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eBay has been great for maintaining old bikes. My hunch is that if someone is offering a used item, it's because the item exists, they have access to it, and wa
by analog31 4y ago
eBay has been great for maintaining old bikes. My hunch is that if someone is offering a used item, it's because the item exists, they have access to it, and want to get rid of it ASAP. There's less temptation to counterfeit something that maybe only one other person in the world might want.
I've also bought used industrial equipment on eBay, often for pennies on the dollar. Same deal.
For stuff that isn't second hand, I don't know what would prompt a seller to choose between eBay and Amazon, but it probably comes down to subtle differences between their fee structures and other policies.
- walrus01 4y agoI sure hope people aren't going to the effort to counterfeit 10 or 15 year old shimano, sram, avid and similar components. New stuff, sure, but ebay does seem to be great also for "new old stock" bike stuff.
- humaniania 4y agoThere is SO MUCH counterfeit stuff on eBay. Things you'd never expect. If there's a buck to be made expect it to be done.
- pishpash 4y agoeBay provides fewer platform support and therefore has lower commission? Also, second-hand doesn't always mean used. A good niche on eBay are New in the Box items that somebody wants to get rid of. The marketplace is pretty good there with individual ads with better accountability, vs. the aggregated mess on Amazon. Bottom line is Amazon tries to hide the complexity of the marketplace and it ends up being the wrong abstraction and becomes straight lying.
- Scoundreller 4y agoeBay commissions are pretty high for how little inventory, delivery and warehouse risk/cost they take ($0). Dunno what I’m getting for their 10% commissions today compared to 5% in the past.
- analog31 4y agoGood point. I pay a roughly 3% commission to PayPal for my tiny side business. I think I do get something. The biggest thing, which I also can't quantify, is probably that I get X percent more sales because people are confident that PP will somehow magically take care of them if I turn out to be a screwball. All it takes is a couple more sales, to completely pay for the commission. Also, I could knock myself out trying to find a cheaper service, or I could spend that time designing the next product. Don't know if a similar calculus applies to eBay.
- Scoundreller 4y agoI wasn't even including the ~3% payment commission. Back in the day before eBay required everything to go through Paypal, I was happy to give a discount for anything but Paypal: COD, cash-in-mail or money order. I earned some add'l sales from the voluntarily and involuntarily un/under-banked. Now eBay is going to automatically charge Canadian sales taxes on my Canadian sales... even though I would be exempt myself as a small supplier. Ugh.
- cjbgkagh 4y agoPeople will pay higher prices to win at a competition.
- analog31 4y agoIndeed, but I've also noticed that a lot of the sales for stuff I'm interested in are "buy it now" type. And I have no good gauge for what a price "should" be, but for instance I'm willing to pay a couple bucks more for a chainring of some odd bolt spacing, that prevents me from having to buy a whole new crankset.
- CTDOCodebases 4y agoYou can search for sold listings to see what price an item has recently sold for. It’s not that useful though for rare items that are not in frequent demand. Part of the reason the “buy it now” is so popular is as a seller sometimes buyers make an offer for an auctioned item then once you refuse they bid up the price so they win but then they don’t transfer the money.
- Scoundreller 4y agoCheck out pinkbike's buy/sell section for bike parts: https://www.pinkbike.com/buysell/ https://www.pinkbike.com/buysell/