Can’t make sense of gear pricing at the moment

AH I see silence is golden .....

I've never sold a thing on evil bay and I probably never will so do the stories a one time GF told me count?

She was a bit of a wiz on the pc and used to build and sell selling websites as well as run her own selling sites and she told me many horror stories. This was some years ago but at the time I remember her telling me that changes to evil bays way of doing things were making it worse for sellers and she was considering pulling out.

She used to sell just anything from TV's, computers, golf clubs, suits and other clothing, huge numbers of DVDs, cameras even, just about anything really that she could get a good deal on and sell on. She used to try to get everything back and the stuff that came back was often not the item she dispatched. People would buy electrical items and return a same model (or there abouts) item with a different serial number, claim faults which weren't apparent upon return and generally pull any stroke they could think off. She laughed her head off one day over one muppet who wasn't happy with a Paul Smith (who??? but she sold lots of these) suit and returned a completely different make suit which she then sold for more than the Paul Smith one :D One great thing was the absolutely cutting replies she gave these muppets :D I wouldn't cross her :D

Maybe she only had a lot of examples because of the volume of selling she did but even so it reached a level of hassle that she wasn't happy with and forced her to consider coming off the platform. Dunno if she actually did leave but these days there are other places to sell on. Anyway, whenever I'm even half tempted to give evil bay a go I remember her and change my mind as just one scammer would be one too many for me..
 
I used ebay for many years though I have not sold any thing on for well over 10 years as the listing fees and selling fees were getting steep.
So it was a well know tactic to inflate the p&p charge to recoup some revenue.
I even know some ex m8s who would bid on each others goods to push the price up, and I sure there are many other tactics sellers or buyers employ to cheat the system.

So beware, do you homework on your selling audience, the sector you are selling in.
 
There is a surprising number of people who are happier paying more as long as they're getting a deal.

Sounds like nonsense right? Well if you had an item you needed £80 on, if you price it at £80 many people will assume that isn't your best price leading to an awkward conversation where you can't go any lower than £80 but that's what they expect of you so think you're being unreasonable. So to avoid all that you list at £100 and then let them take the price down to £80, you get the price you needed and they get the discount they wanted.

Which is yet another reason you can't use list prices as a reference point, a list price is a made up number, sold prices actually represent what people are prepared to pay.
 
There is a surprising number of people who are happier paying more as long as they're getting a deal.

Sounds like nonsense right? Well if you had an item you needed £80 on, if you price it at £80 many people will assume that isn't your best price leading to an awkward conversation where you can't go any lower than £80 but that's what they expect of you so think you're being unreasonable. So to avoid all that you list at £100 and then let them take the price down to £80, you get the price you needed and they get the discount they wanted.

Which is yet another reason you can't use list prices as a reference point, a list price is a made up number, sold prices actually represent what people are prepared to pay.

I thought every seller does this? There has to be a bit of haggling. The local sales site I buy from a lot has some right plonks on it though, even when you do this they will pop in with a low ball €40 and tell you it's all they have in the world - luckily on there you can set minimum offer though, so even if they come with that 40, they will have to choose 80 as a heading to make their low ball offer
 
I recently sold all my Canon kit cost was about £26,000 but I did not have a resale value in mind but thought a £10,000 loss was about right I sold some private and sent the rest off to a shop as I could not be bothered with the hassle on what was left I did try all of it private first though.
l got about £14,000 overall a little more than i thought Taking the shop price into account, I might have got more if i played the back and forth game .
But it got me what i want with cash left so Im not worried that I did not get more -things are only worth what someone will pay.
Rob.
 
Over 50 years or so I've bought and sold a lot of photographic equipment. I've probably broken roughly even as I seldom bought new and have on various occassions sold equipment for much more than I paid. However the one rule I stick to is never thinking of cameras as assets. So far as I'm concerned: once the money is spent it's gone. If I can sell the thing later that's a nice extra but relying on it is just a waste of nervous energy.
 
TBH, I really don't understand what this thread is about or what the gripe is. Aside from the seller and his buyer what business is it of anyone else whether the price is too high or not?
Retailers that use eBay to trade will, as do almost every other retailer irrespective of whether they are on-line or bricks and mortar, price their goods at what they think they can get for it. That's business. Let's face it, there are plenty of photographers who charge more than their skills are worth.
If you don't like the prices on offer then go elsewhere but don't gripe about it.

Well, I have found this interesting; why does a discussion about selling equipment make you think that it is a 'gripe'? People will know now what the main scams are and I, for one, won't be using e bay at all. I am happy to use the classifieds here, MPB or trade in to an LCE branch that gives me a fair price.
 
Well, I have found this interesting; why does a discussion about selling equipment make you think that it is a 'gripe'? People will know now what the main scams are and I, for one, won't be using e bay at all. I am happy to use the classifieds here, MPB or trade in to an LCE branch that gives me a fair price.

Reading through the thread is what makes me see this as a gripe. I didn't automatically think or assume it would be but the majority of posts are moans about overpricing and that to me is griping - should that have an e in it? I don't know :)

I recently offered a virtually brand new D610 to both MPB and LCE. Were their offers fair ... not in my opinion and I sold the damera elsewhere for just about double what they offered. But hey, I kind of expected their offers to be low because they are businesses and are looking to make a profit and good luck to them.
 
I recently offered a virtually brand new D610 to both MPB and LCE. Were their offers fair ... not in my opinion and I sold the damera elsewhere for just about double what they offered. But hey, I kind of expected their offers to be low because they are businesses and are looking to make a profit and good luck to them.

That's an unusually large difference in my opinion, although the market for DSLRs is all over the place with the rapid rise of mirrorless at the moment.

I'd normally see a 10-15% difference between MPB quote and the actual profit from selling on eBay (taking into account fees, postage etc), which is a small enough gap to not risk the hassle of going private. Prices here in the classifieds are often not far off of MPB quotes.
 
That's an unusually large difference in my opinion, although the market for DSLRs is all over the place with the rapid rise of mirrorless at the moment.

I'd normally see a 10-15% difference between MPB quote and the actual profit from selling on eBay (taking into account fees, postage etc), which is a small enough gap to not risk the hassle of going private. Prices here in the classifieds are often not far off of MPB quotes.

I thought about selling to both and thought the prices pretty fair (a couple of lenses seems high and a a couple low) when they need to resell and make a profit.
 
Its the same on the fuji refurb store - I see lenses going used on eBay for more than you would pay there - at Fuji you get 14 day no quibble return and everything i have got from there is spotless (and has a 12month warranty)


Whenever anything from Fuji comes up for sale on here I check the refurb store price, and if it's less than 15% below that, I could be interested, otherwise I just ignore it.
 
Personally I thought MPB prices were a joke when I sold all my Nikon kit.

Yeah Nikon kit has hit rock bottom but still I was shocked at what they offered and similarly slightly shocked at what I got.

Even my 70-200, new they were still 1700. Used on the forums and else where seemed to have hit as low as 900-950 in as new condition. MPB offered something like £625 .

I tried FB pages but kept getting I will offer 625 cause that what MPB would give you... even though they then sell for 1k.
 
I bought an RP off one of the grey guys to see how I liked it; After the cashback received I sent to MPB as I couldn't decide between that and the R and MPB offering a little more than I bought it for..

So you can guess what I did! ;)
 
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