EBay is rolling out more changes for eBay sellers to aid in both the seller and buyer experience... From the eBay announcement:

Seller Update: Overview

Keeping eBay a thriving marketplace requires a close partnership between sellers and eBay to give buyers the experience they expect. We continue to invest in driving traffic and buyer loyalty, and we need your help to make buyers happy and keep them coming back. For our part, we're also taking steps to make it easier and more profitable for you to sell.

Easier, more visual shopping and buyer incentives to drive more sales

Key information to set buyer expectations and help reduce your costs

Other updates to make selling on eBay more efficient

The changes roll out in June. What do you think?

Here's a link to the full post

I wanted to take a moment and thank Antique Trader forum user trantiques for their comments in the "Alternatives to eBay" forum thread. [you can read the thread here]. (scroll down to the bottom of the thread)

He takes the time and analyzes his buying and selling efforts on a number of sites other than eBay.

If you're in the market for learning about someone else's online buying and selling experiences, with both positive and negative points, you won't want to miss what he has to say.

Thanks again trantiques. I'm sure our readers will find your insights invaluable.


Do any of you have online buying or selling experiences you would like to share? Feel free to post a reply here or in the forums.

WorthPoint Signs Partnership Agreement with eBay Research and Education Firm Terapeak

ATLANTA--WorthPoint Corporation Thursday announced that it has signed a seven-year partnership agreement with Terapeak, the industry leader in eBay research and education.

Victoria, British Columbia-based Terapeak, a subsidiary of Advanced Ecommerce Research Systems Inc. (AERS), provides eBay sellers and buyers with two years of trending data to help target the best products to sell, as well as 90 days of item-specific data to guide average expected pricing, sell-through rates, list timing, keyword choice and category selection.

Under the terms of the agreement, AERS will provide WorthPoint with eBay’s entire daily sales of antique and collectible data for inclusion in WorthPoint’s database. In addition, Terapeak will re-sell WorthPoint’s knowledge-based products, which include expertise provided by “Worthologists” (WorthPoint’s art, antiques and collectibles experts), WorthPoint employees and related professionals with more than 2,000 years of combined domain experience that is incorporated into the database.

“We are excited to partner with Terapeak, which boasts the largest customer base for eBay research,” said Will Seippel, CEO of WorthPoint. “WorthPoint’s database already houses 30 million items, and we have become the largest repository of art, antiques and collectible data in the world. WorthPoint has data from more than 500 auction houses and millions of products sold for retail. eBay data will now complement this database, so that consumers, collectors, dealers and others will be able to accurately assess the value of most any item.” Seippel said that the partnership with Terapeak is a major element in a significant WorthPoint product roll-out slated for late January.

“Our partnership with AERS and Terapeak will make WorthPoint the world’s most comprehensive source of information on art, antiques and collectibles,” Seippel said. “We will be adding more than one billion items to our database over the course of this agreement and will make information accessible in an easy-to-use format so that people can learn more about the value of their collectibles. In these difficult economic times, people need help finding additional sources of income, and WorthPoint is the resource to help them do that.”

Commenting on the partnership, Fred Speckeen, CEO of AERS, said: “Terapeak and WorthPoint aim to develop the ultimate resource for collectors and sellers. Comprehensive new products will be created with the vision of serving the breadth of the market, from small collectibles to high-end works of art. We are excited to work with the experts at WorthPoint to offer services that answer the questions most collectibles enthusiasts and sellers ask: ‘What is this worth? Where can I buy or sell this? Which of these items are valuable?’ The combination of education, market research data and analytics will provide pinpoint responses to these concerns and more.”

About WorthPoint

Atlanta-based WorthPoint Corporation (www.worthpoint.com) is an Internet-based data-and-media company that offers a vast database of sales records on art, antiques and collectibles. Founded in 2007, WorthPoint has quickly become the world's largest social network for researching the worth of antiques and collectibles. WorthPoint helps collectors understand the worth of their items and provides expert advice from its international team of Worthologists on how to preserve or sell antiques and collectibles. WorthPoint recently acquired Dublin, Ohio- based GoAntiques, the oldest antiques-and-collectibles site on the Web.

About AERS / Terapeak

Advanced Ecommerce Research Systems Inc. (AERS) (www.researchadvanced.com) is a fast-growing, privately-held e-commerce data and analytics company. The company has two strategic business units, Terapeak (www.terapeak.com) and ResearchAdvanced, which deliver data and analytics based on huge transactional data sets, including eBay. Today, AERS is eBay’s only market data reseller, and has established itself as the pre-eminent provider of the most up-to-date, thorough, and relevant online marketplace statistical reporting available. Currently, AERS websites receive more than one million page views per month.

