Sellers on Ebay will drop massively

[ForestPaul]

Ebay have changed the rules again and private sellers will now only be able to list 100 free auction items per month this will greatly reduce the number of programmes listed on ebay as so many dont sell ebay has over 160,000 football programme auctions and this will probaly reduce by half, what are your thoughts on this and do you think it will increase prices as there will be less to choose from

[ToffeeDan]

Get more than one account?

[James]

I think this is a good move although would prefer a slight alteration on it.

So many times i get the complete raving **** as i sort the items for a team search by ending soonest and some **** lists over 150 items for 99P every ******* day and you see the same items all the time sometimes missing that rare gem, if they made free listing on items under £1 then make it only available on 7 day listings only, and then cap it monthly.

I don;t think it will raise the price of programmes as most of these items are really on of the value of under a £1 anyway so i don't think it will impact the prices of programmes at all
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[Museum de Latique]

Yes a lot will not sell and it can be a grind going through low value items - unless of course you are newer to collecting and then it is a godsend. 99p on one item you want or a fiver on a bundle of 20 from which you only want 1 - would you spend the fiver plus the postage?

I would agree the 1 and 3 day 99p auctions should be stopped but only 100 active auctions a month is not enough and we also have yet to see the fine print - what do they call excessive listing?.

eBay have hit sellers way to much the last couple of years. They seem to want to change from a resell site to a new sell site.

Wish I could do without it but can a active collector ignore it these days?

[paulo]

Interesting this and the first I have heard of it.

Being a seller of low value items, such as programmes, cds, dvds and records I have felt for a long time that ebay has long since wanted rid of people like me. Low value items seem to generate an awful ot of non-payers and therefore hassle for them.

Recently they stoped sellers of cds charging postage, although this has been changed to a max of £1. Before this they stoped small sellers from running shops ebay shops.

As I bought a large colection from someone on here I have been listing 99p items for a couple of months, I always run 7 day listings and I dont just keep putting them up as soon as they finish, I leave it a few weeks, so yes these new rules will slow me down, but at the same time it will reduce the competition, so there are a few pluses.

Most of my stock seems to go to new buyers, so I will keep going until I get left with the dregs.

Hopefully a suitable alternative with rise soon. There are still a lot of programme buyers out there, so it is a shame that ebay seems to not want us!

[mdjw_41]

This is taken from their news page:-


01 April, 2010 | 02:36PM BST


In March 2009 we introduced zero insertion fees for private sellers in the UK and Ireland who list items in Auction Style Format with a starting price of 99p/99c or lower. Since this launch there has been a significant increase in both the number and variety of items listed for sale. This has been welcomed by buyers who are finding great deals and sellers who have seen an overall increase in the number of buyers.

However, some sellers have been taking advantage of this pricing to list very large volumes of lower quality goods, creating a poor experience for buyers and other sellers. We have taken steps in recent months to keep the marketplace in balance, and today we are announcing further changes as detailed below:

1.) For private sellers registered on the eBay.co.uk and eBay.ie sites

From this week private sellers with a feedback score of less than 25, will be automatically limited to 100 live listings/total quantity at any point in time on ebay.co.uk and ebay.ie.
Any private seller listing in high volumes will be reviewed by Customer Support , and potentially required to upgrade to business status or be blocked from listing on ebay.co.uk and ebay.ie.
2.) For overseas private sellers listing directly on ebay.co.uk and ebay.ie.

Sellers registered on the ebay.com site are bound by the International Trading Policy, which now requires high volume sellers actively listing on European sites to be registered as business sellers. Breaches of this policy may result in a range of actions, including demotion in search and being blocked from listing on ebay.co.uk and ebay.ie.
Private sellers registered on all other international sites are now automatically limited to 100 live listings/total quantity at any point in time on ebay.co.uk and ebay.ie.
3.) For all private sellers listing directly on ebay.co.uk and ebay.ie.

