Ebay Best Offer Question

No, you are not obligated to your offer(s), however it would be in bad taste if you crawfished.

A Best Offer is only valid for a specific timeframe, per ebay rule; I think it's 48 hours but might be 72. After that everybody's off the hook.

Thanks Dave! That's what I needed to know

Thanks oih82w8

They should add a feature that lets you specify if you want your offer to be valid for 1 day or two, I have noticed a lot of times sellers dont respond to offers at all. A simple decline would be nice so you can move on to others

hmmm, I'll have to look up the rules. I "thought" that by you making an offer, if the seller accepted, it's the same as doing a BIN, and you are responsible for payment..

Good job on getting the coin you wanted by the way. Post up some pics when you get it in hand.

That's a typical scenario. Most BIN/BO sellers have a minimum price in mind when they list that is obviously less than the BIN ( or they wouldn't bother listing with BO option ). That said, some will auto-reject anything below 95% or 98% of their BIN which kind of defeats the purpose. Most know that buyers expect a 10% or more lower than BIN price when they make BO's and thus price to that model somewhat. When you list auction with a BIN that BIN MUST BE 10% above the auction start price at least so that gives you an indication of where people get some rules-of-thumb for such things from.

It is so dependent on how reasonable their BIN price is compared to market-price ( however one decides to evaluate that ) and how desparate they are to unload that coin. I've had sellers accept as little as 30% of BIN - because they inflated it ridiculously to start, and like I said I've seen others that auto-reject anything but 99% ( which is a waste of time for all concerned as they shouldn't bother with BO in that case ).

Wholesale is typically around 75%-85% of list price so if they are offering a coin at BIN of list your target should be 15%-25% less - unless you want to pay more which strangely is not that uncommon.

But that varies by how desirable the particular coin is etc. Knowing the "fees" are approx. 10-13% is also a factor in that some will not accept less than list because that already means they actually get paid only 88% of list or so.

It's obviously a personal style thing, but my first BO offer is typically somewhere in the 60%-80% of what I determine to be market value - regardless and irrespective of what their BIN price is. The more reasonable their BIN, and obviously desirable that particular coin is to me at the time, the closer to 80% my offer is. I expect some back-and-forth haggling of at least a couple offers before we meet on a price, as why list BO if that isn't in the cards. Yet some will do just that - list BO but then not want to engage in any haggling. IMO, that is just bizzare.

GL2ALL

I couldnt agree more Buffalo, there is no point of a BO if you will only take 98 or 99 percent of the price, just list it for that and save everyone the time. I understand not taking 800 or 85 percent but the other is a little extreme. Ill do exactly what you said every now and then with the over price a bit give the BO option and just wait for someone to make the fair offer. Sometimes it will get extra attention since people feel theyre saving money especially for harder to sell items.

I would agree with the sentiment expressed too that offers should only be made if you plan to buy. If you have a pending one and want to make another a better option may be to email the other seller and see if they would accept your offer and let them know that you have to wait to see what happens with the first one. Some sellers wont care others will appreciate the honesty.