Transformerland.com

Long ago Ebay used to be strictly about bidding. Within the last couple years I noticed a huge growing of Buy-It-Nows. Isn't the point of going on to Ebay about bidding? And NOT to buy something right way like you do at any store?

Just slightly mad at what its become.

Thoughts?

You and me both friend. Its super annoying, especially when all you need is one little gun, and the only way to get it is pay $50 or not get it.

I've noticed the increase as well, and I'm not particularly fond of it. I prefer auctions, rather than 'buy now'.
If enough people share this opinion, perhaps sales will go down and sellers will go back to the regular auction style?

As someone who sells on ebay I don't see buy now going away. They simply are more profitable, although much slower. And ebay is really pushing their store option, which really seems to be better suited for buy now. I don't think ebay really wants to be just an auction site. They seem to want to a one stop shop for anything and everything.

Its not like everyone has enough stuff let alone the time to open a store like TFL.

Besides I like being able to just get what I want when I want it, without waiting an entire week to find out if I have to keep looking.

And then there is the multiple auction situations. Where you skip bidding on one because its at $20 and the one in a hour is at $11. And what happens? THe 2nd one goes off at $31. As does every single one after that.

Beside buy now isn't always bad. For months jetfire's gun clip was buy now $20. Now that they're all sold the auctions on it are at $40.

Anyway there seem to be auctions and buy now for just about everything I ever search for aside from some really rare bit.

No, I don't think buy now will be going away either. I still prefer regular auctions.

LD2062 wrote: Besides I like being able to just get what I want when I want it, without waiting an entire week to find out if I have to keep looking.
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You're right about that. If you want to get something right away, 'buy now' seems to be the way to go!

I will admit that Buy it now is ok at times. I just don't like seeing sellers jack the hell out of the price for a Transformer that is no where near the current average market price. It will be interesting to see what happens 5 -10 years after the third movie and how the prices hold up.

One thing I do like is the "Or Best Offer". I just won a mib Flywheels for $55. The guy was asking $70, so we kept going back and forth untill he caved.

Ebay has changed so much since the beginning that in the near future we will see little or no more auctions anymore.

As a seller and buyer I don't worry about best offer. I just message the seller and offer whatever even when its not listed. Even just doing it direct through paypal can save the seller 12% in final value fees. So offering to buy that way its easier to get 10% off their asking price, also offering immediate payment is a good way to get them to accept.

I get people sending me such offers on a regular basis.

The *very* short version is:
Ebay doesn't care about the buyer anymore. Ebay doesn't care about the seller anymore. The ONLY person(s) Ebay cares about are the stockholders.

IMHO, BIN is a good thing. Do people set prices WAAAY too high sometimes? Yes, of course. You see that nonsense at flea markets, toy shows, and whatnot also.

But this is a free market. If you don't like a price, don't pay it.
I'd much rather have the option of searching for parts I need once every few months, than having to search every single week to see if somebody listed a part that I need or not. And then pay through the nose for shipping, because I have to purchase from 7 different sellers, since you have no idea what they do or do not have, etc.

And I much prefer to have the option of asking the price that I want (or what I *know* it's worth), rather than hoping that enough people happen to looking for that particular piece during a given week, and THEN hoping that enough people looking for it have enough money, and THEN hoping that enough people remember to bid/snipe on it. Yeah, we all like bargains, but trust me, being on the wrong end too often blows.

Yeah some of those ebay wins are crazy low. I won a HUGE box full of stuff one day for like $6 (my max bid was like $75 and even that was a low ball offer). I still feel guilty about it, I REALLY hope it wasn't some kid selling their toys to raise money for something.

I've bought several Transformers cheap and then turned a profit on them as well.

I'm just saying that Ebay shouldn't be called an auction site anymore. It's nothing more than a store.

Be interesting to see what happens to the Transformer market when the movies are over and the hype has died.

Hopefully they'll be doing another TV series.

well i have personal issues with ebay that i wont go into

but i do still buy off there ( all be it through a friend ) and i think that it can go both ways

sometimes you see a crazy low BIN price on something you want / need

sometimes you win auctions for crazy low prices

but every coin has two sides

there are those who think that TFs ( in particular G1 ) are worth far more than they actually are and so put a stupid high BIN price on it

then theres the auctions ...

now the thing with an auction is that it will set the market value ... an auction will only go as high as the price that the eventual winner wants to pay

if say a complete sunstreaker has a BIN of $80 ... then a few sell in auction for say $60 ... that is the market value so then sunstreaker becomes worth $60 not $80

this is a constantly changing market ( as is everything ) what one week was worth $10 could easily be worth $50 the next week

so my opinion is that we do need auctions on ebay to determine the market prices for the BIN

i dont see how one can function without the other

Yeah the auctions really change the prices of stuff. 2 weeks or so ago jetfire clips went from $23 to $40, now they're back down. And last week complete octanes were at $45.

yeah the prices fluctuate too much on ebay sometimes good sometimes bad. the base markets for me on pricing is here at tfl and a few other sources. BBTS for instance is a very high end of the price range on g1 IMO

I agree Bumblebee, the prices on bbts are pretty high.. i hate the buy it now auctions, i always just wait til i see it cheaper or just buy it here..

I hate when people get into bidding wars and make the item go higher than the BIN prices on other auctions. duhh

rule of thumb due to the unknown quality of some of the figs I try not to ever pay more shipped than base price elsewhere (the lowest end of my trolling stores lol)

When I was a more active ebay seller, I used the buyitnows as well as auctions. BIN were used mainly for items I had multiples of, and were usually packaged and from more recent lines, auctions were for everything else.

However, there are quite a few sellers that seem to have some outrageous prices on their items. Also, ebay's search settings (the default 'best match' setting especially) seems weighted towards getting more BINs than Auction listings now.