From June 2010 all private sellers will be limited to 100 free auction-style listings per month. Auction-style listings beyond 100 will be allowed, but will be charged an insertion fee.
Business sellers are unaffected by the changes in this announcement. To identify if you should be registering as a business seller please view this help page.

---
Looks like we have until June to work out what we will do!

[JJPROGRAMMES]

The free listings has been pretty good as I`ve added & replaced some of the more modern programmes in my collection recently.

I think the problem is the 1 & 3 day listings clogging up the search results as you see the same programmes day after day and sellers listing items in the wrong catorgories (look at the pre-1950 programmes) and key word spamming, I have a lot of listing and run them for 10 days & when they finish add new items so my items are re-listed twice a month (max 3 times) not 10 times like other sellers.

The big con in the change of ebay policy is before the free 99p listings the final sellers fee was 8.5% (I think) & when they rolled out the free listings they increased the final sellers fee to 10%, so now they are capping the the 99p listings will they drop the final sellers fee back to 8.5% or lower?

[ForestPaul]

I think the thing now with this and ebay is we all need somewhere where we can all list our programmes with pictures and room for description just like the football-programmes.net which is a very nice looking site but with realistic selling prices maybe something along the lines of a programme supermarket the main problem i can see is getting enough advertising for the site

[Kickoff3pm]

ForestPaul wrote:

I think the thing now with this and ebay is we all need somewhere where we can all list our programmes with pictures and room for description just like the football-programmes.net which is a very nice looking site but with realistic selling prices maybe something along the lines of a programme supermarket the main problem i can see is getting enough advertising for the site

Have any of you tried our site ? http://www.kickoff3pm.com/football-auction ?

We tried to get this started now about 12 months ago. The are almost 200 members but traffic is just not high enough. We plan to keep the site active and have ideas to improve the site but without traffic we just don't see it worthwhile in the current climate.

[kcs]

Kickoff3pm wrote:

Have any of you tried our site ? http://www.kickoff3pm.com/football-auction ? We tried to get this started now about 12 months ago. The are almost 200 members but traffic is just not high enough. We plan to keep the site active and have ideas to improve the site but without traffic we just don't see it worthwhile in the current climate.

I have looked at your site, and to me the availability of programmes that interest me is non-existent.... I accept that my collection is becoming harder to add too, but I regularly find things on eBay.

This, however is not a dig at your site as I can appreciate the efforts and money needed to set up the site are plentiful, but can your site compete with eBay?

Can you answer the following? Why would I buy or sell through your site rather than eBay. (I understand that traffic is a major down-full at the moment but can you give comparisons if traffic was equal)

All in all I wish you all the best and truly hope your site survives and prospers
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[Kickoff3pm]

kcs wrote:

Kickoff3pm wrote: Have any of you tried our site ? http://www.kickoff3pm.com/football-auction ? We tried to get this started now about 12 months ago. The are almost 200 members but traffic is just not high enough. We plan to keep the site active and have ideas to improve the site but without traffic we just don't see it worthwhile in the current climate. I have looked at your site, and to me the availability of programmes that interest me is non-existent.... I accept that my collection is becoming harder to add too, but I regularly find things on eBay. This, however is not a dig at your site as I can appreciate the efforts and money needed to set up the site are plentiful, but can your site compete with eBay? Can you answer the following? Why would I buy or sell through your site rather than eBay. (I understand that traffic is a major down-full at the moment but can you give comparisons if traffic was equal) All in all I wish you all the best and truly hope your site survives and prospers

Don't worry I'm alway happy to disscuse the negatives about any of my sites. It would be pointless arguing that a site is good if everyone else thought it was rubbish and so the object is to get a site that most people think is good no matter what I personally think about it.

I totally agree KO3pm can not compete with ebay, it would be silly to suggest it could. But I suggest we do need an alternative.

Giving money to ebay is a bad thing for british footballer suppporters. They don't sponsor any clubs and in fact have no interest in football.

