New York OA Trader

Updated to add Neckerchief Photo: An auction just ended on eBay, for a previously unlisted neckerchief from Aheka Lodge #359.

photo credit: sunshinecity
The seller described the neckerchief as:

The gentleman I purchased this neckerchief from was inducted in 1952. He indicated that he had been given this NC by his Lodge Advisor. The NC had been issued prior to 1952 and was no longer available. Not listed in BLUE BOOK. Previously unknown issue.

There were 29 separate bids in this auction, which started at $ 499.99. While there were 5 separate bidders, three bidders chased this up to near five figures.

With less than 20 minutes two go, the bidding was over $ 5,000. From there is was quickly driven up to $ 10,000.

A bidder in the last 10 seconds drove the price up another $ 4,000.

When the hammer finally came down, it was over $ 14,650.

Photo courtesy merck22

Makes you want to find some 50+ year old unlisted item from your lodge doesn’t it?

Does anyone know an OA neckerchief which went for more?

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Here is the latest installment in the series Knowledge is Power. Many of you know that Philmont Scout Ranch is a popular area of collecting. One of the key pieces in any Philmont collection is the Philmont Arrowhead which can only be earned for completing a trek. A person can only get a single Arrowhead upon completion of a trek. In addition to the ‘regular’ trek arrowhead, there are also five other arrowheads issued for Ranch Hand, Cavalcade, Mountain Trek, R.O.C.S., and Trail Crew. These programs are much smaller and have fewer participants than the regular treks and are tougher to get and more valuable.

In 2000 only, Philmont changed the arrowheads, by making the borders red and changing the Philmont brand to read P2K. Since these were only used for a single season, this is an exceptionally tough set to complete.

One just recently finished on eBay, a set of all 6 P2K Arrowheads with a Buy it now of $ 5,000.00 lasted less than 8 hours before it was snapped up.

Here is an example of a Philmont P2K Cavalcade Patch.  A Cavalcade is a Trek on Horseback.

It seems that eBay has listened to some of its users at least in the media category and has amended its previously announced pricing changes.

1. To make immediate changes where we believe it benefits the health of our marketplace: We heard your comments about the need for media and category-specific pricing. Today, I am pleased to announce we are accelerating our plan to phase-in category-specific pricing for media. This fee cut will coincide with the site-wide pricing changes previously announced to take effect on February 20. In the Books, Music, Movies and Video Game software categories, we will be offering even lower insertion fees for the first three insertion tiers as follows:

$0.01 – 0.99 (auction-style only)
Original Categories Insertion Fee: $ .20
New Media fee: $ .10

$1.00 - 9.99 (auction-style and fixed price)
Original Categories Insertion Fee: $ .40
New Media fee: $ .25

$10.00 – 24.99 (auction-style and fixed price)
Original Categories Insertion Fee: $ .60
New Media fee: $ .35

These were the sort of reductions I thought eBay would announce for all categories rather than the $0.05 reduction that would apply for most lower priced Scouting collectibles.

—————————————————————–

Well that will teach me to believe headlines in the press.  I posted the earlier pieces on eBay during my lunch hour.  When I got home, I was able to read the information on eBay itself.

It appears that the reduction in fees for listing an auction is $0.05.

  Basic Fees

Insertion Fees
The insertion fee for Auction-style and Fixed Price listings will be reduced as indicated in the chart below. Also, all listings will now include the Gallery picture feature for free!
Starting or Reserve Price Current Insertion Fee Insertion Fee (effective 02/20/2008)

Insertion Fees for Auction-style listings
Starting or Reserve Price Current Insertion Fee Insertion Fee (effective 02/20/2008)
$0.01 - $0.99 $0.20 $0.15 Lower fee!
$1.00 - $9.99 $0.40 $0.35 Lower fee!
$10.00 - $24.99 $0.60 $0.55 Lower fee!
$25.00 - $49.99 $1.20 $1.00 Lower fee!
$50.00 - $199.99 $2.40 $2.00 Lower fee!
$200.00 - $499.99 $3.60 $3.00 Lower fee!
$500.00 or more $4.80 $4.00 Lower fee!

