Ebay and "whats your reserve?"

[Restomod]

Is it just me or do some of you ask "whats your reserve?" of sellers on Ebay?? I do quite a bit and 8 out of 10 times I will be told by the seller "sorry cant say"!! What is the big deal with people not telling the reserve?? I dont get it,the reserve is so your item will not sell for less than you want not some security risk. I know how much I have to spend and knowing that ahead of time will keep me from wasting my and the sellers time by bidding on something I cant afford. Is it JUST me...... :hammer:

[Damn True]

They are hoping to get more than the reserve. I guess they figure if you know the reserve is $500 you will be less likely to set a max bid of anything more than that.

[68sixspeed]

exactly, or in cases where I have told the reserve, 1/2 the time you get "I'll give you that now."; well, that defeats the point of the auction. I've had a car on before, once it hit reserve the person insisted on sending paypal for a deposit, even though the auction wasn't over yet!

[Chad-1stGen]

I'm with the original poster. For something as high demand as a 1st generation I especially don't think the final ending price will be effected much by the reserve. People offer all kinds of crazy schemes to get people to end auctions early on ebay. All you have to do is say no...

[BuddyP]

Most of the time I am told the reserve price. Think only once or twice they've denied telling me. Anytime I put a reserve on something it's just in case it doesn't go near as high as what I want, I am always more than happy to tell what the reserve is on my stuff.

[vintageracer]

Items on Ebay are at auction. Bid what your willing to pay! As a buyer I will always ask the reserve. As a seller I will tell you to bid what you want to pay.

The Buy it Now at least gives people an idea of how foolish your price is. As a seller, I like the Buy It Now for some items that are more mundane or easy to establish a value. On rare, desireable or unique parts I just run an auction with reserve.

My experience is has been that when people want to know the reserve they want to buy offline and/or end the auction early. Experienced bidders will get all the information they can and bid at the last minute if they are interested. The big problem I find now is that there are a LOT of items that never make it to the end of the auction as the items are sold and the auction ended. Kind of a viscous cycle. Now if you really are interested in an item you have to try to buy it from the seller before the auction ends since most sellers will end the auction and sell the item. I can't tell you how many times I have waited until the end of an auction to bid to find out that the seller ended the auction early!

Running an auction till the end is STILL best for the seller. I sold a car 2 years ago that brought $32,000 MORE than my reserve price. Good thing I let the auction run till the end!!!!!

I still contend that Ebay is a great advertising medium. If you have an item that is auto related and desireable or unusual, Ebay is a great place to auction the item since people who are really looking for that item are looking on Ebay. Sell it through the auction or sell offline, far more interested buyer's will see it for sale quickly on Ebay than anywhere else you could advertise the item.

An Ebay auction is still money well spent for advertising unique and/or desireable items.

[Nine Ball]

I always ask for the reserve price on vehicles that I am interested in. That way I won't waste my time bidding on something that I can't realistically purchase, and miss out on another vehicle that I can purchase. 9 out of 10 times, the seller will tell me their asking price. The ones that won't tell me, I simply won't be interested in.

I think every seller has a comfortable price to sell something. That shouldn't be a secret. If people want to bid above and beyond that, they will still do so if the reserve is lower. Telling someone the reserve doesn't neccessarily mean you will sell the vehicle before the auction ends.

I had my red '69 on ebay, and a buyer emailed me in a day and asked my reserve. I told him a couple grand higher than the actual, and he offered to buy it right away. At $60K cash, it was a safe bet to end the auction early when he wired me $30K in a few minutes as a deposit :)

Tony

[toofun]

This is a good topic and one that has many different opinions and answers for. Being that I have sold quite a few cars on ebay(and one currently listed) Here is my take on reserves and sellers points of view.

If they dont tell you the reserve it usually is because of a couple of reasons.
1. They either dont want you to bid up to the reserve hoping to be greedy and get more than they are willing to part ways with the vehicle for.

2. They dont want to stiffle the bidding process by discouraging potential bidders. Remember perception is reality and ebay feeds on the compaetitive"I dont want to lose" mentality. The more bids that are generated on an auction, the more competition is viewed by the serious bidders!! Lets face it, if you see practically NO BIDS on an auction are you gonna throw your hat into the ring or are you gonna question the validity of the auction itself??

3. Many people dont want to deal with the "I'll give you your reserve now" mentality since they figure if your willing to pay the reserve, then maybe they can get someone else to pay more.

I have seen sellers go as far as to tell potential bidders that the reserve is either way more than it actually is or ALOT LESS than what it actually is. Two schools of thought on this. First is that they figure if someone is gonna buy it now, then make it worth your while for a price that you would never argue against. On the other hand people tell less than the reserve to try and peak the bidding numbers up in hopes of someone hitting the reserve with other bids. Once the reserve is met you would be surprised how that "I GOTTA HAVE IT" mentality kicks in.

