selling quality antiques online.

If you shop for serious antiques on eBay today, chances are you’ll find:

• The vast majority of items are advertised on ‘Buy It Now’ or ‘Buy It Now at Best Deals’;

• Quality items still offered for open bidding are advertised with typically high “introductory bid” levels.

• Many professional sellers have left, saying that it is now almost impossible to sell anything on eBay and that they are taking their items elsewhere.

How has this happened?

changing markets

The changes are being driven by the behaviors of buyers and sellers, although it is something of a chicken and egg debate as to where it all started.

Certainly, starting with the crises of 2007/2008, buyers have become increasingly obsessed, although understandably, with “must get it cheap“.

Of course, there has always been a tendency for buyers to try to save their offers for the last few minutes. That was done in the sometimes mistaken belief that it’s the only way to get a bargain. However, that trend became the norm as time passed after 2008.

Another significant change in buyer practice in recent years has been the increasing use of ‘Bid Sniping’ software. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a system whereby buyers can leave a maximum bid level with an online company who then places an automatic bid within the last two to three seconds before the auction ends.

The net effect of less buying and increasingly late bidding to the last second, from the sellers point of view, is that quite often their items will have few or no bids until a few seconds before of the closure. That kills dead seller confidence in a true auction approach with low starting prices.

Now if you’re selling a DVD or some second-hand tools and expect to get a final price in the ‘tens’ of your chosen currency, you can be doomed to see your item bid as low as 1.50 about 10 seconds before that is sold However, if you have, say, a vintage watch worth 500 and you’re there with no bids just seconds before it closes, then you’ll be a lot more nervous.

In theory, this process should be self-regulating, but as any experienced quality seller on eBay will tell you, it is not, and the losses incurred by dealers can be extremely significant and increasingly frequent.

So it’s no surprise that more and more sellers of quality antiques have turned to ‘Buy It Now’ as a means of protecting their interests.

The net effect of this is that, in terms of quality antiques, eBay is much more like Amazon or a simple classifieds magazine than a true online bargain site.

Can the exciting old days of eBay deals return?

Unfortunately, the conclusion must be ‘probably not’.

For sellers of quality antiques to start trusting eBay open auction sales for their financial success again, several things must change:

1. Buyers should be encouraged to bid earlier.

2. Bid Sniping software should be banned.

3. Open bidding average realized prices would need to increase beyond what has been the case since about 2008.

For buyers and sellers alike, the demise of eBay as a truly dynamic and exciting open bidding forum for quality antiques is unfortunate, although it is being replaced by an increasing number of antique sellers moving to forums such as Amazon or antique shops on ETSY.

It is a sad fact that, if anything, eBay’s own policies and practices appear to be accelerating its transition from an online auction forum to becoming a pale reflection of sites like Amazon and various classified bulletin boards.

For serious antique buyers and sellers, eBay as an exciting channel may now become nothing more than a nostalgic memory.