guide to lowballing on ebay

ebay is a one of the largest peer-to-peer online marketplaces, and one of its defining features—and its path to success—is its ability to offer niche goods to a global audience

while the ebay landscape can be very overwhelming in 2024 with live auctions and ebay AI, i personally choose to overstimulate myself through its traditional listings: auctions and buy it now/offers

these two formats, once you learn a few of the mechanics behind the platform, can lead to landing some serious deals—the type of deals you’ll brag about to friends, online forums and future descendants

while these two buying options are certainly easy to use, there is a meta that you’ll have to learn in order to really master the ebay marketplace. yes, buying shit on ebay can either consist of well-executed offers and last second wins or a black hole of impulse purchases and regret

whatever you’re looking for on ebay—vintage cdg, secondhand ssense sale items, or pickups from overseas brands—this guide should help you land that once-in-a-lifestyle deal

search tips

1. use filters and saved searches; the way I use ebay, i usually go back to the app with the same like 4 or 5 searches. the main benefit of saving searches, however, is that it also will save your filters too. you’re not just saving the time typing your search, but also saving the time it takes to select a category, an item location, and type of auction, which can save a lot of time in the long run

2. use advanced query features; this separates the experts from the casual browsers. my most useful query statements include using the - symbol to exclude certain keywords. for example, if i want to look up lemaire or jw anderson, majority of the results will be from uniqlo collaborations. hiding those results with -uniqlo will give you a filtered view so that you don’t have to mentally filter the results yourself

3. view products by sellers; this is by far the best discovery tool that ebay has. ultimately ebay is a marketplace of sellers, which oftentimes sell multiple products within the same niche. think about the seller who is emptying their closet: many of their items will probably fall within similar styles even if it doesn’t match the exact keyword/brand you’re looking up

auction tips

1. determine the type of auction; there are two types of auctions on ebay: high profile auctions (with more than 30 people watching) and low profile auctions (with < 10 people watching). these will dictate two separate bidding strategies, but they also should drive your expectations. be prepared for a high profile auction to triple in price in the last minute, but also expect a low profile auction to get 0 bids, resulting in a re-listing, which sometimes results in a new auction at a lower price than the original

2. for high profile auctions, bid big at the very last second; the general consensus on ebay strategy is to wait til the end of the auction and send your highest bid down the hatch in the last 5 seconds. this works well for higher profile auctions, because you can steal a W from other eager bidders, but it doesn’t always guarantee the W. most of this comes down to luck from a variety of factors (i.e. internet connection, other bid amounts, your financial ability to spend copious amounts of money at in mere seconds) but this meta strategy will at least help you to play the game that most other ebay’ers are used to at this point

3. for low profile auctions, win the bidding war; when there’s less than 10 people watching an auction, there will probably be only 2-3 people actually bidding. what this means is that your odds are a lot higher, so you can play slower and be more incremental with your bidding. in this scenario, you can bid lower or even refuse to bid if you think the item will have no bidders and will get re-listed. also, if a listing has less bids, it will marked as “less popular” from the recommendation algorithm, which will give you an even higher chance at winning in the end

offer / buy it now tips

1. most offers have a floor; a lot of offers will be auto-rejected. usually if the offer is less than half of the asking price, it may be automatically rejected. this saves time for the buyer and the seller, as the buyer can send more offers incrementally and the seller doesn’t have to waste time with the lowest of lowballs. as a buyer, you should start low and then work your way up incrementally, as you’ll have 5 chances to send an offer you’d actually pay

2. message the seller; I use this feature a lot with arranging local meetups on ebay, since it saves not only shipping costs but also taxes. most ebay’ers are a little bit more paranoid when it comes to meeting in person, but messaging sellers can also be used to arrange other logistics like requesting more information or consolidating two orders into one for combined shipping costs. if it’s not time sensitive, it’s usually best to just ask ahead of time, as most users will respond if they are active

3. seller offers; most users will send automatically generated discounts on buy-it-now items. usually the discounts aren’t all that great (like 5-20% off), but it gives the user an opportunity to counter with another offer. also, this counteroffer is non-binding, so you can send an offer without committing to pay. to receive seller offers, you can either add an item to your watchlist or send an offer, then ebay should subscribe you to seller offers on that item

also, what would this newsletter be without an opportunity to buy stuff? here are a few sellers that often provide a great selection of items and even offer discounts too

just don’t flood their inbox with lowball offers (or maybe do since that would be pretty funny)

dontwantnoretrospective

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now that you have this knowledge, will you save more by copping more steals, or will you end up spending more buying stuff you probably wouldn’t have even considered in the first place?

either way, at least doomscrolling on ebay is easier than sifting through racks at a thrift store flooded by the (cropped hoodie / tank top / flared denim) crowds on a saturday