Sellers are not doing buyers favors by selling on ebay.
Buyers expect to get what they want and sellers expect to get paid and to stay in business. Without buyers and sellers, there'd be no ebay.
Photographs are the first part of your listing a buyer sees. Make this first impression count! Always respect your buyer! Sellers need buyers! Sounds obvious but you'd be surprised at how few know this and take advantage of it.
Always use as many pictures as possible with a neutral or bright background. Make sure there is enough light/flash so the buyer can accurately judge the toy from the pictures. Make the pictures as nice as possible, as if there is no word description in the listing. Let the pictures speak and describe the toy accurately.
Make sure the pictures are as big as possible within reason. A good picture size is between 1000 and 750 pixels wide/tall. It makes a seller look dishonest when their pictures are dark, grainy, out of focus and too small! That will result in lower sales amounts and fewer overall sales. Some sellers will upload a 1000 pixel image, taken from across a messy kitchen, replete with a sink full of dirty dishes in the background and off about 20 feet away is the toy, sitting on the table, smaller than one's pinky nail.
Make it happen for the buyer and the buyer will make it happen for you! Ebay allows for 12 full sized pictures for FREE! Take advantage of it!
Never place the toy on top of the box to save time taking one or two extra pictures!!! Always put the toy and box side by side or take separate pictures of each! We cannot emphasize how many times we've seen 50 or 60 yr old toy boxes ruined because of this! Don't do it! To collectors, the toy and the original box are equally important factors when collecting.
Never place the toy on the floor, driveway, asphalt, the back yard or other harsh surface or environment! This can mar the toy and ruin the experience for the buyer and potentially lead to a returned item, lower sales value and maybe poor feedback. You might also lose a customer in the process at the very least! Take care of the toys you are listing. After all, these toys are usually antiques and they just don't make them anymore! Buyers don't want them "just because". Buyers want what they want and if you have it, make it happen!
Try to stay out of your pictures! Let the pictures of the toy do all the talking! There are several websites that exist only to show sellers' dirty hands, wearing their underwear, etc., gathered solely from ebay listings. While this may seem funny to some, the seller's presence in a picture is a real turn-off. Avoid it!
Respect your customers who wish to buy your items by taking good care of the toys you are selling and showing accurate pictures! The better you show and treat your toy, the more others might want it and the more they might pay, meaning more/higher sales for the seller. The goal of ebay is to join buyers with sellers and for all parties to profit from the experience!
DESCRIBING YOUR TOY
In your description, pretend you did not take any pictures and describe as many details about the toy as possible. Sellers lose credibility when they lie or misrepresent their items, so tell the truth! If there's a crack, scratch or rust, say so!
Try to say as much as possible - about the toy! No one wants to read about your neighbor's dog's gout or how you hate politics! Keep it on topic - toys! Buyers also don't want to read about what a know-it-all you are and expert such and such, ranting on for paragraphs before mentioning the toy!
Also, for all you sellers who pride yourselves in "Estate Sale" finds - stop talking about it. No buyer wants to hear how you hit all the yard, garage, tag and basement sales in your neighborhood and found bargains for which you're now asking God's money for, all the while pretending you were just rubbing elbows with the Gettys and Rothschilds. It's a real turn-off for buyers so keep it to yourself!
In the picture above right you can see on the left side is the seller's image from the ebay listing, small and grainy and oh yeah, no signs of rust! Yes, that's the actual size and picture from the listing. To the right is the real-life image of the toy once it arrived. No where in the images or description for the listing on ebay did the seller mention the extensive rust, corrosion and holes in the toy! Did the toy get returned with ebay money back guarantee and a full refund issued? Yes. Did the seller get any repeat business from the buyer? No, no he didn't. That was a $300 sale gone bad. The seller is lucky he didn't get a negative feedback for such a deceptive listing!
Never say the toy is "untested" because you don't have batteries or the time to test it! Show respect for your buyers and admit the toy is not working if it isn't working! Take the time to get batteries and test the toy! No buyer believes the seller when they say they didn't have time to test the toy and especially when sellers say "I don't have batteries"! If you have time to sell it, there's time to test it! Again, a truthful seller gains credibility with buyers when going the extra mile. Likewise, not accurately describing the toy leads to lower sales (as I mentioned above, buyers don't believe it when the seller says "not tested") and will also result in fewer sales in the long run.
