Looking down the notes/status on my selling/sold auctions, they read like something out of “How to be Obnoxious — A Practitioner's Guide”. Let's run through them, shall we?
Item 1 is a very rare set which did not sell because some rather clueless sellers all decided to run auctions for the same item at the same time as mine, and undercut me. As a result they all hurt each other and nobody made what the set was worth. One guy had an extremely low minimum bid and got no bids. After his auction ended, there was only one auction left to bid on, it shot way up over the first guy's minimum despite having poorer quality cards. Thinking about that makes my brain shrivel. Now I have to wait around for all of these shmoes to finish relisting and selling their sets so I can get a fair price for mine. And they appear to be waiting for me. Greaaaaaaat.
Item 2 is my most valuable set, wouldn't sell for 80% of the retail price. I received the most ridiculous offers, promises from people who then disappeared, and got strung along by people who eventually just backed out as if surprised when I repeated stuff to them which was clearly stated in the auction description. Meanwhile the auction has had hundreds of views and dozens of people watching it. I've now relisted (cha-ching! extra ebay fees!) lowered the price to 70% and it still isn't selling. Jesus. I'm going to have to split it up and sell it in pieces (cha-ching! more fees!)… and I'll end up making way more than the current asking price. Had one buyer offer the full price if I would ship to Spain (auction says shipping to USA only.) He assured me up and down that it was perfectly safe and he does it all the time. Then I told him that he would have to assume the shipping risk (i.e. item goes missing, he has to wait for the UPS refund, up to 6 months). And suddenly it's no longer something he feels comfortable doing. (Guess he doesn't have as much faith in the Spanish courier services after all.) Currently I have one offer from a guy who “is trying to get the money together”. We'll see… past history is not a good indicator.
Item 3, a set so rare that only a handful exist in the world. I set a reserve and have people who expect me to sell it to them for one tenth of the reserve. One bidder offered to buy it for the reserve price, but insists I cancel the auction and relist it with a buy it now option first!! (For those wondering, it cost about $9 to list it the first time, and would cost another $9 to list it again.) Guy refuses to just bid the goddamned reserve amount. I refused to end the auction for him.
Item 4, fixed price/best offer auction. I accepted an offer of $150, only to discover that the buyer was from Japan (you don't get buyer's location until you accept their offer.) Auction description says shipping to USA only. Genius. I recalculating the shipping charges, and they tripled. Sent buyer an invoice and pointed out that he should have contacted me first before he bid because that's exactly what the auction description says. I hope he doesn't back out, but I suspect he will (and I lose $5 in listing fees… cha-ching!)
Item 5, sold Aug-31. No contact from buyer. Invoice sent 9/1. Reminder sent 9/4. Still no contact. Standard eBay grace period is 3 days from end of auction. Going to have to send buyer a warning tomorrow and if he doesn't pay within a day after that it will be negative feedback and relist the item (cha-ching! more listing fees…)
Item 6, shipping to USA only. Bidder from Germany pleaded with me to ship to him, and eventually I agreed and let him bid. Then after winning the item he argued with me about the shipping costs and insisted I ship USPS instead of UPS.
Item 7, buyer asked repeatedly about card condition despite pictures of the cards being in auction description, and then took his sweet time getting his payment together after he won (took 5 days to make an instant electronic payment.) At least he apologized for taking so long. He'd be the first.
What next??? 
I imagine trying to make money on ebay is rather cut-throat. I look on it as a way to dump my trash and make a little bit of money instead of just throwing it out or donating it. I know my sister sells quite a lot of her horsey stuff on ebay (old blankets and saddles, etc.), and she just lists everything for a dollar and takes what she can get. There are probably a lot of different attitudes from sellers, and they're not compatible. If I'm dumping something that somebody else is trying to sell as a collector's item, then obviously she's going to look on me as ruining the market.
It's interesting, I never knew about the strategy of waiting for somebody to sell something at a high price, and then undercut them, but it makes sense.
Is there no recourse if somebody breaks your auction rules, like asking you to ship out of the US? Ebay won't let you relist for free? That kind of sucks. I guess it's really “seller beware.”
Heard back from Japanese bidder. Clearly the guy can't read or write english, so I have no idea what he's doing bidding on auctions he can't read. He doesn't understand why he's being charged $30 over his offered price, and tells me with excrutiatingly broken grammar that he wants to bid on some of my other auctions (which are also USA-only) so would I mind waiting on the payent until the other auctions end? HELP!!!!
I'M IN UR AWKSHUNS, BIDDING ON UR STUFF. WHAT IT MEAN, SHIPPING?
eBay is such scam. They don't offer any recourse against the myriad of scummy eBay users out there, and then they have the gall to tell you you're violating their terms if you arrange any sorts of side deals that aren't listed on the site.
eBay only cares that eBay is getting paid. eBay is the Mos Eisley spaceport of the Internet. A wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Maybe you could do what lots of people seem to do, which is make your own “Chuck's store” website and just list one item on ebay, with a link to your online store in that item's description. That way you have complete control over your sales. It might take longer, but it seems worth a try and fewer headaches. (You could also list on other sites, I'm not suggesting Craig's list, but other auction and “for sale” sites.)
Japanese Bidder e-mail #1:
So I send a message explaining why the shipping charges are $30, and pointing out that he *has* to buy the Guru lands now (in reference to the “If” in his message above.) No payment ensues so I block him to prevent him from bidding on anything else until we are in agreement and he understands, and send him another message to that effect. Finally some 12 hours later he sends a payment, but does not pay the $30. Instead he pays the US shipping charge of $9.29. Then I receive e-mail #2:
This baffling transmission implies that the buyer wants me to send the cards he bought to a friend of his inside the USA, and then he will make arrangements with his friend to get the item. It's nice to have the money, and I'm amenable to this arrangement, except for one problem… the above message is not editted in any way… he really neglected to include the friend's name and address.
I guess he's going to have to send me another message.
An article looks forward to arriving!
That's not a bad idea. I may have to do that if things keep up like this.
All your base are belong to us!
All your base are belong to us!
All your base are belong to us!
sorry about the triple post… I was getting an internal server error when I hit post and I thought it wasn't going through…