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Hey Peeps

I'm looking at getting rid of my beautiful Tau army, we have had some good times but I feel it's time to move on to better and brighter things (30k Alpha Legion mainly). I'm just curious what attracts you to look at an auction, I don't want to fall into the usual pitfalls of "pro painted" although I do feel it's a quite unique army how do I get this across in the description?

Any advice and guidance would be very appreciated.

Cheers

Pastel

And I've just realised I've posted this in the wrong place so if it can moved I would appreciate it.

Picture and price, as these show up in the feed.

If I decide to click on it, then the titel has to be short and clear. I don't care if it says pro-painted anywhere, it's an empty catch phrase and should be judged by the pictures.

If I decide to click on the detail page, the desciption needs to be clear. List everything included in the auction, every damage, every paint status.
Also, use the full amount of free pictures (12) or even invest in some more pictures.

Thank you, I was thinking of including my army list and list of models with individual pictures for each unit.

The main picture would be a group shot of the army and price well that's the price ;-)

I would use a pictures a few of your best painted models and not a group shot as the main picture. You can barely see anything in the feed and a close-up of your HQs would be more of an eyecatcher.

Price gets me to look at a page. Numerous (depending) high quality pictures help me determine if the price is worth bidding. Paint job on them is irrelevant as, with only two exceptions, I'm gonna strip any old paint off 'em within a few days.

Hanskrampf wrote:I would use a pictures a few of your best painted models and not a group shot as the main picture. You can barely see anything in the feed and a close-up of your HQs would be more of an eyecatcher.

Good to know, I will probably use a Hammerhead or the two HQs I have

Carlson793 wrote:Price gets me to look at a page. Numerous (depending) high quality pictures help me determine if the price is worth bidding. Paint job on them is irrelevant as, with only two exceptions, I'm gonna strip any old paint off 'em within a few days.

I don't think this would be an army you would look at stripping more a pre painted 2000pts army to use immediately.

I think the pictures are going to be difficult since I don't have a light box.

I'd suggest a full army photo as the first pic.

It seems risky but a 99p starting price and 10 day bidding period tends to work well.
More people will bid early to throw down a 'marker' and invest in the idea of owning the item at an early stage and be checking their updates.
It then becomes more likely for them to get carried away with the auction and spend over their initial predicted spend.

'I was just going to go for £70, hmm I'm not going to lose this for an extra £10.
Hhmm I suppose I could up it by £30 if I don't go out this evening'

That sort of stuff..

However: You will almost always achieve a higher price by splitting into individual units.

The other option is setting a high buy now with best offers, build in the extra 30-40% as people always like to grab a bargain.
It'll take longer to sell this way and cost more in fees but with free repeat listings (3 these days I think) you should get serious interest within in a month.

If you have a quick snap or two to see paint/build quality and a list of what you have with the rrp and what you would be happy to sell for then I could advise less generally.

List it to finish on a Sunday afternoon towards the start of the month too!

Here's a snap shot of a XV25, I have a 8 and one of the 2 Hammerheads. I'm uploading these from my iPad so I'm not sure how they are going to turn out.

Again thank you for all the advice here it's been really helpful.

Those are nice, very dynamic. You should be able to fetch a good price for them, though I don't have any specific advice. I'm assuming that you've searched Tau Army and used the sold filter?

Okay, looking at the pics the models ARE nice, it's hard to tell exactly what I was dealing with given that you have no pics in your Gallery.
Many people value their toys way too highly.

 Alex Kolodotschko wrote:


I'd suggest a full army photo as the first pic.

It seems risky but a 99p starting price and 10 day bidding period tends to work well.
More people will bid early to throw down a 'marker' and invest in the idea of owning the item at an early stage and be checking their updates.
It then becomes more likely for them to get carried away with the auction and spend over their initial predicted spend.

However: You will almost always achieve a higher price by splitting into individual units.

The other option is setting a high buy now with best offers, build in the extra 30-40% as people always like to grab a bargain.
It'll take longer to sell this way and cost more in fees but with free repeat listings (3 these days I think) you should get serious interest within in a month.

If you have a quick snap or two to see paint/build quality and a list of what you have with the rrp and what you would be happy to sell for then I could advise less generally.

List it to finish on a Sunday afternoon towards the start of the month too!

Also with models of that level of quality I'd suggest mentioning that you would be happy to add to the army with later commissions if that would be something you are interested in doing?
Hope this helps.

