All I want to do is talk about Sportlots

[timber09]

Originally Posted by nam812

The slow month of May continues.

Oddly enough I have having a pretty damn good month so far. If things continue with similar proportions, I will surpass April total sales within the next week.

The real oddity of it all is that the bulk of sales are random assortments from large timeframes. Generally a spike month lines up with a fair amount of newer product or a few large set collectors but I think I have four or five large orders that are just giant mixed bags of stuff. Filling one today that will go to that box that is that ranges from early 80s stuff to 2020 Bowman Chrome in baseball and 80s to 2020s hockey.

I better shut up so I don't jinx it. I'll take the decent sales numbers and run. COMC on the other hand has been crickets.

[tribefan26]

Originally Posted by ScottBreaks

There is no way to mark as shipped unless you're providing tracking. Orders can be marked as Filled, which means the cards have been pulled for the order. That doesn't necessarily mean they've been shipped.

I don’t mark box orders as filled until the day before or day they are shipped. They adjusted the time to fill algorithm so that a seller doesn’t suffer on that metric. I don’t usually put tracking on box orders.

[ScottBreaks]

Anyone else's box order taking a little bit to get to them? I requested and paid for the cards currently in my box almost a week ago, still shows as pending. Thinking they might just be backed up with orders.

[flyercle]

Originally Posted by ScottBreaks

Anyone else's box order taking a little bit to get to them? I requested and paid for the cards currently in my box almost a week ago, still shows as pending. Thinking they might just be backed up with orders.

It looks like Sportlots is lagging a bit on getting them checked in, so they may have already been received but not "checked-in". I know I had a box shipment that was received by them on last Saturday, but has not yet been checked-in.

[nam812]

Worst month is a long time continues for me. Hope everyone else is killing it.

[DegaBama]

I think I said this before but people are asking for a competitor for eBay and sportlots is it. The interface needs updating but the buying and selling of auctions is good. Fees are low. I wouldn't be listing high-end stuff but low-end stuff does well.

[sthoemke]

How well do 1990's basketball base cards sell on Sportlots? (commons, semi-stars)

[flyercle]

Originally Posted by sthoemke

How well do 1990's basketball base cards sell on Sportlots? (commons, semi-stars)

I've been actually surprised, but my basketball stuff doesn't move all that way. Baseball definitely seems to be king on that website (although I haven't listed all that much football or hockey yet).

[longhornjunkie]

Originally Posted by flyercle

It looks like Sportlots is lagging a bit on getting them checked in, so they may have already been received but not "checked-in". I know I had a box shipment that was received by them on last Saturday, but has not yet been checked-in.

I had one Received tonight.

[bryanscs]

Pokemon & Magic are going to be added to the site.

I've seen a lot of request for this, so we'll see how it goes!

[nam812]

Is anyone else getting "invalid search request" no matter what they try to search for?

[ScottBreaks]

Originally Posted by nam812

Is anyone else getting "invalid search request" no matter what they try to search for?

Yes, was hoping to grab some cards to finish out some more sets

[longhornjunkie]

Originally Posted by DegaBama

I think I said this before but people are asking for a competitor for eBay and sportlots is it. The interface needs updating but the buying and selling of auctions is good. Fees are low. I wouldn't be listing high-end stuff but low-end stuff does well.

Is it possible to only do auctions on Sportlots and not be an inventory/fixed seller? I do see where they encourage low starting bids. I'd be afraid if they get flooded with eBay refugees they'll go up on fees.

[timber09]

Originally Posted by longhornjunkie

Is it possible to only do auctions on Sportlots and not be an inventory/fixed seller? I do see where they encourage low starting bids. I'd be afraid if they get flooded with eBay refugees they'll go up on fees.

I believe there are a number of sellers that only do auctions. SL also urges smaller or more infrequent sellers to utilize auctions instead of store inventory.


Excerpt from Sportlots User Guide > Sportlots Stores > Fees

Sportlots encourages smaller sellers to use the Sportlots Auction format to sell cards. This is a great format to quickly turnaround cards that are no longer needed. Fixed prices stores format is generally used for larger sellers looking to consistently make monthly sales over a long period of time.

[longhornjunkie]

Thanks! I missed that comment.

[timber09]

Originally Posted by longhornjunkie

Thanks! I missed that comment.

It is tucked in there and hardly noticeable - I'm sure most people miss it and are scanning right to the chart that shows the fees.

