Sometimes All You Can Do Is Laugh!

[bumblebee]

When you look through the bidders you see a lot of the same people bidding on a lot of his auctions. Even though you don't see a full name, you can still tell. I would say that he either has a lot of regular customers or.....

One of his bidders in the past 30 days has placed 174 bids, 90% of which were just for this seller, and he bid on 142 items but rarely placed more than 1 bid. Not saying that's evidence of anything but I find it highly unusual that ANY collector who is that active would not be bidding on more sellers.

[MarbleClueless]

I have a question...sort of on topic. Occasionally, there will be listings which indicate they sold at what must be an error. Recently there was one for $52,000 and another for slightly less. I've seen a few that seem to have been done as a joke. Are these sellers on some vastly different fee schedule? I think eBay’s fees are high and wouldn't want to risk incurring fees on shenanigans.

Similarly, I would be afraid a shill bidder would win the lot. It wouldn't take many wins to incur more in fees for shills than the extra revenue for driving up the price.

and...and...and...while I'm griping. I have been watching a couple of items which I noticed because they were listed at ridiculous "buy it now". They have been listed for years (literally). They will remain there forever because the price is not realistic. I don’t see how that pays for anyone.

I guess my question is.....how can people afford some of this? Is there a lot of variation on fees between sellers? Are all us little hobbyist small timers (speaking for myself) paying more than our share?

[BobBlock]

Buy It Nows are listed at 5 cents a month

[Steph]

Listing fees are a lot less expensive now than when I last actively sold.

You can list many items per month for free, no matter how much the initial price is, if I understand correctly.

Used to cost more to list something for $20 than to list it for 99 cents. Now free for all for your first 50 listings. .... I think is what I saw when I checked recently.