Prices are up.. On Ebay

[scooter]

I have been watching bitcoin related auctions on ebay a lot lately.
Mostly because I wanted to track the fall in price of the block erupter USB miners. But also to buy any good deals on fractional bitcoins if I see any.

It has been interesting to observe prices for bitcoins on ebay since the price started to fall.
When it was around $130-$135 people were frequently paying around 10-20% premium to buy on ebay. This is expected because ebay takes 10% and another 3% or so from paypal.

However, as the price fell I noticed less bitcoins for sale and the prices went up. Now it seems a 40%-60% or more premium on price is common.

My guess is that as the price has fallen, sellers expecting the amount they could sell their coins for to go down decided to hold on to them and wait and see if the market price goes up having the effect of driving prices up on ebay.

Maybe something else is at work. But it is interesting to observe.

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[Jakewell]

The sellers moved their bitcoins to the exchange to sold them fast.. thats why less bitcoins for sale.

[Manna]

I don´t get it, who sells bitcoins at ebay for paypal. There are a lot of scammers outside. Or do they ship a coldwallet to the adress mentioned on paypal and reload it when sucessfully shipped ?

[virtualfaqs]

I don´t get it, who sells bitcoins at ebay for paypal. There are a lot of scammers outside. Or do they ship a coldwallet to the adress mentioned on paypal and reload it when sucessfully shipped ?

Doesn't matter how they send it. If the buyer calls foul, they'll be getting their money back. If the seller does his homework, he can easily spot 99% of scammers on eBay. Most don't. And even if you do, there's probably a group of buyers who suffer from buyer's remorse after price dropping who will threaten you with a dispute if you don't refund them.

When I was selling on Ebay, I never sold a single BTC or lost a BTC after 50 auctions. I had a specific criteria for buyers, and they never met my criteria. Numerous scammers. I only ended up paying eBay fees for my troubles.

[scooter]

I don´t get it, who sells bitcoins at ebay for paypal. There are a lot of scammers outside. Or do they ship a coldwallet to the adress mentioned on paypal and reload it when sucessfully shipped ?

There is certainly a risk to doing it. Especially since ebay is a scam magnet.. I see so many auctions for those fake Cryonic Frostbit mining rigs.
But, clearly there are a lot of people selling BTC on ebay and making a very nice margin.

[Reckman]

I have been watching bitcoin related auctions on ebay a lot lately.
Mostly because I wanted to track the fall in price of the block erupter USB miners. But also to buy any good deals on fractional bitcoins if I see any.

It has been interesting to observe prices for bitcoins on ebay since the price started to fall.
When it was around $130-$135 people were frequently paying around 10-20% premium to buy on ebay. This is expected because ebay takes 10% and another 3% or so from paypal.

However, as the price fell I noticed less bitcoins for sale and the prices went up. Now it seems a 40%-60% or more premium on price is common.

My guess is that as the price has fallen, sellers expecting the amount they could sell their coins for to go down decided to hold on to them and wait and see if the market price goes up having the effect of driving prices up on ebay.

Maybe something else is at work. But it is interesting to observe.

nah the premium is due to fraud rates on ebay

[dnaleor]

I have been watching bitcoin related auctions on ebay a lot lately.
Mostly because I wanted to track the fall in price of the block erupter USB miners. But also to buy any good deals on fractional bitcoins if I see any.

/offtopic:

so I'm not the only one

[ruggedman_dan]

Come on guys

Scammers will pay any price you slap on there. They won't lose anyway.

[bb999]

Selling on eBay is asking to be ripped off.  One of the main benefits of BTC is the finality of payments, to sell it through eBay completely removes that benefit.

[kokojie]

1/3 of ebay btc transactions end up in scams.

[hybrid]

I don´t get it, who sells bitcoins at ebay for paypal. There are a lot of scammers outside. Or do they ship a coldwallet to the adress mentioned on paypal and reload it when sucessfully shipped ?

Doesn't matter how they send it. If the buyer calls foul, they'll be getting their money back. If the seller does his homework, he can easily spot 99% of scammers on eBay. Most don't. And even if you do, there's probably a group of buyers who suffer from buyer's remorse after price dropping who will threaten you with a dispute if you don't refund them.

When I was selling on Ebay, I never sold a single BTC or lost a BTC after 50 auctions. I had a specific criteria for buyers, and they never met my criteria. Numerous scammers. I only ended up paying eBay fees for my troubles.

So what was your policy?

I tried selling some BTC on eBay a few days before the crash and the buyer messaged me with his bitcoin address saying that he would pay half the purchase price first, and after he received the full BTC amount, he would send the other half of the payment (yeah right). 

I told him I would send the BTC to the address he provided, and after they are sent I would message him blockexplorer.com link to the transaction.  That way if either of us claimed to have been scammed, when eBay looks through our message history they will see proof of the bitcoins being sent to the address the buyer provided.

