A Word about Buying on Ebay

I have a book that I periodically offer for sale on ebay. It's a collector's limited edition book about Rick Springfield, and when the one and only print run ('cause it's a limited edition) took place, a number of books came out with scratches on the cover. Rick Springfield fans aren't the type who want their pictures imperfect, and no one who is paying for a limited edition wants to deal with scratches, so these scratched books were pulled from the initial sale.

The books originally retailed for $21.95 without scratches, but I've gotten upwards of $50 for the scratched books on ebay. One of them even appeared in the Marketwatch column in discoveries magazine a few years back.

On the surface, that might seem to make sense--it was a collector's edition and the sale is long over, so if someone wants the book, she has to be prepared to bid for it, right?

Well, sort of.

But here are a few things that bother me:

-I have a few unscratched, mint-condition books left, too, and every once in a while I offer one of those on ebay. I find that they don't command any higher a price than the damaged books.

-I often start the auctions with a buy-it-now price of $12 and stagger the listing dates so that when one book has been bid up to $15 or $20, I offer another one with a buy-it-now price of $12--but people will continue to bid up the higher-priced book rather than grabbing the $12 price.

-Worse, this happened even when the unscratched books were still available for sale on my website. People who could have purchased a new, unscratched book directly for $21.95 plus shipping were bidding nearly twice that much on ebay for a slightly damaged copy.

-People start the bidding war days before the auction ends, so that when it comes time for the inevitable last-minute escalation, they're starting from a much higher price than they would have been if they'd held off bidding until near the end.

I make an effort to keep an eye on these auctions and end them early if the prices get out of control. Judging from the reaction I've gotten whenever I've mentioned that, it isn't standard practice to end an auction early because your item is getting bid up too high. I guess that makes sense from a seller perspective, but it leaves me wondering how much too much the average person is paying on ebay, and what other options are being overlooked.

Just a few tips:

-Before you bid on something on ebay, find out how much it would cost to buy that same item from a store or the manufacturer (if, of course, it's something still available)

-Don't start bidding days before an auction ends just because other people have. You can't help yourself at that stage; you can only drive the price up.

-When you want to bid on an item, look at the seller's other items (there's a link right on the item listing page) and then do a search for the item itself and find out whether there's a buy-it-now price available that's lower than the current price on the item you're bidding on.

-Decide how much you're willing to pay for an item in advance, and stick to it--it's very easy to get caught up in the final minutes of bidding and go higher than you're really willing to pay. I've seen some of my items double in price in the last few minutes of the auction.