Originally Posted by
Citoyen du Monde
It is my experience that the more exclusive and sought after items are virtually never affected by this emotional bidding, so if you exclusively look at the lower end of the market, you will encounter this effect more often. I therefore take that cehowardGS has more mundane and basic interests than some of us.
You are probably right, the rare stuff has less variance.
Unfortunately, most of what I buy and sell is in the mundane end of the market. As a buyer, this variance works in my favor, resulting in some really good deals.
As a seller, at least a third of my items do not get a single bid. Lets see, I have ten items ending tonight, right now seven have bids, the others don't even have watchers, so this is probably it. That's a good week for me.
So why bother? Because almost all of the items are thrift store or garage sale finds, so the items that sell make it well worth it. And its easier to find mundane stuff at a garage sale, than something special/exclusive/highly sought after. The mundane stuff that does not sell goes back to the thrift store, and hopefully, I do a better job picking in the future.
(Ended up getting a bid on item #8, so it was an unusually good week.)
I used to be 90% buyer, 10% seller on ebay. In the last year, I have reversed that to at least 90% seller, 10% buyer. Per below, become a seller and you will see a totally different side of ebay.