The buyer only responded a week later claiming to have had his account compromised and that eBay was looking into it.

[Rygon]

Stay away from selling BTC on ebay. I don't think there's any reason for a legitimate buyer to use eBay to buy BTC, considering the premium they have to pay.

[scooter]

Stay away from selling BTC on ebay. I don't think there's any reason for a legitimate buyer to use eBay to buy BTC, considering the premium they have to pay.

I disagree. Sometimes the premium is less than that of sellers near me on localbitcoins.

[virtualfaqs]

I don´t get it, who sells bitcoins at ebay for paypal. There are a lot of scammers outside. Or do they ship a coldwallet to the adress mentioned on paypal and reload it when sucessfully shipped ?

Doesn't matter how they send it. If the buyer calls foul, they'll be getting their money back. If the seller does his homework, he can easily spot 99% of scammers on eBay. Most don't. And even if you do, there's probably a group of buyers who suffer from buyer's remorse after price dropping who will threaten you with a dispute if you don't refund them.

When I was selling on Ebay, I never sold a single BTC or lost a BTC after 50 auctions. I had a specific criteria for buyers, and they never met my criteria. Numerous scammers. I only ended up paying eBay fees for my troubles.

So what was your policy?

I tried selling some BTC on eBay a few days before the crash and the buyer messaged me with his bitcoin address saying that he would pay half the purchase price first, and after he received the full BTC amount, he would send the other half of the payment (yeah right).  

I told him I would send the BTC to the address he provided, and after they are sent I would message him blockexplorer.com link to the transaction.  That way if either of us claimed to have been scammed, when eBay looks through our message history they will see proof of the bitcoins being sent to the address the buyer provided.

The buyer only responded a week later claiming to have had his account compromised and that eBay was looking into it.

Sorry. So hard to tell when someone replies in these threads. I just saw this. You have to do everything if you don't want to get scammed on eBay. Verify PayPal emails. Did they bid on other BTC auctions? How much are they paying? How does your price compare to others? Why didn't they bid on cheaper auctions? Call their phone numbers. Social engineer. You want to look for people with good jobs, decent universities, good records of behavior. I did all this and I never had auctions for more than 1 BTC back when they were $10. haha That's why there's such a high premium on eBay because you pretty much have to do this for every transaction.

Don't even think anyone on eBay is going to even look at blockexplorer and have a clue what it means or anything about BTC.

Just think of eBay or any online sale as the buyer can hit an "I win" button and get their money back for up to 90 days unconditionally. Now if you don't have a good idea if your buyer will use this "I win" button or not. Then you obviously haven't done enough research and should not proceed with the sale.

[austins]

I don´t get it, who sells bitcoins at ebay for paypal. There are a lot of scammers outside. Or do they ship a coldwallet to the adress mentioned on paypal and reload it when sucessfully shipped ?

Doesn't matter how they send it. If the buyer calls foul, they'll be getting their money back. If the seller does his homework, he can easily spot 99% of scammers on eBay. Most don't. And even if you do, there's probably a group of buyers who suffer from buyer's remorse after price dropping who will threaten you with a dispute if you don't refund them.

When I was selling on Ebay, I never sold a single BTC or lost a BTC after 50 auctions. I had a specific criteria for buyers, and they never met my criteria. Numerous scammers. I only ended up paying eBay fees for my troubles.

What about PayPal chargeback?

[randrace]

Thanks for sharing you observations OP. I have sold cryptos on EBay, but hold off when the price is down.
I think I'll give selling on a downturn a try.

Also...
Tips for sellers afraid of fraud:
-Add a ridiculously high Buy It Now price to your auction. Whomever uses it is a likely a fraudster.
-Make sure buyers PayPal and EBay info match.
-Look at buyers recent feedback for clues of fraud.

I dodged two fraudulent buyers recently by noticing their PayPal and EBay info did not match.

[virtualfaqs]

I don´t get it, who sells bitcoins at ebay for paypal. There are a lot of scammers outside. Or do they ship a coldwallet to the adress mentioned on paypal and reload it when sucessfully shipped ?

Doesn't matter how they send it. If the buyer calls foul, they'll be getting their money back. If the seller does his homework, he can easily spot 99% of scammers on eBay. Most don't. And even if you do, there's probably a group of buyers who suffer from buyer's remorse after price dropping who will threaten you with a dispute if you don't refund them.

When I was selling on Ebay, I never sold a single BTC or lost a BTC after 50 auctions. I had a specific criteria for buyers, and they never met my criteria. Numerous scammers. I only ended up paying eBay fees for my troubles.

What about PayPal chargeback?

Yes, chargeback is the "I win" button. But I'm going to assume you don't chargeback unless you've been done wrong. See, those people are out there. You just need to do a good job of figuring out who is who.