For more information: www.terapeak.com.

For many, enough is enough.

Change doesn't come readily to many. What's good for some, may not be good for all. At this point, I see change as change. It's going to happen. I try not to put a value on it and just "roll with it."

The last few weeks we've received dozens and dozens (I think the last count was 130) of responses about eBay's last round of changes – most significantly the new paperless payment policy.

For those of you who have decided this is the last straw, so to speak, you may find this helpful. Click on the link below for buying and selling options other than eBay.

EBay says that sellers can accept a few checks and money orders from buyers, but they will be watching so this option is not abused...and sellers cannot promote that they will accept non-electronic payments.

What should I do if I have long-standing, repeat customers who insist on paying with checks or money orders, even after I explain the benefits of electronic payments and offer suggestions?

We know this may happen occasionally, and if you accept checks or money orders from these customers a reasonably small percentage of the time, this will not be a violation of the new payments policy. However, we will not allow abuse of the new policy and will be watching for sellers who accept a significant amount of prohibited payments. Remember also, you can refuse to accept these payment methods. If the buyer doesn't pay, you can file an unpaid item (UPI) complaint. Buyers who insist on paying with these prohibited payment methods in a UPI claim will lose the claim and will not be allowed to leave negative feedback.

You can check out the eBay payment policy here.

If you're an eBay seller and going to stick with them and do the electronic payment thing, you may want to read this:

ProPay Announces Details of Electronic Payment Alternative for eBay Sellers

You can always drop us a line and let us know how it's working out for you.

This from DigitalTransactions.net:

How ProPay Plans to Leverage Its Position in eBay Transactions

(September 29, 2008) ProPay Inc., the only third-party payment processor chosen by eBay Inc. to handle transactions under its new all-electronic payment policy, says it is looking to the arrangement for big growth but hasn’t yet worked out any projections for how much volume it will generate. “We see this as a growth opportunity,” says Greg Pesci, executive vice president of business strategy for Orem, Utah-based ProPay. “It’s ready to scale.”

What Pesci and Bryce Thacker, executive vice president for sales and marketing, are looking to “scale” is a payment-processing product that will be integrated into eBay’s checkout process, so that buyers won’t leave the eBay site. It will offer eBay sellers a merchant account on which they can accept credit and signature-debit cards, along with an encrypted card reader that works with ProPay’s virtual terminal for card-present transactions. Pesci and Thacker say pricing will be a transparent discount rate plus a transaction fee. Exact pricing, they say, will be established by late October, when the new eBay policy on electronic payments goes into effect (Digital Transactions News, Sept. 16).

ProPay’s product will include two levels of service, dubbed eAuction and eAuction Pro, though eAuction will be offered first, followed by Pro within a couple of months. The former is aimed at smaller sellers, includes basic card processing for eBay sales only, and carries a $24 annual fee. Rebate credits are available for sellers whose monthly volume equals or exceeds $3,000. Pro includes this plus electronic invoicing, a virtual terminal, and support for phone orders.

Ebay said in August it would no longer allow sellers to solicit or promote checks or money orders for payments after late October. In addition, it announced an electronic-payments program that requires processors to integrate their products with eBay’s checkout. This summer, it began talking to processors who are listed in its so-called acceptable-payments policy about becoming part of the program. This month, an eBay executive told Digital Transactions News ProPay, which has been handling eBay transactions for about eight years, and eBay’s PayPal unit were the only processors that were ready, though eBay is still talking to other processors and hopes to recruit several more.

Pesci and Thacker say the development effort to get ready was significant for ProPay, which is an independent sales organization for Wells Fargo & Co. Some two dozen staffers out a head count of about 125 worked on the project after eBay’s call came in July, they say. “We’ve been handling it internally, and there are still some things ongoing at the moment,” says Pesci. “It proved to be a significant commitment, but we feel good about having done it.”

Having electronic transactions on the giant online marketplace to itself—except for PayPal—should be worth a hefty boost in volume, but Pesci and Thacker say they haven’t yet been able to work out a projection. “It’s tough to tell at this time,” says Thacker. “We’ve had projections all over the board, though as a private company we probably wouldn’t release that.” Nor will ProPay reveal how many merchants it services or the break down in merchants between e-commerce and physical point of sale, though Thacker says “most of our work is in card-not-present transactions.”

Still, both men are mindful that eBay expects to bring on other processors. “That will be healthy for everyone,” Thacker says, though he adds that ProPay hopes to have the market to itself “as long as possible.”