Me myself I have always had a different approach. I put a price on my auctions that I can live with. A price that I would not look back on an say "well I could have gotten more" I always set a BUY IT NOW option which is about 100-200 dollars more than the reserve. Out of the thousands of auctions I have posted. I would say that 90% have always ended with the BUY IT NOW option. People want to know a price, if you give it to them, then they can decide how bad they want it. My famous ebay story?? I was selling a 67 Chevelle SS. This guy was emailing me everyday trying to get me to disclose the reserve. I had a "buy it now" price listed on the auction. After three days of constantly emailing me and me not disclosing the reserve price someone else hit the "buy it now". This guy emails me back and says to me.."HEY I WOULD HAVE BOUGHT IT FOR 3 GRAND MORE" the only reply I sent back was "MAYBE, BUT YOU COULD HAVE BOUGHT IT FOR THREE GRAND LESS HAD YOU HIT THE BUY IT NOW BUTTON"

Mark
TOOFUN

[paul67]

The 1 thing that gets my goat is when selling with no reserve, but in the bottom of the add, addvertised elsewhere have the oppssion to close early. That means if it does not fetch what i want will remove. Time wasters.

[Restomod]

All of you have valad points,I as a seller have no problem telling my reserve. Anouther problem I have been seeing a LOT of are new bidders with zero feedback bidding the auction up, and up high. I think most of these are shill bidders,in the auction I am looking at now the high bidder registered the day after the start and is suposedly from the United Arab emerates (sic?)! Yeah right, this car will not sell to a real bidder because the shill bidder has bid it up to high.

[toofun]

I see alot of that crap as well and have to tell you it makes me very nervous. Currently the high bidder on my auction has 0 feedbacks and is currently a newly registered user. Many times it is just JOY BIDDERS..(People that want to screw with auctions with no intentions of ever following through on them) It is a shame but is done all the time on ebay.

[zo66]

i agree that ebay is a great way to advertise your car,i also do not mind telling the reserve, really think about it a nice car will have a couple k of hits for under 100.bucks,have had some interesting sales, darth vader went to Sweden.I DO RUN PRIVATE AUCTIONS ON THE NICER CARS.\

[xtrmeta]

I always ask for the reserve price on vehicles that I am interested in. That way I won't waste my time bidding on something that I can't realistically purchase, and miss out on another vehicle that I can purchase. 9 out of 10 times, the seller will tell me their asking price. The ones that won't tell me, I simply won't be interested in.



I think people are forgetting what an auction is. The above mentality is a problem. No picking on you Nine Ball.
I had the exact same E-mail a few days ago on my EFI system I have listed. The guy wanted to know the reserve so he could move on if it was to high and find something cheaper.
How about this. Bid what your will to pay. If the reserve is no met move on. It also helps the seller but building the bid count and the dollar amount.
This is a reason why I don't like tyo give the reserve price out.
E-Bay is getting worse all the time.

[Jim Nilsen]

I have a question? Lets say you see an item for sale and no bids and it gets to the last second and you make a bid higher than the reserve. Will you sell it for the reserve because there were no other bidders. I ask this because when there is another bidder and I place a bid for more I always get a price that is only an increment above the prevoius bidder and not the highest amount I am wiling to pay. I like that when I can make sure that I can get it for less than what I am willing to pay or for slightly more than the guy before me was willing to pay. It just works out that way because of the rules,but with no other bidders are you going to be willing to say you would be glad to sell it for the reserve and give the guy the break because he was the only bidder and you might not have sold it at all while knowing that you set the reserve at what you were willing to take for it?

This is just something to think about when making your reserve price and I hope you guys understand what I mean when saying this.

Myself I think that asking the reserve price instead of placing the bid is something like saying , " if you tell me what your reserve is , that is what I will pay and no more unless the bids get higher and I still decide I want it anyway. I wouldn't want to have to deal with disappointed bidders contacting me saying they would have paid more and kick myself for it,would you? just because I closed it early for a guy who will pay the reserve now.

Anyway ,it's an auction and that's the way it goes and it's your choice when it comes to Ebay.

I liked the one the guy lost that he could have gotten the Chevelle for 3g less for the but it now price which is the way I like to see listings to begin with. I think it is more honest to yourself and the bidders all the way around and it worked well for the guy with the Chevelle who got it and sold it.

Jim Nilsen

[xtrmeta]

If I sell something with a reaerve price. That price is what I would be happy to get for the item. If one person bids the reserve amount why wouldn't I sell it to him???
The reserve is what I want for the item. There may be many people who would be happy to pay more. I sold a bunch of items over the years that the auctions have closed much higher than the reserve.