The 50% reduction appears to be derived from the elimination of Gallery Fees.  Formerly an extra $0.35

The Gallery picture feature fee for all listings will be free

On lower price items, the reduction of $0.05 on the listing and the elimination of the gallery fee would reduce the current combined fee by 50%.  But of course not all of us used the gallery on every listing.

Bottom Line - I don’t think this will lead to a significant long term increase in listings.  What do yoy think?

The rumored changes have begun.  eBay has announced changes to their pricing structure.  They are both reducing the listing fees and raising the commision on items that have sold.

The Associated Press reports:

EBay Inc. said Tuesday it will cut by up to 50 percent the fees it charges sellers to list their goods online, in an effort to boost listings and keep pace with other burgeoning e-commerce sites.

To balance the fee cut, the company plans to increase its commission on items that do sell — a method eBay says sellers prefer because it lowers their risk if items do not sell.

EBay will also increase fees on some items, including auctioned goods selling for less than $25. EBay’s fee for those transactions will rise 67 percent, to 8.75 percent of the final sale price.

Apparently the new fee structure will take effect on February 20, 2008.

• What effect it it have on Scout Patch Collecting?

Of course, the main concern to you and I is what effect it will have on our collecting niche.  As a longtime eBay member going back to 1998; I remember a time where virtually any OA flap put up on eBay would sell for a minimum of $5.00.  Sell-through rates of 95-100% were not uncommon.  Most times there would be a mini-bidding war on at least one of the items I put up for auction.  Even what would be charitably referred to as common flaps would sell at $4.00 on the first listing. 

Fast forward to 2007-2008, many OA flaps (and other collectibles) go unsold at $4.00 and $5.00.  Sell-through rates are sometimes only 20% of items listed (or less).  This has led to a reduction in the number of listings in the Boy Scout area.  Most weeks, there are about 10 - 11,000 items for sale at any given time.  A couple of years ago, average listings were probably about 20-30% higher on the typical week.  Now this only seems to happen on free or reduced-price listing days.

• In the short term, I would expect listings to go up.

Once the reduced listing fees are in place, I would expect the average number of listings to go up.  If a seller’s listing costs are cut in half, they will likely to list more items.  It also means that the overall break even point for a seller will a lower even with a small sell-through rate.   

• Longer term - Where are the buyers?

In the longer term, eBay will need to drive enough buyers to their site so that sellers are willing to list.  While a lower cost will help sellers, they can not and will not continue to list if the sell-through rates are too low.

In a move to improve (or restore) public confidence in its services, eBay announced the acquisition of Fraud Sciences Limited.  While it may not be as big a problem in our niche, instilling more buyer (and seller) confidence can only help in bringing new and repeat buisness to eBay.

SAN JOSE, Calif. & TEL AVIV, Israel–eBay Inc. today announced that PayPal has agreed to acquire Fraud Sciences Ltd., a privately-held Israeli company with expertise in online risk tools, in a cash transaction with an aggregate transaction value of approximately $169 million. Fraud Sciences’risk tools and analytics are expected to enhance eBay and PayPal’s proprietary fraud management systems and accelerate the development of next generation fraud detection tools.

The acquisition of Fraud Sciences fits into eBay’s recently announced plans to significantly improve trust and safety across its sites in 2008. “Integrating Fraud Sciences’risk tools with PayPal’s sophisticated fraud management system should allow us to be even more effective in protecting eBay and PayPal’s hundreds of millions of customers around the world,” said Scott Thompson, President of PayPal.

Hat Tip: TechCrunch

A follow up to yesterday’s eBay post from an posting on the Wired Blog.

Whitman will be replaced by John Donahoe, current president of eBay Marketplaces, effective March 31. Although Donahoe’s a relative unknown, the Street is already impressed.

How this will effect us sellers and buyers remains to be seen, I’m interested in what this means:

The news comes after a tumultuous year for eBay, whose core auction business experienced two quarters of sequential declines in listings. Although the company reversed the trend in the fourth quarter, eBay is still desperately scrambling to spur growth.

