To Reserve Or Not To Reserve..that Is The ?

Everyone wants a deal. Often you bid on a coin in hopes of getting it at an advantageous price. That is why they make their opening bids. Many times the reserve figure dampens buyers' enthusiasm because it greatly limits any chance of a "good deal." Psychologically, it's a killer.

Also...it seems that many times the reserve is not listed. Buyers don't bother wasting their time with bids only to be told that the "Reserve is not met." No one wants to "go fishing" for the reserve, only to find it is higher than they wanted to pay for that particular coin. Again...and absolute killer for the auction as far as I'm concerned.

If you have particularly nice material, you can probably use reserves and still do just fine, but if you are selling common stuff, I feel people will just cruise right on by looking for the right deal for them.

Please tell me differences between starting the bidding at $100, and setting the reserve at $100. I'll start....

1. Meg gets twice as much money when your reserve auction doesn't sell.

2. Over 90% of buyers won't bid on a "Reserve not met" auction.

Anybody got any more?

And when they make $20 more than they paid for it on the 5th try they get all excited.

Most never realize that they've rewarded Meg with about $15 for not finding a buyer for it the first four times.

CEO of ebay.

She's sitting in her hot tub right now sipping champagne thinking what a great idea (for her) reserves where.

I understand the buyers perspective, but I too have lost my shirt on .99 cent auctions on ebay. I'm actually just now trying to make all my auctions with starting bids that cover my breakeven. I think thats fair, but of course a potential buyer will have to take my word for it and it will probably be a rare occurance when they do.

Buyers have to understand though that there is so much material, especially common date and grade stuff, being offered on ebay that its hard to get the necessary attention to turn any profit on ebay. This goes double for true low margin dealers. And selling is expensive. You have to cover aquisition cost, selling cost and overhead. Most ebay buyers just have the attitude of naming their own price.

I'm trying to save common type coins as I buy them just to offer as a lot to better cover selling costs. I've tryed to compensate with extending my return policy, but we'll see. I've got a nice Morgan out right now where the starting bid is half of Red Book but no watchers yet. Its under seller not_enough_time_to_play. Do you think a start at half RBV is too high to attract even one bidder?

Double_Die I can empathize, but if you maintain a cavalier attitude about buyers wants/desires, you are destined for disappointment on ebay. I have virtually lived there over the past four years watching Seated coin auctions and occasionally others. Older, desirable coins (in virtually any condition) and bullion do well, some final bids are downright ridiculous.

Moderns (1964 to present) have so much competition that it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. High-end errors, PCGS-70 and NGC-70 slabs, and outrageously toned coins are the exception.

I would like the link to your Morgan, so that I could give my personal assessment of the presentation and offer suggestions ... I may even want to place a bid!

Bobby & SeatedNut,

Good advice. I think your going back to the idea that the majority of buyers are looking for specific denominations or dates and in turn search based on those keywords. I've never put a lot of thought into the keyword thing because I believed that the majority of ebay buyers were just searching out the deals, and made distinctions only between truly rare old coin types and less valuable modern stuff. I figured the majority was sitting there looking at what was ending in the next 30 minutes, watching each item pass sniping .99 start auctions that were undervalued. That's where I was hoping they'd notice mine that lists both the RBV in the subtitle line and starting bid at half the RBV. I was hoping they'd realize getting something for half its value is a good deal and thus bid. I'll let you know how it goes.