When Should You Not Use Buy It Now on Your Auctions?

Buy It Now is a very popular feature at eBay. If your auction ends with BIN, you often get a higher price than what it might have otherwise sold for, and you often get the payment for the auction faster than if the auction runs its full duration.

But with such a popular feature, it is important to realize that there are times when using BIN on your auction might not really be the best thing for you to do.

If you have something you believe is highly collectible, but you are just unsure about its true value, you could be greatly underestimating the final value price.

One woman was selling a cookie jar - a ceramic cookie jar in the shape of a chicken she picked up at a garage sale and looked quite ordinary to her. When she wrote her auction description, she happened to mention the company name imprinted on the bottom of the jar. She paid twenty five cents, and she set her minimum bid at $0.99 with a BIN of $14.99, hoping against hope that it might bring in that much.

The first bidder came along, and judging by her username, she collected chicken things. She bid the $0.99, hoping to get a steal instead of choosing the BIN at $14.99. It turned out to be a lucky thing.

The ordinary chicken cookie jar was a collectible, and the final selling price was over $600.00 US. Not bad for a twenty-five cent investment. But if it sold for the BIN price, she would have lost out on an extra $600.

If you feel you might have something that could be worth more money, do a search online and on completed eBay auctions to see if you might be right. And it shows that sometimes mundane auction description details - such as this seller including the company name printed on the bottom - can increase an item's value exponentially.

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