Do $.99 cent auctions work?

[mcsyankees]

I've always been really hesitant to put up a card for .99 cents when its worth $10-20 bucks. Never want to sell it for too low but feel like it never goes up if bid on. does it really attract more bidders? just curious what you guys thought

Max

[greg271126817]

It works. A card will sell for what its worth 99% of the time when starting at 0.99 I sell stuff for that all the time. My most recent a babe ruth jersey card started at 0.99 sold for 377, had a non paying winner, but it got that high. If its something that sells consistently for 50-60 you should get 50-60 for yours. Some factors can influence the ending price but not much. Holiday end times can hurt, extremely early end times like 3AM can hurt, but that doesn't always matter either. Start it at 0.99 and you should be good to go. i do it all the time and so do many members on ebay

[pwaldo]

They did years ago. It was much better to list at .99 for something that would sell for higher than that because for some reason stupid people would watch your auction instead of the others and then a bidding war would happen or snipers would come in at the end. But for now who knows? eBay's seller traffic is down and the economy isn't as great where you would just have people basically "wasting" money not caring what they were spending on an item. Now I think they are more frugal with their money since they don't have as much of it as they did before or at least disposable income.

[frizzzlecake]

I had good success with .99 auctions, but if the card was worth over 50 and under 100, I would start it at 50.

[YoungGun]

I've also been hesitant to put up the .99 cent auctions, however when I've put some up they've usually done pretty good. Although its always a gamble. I mean if you start it out at around what you want for it, all you need is one buyer. If you start it out at .99 you're gonna need multiple bidders. Depending on what card it is and go from there in my opinion.

[coyote12]

all i do on ebay is buy so this is from my perspective. 99¢ will get me watching it. if you start it around $20 or $50 because that's the lowest you're willing to take then i might watch it but if there's another auction for the same item i'll be more focused on the 99¢ one. from a set builders perspective i, of course; want to get it for the lowest price possible while you are hoping it goes for a lot. i'm sure there are a good bit of items that go for more than they really should because of the people who collect certain people of build team sets whereas set builders IMO want below BV since we're needing hundreds if not a thousand cards with all the parallels and inserts.

i see it as a toss up. the price you finally get doesn't really matter on what the book says. it's just the luck of the draw on how many people want that particular card and then find your auction. i've gotta say i like the people that do an auction but also have a BIN and BO. if i see something i need i'll look at shipping and if you have anything else i want. if you do AND you have a BIN and BO then i'm really researching to try and make myself bundle as much as possible with you.

ending time is very important too. i just recently scored what i consider a huge win because somebody at some store listed 14 PSA graded 1996 finest gold cards that all ended within a 10 second window and started for 99¢. i already had all of these cards but since one started at 99¢ i searched through all of their auctions and ended up watching them all. the only reason i did this was because i noticed when they ended. i figured nobody was going to go after all 14. 1 had a few in a bidding war so i ended up bidding on 13 of them. i focused on the maddux and mcgwire and ended up winning 11 of the 13 auctions i big on. as much as i tried i had to let 2 gold cards get outbid so winning 11 in a 10 second window and having to increase my bids on several i was jumping out of my chair when it was over. got 11 psa graded 1996 finest gold cards for $21 and it was ALL because the seller made the mistake of ending them simultaneously.

so yes, a 99¢ auction WILL get me to watch and poss bid unless multiple people bid it up right at the start. while you'll surely have auctions where people like me will grab it for cheap most likely, if you have really good cards for sale; you'll have at least a handful of people bidding for non-set building reasons

when i see auctions that start high or have a BV BIN i see a lot of those same auctions ending with no takers. it's just a roll of the dice on your part as a seller

[PoseyBuster]

I always use .99 cent auctions and never have items sell for DRASTICALLY lower than they normally do. save yoruself the fees, if someone one wants to pay $15 for a card, theyre gonna do it if you started at .99 or 14.99

[maxe0213]

I sell tons on ebay and I list two different ways:

1) BIN OBO - I'll do this for a week or so with high end cards or do this for 1/1's or plates or things like that of not so big players. Normally that is because you will get more for a 1/1 of a medicore player if you can wait for a player collector who PC's him to come along and they may not always see your auctions.

OR

2) Start auction at .99 cents. I'll send any star player auto/card/GU to a .99 cent auction because thye will always get up to their averages. Starting at .99 is much more attractive to buyers as well. If a card is sitting at 20 with no bids I will almost always skip over it and many buyers do the same.

[patsgetgronked]

Definitely start at 99¢ and yes it makes a lot of people look

[hortonhearsawho]

I think it depends a lot on the card. You should look at other similar cards. If your listing ends at good time it should sell for about the same. Sometimes good cards just don't sell very well on ebay and you end up losing it for $.99. It seems to me that you can get a better price with a buy it now listing for some cards. You may have to be patient though. Do your research first. You can see the recent completed listings.