eBay increasing listing fees for bullion

Welcome to the Precious Metals Bug Forums

Welcome to the PMBug forums - a watering hole for folks interested in gold, silver, precious metals, sound money, investing, market and economic news, central bank monetary policies, politics and more. You can visit the forum page to see the list of forum nodes (categories/rooms) for topics.

Please have a look around and if you like what you see, please consider registering an account and joining the discussions. When you register an account and log in, you may enjoy additional benefits including no ads, market data/charts, access to trade/barter with the community and much more. Registering an account is free - you have nothing to lose!

pmbug

Your Host
Administrator
Benefactor
Messages
13,941
Reaction score
4,356
Points
268
Location
Texas
United-States
Aren't there other p2p networks for small dealers that have lower fees?
If not, this might be worth creating one...
 
It appears that E-bay simply does not want gold and silver sales on their site. who in the world would pay 7 to 10% more for metal if they didn't have to? That's just stupid if you ask me. Greedy as well.
 
They aren't adding the fees to sale prices (ie. the the buyer doesn't notice them). They are taking their cut from the sellers. It's likely going to drive a lot of sellers (high volume dealers) out of their market.

For example, a gold eagle auction is won for total price of $1,600. The buyer pays the $1,600, but the seller ends up receiving about $1,400 after ebay, paypal and shipping/insurance fees are subtracted.
 
...

Another effect: the eBay / 24hgold gold price widget will get wrecked by this. The widget is one of the few (but very imperfect) ways to gauge premium of physical Gold Eagles vs. spot price.
 
Is it possible that Ebay bullion sales are harder to track, keep account of?

Maybe easier to drive buyers to the big suppliers so if your total purchases equals an amount worth confiscating, be easy for them to find out.
 
They aren't adding the fees to sale prices (ie. the the buyer doesn't notice them). They are taking their cut from the sellers. (...)
...well, since no dealer/company is here for the charitable purposes, guess who's the final tag is going to be passed on?

It is quite often that we see that "reversed logic", when some fees/taxes/tariffs are being imposed, by whomever - it is never "the small folk/consumer", who is being intentionally targeted, always these "greedy bastards" (who provide them products/services, that everybody else agrees voluntarily to part with their money for), yet in the end - it is always the small folk, where the buck stops - sellers will simply up the price to compensate for their lower margins.

Of course, some of the sellers might not make it through the transition, therefore, it lowers the competition, and because lower competition among the sellers, the "small folk" gets double-whacked, but hey, who cares.
 
Having watched auctions on ebay before, I can tell you that buyers there know what the going rate is for physical delivered from an online retailer. Most auctions end on a price very close to what it would cost to buy from a retailer.

Sellers are going to have a hard time selling on ebay if they raise reserve limits on their listings to accommodate the fee increase.
 
I don't know

I'm not sure I really believe that. Looking at the auctions for Scotsdale Silver, a lot of the buyers overpay. 10 5-gram bars typically go for over $90 and I've seen them over $100. I was bidding on some of Scotsdale's auctions. I'd bid a dollar or two above the price point based on the weight of the metal (since they offered free shipping, it was still an alright deal for me). I got outbid 95% of the time.
 
Don't know how it is now, but a while back, ebay was allowing people to earn "ebay bucks" on bullion purchases. Folks in the know could use coupons/programs to get bonus "points" in the system and thus they were able to pay a little bit more for things than folks who weren't hip to the game.
 
Back
Top Bottom