Buying cards on ebay

     I would like to share with you several things I have learned along the way since I won my first auction on ebay last September 2005.

          Have a game plan about what cards you are interested in buying,  don't just start bidding on any card whose starting bid is $.01.  The ebay search engine allows you to search for a particular card you are interested in and see what it has been selling for, this is a good way to determine what the value of a card really is, as opposed to what is in the Beckett listings for card values.  A card is really only worth what a buyer will pay for it.  For example if you want to see what Manny Ramirez Rookie cards have been selling for do a search and you will see on left hand side of page they list search options which you can fine tune for your particular player or card.  This search result shows Manny Ramirez rookies and their ending bid price and postage.  This helps you determine which cards are more valuable to collectors.

Watch out for these "scams"

Postage "scam"

     Some sellers will try to charge 3 or 4 dollars shipping and handling to mail one card, this is ridiculous.  They start the bid price @ $.01 and figure even if it sells for a penny they will make money on shipping.  I see no reason to pay that much to mail one baseball card unless the card is worth several dollars and you can win the auction with a low bid.  A reasonable shipping cost for one card is $1.50.

Sales Puffing "scam"

Some sellers will give an amazing story about why they are selling their sports cards, some of them of which are too outrageous to be true.  Even if the story is true it distracts from the value of what they are selling.  I have found that the more outrageous the sales puffing the more likely you might be disappointed in what you receive as the winner bidder.  An example of this sales tactic is this the woman whose boyfriend has broken up with her and she is getting back at him by selling all of his card collection on ebay at a low price.   Also watch out for sales pitches that claim "Huge Find at Estate Sale".  These sales pitches make for interesting reading but I would not bid on these auctions.

The PSA10 ???   "scam"

     Some sellers will overstate the value of the card(s) they are selling by putting this line in the header: "PSA 10 ???"  They want to make you think you may be the one who realizes that this card will in fact grade a 10 if submitted to PSA for grading.  I also avoid auctions that put the word "WOW" in the header.  Again common sense will tell you when something may be too good to be true.  There is a lot of competition among sellers on ebay who deal in sports cards, some dealers are just looking to sell lots of common cards which they otherwise can't sell.

Check Seller's Feedback

It is well worth your time to take a few minutes to check what other buyers have said about the seller whose auction you are bidding on.   If a seller has thousands of feedbacks it is not unusual to have 1 or 2 negatives mixed in.  As a rule I will only bid on an item from a seller that has a feedback rating of 99% or above, preferably 100%.  The only time I have lost money bidding on an item was when I mailed cash for a DVD that I was the winning bidder on.  In hindsight I never should have bid because the seller was relatively new on ebay and already had several negative feedbacks that should have been a warning sign not to bid.  I won't make this mistake again.  BTW I didn't leave negative feedback for him, I just took the loss and moved on which seemed to be the smart thing to do.

Don't bid on items with vague descriptions or pictures

     If you are bidding on a lot of 50 Albert Pujols cards and they don't list each card individually in item description then you are taking a big risk.  Just as risky is bidding on cards for which there is not a big enough scan or digital pic to see if the card is what you want and is acurately described.

For example if you see this pic you can't really get a good idea of the approximate grades of the cards:

Bid on cards for which you can plainly see how sharp the corners are and how well centered the card is  Otherwise it's a guessing game whether you receive the card(s) you thought you were bidding on.  Sometimes the seller will list the wrong picture for item being sold or not give a picture at all, again in these cases I believe that the chance of being disappointed is very high.

In summary, use your common sense when bidding, don't bid willy nilly on items you didn't plan to buy, follow the guidelines listed here and most of all HAVE FUN!  Whether buying cards for your personal collection or buying inventory to resell ebay is the biggest market  in the world, use that to your benefit.