Oh Where, Oh Where Has My eBay Auction Gone?

Logging in to eBay today I noticed the view count on my vintage Leica IIIc to be well below average, with only 3 days left on the 7 day auction. It was a little surprising but I figured there could be plenty of reasons for why the numbers were down; for example a flood of vintage Leica postings. So, I typed in Leica IIIc, actually I copied and pasted “Leica IIIc” from my auction heading, into the search box with the “All Categories” selected and pressed search to check out my competition.

The search turned up only one page worth of results and as I was going through the list I couldn’t see a reason for why my auction views would be so low. There weren’t more than the usual amount of cameras listed and my pricing seemed to be well in line with the rest of them. Then I realized my auction for my Leica IIIc didn't show up among the search results.

I went up and down the list a few times and even hit the search button again but my auction wasn’t anywhere to be found. After playing around with the search options a little more, however, my auction finally appeared within search results. What I needed to do in order to see my listing was sort the results by “Pricing + Shipping: highest first”. I noticed I foolishly had my search results sorted by “Pricing + Shipping: lowest first”. As a thrifty minded individual I generally choose the "lowest first" option so I can see all the bargain prices first; I’m assuming that for most bargain shoppers this is also their preferable sorting option as well.

I don’t understand though, why my auction would show up in one sorting option but not the other? The auction was listed as one of my 50 “free” postings for the month, so could that be the reason? Or maybe it’s a bug? When searching for “Leica IIIc” by “Pricing + Shipping: highest first” there are 3 pages of results. When searching for “Leica IIIc” by “Pricing + Shipping: lowest first” there is only 1 page of results. So, I’m guessing I’m not the only one with this problem.

Whatever the case may be, I certainly hope I don’t have to start paying a fee now just to ensure my auction shows up properly among the search results.

The Price Of Doing Buisness On eBay

I have been told by many people in the past to “put it on eBay” under the notion that you can sell just about anything on eBay. While I believe it to be true to a degree, I’m starting to reconsider that piece of advice. 

Is It Really Worth It

Though I know for a fact that I am not actually “making” money off eBay as of now, because everything I have sold thus far has went for less than what I had original spent to acquire it; being the geek I am, I still want to know approximately how much am I getting for my efforts by selling on Bay. 

As you can tell the majority of my items for sell are action figures and, as a matter of fact, action figures are the only items have been able to sell. Now though the most recent figure I have been able to sell went for $4.99, it would be unrealistic for me to think that I can sell all my Marvel ToyBiz figures for the same price. Some of the more popular characters might go for $4.99, but I’m guessing if I really want to move these figures I’m going to have to drop the price below $3.00 apiece; this is partly due to the way eBay is setup. Being a little optimistic and for the sake of this argument, however,  I’m going to calculate how much I would be getting back for a Marvel ToyBiz figure that sold at $3.49; the price which I have listed the majority of them for the last time they were on eBay.

Let’s Calculate Those Fees

EBay charges a fee of 9% based on the closing total of your auction for toys. Now, this “total” is exactly that. It not only includes the final bid price of your auction but also the cost of you shipping the item.  So for my $3.49 figure which I charge $7 for sending it through priority mail, eBay charges me $0.94.

$3.49 + $7.00 = $10.49 total
3% of $10.49 = $0.94 eBay’s first fee

Yes, $0.94 is only the first fee. If you are selling on eBay, you are more than likely accepting your payments through an eBay owned company known as PayPal. EBay’s PayPal charges you another fee of 3% based on the “total” you received for your auction, plus $0.30. So, for my example auction that fee comes to $0.61.

3% of $10.49 = $0.31
$0.31 + $0.30 = $0.61 eBay’s second fee

So for my auction of a $3.49 figure my total fee is…

$0.94 + $0.61 = $1.55

Now, $1.55 for a “total” of $10.49 doesn’t seem that bad. However, let’s remember $7.00 of that “total” actually goes to shipping. In fact at $7.00, the actual shipping cost is eating in to my sale even if eBay didn’t charge sellers a fee for shipping. Walking in to the post office to send a package through priority mail with a delivery confirmation slip is going to cost me $7.05. Some of you might say you can save yourself a few cents if you pay for your shipping online, but if we are really going to be nit-picky the cost of packaging materials and the price of gas when you drop of the package at your nearest post office will basically make any of those “savings” disappear. In order to make things a little simpler, however, I’m just going to ignore those extra costs and say $7.00 covers it. So, that’s an eBay fee of $1.55 for a $3.49 sale.

