Buying Games on eBay and Flip Them The world’s online auction house, the biggest in the world, it’s no surprise that this one of the ...
Buying Games on eBay and Flip Them
The world’s online auction house, the biggest in the world, it’s no surprise that this one of the best places to find games. Be it for resale or just to collect, it’s possible to get games for bargain prices on eBay if you know what you’re doing and have a bit of patience.
Setting up a quick link to the auction feed
eBay works in a way that you pretty much have to search for things individually, with the site making it a slight ordeal to get a feed of the auctions ending soon. However, this is the key to getting games cheap on eBay and its fairly simple once you get an idea of how the site works.
The first thing you will want is to bookmark a link to the ‘ending soonest’ list of video games.
1. This link will show you the auctions that are ending soonest, which will come in handy. On the side bar are options for all of the other subcategories eBay lists games and various items under, it’s always worth a check.
Once you have this set up, make sure you are checking it constantly. I flick through it every hour and go around five pages deep, sometimes finding list—
ings that go under the radar, allowing me to get some really good deals. Having this bookmarked is essential, try and put it on your bookmark bar if possible.
Get the App
Nothing is more useful than having an automatic update on your phone telling you that an auction is about to end, giving you time to react. The eBay app is essential if you are flipping or collecting. Not only for the notifications, but for the quick access to the best valuation tool you will ever have in the form of sold listings. This will be essential not just for buying things on eBay, but when buying things anywhere.
It’s not the best app in the world technically speaking, but if you stick with it it’ll make the entire process so much faster.
Email alerts and saved searches
eBay now gives you the option to save searches and have new listings emailed to you. This is a great tool if you are looking at specific things. I don’t recommend saving a search for something like ‘PS3 video games’, or you will get a large amount of listings that will be of little value. Be more specific like ‘Gamecube bundle’ or ‘PSl JRPG Lot’ for instance. It’s best used when looking for specific games if anything, but still be precise with your saved searches.
Watch items and bidded items
Your watch item list is your friend, if there are items or listings that have peaked your interest with a fair amount of time left before it ends, you will want them saved in your watch list. This gives you quick access back to the item and will also notify you when the auction is in its final moments. The same thing occurs if you have already bid on an item.
I recommend that you audit this list every so often, especially if you’re saving a lot of fixed price listings. Otherwise these will remain in your watch list until the seller removes it or it sells out, making it cumbersome to scroll through.
Make a secondary account
If you are planning to resell games, you will want a buying account. A buying account allows you to fly under the radar somewhat and prevents sellers from trying to exploit you, it also doesn’t look as bad when you buy their games and don’t already have a metric ton on your own listings.
It’s not essential, but I have had a lot of ease on eBay using a separate account to buy games. The great thing about this
is that you can still use the same Paypal account also if you don’t have too many already attached to one. For simplicity sake, I recommend having your seller account logged into one browser and your buying account logged into another.
Having the eye and valuing
The eye is what I’ve mentioned a few times in this post, and it is essentially the ability to look through a bunch of listings quickly and be able to pull out worthwhile ones instantly without needing to scour each one individually. This includes knowing the general values of most games and being able to spot which games might be worthwhile, allowing you to then go into Sold listings and get a good idea of what something is worth.
When valuing games you will want to take an average price on sold listings, and then deduct the 1 3% you will need for listing and the cost it will incur to post off if you are going to do that. If you get a total in your mind, you can then create an overall bidding price you are willing to go to on a listing.
Sniping
Here we arrive into risky territory, the art of eBay sniping, an ordeal for buyers everywhere to contend with. It’s not an exact sport, but there is an effective way snipe listings.
The first step is to work out what your max price is. As mentioned above, you need to gauge what price you will be able to sell everything for, as well as how long it will likely take you to
do so. The quicker something takes to sell, the less of a profit margin you will need and vice versa. Once you work this out, make it an odd number. The key here is that people tend to bid in milestone numbers, so if you’re max price is around £1 7, make sure you bid £1 7.64, as it will put you ahead the others bidding £17 also. If you’re biting point is £17.50, bid £18.24. That is something that has always worked for me.
If you know the price you’re going to bid at, you can now wait for the last moment. Sniping is all about having a cut point for what you’re about to bid on, you don’t want to bid any higher than what you are about to and therefore you can go for broke in the last few seconds. Next you will need to wait for the auction to get to its last few seconds, place your bid if it is still viable and click submit bid, a box will show up saying confirm.
DO NOT CLICK THIS UNTIL THERE ARE 2 — 3 SECONDS LEFT.
This is the imperative part of sniping and will work sometimes, and sometimes it will not. But having that item ready to go on the side is a great way of getting last second bargains. If you’re Internet or computer is laggy, you can give a bit more leeway on the time, but the closer to the final moment the better. Give others too much time and you will be outbid.
If you have a listing loaded on a tab and there is still a fair amount of time before it closes, make a timer for a minute or so before it ends and have that on the side. You can literally type in ‘Timer X Seconds/Minutes’ on Google and it will make a timer which beeps at the end. This is a good way to keep items going and not forget about them.
Do not overbid
Similar to what I mentioned before, don’t overbid. Unless you are really fighting to win an item, it’s good to just have a price in mind and not go past it. This applies to if you are sniping, buy— ing something you want or just casually placing a bid on something. It’s likely that there will be another one available at some point on the site. It is very easy to overbid on eBay, especially now they have quick buttons that increase your bid, it’s easy to get wrapped up push for an unwanted win.
Read the descriptions and do your research!
Always read the descriptions of what you’re buying, even if the photo has all the details, there may be something they have missed out that is mentioned in the description. There have been a few times I’ve been caught out by listings in which it has mentioned
something is included or doesn’t work properly. It’s a really obvious thing to do, but it’s easy to get caught out if you’re quickly sifting through eBay or getting over excited. Sometimes a listing description may not be too indepth, if you need to know more, always ask the seller.
Feedback is just as important. Not everyone is truthful on eBay, so make sure you sift through their feedback. If the seller has caused problems in the past, then it will show. You will see their feedback on the listing page, if this is less than 98%, check it. Context is key here, a person with few sales will have a low feedback score if they had one little mess up. Always read the feedback to gauge whether the seller is worth buying off.
Buyer guarantee
Don’t forget eBay have one of the most buyer - sided guarantees going and will nearly always side with them. Please do not exploit this, it is one of the things eBay sellers contend with and have to fight against. Saying that, it is useful if you do have a problem with something you have been sold, either it hasn’t arrived or isn’t as described, and you will be able to get your refund.
In these situations, be conscientious and message them politely first. Most sellers will appreciate the honesty and are more likely to be cooperative if you just tell them the issue, rather than going straight to eBay for assistance.