In an effort to shake things up, eBay plans to announce a new pricing structure next week, which it hopes will motivate sellers to list more items on the site.

Our favorite auction site eBay, is in the news today.  eBay of course the 900 pound guerrilla in any discussion of the sale of Scouting collectibles  (and virtually anything else you can think of).  The Wall Street Journal announced that:

Chief Executive Meg Whitman is preparing to retire.

In the past few months, Ms. Whitman, who has led the San Jose, Calif., Internet auctioneer since March 1998, has been delegating more daily responsibilities to her lieutenants and is completing her succession planning, say people familiar with the matter. A decision about her departure could come within weeks, though the situation remains fluid, say these people.

I had previously written on some of eBay’s issues last December and this article seems to confirm some of the previous reports.

The company’s auction business, which allows individuals to buy and sell items online to the highest bidder or at a fixed price, accounts for more than two-thirds of eBay’s nearly $6 billion in annual revenue but has experienced slowing growth rates for the past few years. Any efforts to reverse the slowdown could involve drastic changes that may be more palatable under a new CEO. EBay has already warned Wall Street in recent months that it may alter how it structures its fees for listing and selling items by collecting bigger fees once sales close.

Mr. Donahoe has been wrestling with how to reverse the auction business’s declining momentum. Last year, he set into motion changes such as simplifying the auction Web site.

The auction business remains stagnant by some measures. EBay’s third-quarter listings of auction items for sale, a key barometer of the auction unit’s health, fell 3%.

 

Here is another item well worth keeping an eye out for. As many of use realize, Eagle Scout Badges, particularly early versions can be worth significant money. Here is an Eagle Patch on Blue Felt issued for Sea Scouts who earned Eagle. Obviously since it was a smaller, shorter-lived program, there are even fewer of these around than ‘regular’ Eagle Scout Badges from the same era. What do you think it is worth? Check it out on eBay.

A while back I auctioned off a patch on a neckerchief for the TMR Museum. The item in question, was an unlisted Oratam P1 variety on a neckerchief.

I had a email exchange with an Oratam collector who said

At first when I saw the price I thought you had a pair of really big ones or was just plain CRAZY. But now I must admit that I was wrong.

He thought my minimum bid was way out of the ballpark and I explained a bit of my thought process on the issue and how I determined the price. He also had some comments on sniping on eBay. My reply…

Your entitled to your opinion of course, but I suspect the 484P will go for well over $ 100 (maybe close to $ 200 ). It is my job as a seller to maximize the return on an item, particularly as this was donated to the TMR Museum and the proceeds will go to them.

First neither the Tracker Software nor oaimages lists a price for this item (or any P1 or P2). This means that none were sold by the major dealers who contributed pricing to Tracker and none sold on eBay (at least properly identified) over the past couple of years. So it is at least uncommon. Most older Pies and other odd-shapes, were generally produced in low quantities and are becoming difficult to find.

Plus when I showed it to a major NJ OA Collector I was offered $ 75 on the spot for it.

There are multiple people watching it, and at least one person has told me he plans to snipe. We will see what happens.

As for sniping, as a seller I’d prefer to see bidding early and often to drive the price up. The reality is, eBay allows sniping, since any user can follow another’s bidding through the search function, it makes sense to me as a buyer to conceal my intentions for as long as possible. There are other NYS OA collectors who bid on the same items I do. Should I risk showing my hand particularly when an item is not well described or one item pictured in a pile of ” various miscellaneous scout patches?” It could wind up costing me considerably more.

Besides a sniper will never beat me unless he is willing to spend more than me. When I place a final bid, it is the maximum I’m willing to spend on an item at that time. If I think an item is worth a maximum of $ 50 and only bid $ 25 and I get sniped at $ 26 it is my fault not the snipers. If I get beat at $ 51, it was more than I was willing to spend and the sniper is entitled to it. For all I know, the snipers could have been willing to go $ 100 but it will only show one bump above my maximum.

By the way, the starting price was $ 74. 99 and it went for nearly $ 180 .00, with 2 different snipes in the last 15 seconds.