I haven't done it recently but if you go and start looking at auctions then click on the sellers you can see their store inventory, transactions and feedback. There are certainly a lot of things that can change over time but I think one can also get a good sense for those that are running a bunch of auctions without a store inventory. I have contemplated going that route for awhile as it seems there is some success to be had if done right.

[Tom Oates]

May was decent for me. My goal each month is to exceed the $75 requirement for yellow star to try and stay on the main page of store listings. Finished the month at $80. Obviously, I'm not a big time seller, just thinning out the "bulk" portion of my collection slowly over time.

Sometimes I notice weird buying patterns. I have one guy who bought three 1994 Upper Deck Electric Diamond parallels at .18 cents each. He could have bought four for the same shipping amount. A few days later he buys one more and pays shipping again. Three days later, he buys another one and pays full shipping again. I have had other buyers do similar things in the past and I always wonder what process they are going through to determine what to buy and when. Maybe some people aren't really concerned with optimizing their shipping fees?

Tom

[tribefan26]

I have that some buyer buying electric diamonds 1 at a time. Not sure why he doesn’t just clean out what I have left.

[longhornjunkie]

I put up a few Sportlots auctions. Not a fan so far. Pics must be downsized and somehow the site turned them sideways after the fact. No basic formatting whatsoever in the description either... Text just all runs together.

[ScottBreaks]

Originally Posted by longhornjunkie

I put up a few Sportlots auctions. Not a fan so far. Pics must be downsized and somehow the site turned them sideways after the fact. No basic formatting whatsoever in the description either... Text just all runs together.

I also tried auction for the first time with a Series 2 set, just to compare to the ones I was able to sell on eBay. Had the same experience, pictures turned side ways for some reason.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[longhornjunkie]

Originally Posted by ScottBreaks

I also tried auction for the first time with a Series 2 set, just to compare to the ones I was able to sell on eBay. Had the same experience, pictures turned side ways for some reason.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Message to me from Sportlots:
"auction pictures are always optimized and re-orientated in
portrait position. This is done every couple hours for new
pictures added.

We need them to all be in portrait position so they fit will
with the side design."

[Tom Oates]

Originally Posted by sthoemke

How well do 1990's basketball base cards sell on Sportlots? (commons, semi-stars)

I don't have a ton of basketball, football, or hockey listed but what I do have does not sell very often. I listed some 1970's basketball and they were snatched up quickly.

Tom

[longhornjunkie]

My first auction closed for 25 cents! If my math is correct, after listing fees and Paypal, I'll probably lose 25 cents. At least the same bidder is up to 75 cents on another auction so that'll spread the Paypal across two listings.

[longhornjunkie]

One of my other 3 auctions closed at 75 cents. The Paypal fees on these auctions are over 70 cents. So, definitely losing money.

Now the same buyer both of the cheap auctions and evidently paid separately for each. Somewhere in the Sportlots terms/guide it tells you not to combine if they've already paid for the first one. But as a buyer I know I'd be at least a little disappointed if I dropped 2x shipping, even if it's my fault for paying early.

So, question: do I ship this buyer's stuff in 2 different shipments? Refund with Paypal somehow? Refund with cash in the combined shipment? Since the guy paid twice (costing me 2x Paypal fees) I feel justified in not refunding 100%, maybe I include a few bucks in the box.

And, it looks like Sportlots holds all the payments until the end of the month (assuming you filled the order). Not a good scene if you have a bunch of auctions paid on 6/30 and fill on 7/1.

Any upside I'm missing here? My other two auctions did end in the $3-5 range with the same buyer so I'll come out ahead on those, with my luck probably would have ended at 99 cents on eBay.

[panamamyers]

I wonder if they might think about making s box option where the buyer would be willing to wait for say up to 60 days for the seller to gather enough sales to ship it in a budget-minded way.

I went through today browsing for about two hours and added all sorts of cards i wanted to purchase. Many between .18 and .75 cents.
I then had to take another 45 minutes to go through and removed all the 0.18 cards that were going to cost $1 to ship to the box.
More than just that example though. I had like 100 different sellers in the cart. Any seller that had less than a dollar of cards and was more than a dollar to ship to box, I cut them.

I understand why it has to be that way for the seller, because they don't do enough volume likely in those cases of the sellers I cut. Maybe they would be willing to send to box for cheap if they were allowed to collect a few months worth of purchases?

Thoughts?