The is no question that our site will survive because it's fully paid for as it is. The disapointing thing is we can't do what we wanted to do when we set it up. And so the main reason why a footballer support might use our site rather then ebay can't be achived - that reason being that any money made from buying and selling went into grassroots football.

I think it's possible to take enough sellers from ebay but it has to be done maintaining if not improving security for both buyer and sellers.

If I manage to free up some cash I have a few ideas for the site which will make it more apealling for bulk sellers. But as long as the membership continues to creep up I'm not too concerned.

You see that will at least allow us to contact people when we do implement the changes. So if you've not sign-up but want to be kept informed please do, it costs nothing as a buyer but if you go on to become a seller the is a one off fee to validate your details (2 quid)

[escafeld]

Delcampe might be an alternative. It's a specialised auction site for collectors of all kinds. There's not much in way of football programmes at the moment but if many start using it then that may well change.
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[Tynie Topics]

ForestPaul wrote:

ebay has over 160,000 football programme auctions and this will probaly reduce by half

Currently 107k programmes on ebay, but it dropped quite a bit during the summer/World Cup.
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[john9965]

I think the real reason for the drop in sales is there is not that many people collecting programmes anymore, certainly not youngsters.

[gang-warily]

John, do you think that this is because they are collecting other things instead or do you think that collecting in general is less popular these days?

[paulo]

I am not so sure, people are still collecting programmes. Since ebay has put these limits on I reckon I am getting more sold as there is less choice on there. Most of my stuff is pretty run of the mill, but I am still pleseantly suprised how much I shift each time a free listing day comes around.

I think more people dip in and out of the hobby and there are an awful lot of people that hark back to their childhood, which is why all these model and toy shops seem to be opening everywhere.

I also think that the internet and ebay has made it far easier to complete collections. Take my vintage Star Wars figure collection. 5 years ago I decided to complete it via ebay needing about 20. I did this to the cost of about £300. I look every now and again to get values and I notice as time goes by less and less get sold. This is because more and more people have completed their collections and demand reduces. I suspect its the same with programmes. Yes there will always be new collectors, but not as many as when I was young as most kids these days rely on the internet to get their clubs news. Programmes are seen as items for dinosaurs!

[tcno10]

Paulo wrote,
I suspect its the same with programmes. Yes there will always be new collectors, but not as many as when I was young as most kids these days rely on the internet to get their clubs news. Programmes are seen as items for dinosaurs!

Very true regarding the younger collectors,
If I were to guess the ages of say 10 regular customers in my shop on a matchday it would look something like this,
55 , 58 , 35 , 70 , 68 , 40 , 25 , 52 , 44 , 45 giving an average of 49.

However, during the 6 week holidays a younger lad walked in ( guessing aged 10 ) picked up a complete set of Sheff Utd homes 80/81 , gave me £10 and bid me good day.............I didn't have the heart to tell him that was the relegation season to Div 4..........Happy days
The following week he returned with his mate,they parked their BMX's outside and this time his friend bought £10 worth of Weds stuff,
being a decent human being I gave him a 1991 Cup Final as a freebie,
the young United collector said ' have you got any united finals Mr ? '
I explained that sadly United hadn't been to Wembley for a final since 1936 and the obvious value of said item so I gave him a 1972 Watney Cup Final,he told to forget it.......

[sharrowblade]

Steady on mate, that's outrageous....................you mean kids have actually heard of BMX's in S6.

[surfinjim]

sharrowblade wrote:

Steady on mate, that's outrageous....................you mean kids have actually heard of BMX's in S6.

It's usually what they've thieved back from S2!


Jim
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26th December 1979

Bolder, Blackhall, Williamson, Smith, Pickering, Hornsby, King, Johnson, McCulloch, Mellor, Curran.

Scorers; Mellor, King, Curran, Smith (pen)

GODS EVERY ONE OF THEM!