Putting the price of the fee into another perspective, $1.55 of $3.49 is 44%. When considering only the fees that eBay charges me for a “successful” auction of $3.49, I would receive a grand total of $1.94.

What Can I Do To Make It Worthwhile

Now to be fair, I guess there are a few options available to me to offset these fees.

Raise Prices

One thing I can do is raise prices, after all as I stated earlier the latest action figure I did manage to sell closed out at $4.99. However, that was for a popular character in which the lowest price from a “top-rated seller” came in at more than 4 times as much, and my auction didn’t even warrant enough attention to so much as draw in another bid.

As a new eBay seller without much feedback, if I raise my prices anywhere near the ball park to that of one of these “top-rated sellers” I pretty much guarantee that all the figures I own will stay firmly in my possession. Buyers don’t really like taking chances on new sellers who haven’t already received hundreds of positive feedback unless the price for the item is really good and really low.

Of course there are ways you can fix that feedback problem by selling hundreds of single paperclips; which is a practice I have seen some gold-star sellers do in one form or the other, but it is cheating the system and supposedly “against the rules”.

Change Shipping Options

Another thing I could do is change my shipping options. That will reduce the fees a little since eBay charges you for the cost of shipping.  The problem I have with that, however, is getting boxes. Unless you buy in mass bulk boxes are pretty expensive. If I add the cost of a box and the price for shipping it as a first-class parcel it would come pretty close to what USPS charges for their priority mail service anyway.  For only a dollar more I think a buyer would rather go with the seller that gets them their item quicker.

To top things off, I have seen plenty of “top-rated sellers” who charge more for the economical shipping option than I do for shipping the same item through priority mail. Even with their exuberant shipping prices I can only assume that they still manage to sell plenty of their items in order to achieve their rating, while I would consider myself to be lucky to have even sold one item during the entire month.

Show your commitment and purchase an eBay store subscription

Buying a subscription fee for an eBay store reduces eBay’s fees…slightly. A fee rate drop of 1.5% does not sound very appealing to mean when I don’t put up hundreds of items a week for sale. This option might be good maybe if I decided to make the eBay store my life. Then again I somewhat get the notion that it would still be difficult for many of the mom-and-pop e-retailers to make a decent living if they chose to go with eBay as their only outlet option.

In Conclusion

Though my calculations did show that I would get some money in return for selling my toys on eBay, the whopping return of $1.94 for a $3.49 auction sort of makes me feel like I might be wasting my time taking photos of these items, writing up descriptions, and posting them online; especially when I believe that I’m going to have to lower my prices further in order to move them. Add to that fact as I lower my prices I also raise the percentage eBay takes as their cut for each sale, and I start to feel a little more disillusioned with selling on eBay. If I sell an item for $4.99 with my current shipping options eBay’s cut would be 35%. At $3.49 an item it becomes 44%. At $2.99 I have to shell out more than 50% of that price to eBay.

Now, I’m not trying to get rich here; but seriously I would rather just put up a garage sale sign, place them in a box, and sell them for $2 dollars a piece on my lawn. For my time and effort in doing so, I feel I would be getting way more back than what I could be getting from eBay. I’ll even be saving on the cost of gas it would take me to drive back and forth to the post office when shipping an item. Selling on eBay is definitely not all that it’s made out to be.  As a new or casual seller the odds are stacked up against you to make a successful sale with the hopes of getting a decent return for your item. 

Yes, there are a lot of successful so called eBay power-sellers out there. However, you don't simply become a power-seller without putting in a lot of time and also a lot of your own money first; especially, when trying to building up your reputation o be a “top-seller rating” in the beginning. To be honest, it’s like that for any successful business and you can’t really blame anyone for that.

