Might have fucked myself on ebay with my current auction
 

I'm beginning to sell off my photo gear, I started with some lenses. It's been a long time since I sold anything so I'm out of the loop as far as best practices for sellers to get the most dosh.

I listed things with relatively low starting bids not realizing that a starting price under $250 only bids in 2.50 increments. So now some things are at $152.50. If I understand correctly, if person A sets a maximum bid of $500 for this item, started at $150. and then person B comes along and makes a maximum bid of $501, and there is no counter bid then the hammer price is $152.50.

Which makes me think I should have set a reserve or higher starting bid.


Here's the page listing my current items

Not sure if there is anything I can do at this point, there's at least one bid on everything, but moving forward is there a better strategy?

Any advice or opinions are appreciated.

I suspect that the last minute snipers will drive the price up. There is always more activity just before the end of the auction.

But then again, these are specialty items, so I don't know what the market is like.

One has 350 views after two days and 38 watchers.

Is that really how it works? If a third person comes in with a bid of $160, does it ignore them? Do they have any way of knowing what they would have to bid to get it to go up to $155?

I think if there are two people with a max bid it will fly up to the lower max bid.

Hopefully $2.50 more than the lower max bid, in favor of the higher max bidder?

In that case, people may not have "max bids" on the auction footfootfoot mentioned, and two people just hit "bid"?

I just looked at the bid history and it jumped from 125 right to 212.50 in 8 bids by 7 bidders. I'll have to read up on this.

On the bidding list page, click on Show automatic bids. Those are the bidders using the Max bid feature.

I just clicked "watch" on all of your auctions. This might cause some interest.

Cool. I did that. I thought that's how proxy bidding works in the first place. Maybe I need to re-read that section.

Thanks. We'll see.

Another lens sold for not much money. It's a nicer lens (newer, more modern) than the others that have sold and brought more money. Maybe the older ones have more nostalgic value?

I did screw up in that two listings went international, one to China, one the Canada. It is a default that you have to opt out of for every listing, there doesn't seem to be a way to turn it off in setting preferences. I must have missed it on those two.

The only issue is PayPal doesn't release the $ until the people get the merch. Passing through customs, shipping, etc. can take ages. I once had to wait a month. I think I might see if I can make international shipping contingent upon paying and releasing funds before I ship.

watch listed

The number of people shown to be Watching an item is a double-edged sword for me. It's totally subjective, perhaps imaginary; but, ...

When one or two people are Watching, they seem like competition for the item who simply haven't yet made up their minds to buy. If the item is hard to find and at a fair starting price, that may prompt me to bid/buy it now rather than wait and hope that it will become bargained priced by being put on sale; or, relisted at a lower price.

OTOH, if there are three or more people just Watching, the first thing that occurs to me is the item is overpriced (perhaps simply because more of the same just came on the market). My second thought is that I overlooked something in the description (e.g. important omission in the narrative, pictured flaw) that's causing others to hesitate. Thirdly, I consider that I may have missed something about the seller. That could be something like a high seller rating; but, low proportion of feedback to sales which may make the seller rating misleading (perhaps a large number of returns). Fourth, the apparent interest is artificial meaning the seller wants a quick sale and I can wait for the price to come down.

Naturally, all this depends on the kind of item that's being sold and YMMV.