Is Ebay as we know it over?

[War_in_D]

So, I got a promotional email from Ebay early last month saying that I could list up to 10 items by Dec. 31st and I would only have to pay $1 in final value fees on those ten items.  I had a couple of guitars I was thinking about letting go, so I waiting until the very end of the month to list and then put up a 30 day "Good til Canceled" listing (to try to possibly catch the early tax refund crowd).

So far, I've gotten three offers on one of the guitars and zero on the other.. Honestly, the one I thought wouldn't garner that much interest is the one that seems to be getting the most attention.  I find that odd, because they are both the same make/model of guitar but the one getting all the attention has a lot more wear and tear and has a Floyd Rose which in many of today's players eyes is akin to the Devil.. They ain't got time to deal with all that floating trem mumbo jumbo!! LOL  Of those three offers, I know one of them for sure was a scammer using a hijacked account and one of them I suspect was a scammer using a basically brand new account that was opened in August of last year and had only one feedback.  The third was a lowball that was automatically declined due to my settings.  If you spend any time on the Ebay Discussion boards, all you read about are people posting aobut how they got scammed on Ebay, or they are posting about how Ebay is ripping them off somehow.  Now, I'm not so naive that I haven't learned that people will go out of their way to bitch and moan on the internet, but will rarely ever post anything good..  But, at the same time it just seems that Ebay has become a shadow of what it once was..

What say ye?   

 

[mayfly]

Yea I think that eBay is pretty much toast.  Have not gotten anything from there in years. 

It's the tax, man!

 

[aarontunes]

Haven't bought anything off Ebay in a looooong time.

 

[PhilHill]

The only thing I ever got off eBay was a motherboard for an old computer because it was the only place I could find it. And that was going on 8 months ago I think. Never really cared for eBay...... :dontknow:

 

[swarfrat]

eBay is still where I would look for a vintage slide rule or drafting set. That sort of thing is about the only thing I would bother with bidding on. I don't buy instruments there any more, and pretty much only do bin, not auction

 

[Rick]

It ain't like it used to be.

 

[DangerousR6]

Lost respect and interest in feebay a long time ago...If I look for any used gear, it's usually from Reverb.

 

[stratamania]

E Bay is what it is. I am not sure what you know it as?

 

[aarontunes]

E Bay is what it is. I am not sure what you know it as?

Speaking for myself, I knew it as the world's biggest swap meet; a peer-to-peer experience where you could find really cool used stuff. You were dealing with an individual somewhere who had something to sell. Fees were low enough to facilitate everything. A lot of times you got paid by the buyer sending you a check in the mail.

As a seller, you could put any old thing on there to discover buyers you had never had access to before, and get money for stuff you would otherwise have had to throw away.

Here's a personal story that illustrates the best of what Ebay used to be. My wife's grandfather worked at Boeing in the 60's. At that time Boeing was working on a supersonic plane to compete with the Concord. It never got past the drawing board, but they did make a conceptual model out of wood. When the project was scrapped, the model was tossed. My wife's grandfather literally grabbed it out of the dumpster. He took it home, put two eye-screws in it, and hung it from his ceiling, where it stayed for 40 years. Later, when my son was around 8 years old, his great-grandpa took the plane down from the ceiling and gave it to him to play with. My son took it home, played with it for a bit, and then it sat under his bed for many years as he outgrew it. The thing was in rough shape, and eventually we decided it had reached end of life. My son was literally on his way out to the garbage can with it, when he carried it passed a neighbor who happened to be at the house. The neighbor suggested that instead of dumping it, we put it on Ebay first, just to see what we could get. Answer: $2,500. True story. We made my son split the windfall with his sister.

Nowadays Ebay is full of businesses and scammers. Fees are prohibitive, and all money gets funneled through their system.

 

[stratamania]

Yes got that. It has been a long time since it was just individuals selling stuff which is more where I was coming from.

I think the last time I used it to sell some stuff may have been about 5 years ago. I still find it useful for finding odd items.

 

[War_in_D]

So, is Reverb the "new" place to sell?  I know it's not new, but...  I've had an account there for several years, and have bought a few things but never sold anything on that platform.

And I agree 110% that internet sales tax has put a huge damper on selling anything online, especially on used items. 

 

[stratamania]

I have bought a couple of things via Reverb but not tried selling on it yet. It seems to get mixed reviews as do most things.

 

[Rick]

Back in 2000 I bought a beautiful Ovation Nylon acoustic / Electric, I think it's a country model, sounds great still have it.  Made in 1976.  Back in the day it was people selling to other people, not businesses, no taxes.  Like a garage sale.  Yep, those days are done.

 

[swarfrat]

Like I was getting at. That sort of still exists, but it's shrunk. Ebay remains the place to go for a vintage slide rule, or a mimeograph machine, or WWII Vintage US Army Field Phone.  Instruments - and I presume other markets which I'm not aware of - have abandoned it to varying degrees to places like Reverb. And it's become, (Much like Amazon has) a clearinghouse for Asian resellers who sell various bits of crap under flybynite names like RandomEnglishWord selling brands you've never heard of, so as to avoid traceability for product warranty and reputation issues.

(I recently bought a thermometer on Amazon - it came with batteries branded "Bursto" - finally truth in advertizing.)
I suspect ebay will one day collapse under the vision of those trying to make it into what Amazon did better (and which will one day kill them too.) It's really just become a credit card skimmer milking both consumers and sellers.

 

[War_in_D]

Back in 2000 I bought a beautiful Ovation Nylon acoustic / Electric, I think it's a country model, sounds great still have it.  Made in 1976.  Back in the day it was people selling to other people, not businesses, no taxes.  Like a garage sale.  Yep, those days are done.

Those are the days I miss..