In an effort to increase their own revenues EBay, as many of their forum members can attest to, has been making changes to their policies to encourage (or force depending on how you want to look at it) more of their sellers into becoming power-sellers. Unfortunately, a lot of the small time sellers who have been on eBay for a long time and who have helped the company in becoming as big as it is today, don't have the means to step up their business in this new environment and as a result have been feeling the squeeze. So, what do you do when you only have the means to pitch a tent in the parking lot of an outlet mall, while bounded by policies which reduce your profits to practically nil as you try to maintain some form of competition with your competitors?

Personally, I will still continue to try and sell my collection on eBay, but I have serious reservations against putting up anything for less than $5 as I feel it will simply not be worth my time and effort. I’m just going to hope that my decision to do so doesn’t drop my chances of making any future sell on eBay lower than what my chances are of hooking up with Kate Upton.

1990s Spawn Action Figures: Malebolgia, Vandalizer, Vertebreaker, and Violator by McFarlane Toys

From McFarlane Toys’ 1990s line of Spawn action figures here are four of Hell’s most infamous demons: Malebolgia, a demon lord from the Eighth Circle of Hell; and his demonic children Vandalizer, Vertebreaker, and Violator who make up part of the collective known as the Phlebiac Brothers and are in charge of training Malebolgia’s army of Hellspawn.

Malebolgia is from the 1995 Spawn Series 2 line.

Violator II is from the 1995 Spawn Series 3 line.

Vertebreaker is from the 1995 Spawn Series 3 line.

Vandalizer is from the 1996 Spawn Series 5 line.

When a pipe broke in my garage these items happened to be in a cardboard box on the floor. Though the water never reached more than a couple of centimeters high the water was soaked up by the cardboard box and by the backboards of the packages containing these figures as well. The figures themselves did not get wet. I decided just to remove the backboards and place them into Ziploc bags. (Though, the figure of Malebolgia proved to be a little too big to be sealed completely in a Ziploc bag.) The only time I have removed the items from their bags since then was to take these pictures.  None of the parts are missing and as you can tell from the pictures the items are in excellent condition.

Todd McFarlane’s Spawn is arguably the most successful series to spawn from an Image title. Since the publication of the first issue in 1992 McFarlane’s Spawn has been made into a video game, an animated HBO series, a live action movie, and a successful toy line. 

If you are interested in these four figures, you can find them for sale as a package on… Will be posting soon.

1995 Youngblood figure of Rob Liefeld’s Troll by Todd McFarlane Toys

From Image comic’s creator Rob Liefeld, Bartholomew J. Troll is a government agent who has been working on the side of American ever since the Revolutionary War. A former member of the superhero teams Youngblood and Brigade, Troll is in fact a mythical troll and is over thousands of years old. Though naturally all covered in blue fur, he chooses to appear more like a grayed haired version of Wolverine.

Here is a 1995 Youngblood action figure of Rob Liefeld’s Troll by McFarlane Toys.

When a pipe broke in my garage this item happened to be in a cardboard box on the floor. Though the water never got more than a couple of centimeters high the cardboard box soaked up the water and so did the backboard of this item’s package. I decided to just remove the backboard and place the figure in a Ziploc bag. The only time I have removed the item from the bag since then was to take these pictures.  None of the parts are missing and as you can tell from the pictures the item is in excellent condition.

If you are interested in Rob Liefeld's Troll, you can find it for sale on... Will be posting soon.

1996 Spawn Series 4 figure: Cy-Gor the cybernetic gorilla by Todd McFarlane Toys

In an attempt to create the ultimate supersoldier the entity simply known as “The Agency”, sanctioned an unholy project which would combine man, beast, and machine into one. The plan of Dr. Fredrick Whilhelm’s was to fuse the mind of Sergeant Stephen Smith with that of a silver back gorilla which he had enhanced with cybernetics. However, Dr. Whilhelm, who was apparently running the entire operation single-handedly, suffered a debilitating stroke leaving his work incomplete and as a result the mind of the monstrosity known as Cy-Gor would be more beast than originally planned. The then uncontrollable Cy-Gor eventually broke free from the layer of Dr. Whilhelm in order to extract his revenge on all those that had a part in his creation including his onetime mentor Al Simmons.

