Re: [Leica] OT on eBay

[Robert Jagitsch <robertj@powerlogix.com>]

Muhammed is right. Ebay is great, it allows individuals to sell 
pretty much at dealer retail prices on used photo equipment.

I thought I'd add a couple comments based on my experiences of the 
past 30 months on ebay:

(1) For photo equipment, don't use a reserve. You will always get 
more bidders, and usually a higher price if you don't use a reserve. 
This may or may not hold true for other kinds of items on ebay. 
(Although ebay outages are now rare, you might put a clause in your 
terms that cancel the auction if this happens, that way you won't 
have to sell the item at too low a price if this happens.)

If you look at current auctions, you'll see many people that have "NO 
RESERVE" but put the first bid at $2000. This rarely attracts very 
many bidders.

I always put no reserve and first bid at $2.You want to attract as 
many bidders as possible. Last month I put my M5 up this way and it 
went to $2000.

(2) ALWAYS include photos of the equipment. You'll attract more buyers.

(3) Answer email inquiries as quickly as possible, and answer every 
question directly. Don't answer one and forget to answer another. Pay 
attention to the details in the email so the bidder has to do as 
little work as possible.

(4) Sell a few cheap items to get your feedback rating up quickly, 
before posting more expensive items for sale. Many bidders will not 
bid on that $5000 black M4 body if you have no feedback rating and 
it's your first auction.

(5) Be patient. Bidding will go up the closer the auction gets to 
closing. I've had auctions go up 50% in the last hour.

(6) Selling items individually will generally get you more than 
selling an entire kit (say, body with 3 lenses) although it requires 
more work.

- -Robert

At 1:06 PM -0400 7/17/00, AppleMac97@aol.com wrote:
>Donal:
>
>eBay is a GREAT place to SELL camera equipment.  If you try to sell your
>equipment to a dealer like KEH or B&H, they will offer you (say) 1/3 of the
>new price and then will try to sell it to someone else for 2/3 of the new
>price (these proportions of course depend on the condition of the
>equipment!).  If you sell it on eBay, you may get that 2/3 of new price $
>amount. Make sure you set a reasonable reserve, otherwise you may be forced
>to sell for a lower than satisfactory amount.  Look at past auctions to get
>an idea of selling prices for your cameras and lenses.  Read the eBay rules
>carefully.  I have sold two entire systems (Nikon and Canon) plus many other
>camera accessories on eBay.  I HAD to do it to buy my Leica M6 TTL and
>Leicaflex SL cameras and lenses!  If you post a detailed description and
>include photos of your cameras and lenses, you should get many bidders on
>eBay.  Only once or twice have winning bidders walked away without buying my
>equipment.  Feel free to email me personally if you have other questions.
>Good luck!


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