Questions for Bruce-EMP

Bruce

How eBay's blunder turned into one of eMoviePoster.com's BEST decisions EVER!

I read an article today in EcommerceBytes and it reminded me of one of the BIGGEST blunders eBay EVER made (and how it led to one of my BEST decisions EVER)!

What am I referring to? This article says that "eBay's purchase history only goes back 7 years". But it didn't have to be that way!

I started selling on eBay in 1999 and by mid-2001 I was one of their largest sellers. On June 30th and August 1st of that year I held my entire annual major auction on eBay, shocking the entire hobby!

The auction was a giant success, taking in over $600,000 and the collectibles department took in over $1 million that week (for the first time ever and over half due to me alone) and that made the top people at eBay want to know more about me.

So much so that they invited to visit their headquarters (all expenses paid, and by myself), and I jumped at the chance, because I wanted to give them advice.

I went there, and was introduced around as their #1 collectibles seller, and was even introduced to Meg Whitman (Pierre was no longer around).

The best part of the day was when I was introduced to a man named "Jerry" and I don't know what his title was, but I was told that if I got lucky he might talk to me for five or ten minutes, becaue there was always a long line of people waiting at his door.

But I was also told that if I told him something helpful, Jerry had the power to make it happen! I was ushered into his office and he started by showing me some pins they had made to send to sellers who reached various milestones.

He asked what I thought of them and I (ever blunt to a fault) told him I thought they were stupid, and I would much rather have a discounted rate for reaching a milestone, and that the pins were kind of insulting.

He said "That's what I told the people who came up with them!" and I knew I had found a kindred spirit. We ended up talking around an hour about all things eBay, but the part I was most excited to tell him was this.

At that time, you could only see past results going back 30 days, and I asked him if they could retrieve ALL the old results. He said "yes and no", that while they WERE still on their servers, it would super hard to retrieve them.

I said, "Then start with right now. After every auction ends, move it to an "eBay Archive Site" and make it accesible to dealers and collectors. At first it won't mean much, but after five or ten years, you will have the ultimate Price Guide to EVERY kind of collectible".

He said, "You're talking about millions of results a month and zillions of images. That would cost a ton to maintain."

I said, "But you can charge for access to it. What dealer or serious collector wouldn't pay a monthly fee to see tons of results for everything in their collectible area?".

He said, "You may be right, but they have so much else going on that I could not get it going" and I thanked him and left (and because I had stayed so long, there was a massive line at his door!).

BUT THAT GOT ME THINKING! If it made sense for eBay, then why did it not also make sense for eMoviePoster.com?

And that is how our Auction History at https://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/archive.html was born! At first it only had 2002 results, but I had employees manually enter results from earlier years (especially all my major auction results) and we were off to the races!

And now we have 2,099,771 results and 2,046,546 images and EVERY movie paper collector the world over refers to it constantly, and surely it has contributed mightily to our success!

And of course eBay ended up mostly turning its back on collectibles anyway (a pale copy of Amazon) but had Jerry listened to me, the company might currently be the foremost seller of collectibles (and I might still be a seller there)!

Charlie

Bruce we had a question pop up in another group regarding photos of lobby cards. Are they taken like regular posters or do you scan them? Just curious…

Bruce

Single lobby cards are ALWAYS scanned. 2 or more are always shot with a camera.

darolo

It's just as well you left eBay Bruce.  With their ever increasing seller fees  (which will eventually rival that of auction houses)  you would need to charge a buyers premium and higher fees for consignors also.

Bruce

darolo said:

It's just as well you left eBay Bruce.  With their ever increasing seller fees  (which will eventually rival that of auction houses)  you would need to charge a buyers premium and higher fees for consignors also.

I agree. eBay's rate are SO high that it makes little sense for consignors to sell there themselves (and do ALL the work, including mailing every item separately), when they can instead send their $50+ items to us and do NO work (beyond sending a single package).

And don't get me started on other auctions! Sending 100 $50 posters to an auction with $49 minimum buyers premiums would result in $5,000 in sales, $4,925 going to the auction and $75 to the poor consignor!