Here is a 1996 Spawn Series 4 action figure of the part beast/part man/part machine known as Cy-Gor by McFarlane Toys.
 

When a pipe broke in my garage this item happened to be in a cardboard box on the floor. Though the water never got more than a couple of centimeters high the cardboard box soaked up the water and so did the backboard of this item’s package. I decided to just remove the backboard and place the figure in a Ziploc bag. The only time I have removed the item from the bag since then was to take these pictures.  None of the parts are missing and as you can tell from the pictures the item is in excellent condition.

If you are interested in this figure of the cybernetic gorilla, Cy-Gor, you can find it for sale on... will be posting soon.

Printer’s Proof of the Recalled Spider-Man Teaser Poster Featuring the World Trade Center

Before the tragic events of September 11, 2001 Sony Entertainment released a number of teaser posters for their upcoming Spider-Man film. The poster featured Spider-Man hanging on the side of a building with the reflection of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in his left eye. In light of the events of 9/11 Sony decided to recall these posters along with all other material using that same image, instantly making them a highly sought for commodity by collectors. Three versions of the teaser poster exist with slightly different taglines:

The North American version states “3 MAY 2002”
 The International version states “COMING 2002”
The South American version states “2002”

An even rarer version of these posters would be a printer’s proof. Before a batch of posters is printed a limited number of test posters are printed with a color chart along the left edge of the poster. Once they are given the ok the proofs are normally destroyed.

Here is an authentic printer’s proof of the highly sought for recalled Spider-Man teaser poster.

The poster has a slight tear on the left border and some white spots are noticeable near the bottom and top of the poster upon close inspection (shown in the pictures). Other minor defects are due to wear from rolling the poster. I have provided several images to help you determine the condition of the item and its authenticity for yourself. If you have trouble authenticating movie posters for yourself you can go to movieposterauthenticating.com for help.

The poster measures approximately 28 x 40 3/4 inches.

Here are few of the reasons why I feel this poster is authentic.
1) In the original cut version of the poster there is a yellow cab that can be seen partially on the left side of the poster traveling on an overpass. In reprints of the poster this cab is usually not visible due to a difference in cropping of the image. In this printer’s proof the entirety of the cab is clearly shown as it’s an uncut version of the poster.
2) The small red text under the tagline includes the word ‘sale’. This word has been left out in reprints apparently in a move to make them more sale-able.
3) Original versions of this poster also state under the tagline, “THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED. FOR FUTURE INFO GO TO FILMRATINGS.COM”. Reprints, possibly made after a rating was given to the film, are missing this line.

If you are interested in this extremely rare movie poster of Sony Entertainment’s Spider-Man, you can find if for sale on eBay by clicking here.

Point of No Return Movie Poster Autographed by Cast

Point of No Return is a 1993 American remake of Luc Besson’s 1990 film Nikita. It tells the story of a drug addict, Maggie Hayward, who was found guilty of murdering a police officer and sentenced to death. However, her death is staged by a secret government agency that transforms her into a deadly assassin. As Maggie begins to fall in love with her house manager she starts to hate her job as a professional killer. Having had enough, she asks to leave the agency; unfortunately for her leaving the agency proves to be no simple task.

Here is an authentic double-sided movie poster for the film Point of No Return signed by five of the main members of the cast: Bridget Fonda (the femme fatale, Maggie Hayward), Gabriel Byrne (the love struck secret operative, Bob), Dermot Mulroney (Maggie’s apartment manager and lover, J.P.), Harvey Keitel (the ‘cleaner’, Victor), and Anne Bancroft (the secret operative instructor, Amanda).

Tape has been previously used on the back side of the poster, apparently for when it was on display, and it has left marks in six places. On the front side of the poster there is also a mark left by tape by after the ‘N’ in Return which possible got there when it was being rolled or taken down. Other than the tape marks, the poster is in great condition with only a few other minor defects.

The poster measures approximately 27 x 40 inches. The certificate of authenticity for the signatures comes from All-Star Entertainment Inc.

If you are interested in this item, you can find it for sale on eBay by clicking here.