Help on pricing needed

Hi all

I am about to put my Polaroid M403R portrait/passport camera for sale on the bay, but I haven't got a glue on how much this camera is worth. Can anybody help me in the right direction?

Kim

Do a search of "Completed Listings" under Advanced Search. This will tell you what others have sold for.

However, the best way to get the most money on eBay is to start the auction at 0.99. This get's people excited and bidding early, the more bidding, the more valid and trustworthy the auction seems, and more and more people start bidding. However, it can be scary if it's coming up on a few hours and there are still no bids. Having a friend bid a minimum is not a bad idea, though slightly unethical.

Setting a reserve is usually a bad idea also.

Luckily, the beauty of an auction is that the fair market price is automatically met. (in theory)

holmburgers said:

...Having a friend bid a minimum is not a bad idea, though slightly unethical.

Click to expand...

It's dishonest and committing fraud. If someone doesn't want to run a legitimate auction, they shouldn't list in the first place. If something looks like fraud, it should be reported. I've seen a few sellers that engage in sham bidding and I won't go near their auctions.

Getting a friend or anyone to do a sham bid isn't slightly unethical, it's completely so.

But, yes, a completed auctions search will give you a good indication of ultimate "value", and perhaps more importantly, demand. If there are few auctions that actually complete, you'll know what to expect. If demand is good, and you don't have a certain price you need to cover, throwing caution to the wind and starting at .99 is a good strategy. Interested buyers will get it to where you want. For items that have good demand, no bids or low activity even a few minutes before the close is not a good indicator of the final price. I've seen prices of stuff triple or more in the last 5 seconds of *bay auctions.

I think an important aspect to getting the highest closing bid is timing the closing - or more succinctly timing the listing to time the closing. True, starting at 0.99 is a good tactic. But if it closes at some awful weird hour of a day in the middle of the week, then the only final bids will be the automatic snipers. List it appropriately so that it closes mid Sunday afternoon if the target is the USA, or perhaps another time that's more appropriate for a European close since you're in Europe. Proximity is far less important than in years gone by, but it still does matter in things like shipping.

And give it the longest "visible" time you can stand. A 10 day auction gives far more people time to look at it and think.

As always, more good pictures is better than fewer. Even if you've got to take 50 shots with a digital to illuminate/illustrate the salient points it's worth your time. After all, you *ARE* a photographer.

Thanks a lot all of you. Ive taken notes I tried searching, filtered for Completed Listing - I found one - Sold for 299 dollars, Buy It Now.

I got my polaroid passport camera for £20 off of ebay a few years ago. It's probably not as fancy as yours though.