Is it me or is ebay taking over the site?

[sschind]

Speaking as a guy that has decided to break up a large portion of his PC--a collection of nearly 600 cards of one of the most popular players in hockey--I've had much more success with eBay than I have here at SCF when it comes to moving cards. I find that surprising and disappointing.

I blame eBay.

Disappointed I could see, we would all like to see our favorite hobbies and related sites more popular, but surprised? I don't know why you would be surprised. Ebay probably gets more lookers in 5 minutes than this site gets in a month. That's not to denigrate this site, I love it, it's just the nature of the beast. If you want to have the most sales (or purchases) go to where there is the most traffic.

As far as ebay taking over this site I can't really speak to that because I don't look at the for sale or trade sections but I do believe, like someone else alluded to, it is inevitable. I remember way back when I was trading on the Usenet rec. and alt. groups (all you youngsters are going Huh?, Usenet, What the heck is he talking about? rec? alt? is he loco or something) anyway, at first it was great and most of the posts were direct sales wanteds and trades but toward the end it was 90% "look at my ebay auctions." At least some people were decent enough to put Ebay in their thread title so I could ignore them.

[RGM81]

One question that you have to ask yourself though is, where did you have the most success in acquiring those 600 cards? I would love to be able to say that the greater majority of my PC came from trading, but there is no way that is ever going to happen. The main problem is that being a player collector only, it's a lot easier & more economical to just buy the singles or lots on eBay than it is to open boxes & packs trying to get one, maybe two cards of the player you collect. The downside of doing this is that without buying the boxes or packs, you also don't accumulate the tradebait needed to get cards from others. Here recently, I made several trades on the site for non-PC cards just to make a trade for some PC cards with someone else. This has been not only time consuming, but also ended up being a lot more expensive then it would be if I would have just bought the cards that I am hoping to trade for.

I'd say it's a pretty close split between eBay and the larger trading community. One thing that does happen over the years is that you get to be known as "the Carey Price guy" so you get a lot of people soliciting you for trades & sales. I also make extensive use of the site's search function and Inventory Manager to seek out deals. Plus I know a lot of people in Montreal, which is massively important. I too have ventured into the occasional "trade tradebait for other tradebait" routine and much like yourself find it very inefficient. I don't break a ton of wax but when I do I am often lucky enough to at least pull something that someone out there will want eventually.

Disappointed I could see, we would all like to see our favorite hobbies and related sites more popular, but surprised? I don't know why you would be surprised. Ebay probably gets more lookers in 5 minutes than this site gets in a month. That's not to denigrate this site, I love it, it's just the nature of the beast. If you want to have the most sales (or purchases) go to where there is the most traffic.

As far as ebay taking over this site I can't really speak to that because I don't look at the for sale or trade sections but I do believe, like someone else alluded to, it is inevitable. I remember way back when I was trading on the Usenet rec. and alt. groups (all you youngsters are going Huh?, Usenet, What the heck is he talking about? rec? alt? is he loco or something) anyway, at first it was great and most of the posts were direct sales wanteds and trades but toward the end it was 90% "look at my ebay auctions." At least some people were decent enough to put Ebay in their thread title so I could ignore them.

I know a lot of people on here that collect the same team as I do, hence the surprise factor. Unfortunately for me, many of them aren't wanting to trade their PC items for my PC items, so a lot of potentially very cool deals end up not happening. Then I turn to eBay and make some money.

[yazfan71]

I'd say it's a pretty close split between eBay and the larger trading community. One thing that does happen over the years is that you get to be known as "the Carey Price guy" so you get a lot of people soliciting you for trades & sales. I also make extensive use of the site's search function and Inventory Manager to seek out deals. Plus I know a lot of people in Montreal, which is massively important. I too have ventured into the occasional "trade tradebait for other tradebait" routine and much like yourself find it very inefficient. I don't break a ton of wax but when I do I am often lucky enough to at least pull something that someone out there will want eventually.

Well, your situation is a little different than mine in that your PC guy is still active in his career. It gets discouraging at times to open so many boxes & never hit a PC card when you're limited to usually the inserts in sets containing the only card you want. Perhaps in a few years the next generation of my PC will make things easier.