Focus. If the photo is blurry, I assume you are hiding defects.

So I tend to buy a lot from ebay and these are things which attract me as a buyer (I will list them chronologically):
- starting price ( I usually go for a cheaper starting price since we as a gamers who invested time in it tend to overestimate value of our man dollies )
- shipping (I just hate when people put unreal shipping fees as must buyers can calculate those by themselves, I know that ebay kills these days with fees but shipping cost is more psychological factor in auctions)
- pictures (although it is in the 3rd place good pictures are probably most important part of auction, decent clear photos are really no problem these days with quality cameras found everywhere)
- communication (answer all questions immediately as you see them and dont answer them "protectively"- yes I know they are your precious but I am interested to buy them not to hear too much about their victories or history )
- description of what do you have, name all faults and damages if there are any and custom stuff like resin bases, 3rd party parts etc

And for the listing ideas everything is mentioned there, low starting price, 10 day span to allow them to be seen by more people, offer international shipping, link to some kind of gallery where they can be seen more precisely- Dakka dakka gallery is great, list link also here in swap shop, aim at Sunday ending day, offer people few days to pay for item - 5 is more then enough and looking quality of posted images I would split that army in several chunks if you are not in any hurry. You will get probably more money then in bulk sell but risking few "unwanted" leftovers (if you sell them this way offer combined shipping).

Wish you all the best with selling

On eBay, nowadays its all about the image. title and price, and the sellers feedback.

I work for an eBay powerseller in customer service for my day job, and this remains true across the board of items.
The vast majority of contact from buyers for my employer, havent even read the description ~ I know this because they ask questions that are already answered. Infact some even ask questions that are clearly answered in the item title, be prepared to be nice about answering dumb questions things are not obvious to everyone.
Its because of the mobile phone app, most dont seem to know how to make the description even show up (its an additional button press) thats not to say dont write it. Make it good. The niche for our hobby do seem like a different kind of buyer over general goods, I've sold a bunch of hobby related items on my own ebay outside of work, and the contact from them... I'l be honest our crowd is really quite pleasant and forgiving compared to your average shopper.

Other than that... maybe dont gouge on shipping prices.. that was only cool in the 90's on eBay. Buyers now rate you out of 5 stars, any ratings of 3 or below are as good as a negative feedback.

people who dont read descriptions annoy me greatly.

dont do the 99p thing. Or maybe it might work because you're in the UK and the people there seem to throw money at this stuff.
i still recommend picking a decent price and sitting on it until someone coughs up some money. or even sit on it until the new tau codex comes out. bide your time and you will make more usually and don't get impatient.

your pictures could be better. the first pic is way too tiny.

kb305 wrote:
people who dont read descriptions annoy me greatly.

Too true, but they're here to stay because eBay wants to push the mobile app to them.
Vast majority of shoppers on eBay are not computer geeks who know the ins and outs of the website like the sellers do, I find myself playing tech support on behalf of eBay quite often just to help out a customer or secure a sale for my employer.

You wait until you have a shopper buy something on a mobile, change their mind because they didnt read the description that eBay made hard for them to see, want to return, but cant find the eBay returns system on their mobile, and then blame the seller because they dont have a pc with a printer with which to print the shipping label that eBay will charge the seller for, give a negative feedback to the seller and net a refund from eBay customer services despite not returning the item
Oh lordy lord that one was really entertaining at work! once in while ridiculous stuff like this happens on eBay :/ its a lot of swings and roundabouts! (oh and you get a seller defect for that transaction too ; 5% of all transactions have a defect and your not selling anymore)

Would anyone mind reading through my description to see if I'm on the right tracks?

I've got no problem taking a look at it ; I can judge from a general selling on eBay point of view from experience in my day job.

But as I said earlier, our niche market for hobby stuff isnt quite typical, the others here, who do look to buy painted units / armies are giving highly valuable insight into what that kind of shopper looks for specifically.

Beyond the description of whats actually on offer, you want to have some mention of the terms of the sale in the description ; will you accept returns, acceptable payment methods, how it will be shipped etc

The title should be to the point, but also use all the words that you think should bring the item up in searches. There's a low limit to item title length, many sellers will use every character adding in meta tags after the actual item title until the line is full.

Sent as a PM as it's quite wordy and I appreciate that not everyone would want to read it.

I'll happily take a look too.

Sent to you as well, if a third person asks though it's going in the thread hahaha