What do you think? Will ProPay's volume increase dramatically? They are certainly in a position to benefit from eBay's business volume. Will sellers choose ProPay over PayPal as a form of protest to having to pony up more fees to eBay? Or will eBay buyers and sellers jump to a different venue, like OnlineAuction and CraigsList?

I know I will be watching the wires for new developments ... and for ProPay's pricing.

— Karen                     

If not, you should.

AuctionWally, a 25-year veteran in the auction and appraisal field, has an antiques appraisal blog that is just chock-full of information on antiques values and how to sell them. You can find him at http://www.antiquewally.com, where you can view 500 stories and appraisals for free.

I found this recent article on examiner.com especially interesting: Auctionwally's tips for buying expensive collectibles from eBay and elsewhere

AuctionWally also tips us off to scam examiner in Karin Malchow, who keeps current with the latest scams (from Internet hucksters to door-to-door cons) and alerts readers to them.

Knowledge is power, everyone! Protect yourselves.

— Karen                

My Mother called the other day and asked me to see if I could find a replacement handle for her vintage Mirro pressure cooker on the Internet. Confident, I said "sure." I really wanted to find a replacement for her because I didn't want to give her back the cooker that she had given me.

Unfortunately, I had no luck finding the handle for her model. I exhausted all the cookware parts suppliers that I was aware of and had to resort to my favorite online auction site: eBay.

While perusing the vintage and antique cookware listings, I came across this listing:

What is wrong with this picture? "Antique Visions Rangetop Cookware 1984 by Corning."

I realize that sometimes we use the term "antique" rather loosely when it comes to describing "old stuff," but 1984! Not even close.

Check out this unusual Schneider art glass vase that recently sold on eBay for $2,425. (Item number 120283294262 if you want to see many more images and more of the description.)

ANTIQUE SIGNED SCHNEIDER FRENCH ART GLASS VASE WITH IRON MOUNT CIRCA 1920S. The glass body is mottled red-orange to yellow, and is mounted by iron, which to my eye resembles very moderne styled stick figures assending the sides of the vase. The design is Arts & Crafts in style with the hammered base, but also has an Art Deco & a very modern architectural element, with the simple & interesting criss cross design. Arms outstretched they climb...Anyway...this jewel has something for everyone, as I believe the design is as valid now as it was then. The vase is approx. 20 3/8"h X  9"(dia. top) X 5 1/2" (dia. bottom).

I'm awestruck by the craftsmanship and the design.

What do you think of it?

... but this has to be one of, of not the strangest collectibles that I have ever seen. The thing is, too, that it sold for $150 on eBay, and that this designer does custom jobs on My Little Ponies, bit that she didn't have any open slots right now (the emphasis is mine).








My. Little. Pony.



There is a certain undeniable deviant quality to it, which is why I ultimately couldn't resist posting the link. I'm a sucker for Outsider Art, and always like to see what kind of things there are subcultures for out there. And trust me, if you like to collect things like weird '70s collectible plastic ponies, then deck them out like you favorite video game characters, then, well... You're a sub-culture. Face it. More than that, you're a subset of the whole freaky doll subculture, which is another thing unto itself that is best left off these pages. Trust me, though, it exists.

This is a link to an auction watch at a blog called Gamer Tell,and the "art" comes from a deviant artist named Anime Amy, who is good at what she does, even if it borders on the absurd, which may just be the point...

This is from a U.K. paper, The Register, about the exoribtant amount of cash eBay raked in during the  first quarter of the year this year, despite all the changes and what new CEO James Donaohoe called a "softening economy" on both sides of the pond.

The catch is that the eBay user base didn't really grow during this period. So where did all the moolah come from?

A weak dollar, for one, and jacked up fees on its sellers, for two. Oh yeah, how can we not mention the fact that number three must be PayPal, the unit that all users ore explicitly forced to use for their payment transactions, this from the Wall Street Journal. The whole PayPal forced use thing is the part that I personally find the most distasteful.

See, when you own the whole monopoly board, you're going to have all the money.

This is posted, from the AP Wire, with absolutely no bias either way on behalf of Antiques Trader. It's just simply an interesting bit of news about that dear friend of all online antiques... Meg Whitman.

Retiring eBay CEO Whitman joining McCain campaign
Source: AP - AP Wire Service

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Outgoing eBay chief executive Meg Whitman is joining Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign as national co-chairperson.

The McCain campaign said Friday that she will help raise money and policy development and travel the country on his behalf.

Whitman also helped former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney during his bid for the Republican nomination.

She announced in January that she would retire from the online auction company after a decade at the helm.

She is leaving as eBay Inc. faces slowing growth.

