Logic behind ePay seller pricing

[HalFoster]

All-

Why do some vendors price items at 5 to 25 times the actual amount they are selling for.  Nothing special about the listings, just a high price.  For example a while back I saw a HP 5335A listed for about 10K... really?  Some are "Make Offer" but others are only "Buy it Now."  I've checked and can find no instances of anything in the sold listings although I can't imagine that they sell often enough to show up there.  While I've seen this question asked, I can't remember ever seeing a answer that did not include a lot of "I guess'" and "maybe's"  I tried - very politely - asking a couple of them their reasons but unsurprisingly received no answer.  I can kind of understand the ones that try to bust the nut with the shipping but that pales in comparison to some of the ones with the inflated sales prices.  So, does anyone have any insight here?

Hal

[Fungus]

Because... PT Barnum's theory.

[rhodges]

In some cases, the seller may want to put the listing "on hold", without taking down the listing. This might be temporary lack of stock or going on short vacation. But as a seller, I can easily change the available quantity to zero until I have more.

I guess I have to go with the seller thinking the item is "precious" or thinks the buyer is stupid. Rather insulting, in my opinion.

[DaJMasta]

There are vacation settings for sellers, though, and there are sellers who just set their handling time to like 2 weeks so that if they're away, they can just send it when they get back and still be within expectation.


My theory is this:
You can list stuff at a reasonable price and make an honest buck
or
You can list stuff at absurd prices and almost never sell anything..... but if you do, you've made as much profit as selling 10 or 20 normally priced things for a tiny fraction of the work


There are definitely fools out there, and in this market, there are definitely companies with large budgets looking for a very specific thing if they can get it guaranteed.  I don't necessarily think a lot of the crazy listing prices are trying to specifically cater to the latter, but most will take the former.

[CatalinaWOW]

I am an occasional seller of equipment on eBay.  I don't really do enough buying and selling to have any idea what the real market value of most equipment is.  So I look the item up on eBay and set my price at roughly the minus one sigma point of the listings.  My intention is to get a relatively rapid sale without losing too much of the potential value of the piece. 

The algorithm is obviously flawed.  Some pieces sell within minutes of listing, indicating that my price is low to the real market value.  Other pieces have languished forever, even after major price reductions , indicating that the real market value is much lower than the eBay asking prices. 

These problems don't bother me. It is a hobby, and the sales only help fund my fun.  For someone trying to make a living at this there is real potential for disaster, and in fact some of the stuff I have acquired comes from people who were trying to make a living in this market and were giving up, selling off their stock at fire sale prices.

I think that the bottom line is that the market for much of our kind of stuff is too small to easily establish a real value.  Something like a tutorial by Dave using a particular piece of gear can raise the value a lot by creating a couple of dozen buyers.  Or once the few dozen buyers in the world (or within reasonable shipping range) have their toy of choice the market just goes away.  I have had this happen on two items where I had multiple copies of a device.  The first few went very quickly at my asking price, and then there were no more sales for literally years, even with order of magnitude price reductions.  The original buyers indicated great satisfaction with their purchases so it isn't a case of word getting out that this particular source is no good.

[HalFoster]

I pretty much go with the "big score" idea... but it's the scale that the value is inflated that bakes me wonder.  There are a couple things that I planning on listing high simply because if you are buying it, it will have to be send freight and with what a new one costs even a great sale for me is still dirt cheap for the buyer. (Thinking of a California Instruments 3001TC I have - almost 300 lbs of hard-to-sell.)  But, taking the 5335A example i gave (I'm trying to remember the seller, thought it was All-test (sp?) but it wasn't - *all* the seller's items were priced that high) even with an actual cal cert it would be hard to sell at more than 500-750.  But, then, we live in a world that has people that think spending 30K on a 6 ft. power cord for a amplifier is a reasonable purchase so who knows?

*** Thinking of going out to the garage and start listing whatever junk I find for 100K each.  Better odds than the lottery and I wind up with a cleaner garage. ***

Hal

[HalFoster]

CatalinaWOW:  The best way to get a feel for it is to look for what things *sold* for, not what unsold items are listed for.  Still, as you pointed out, demand - and accordingly price - can vary greatly for any number of reasons.  As you, i just do this as a hobby and, at best, I hope to make enough to pay for the things I keep and to generally break even.  But, taking the 5335 as an example:  most places just buy one, take new pics, and relist.  To go through and thoroughly clean and refurbish one - including not only the circuitry itself but actually following the manufacturer's calibration routine (and do it with in-cal TE) takes not only time but money.  As such, I don't have a problem listing something at ~300.00 (and could certainly justify more) that I purchased for 100.00, but these guys don't even to wipe the dust off first - and, to list it at several K takes real big brass ones!

Hal

[jjoonathan]

Hobbyist demand is extremely elastic. If a hobbyist doesn't see a deal, they wait. Possibly forever. Professional demand is extremely inelastic. Project requirements dictate the gear that's needed and the schedule it's needed on. They don't have the luxury of waiting for a deal, and if that means paying the piper, so be it.

[DaJMasta]

Hobbyist demand is extremely elastic. If a hobbyist doesn't see a deal, they wait. Possibly forever. Professional demand is extremely inelastic. Project requirements dictate the gear that's needed and the schedule it's needed on. They don't have the luxury of waiting for a deal, and if that means paying the piper, so be it.

But then there's TEA afflicted individuals with disposable income... so it doesn't always have to be an incredible deal if it's unusual or particularly high performance (see 8.5 digit multimeters  )

[CatalinaWOW]

CatalinaWOW:  The best way to get a feel for it is to look for what things *sold* for, not what unsold items are listed for.  Still, as you pointed out, demand - and accordingly price - can vary greatly for any number of reasons.  As you, i just do this as a hobby and, at best, I hope to make enough to pay for the things I keep and to generally break even.  But, taking the 5335 as an example:  most places just buy one, take new pics, and relist.  To go through and thoroughly clean and refurbish one - including not only the circuitry itself but actually following the manufacturer's calibration routine (and do it with in-cal TE) takes not only time but money.  As such, I don't have a problem listing something at ~300.00 (and could certainly justify more) that I purchased for 100.00, but these guys don't even to wipe the dust off first - and, to list it at several K takes real big brass ones!

Hal

Due to the factors mentioned above I have had nearly as much trouble with sold listings.  For example one unit had two recorded sales - one at $1500 and the other at $765.  Both within a year of when I first offered mine for sale.  I first offered it at $750, later reduced price to $450.  It still graces my storage area.  There are others continually listed on eBay at well over $1000 and apparently not selling.