Why Offer A Bo Option If You Aren't Willing To Haggle At All

Yeah, but from the seller's point of view....when you offer $4000 would be like telling him: "who are you going to 'cheat' .... you ask $5765 for that coin... sure.....come on...you know that's not the price".

my question would be to you, was 4000$ your one and only offer, or the bottom of your range,my opinion is the seller is probably feeling you out, like they figure you are doing as well. You are allowed 3 offers per item.The seller know that and is hoping for you to move up in your offer. I believe unless you have but in your second offer you really don't know what he is willing to sell it for..the seller always has a price he will settle for. Maybe you started too far away from it.And it sounds like you know the coins value,if 4000$ was your maximum, maybe you should have started alittle lower to show the seller you had room to go up.as a seller I have seen a lot of low offers, ones that don't even require a counter-offer, at least you got a counter-offer.

arianzo, exactly. Expecting 5700 on a 5765 with BO option is beyond ridiculous and silly time.

jdmern, the point is not that I want someone to sell me something at my price. It is that many sellers, even of hi $ coins, are unrealistically naive to think they will get 99% of their ask out of a BO negotiation. If they don't want to haggle - then that is fine - just DON'T WASTE OTHERS TIME then suggesting you will haggle/negotiate by checking the BO option, then not ACTUALLY BEING WILLING to negotiate. Or not negotiating realistically or rationally! ebay makes it EASY to auto-reject offers below your threshold for "lowball" whatever that may be. I use it all the time to avoid the "$1 on a $130 coin" creeps out there. If this seller thought 4000 was an insult they should set it to be auto-rejected. It isn't "hard" to do! And I have had buyers be "auto-rejected" but came into an acceptable offer zone by their 3rd offer - so it doesn't necessarily scare all buyers away. It just saves you the hassle of dealing with "true lowball" types.

Too many got bogged down in the first offer - if you feel better just ignore what I actually offered and substitute 5000 as the first offer - if 70% makes you think it is an insult offer! The point is not "how to negotiate 101", some obviously have no clue how to haggle and likely get the worse end of it more often than not - so I am not trying to help on that front. Rather it is how many sellers waste buyers time with BO items they aren't willing to haggle on at all in reality.

silverwolf,



Not that the purpose was to debate haggling, but I almost never offer my TOP on a first offer. They allow 3, I tend to plan on using all 3. Particularly on 4 figure coins. So even my first counter is likely lower than my MAX. I know others don't care to haggle much and just make one offer - but that typically is not my style. 99% is not a reasonable counter is my point. It is a waste of everyone's time!

Someone selling a big ticket coin should have a lot more selling savvy and knowledge about the business is part of my point. I see this stuff on coins from $50 up though. Just wastes time.

Many responded that my 1st offer was too low and deserved a "go pound salt" ridiculous counter. You instead suggest I should have offered less? Do you really think they would have countered "much less" had I offered less? Many others suggest the opposite and that if I had offered much more then they would have countered more realistically. I don't agree - but their scenario has at least a small chance of playing out had the seller been offended.

It seems that you don't understand what I mean and most of people here mean.

I doubt the final price for the seller was 5700. The seller was just sending a message like "when you really want to make a serious offer, come back again".

If you would have offered $5000, I'm sure he wouldn't have counter offered 5700.

I am really surprised with all the comments here. It appears a lot of you don't know how to haggle, or don't even know what haggling is.
When trying to sell something like this if you want $5765 for it, you don't ask for $5765, you ask for more. That way if you have to go down in price it will give you more wiggle room and you still get close to what you wanted for it in the first place.
If you put something up for $5765 and then make a counter offer of $5700 while getting offended in the process then why bother? If you know you are sensitive then just mark it $5700 buy it now and be done with it.

LincolnGuy,
I have a 1912 cent probably somewhere between an MS63 and an MS64, slightly iridescently toned.

I figure it's worth about $130.

If I knew you were the likely customer, I would offer it at $250 or BO and hope that you would haggle me down to, say, $120.

However, on ebay, a BIN of $250 would frighten off most other potential buyers.

It's OK to offer a coin at a high price to haggle down if you're in an Arabic souk or somewhere else that haggling is the norm, but I doubt it's a successful selling strategy on ebay.

I saw an ebay store yesterday where the seller is offering very interesting medallions at 2 or 3 times the price I'd want to pay and I'm wondering if haggling is his sales strategy.

For the moment, though, it's frightened me off.
His postage costs are high too, and I don't want to pay them unless I can be sure that he would accept offers for for 4 or 5 items and bundle the postage together.

I don't do BO auctions so not a problem for me. However, I see the same crap at coin shows. Someone offers me 1/2 to 2/3 of what I'm asking they can go away empty handed. (I usually price my stuff between bid and ask.) If I hurt their feelings they can go shoot themselves. I don't care.