Hello Everyone. I have been a seller on ebay for a few years now. I sold marbles and I did well. But I started selling my Art on ebay and No one would buy it. I began to think It was not good art. Yet it was good alright.! I soon discovered that what has happened to ebay as a market place for Fine Art is very troublesome.

Back In 2004, when ebay retired Going going gone, and made all the feautured plus auctions front loading , everything else got buried by 50  to 70 pages of featured plus items. Artists especially those who made their living off selling their Art on eBay, began to do anything and everything to get their work noticed. That is where a lot of the lower priced auctions began to flood eBay. Page after page of auctions of Fine Art for lower prices , artists underselling their own art and themselves. It really bothers me to see this happen and no one seems to do anything about it.

To make the issues Artists faced worse , ebay opened ebay in China, and the market was flooded with low priced sweat shop types of artwork. And once again Artists who were depending on their livings to come from the incomes they recieved from selling on ebay had to do something to get noticed again. And again they began to cut their already lowered prices on their Fine Art again. This they did in the hopes of attracting buyers.

But as you know and most likely dont need to hear me say it, the World Markets thrive on the American way of life. What I mean by that is that , many export countries as china and the others export so much merchandise to the USA per year its astounding. There are hardly any more american made products in the USA. All our clothes are basically made in foreign countries. Now eBay began as an american company and I believe opening in china was a mistake because of the sweat shop flooding of the market on ebay. It ruined alot for the american eBay experience.

The whole issue is this, in that while eBay used to be a really great place for artists to sell their work for nice high end prices , they were forced to undersell themselves and their work. We know that the effects of underselling has made a huge impact on the mindset of the buyers. Now buyers think they are entitled to fine art for cheap prices. Nothing could be further from the truth than that. The Rut and Mold has been forged by underselling but now the artists are rising above the Rut and Mold and climbing out of the ditch of poverty and underselling.

To have the mindset that artists are all to be starving artists is not correct. We deserve our weight in gold so to speak. If  people want our fine art then they will need to pay our asking prices. I dont go above what the worth of my paintings are worth in my asking prices. I factor in my expenses in my asking prices. I dont expect any less than my asking prices. You dont go into a grocery store and tell the clerk  " hey I think this food is priced to high but I will give you this much money for it." Of course you dont do this because they would laugh at you until they didnt have any more breath to laugh anymore.!

The artists set the price range and the buyer makes up his mind to buy or not to buy. It is not up to the buyers of fine art to say "they are asking too much " NO but it is up to the buyers to buy it or not buy it and then life goes on.

I hope this guide has been a help for you as you read it. I hope we transact business one with the other soon. Thank you so much for reading my Guide and Review.

Sincerely In Messiah, Carl S. Vitale~~~~ carls-marbles-beads-etc ((ebay user id.))