Like I said, Trader has no opinion. It's just interesting...

I guess it's only fair to open this question up to a broader range of sources, so let's say then: What's the single most valuable antique you've ever bought at a sale of any kind? How's that?

When I go to a shop or a show, I tend to forget value and buy with nostalgia. This doesn't take me back too far, to the 1970s and early 1980s, so I always end up with a beaten-up Star Wars action figure, or dog-eared football card of some Dallas Cowboy I loved as a kid.

Once, though, on a lonely Sunday while waiting for a movie to start in Downtown Waupaca, WI, I wandered into an antiques store to try and find something for my daughter. After an hour of looking, and believing I would leave empty-handed, I came to the last booth and saw it: A Lawson Wood print of two monkeys and a bear with the caption, "A good story, well told."

I loved it immediately. The giggling bear, one wise ape scratching his chin with amusement, and one more monkey telling the story with an arm draped over the bear and a casual hand about to make the final point. The ground is littered with apple cores, nuts and banana peels. Simply awesome.

Monetary value? Who knows? Sentimental, seeing my daughter's face light up whenever she looks at it and points, then says, "Papa!"?

There's no value that can be placed on that.

So, what's the single most valuable antique you've ever bought at a sale of any kind?

Send your answer to me at noah.fleisher@fwpubs.com, or post your answer in the comments below.

For some reason it was very hard to write the headline to this post and not sound like I was trying to speak like Yoda...



"Hmmm... On eBay good ephemera buys still there are... Blind is eBay corporate... they must unlearn what they have learned..."

But I digress.

Marty at Ephemera Blog has posted this about another post he read and enjoyed about eBay still being the place to get good buys on ephemera, and he's right. Put aside your feelings about eBay corporate acting like a bunch of dolts in hurting it's dealer base and you can see, just by reading Marty's post, and the post he links to, that they're right.

As Master Yoda might say, "By your anger blinded be not... Good buys on ephemera there still are..."

Antique Trader had an article about this sale, by one Paul Mahwinney of Pittsburgh, of perhaps the greatest single collection of records ever to be sold at one time. Our story was in the 2-20 issue.

It is truly an amazing collection, and, if I had a cool $3M for just about every record ever recorded - and you can bet there are some rare and valuale ones in there - then I'd get in a second.

I'd reference Trader's article, but I couldn't resist this headline: Dude Auctions off "World's Greatest Record Collection."

Dude... Whoa...

Just what exactly will it take for owner's of private, important collections of art - especially those on public display - to add security?



This is an unbelivable story, reported widely across the world this morning, about more than $160M in art stolen from the Beuhrle Collection in Zurich. I like the New York Times coverage best, so I linked to it here.

Chances are the artwork will go underground and decorate the home of some one who doesn't care that it's stolen goods. The market in art theft if huge, and the paintings are re-sold at hugely below actualy value. You could pick up one of these paintings, the Cezanne for instance, for a song... Say $15 million...

Let me just go check that shoebox in my closet. Maybe I'll cash in those bonds I got for my bar mitzvah so long ago.

Hey Beuhrle Collection! Get a lock on those doors and a connection to the police. Then maybe those priceless paintings will remain where they are and you'll be proven worthy to own such cultural treasures!

Since it was mentioned in the 2-20 Trader, and on this blog earlier this week, here's what Specialist Auctions has released about its sale to compete with eBay.

I understand well and good that this is a press release from the company and they are representing their best position on the subject. I feel, from an editorial standpoint, that it bears looking at because it is one of the most public counteractions to eBay's recent changes.

Here's how they put it:

"SPECIALIST AUCTIONS TO GO HEAD TO HEAD WITH EBAY DURING “VINTAGE BLOW-OUT SALE”
 
VBOE on Specialist Auctions February 14 – February 21, 2008
 
In an effort to attract both unhappy Ebay buyers and sellers, the rapidly expanding UK-based site Specialist Auctions (www.specialistauctions.com) announced plans to compete directly with a long-held tradition of Ebay vintage clothing sellers: the popular “Vintage Blow Out Sale.”  During this sale, many vintage items are sold for $19.99 or less.
 
Specialist Auctions is calling its sale “VBOE,” and VBOE is rapidly catching on.  Numerous Ebay vintage sellers, some of them Powersellers, are signing up on Specialist Auctions in order to take advantage of the event, which, like VBO, runs from February 14 through February 21, 2008.  Many vintage items will be also be offered for $19.99 or less. 
 
During VBOE, buyers will be able to pick from a huge variety of vintage clothes, hats, accessories, jewelry, and more.  Just like on Ebay.  And Specialist Auctions is also offering collectibles, comics, in fact, anything that dates before 1989.
 
