Alternatives To ebay?

Once you get more than 250 quality posts, you can sell your coins on this forum

Maineman750 wrote:


Actually, I have googled for "online auction" and "coin auction" and found many sites.

My question is more, has anyone here had any experience with any of these other sites?

As for fees, I used to sell on ebay back in the 2000-2004 time frame. Back then, you could advertise that you accepted other forms of payment (other than PayPal). There was a listing insertion fee (seems like it was 1% or 1.5% depending on the opening bid or reserve) and the "Final value fee" was in the range of 2.5% to 4%. Assuming you got a postal money order for payment (that was my preference back then), you generally got out for under 6%.

Today, ebay is offering "free listings, no insertion fee" and they are taking 9% in the final value fees. In addition to that, you have to accept PayPal and you can't solicit payment by any other method (though you can accept it if offered). So PayPal gets 3% or 3.5% of the total (including shipping) bringing the total up around 12.5%

The competitors that I found through Google range from free (completely free, with advertising on your listings that might compete with your listing) up to 12.5% final value fees. But most are under in the 3% to 6% range.

Of course, none of this matters if there are no bidders on those sites, or if they cater to crooks and fraudsters.

That's why I ask if anyone has tried any of the other ones?

Personally, I've bought from an auction (once) on Overstock.com. Went as smoothly as ebay to me. Not sure what that one is like for the seller, though.

Again, I'm just curious about any experience that others have had.

I peruse craigslist also. Sometimes that's a good way to sell/buy some coins. I've heard horror stories and you should always be cautious of course, but I've never had any problems.

A lot of members here have stores on ecrater, too. Thinking about opening one myself.

wheezydog, I'll agree with you on ebay fees.I'm hoping they'll change their fees back to the old schedule.Every time I get a survey or phone call from them,I mention fees.Since most of their communications are as to why I'm not selling more,I have to assume the fees have cut down on sellers. Let's hope they see the light.

wheatguy wrote:

Once upon a time, your statements were correct. I still think they take counterfeits and other outright fraud aimed at buyers seriously. However, they no longer seem to care about fee avoidance or excessive shipping charges reports.

I can't seem to post links here (yet), but ebay item # 160523023756 (and every other item from that seller with $50+ shipping for USPS Priority Mail Flat Rate shipping) has been reported by me, both with the link I found here on the coincommunity.com forums, and with the "Report item" link.

There was a weeks long discussion of that guy over on the ebay "Coins and Paper Money" discussion board. Numerous people reported many of those items. None have been pulled yet.

Eventually, the ebay Discussion board "Posting Police" started pulling that thread down. First a reply or two at a time (they pulled one of mine), then they finally pulled the whole topic. Apparenty discussing violations of ebay policies on ebay's discussion boards is forbidden.

I got an email from ebay moderators about a reply of mine that they pulled. They said that I should report the items using the tools provided by ebay, but that discussing violations on the discussion boards was forbidden. I sent a reply to them telling them that I had reported it using every tool available, and suggesting that maybe if they spent some of their efforts enforcing the policies about excessive shipping charges and cheating on final value fees, these discussions wouldn't happen on the discussion boards. I have seen no reply or action from that.

I also asked in the "live support chat" if I was allowed to offer things for $0.99 plus $100 shipping. I was told that shipping/handling charges could only be actual shipping costs. If I charge any more, then I'm violating the policy. I pointed out the the live chat operator the proof sets being offered for $25 plus $300 shipping. He said that's a violation, I can't do that. Yet over a week later, the other guy's listing is still there. He's allowed to do that, I'm not.

I also included links and discussion of that guy my follow up "survey" from ebay about the chat experience.

So ebay has had numerous reports through every channel I can find about $300 shipping on a $25 item. I am left with the conclusion that I am prohibited from doing that (they've told me that several times), but I'm expected to pay my 9% fees to support servers and bandwidth for the cheaters. Nothing will be done about those cheaters.

ebay has some seriously misplaced priorities. It's a shame. Back in 2000 through about 2005, I used to sell a lot of stuff there. That was before PayPal was mandatory.

Now, it's not what it used to be. It seems clunkier than it was in the past (maybe my tastes in website design have just changed, I don't know). And their fees have gone up significantly. Their fees are starting to approach the "High end auction house" like Heritiage, but the service you get from ebay is nowhere near what the higher end places offer.

And with the way they have handled reports of cheating, it's just a matter of time before they start asking for more from the few remaining honest folks.

You're right about the traffic there. Nothing else comes close.

Stil, it looks like eCrater shows up on Google shopping/product searches. That probably helps a lot.

I'm considering putting some stuff on eCrater in early 2011 and seeing how it goes there. It's worth a try. Free (possibly + 3-4% PayPal, or whatever Google Checkout will eat) beats the heck out of ~12.5% ( ebay + PayPal).

Hello John,

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Good luck with your transactions!

Seb Delcampe