In the case of the robot toy above, the seller suggested the rust happened during shipping, which took 2 days and was perfectly dry upon arrival. The seller, who has several hundred listings also mentioned the toy was not tested. And how could it have been tested, since the battery box was completely missing! The seller neglected to mention that fact as well. Ironically several other listings of the same seller did mention that some toys were tested and working perfectly. In other listings the seller stuck by that old line "I have no batteries...untested". Hmmm... FAIL!
Disrespecting buyers never pays off and the buyer here mentioned this fiasco to dozens of collectors on a well known toy forum. The images went viral and the rest is obvious.
This box is for sitting on a store shelf, not shipping a $550 toy overseas!
PACKING AND SHIPPING THE TOY
Once you've made a sale, your work is just starting! Once again, respect your buyer! They expect to get what they purchased from the listing, not excuses.
Make sure the toy is well packed and shipped as quickly as possible! Shipping the next business day frees the seller up to list more items. It also makes the customer happy in knowing their toy has been shipped quickly.
In the picture left is a box someone in the UK thought was appropriate to ship a $550 toy overseas! Inside was a plastic shopping bag, tossed in for some reason. The seller charged $88 for shipping and spent $17.80 on postage with NO insurance! The toy was about 1.5 inches larger than the box, but that didn't stop the seller from ramming the toy inside. Out of sight out of mind? Needless to say, the toy was returned with ebay Money Back Guarantee for a full refund. The toy was ruined. Draw your own conclusions...
Packing is critical for vintage items and should be done with care to preserve both toy and original box if present. The original box IS NOT a shipping box! Pack the item(s) well, with plenty of protective material. Don't have bubble wrap (preferred)? Then go out and get some newspaper! Not one sheet, a whole newspaper if necessary! After all, they cost about a buck and work well as a packing material when used properly. Crumble up individual sheets of newspaper and fill any voids in the shipping box, including making a nice bed of crumbled newspapers in the bottom of the box before placing the toy inside. I can't tell you how many times someone has placed a toy in an empty box, then filled it with great packing material only to have the toy arrive damaged/destroyed as it was unprotected in the bottom of the box, getting tossed and slammed on its bottom side the entire shipping journey!
Be sure to use some newspaper (or packing tissue paper) to individually wrap the toy and box. The toy ideally should be packed separately from the original toy box. Both should be protectively wrapped to avoid damage while in transit inside your shipping box. If the toy box is hollow/empty, fill it gently with crumbled newspapers. Don't over do it and ruin the toy box! Just enough to keep the box from collapsing during transit.
The shipping box should be large enough to accommodate the toy and/or box/other toys but not too big as to be impractical. Leaving a space of about 2 to 4 inches from the inner walls of the shipping box and the contents is usually a good measure. Use all the newspaper you need to fill in all the gaps/voids in between the item/contents and the shipping carton. Ideally the box should be new or newish. USPS offers free boxes for Priority and Express Mail shipping and ships them to you for free! Go visit their website and order some - it's free!
Don't take some old box and tape it to death hoping it will make the journey - it won't! About 20% of the toys I buy have to be sent back to the seller due to poor packing and damage during shipping! That means lower sales and fewer customers as I and many other buyers will not return to a seller who has only offered a bad shopping experience. Respect the buyer and they will return!
Also, assume everything you sell will be handled by large, hungry, brain-dead gorillas with an attitude while in transit! Mark Fragile in at least 2 inch sized wording on EVERY side of the box. Use a RED marker if you have one. If you have to, write FRAGILE on pieces of paper and tape them to all sides of the box, legible and clear.
Finally, if the value of an item exceeds $50, the seller should insure it for the actual value! That whole nonsense many sellers employ of claiming "Seller not responsible for damage during shipping" is rubbish and disrespects the buyer! If you're a seller, you're 100% responsible for the toy to arrive EXACTLY as in the listing! Don't believe me? Go read ebay and PayPal seller policies. A buyer is not liable at all for a damaged item and can simply return it to the seller, using the seller's return policy or ebay's money back guarantee. See the $550 mistake the UK seller made above, OUCH! So do yourself a favor and insure it! Sellers ARE responsible for ALL damages incurred during shipping. Lying to buyers about it only disrespects them, which of course leads to lower and fewer sales.
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