The recent changes at Ebay have prompted calls for a boycott starting February 18 and lasting at least a week.  By moving to sites like Specialist Auctions, sellers can sell with a clear conscience—and not be held hostage to payment method Paypal, an Ebay subsidiary that recently announced it could put a 21-day hold on payments, even if the item was shipped to the buyer.  Sellers on Specialist Auctions accept a wide array of payment options, including Google Checkout, Western Union, money orders, and bank transfers.  Not only that, the only charge to sellers that Specialist Auctions asks for is 3% of the sale price of an item—no matter how high or how low.
 
So if you REALLY want to shop victoriously, shop at Specialist Auctions during VBOE!"

I trust you can decide for yourself.

Everyone in the antiques business - collector and dealer alike - have an opinion about eBay. However you feel about it now, it's played a major role in antiques commerce over the last decade. The role, however, has been changing rapidly in recent weeks.

Ebay has suffered a well publicized decline in market share in the last year - something like 14% - in its auction business and has not seen it's Marketplace feature do as well as investors would have like to have seen in the face of Amazon and Google's growing share.

This all culminated last week when it was announced that Meg Whitman, the CEO who guided eBay to glory in the late 1990s, was resigning to "spend more time with her family." That last bit was mine... I just put it in for dramatic effect...

Whitman's resignation, and her successors pledge to amp up the Marketplace and "Buy It Now" features while de-emphasizing the auction business, along with a reduction in listing fees and a tweak to the feedback system - which many sellers fear will lead to shady buyers not being weeded out - have given eBay more press than its had in a few years. Whether it's positive remains to be seen.

Here's what Trader wants to know this week: With a leadership change, lower listing fees and a shift in selling focus, can eBay remain a relevant force in the marketplace?

Post your answer to the new Antique Trader Blog at www.antiquetraderblog.com/atblog, or send your response to noah.fleisher@fwpubs.com.

To be fair, it means change for the entire business, but I needed a way to get you reading.

As was widely reported earlier this week, Meg Whitman is stepping down as CEO of eBay. While there she oversaw phenomenal growth in the business, making the company a household name and turning on countless thousands of people to the business of auctions - even if they weren't strictly antiques auctions. The impact of eBay on the antiques business, as noted earlier this week, has been huge.

The last few years, however, eBay has seen a precipitous decline in its listings, its sellers and its overall business, so Wall Street was expecting Whitman's resignation for a while, and - as reported here in a good article from Fortune Magazine - her successor John Donahoe will most likely be making some significant changes to the online auction giant to make it more competitive with other sites like Amazong and Google, where a lot of sellers are going to market their goods.

Some have blamed eBays diminished status on the yearly hike in seller's fees, while others in the media have speculated that eBay has lost market share because it didn't focus on buyer's needs. In the print version of Antique Trader our Web writer Gabe Constantine has written about this before. And it does indeed seem that eBay is already trying to make itself more customer friendly in light of its problems.

Here's what the real change is going to be, and its ramifications on antiques will be interesting to watch, considering how good it's been in the past for many dealers and buyers. Basically, eBay, under Donahoe, will emphasize its auctions less and put more into its Marketplace where you can "Buy it Now," and not have to wait.

For many, I imagine, this will be great, because you will simply click and buy and await the arrival of your booty in the mail. It does, however, fundamentally change the nature of what antiquers on the eBay have come to expect. NOt to mention the many people and services that make a good bit of do-re-mi from sniping software - the programs that allow you to get a last second bid in as time expires.

I can hardly blame eBay for wanting to change and be competitive with the other online retailing giants. This is America and anything is fair game. Also, antiques and its varying subsets have evolved in the past decade themselves, with sites like Ruby Lane and others, to conduct eBay type auction and Marketplace business in a quality-controlled atmosphere run by people with actual expertise in the area. We've all heard stories, and experienced it ourselves, where what you got was not what was represented in the sale - a fake, fraud or something of severaly diminished quality - or the price was artificially inflated by scamming dealers looking to fleece excited buyers caught up in the heat of the moment. With the ability to control our own sites and quality, the need for eBay among hardcore antiquers is certainly less. It should be interesting to see ow eBay weathers the transition.

Personally, I wonder if it isn't too late for eBay to make up that ground. The company enjoyed so much success and such heightened status in the last decade, that it seemed that it thought that - because it was the industry leader - that it didn't necessarily need to change and that the busines would follow it instead of the reverse. It's a classic mistake, one that's been made countless times over the centuries.

What does everyone else think?