eBay or not eBay?

The forum is not dead, but sleeping. Let's wake it up with some interesting topics that are not related to the Jubilee or the Olympics?

For example, what do most of you think of eBay? I bet we've all used it at one time or another, both as sellers and buyers. It was a prime source for laserdisc collectors and dealers. But what's happening now?

I know of at least two major players in the U.S. who have decided to sever all connections with the online auction site. One (Laserdisc Vault) is concentrating sales solely on its own website, and significantly lowering its stock prices accordingly. Another (G & J Rarities) is trading directly with collectors on a personal basis (you see what they've got, say what you want and then you negotiate a fair price with them, often way below the advertised price) through the Laserdisc Data Base.

Both traders have expressed dissatisfaction with the way eBay creams off the profits so that only it, and not the buyer or seller, really makes anything out of the deal.

I used to use eBay for most of my LD transactions but there has been a tendency over the last five years or so to discourage the smaller individual traders. The site seems geared more to the bulk dealer, the professional or 'power' sellers who shift in volume and at high prices. Unlike, say, Amazon Marketplace, you still have to pay to list items whether they sell or not and you've usually got a limited sales 'window'. (Amazon lets you list stuff for 60 days, with an option to continue, at no cost at all until the item sells. The only limit with Amazon is that you can't just sell anything - it generally has to be stuff that they sell, too, which, of course, excludes laserdiscs!)

But there are other smaller auction sites. However, the trade in LDs is so tiny that I think most people still active in the field are choosing to buy and sell directly, often on a personal first-name basis. They know their customers and they know the market. Maybe it's time for all sellers to leave eBay to sellers of cars, clothes and bootleg CDs from Taiwan!

Hi Kenneth

Great to see you posting again and hope you had a great time on holiday and managed to pick up a few laser discs , I would love to hear about your recent holiday and if you did indeed manage to find any laserdiscs whilst you were away so if you have time PM me or start a topic on the forum.
On the subject of ebay from my point of view I fear that the selling fees might make me look at selling elsewhere in the future but for now I will just keep relisting items I have listed and find little time due to list many new items due to other work commitments. Lack of time is another reason I havent looked at selling elsewhere at the moment because it would mean listing all the stock again on another site.

EBAY

The main advantage with ebay is the sheer number of people who use it and it is still the number one place to sell but the fees for sellers is really too high. I pay £50 every month just to have an ebay shop then I have to pay 5p per month for each listing and then on top of that you have the final value fees and paypal fees , now this might not seem like a lot but it really adds up when you are selling a niche market product and you havent got high volumes of sales each month.

AMAZON

I have looked at amazon and would move all my stock over to amazon but the problem with this is that very few laserdiscs are in the amazon inventory so it would mean not only listing all the stock but also adding all the new titles into the amazon inventory. On amazon individual sellers can only list what is in the current inventory but pro merchant sellers can add to the inventory but this would be quite an undertaking as you have to add quite a bit of information for each title such as cat numbers etc.

LDDB

The laser disc database is a great and informative site and has a huge amount of discs for sale but having tried the site I found sales to be very slow.