Mint System Grading

Grade	Abbreviation	Description
Mint	MT, M, 10	An item in perfect condition, without any damage or imperfections.
Very Fine	VF	Similar to mint.
Near Mint	NM, 9	An item with a very minor, hardly noticeable flaw. Sometimes described as “like new.”
Near Fine	NF	Similar to near mint.
Excellent	EX, 8	An item considered above average, but with pronounced signs of wear.
Fine	F	Similar to excellent.
Very Good	VG, 7	An item in average condition.
Good	GD, G, 6	An item that has clear indications of age, wear, and use.
Fair	F	An item that is heavily worn.
Poor	P, 5	An item that is damaged or somehow incomplete.

Degrees between grade levels are indicated with a + or . (For example, an item between Fine and Very Fine would be designated as F+.) Naturally, the definition of a Mint or Fair item differs by item type.

If you’re not sure what grade an item is, you may want to utilize a professional grading and authentication service. These services will examine your item, authenticate it (confirm that it’s the real deal), and give it a professional grade. Some services will even encase your item in a sealed plastic container or bag.

Grading and Authentication Services

Collectible	Site	URL
Autographs	OnlineAuthentics.com	www.onlineauthentics.com
	PSA/DNA	www.psadna.com
Beanie Babies	Peggy Gallagher Enterprises, Inc.	www.beaniephenomenon.com
Books	PKBooks	www.pkbooks.com
Coins	American Numismatic Association Certification Service	www.anacs.com
	Numismatic Guaranty Corporation of America	www.ngccoin.com
	Professional Coin Grading Service	www.pcgs.com
Comic books	Comics Guaranty	www.cgccomics.com
Jewelry	International Gemological Institute	www.e-igi.com
Sports cards	Professional Sports Authenticator	www.psacard.com
	Sportscard Guaranty, LLC	www.sgccard.com
Stamps	American Philatelic Society	www.stamps.org
	Professional Stamps Experts	www.psestamp.com

The cost of these authentication services varies wildly, depending on what you’re authenticating, the age or value of the item, and the extent of the service itself. For example, Professional Sports Authenticator rates range from $5 to $100 per sports card; Professional Stamps Experts rates range from $15 to $500 per stamp. Make sure that the item you’re selling is worth it before you go to this expenseand that you can recoup this expense in your auction.

The post Choosing condition of eBay Items first appeared on Tips For eBay Sellers & Buyers.

This is a good option if you have to create your auction listings at what would otherwise be a bad time to end an auctionin the morning or early afternoon, for example. It’s better to end an auction during the evening, when more users are at home. So if you can’t launch your auctions in the evening, spend the extra $0.10 so that eBay can automatically schedule the start of your auction for you.

Using eBay to schedule a start time for your auctions may be a necessary evil if you’re not at home, at your computer, at the time of day you want your auctions to end. It may be better, however, to use an auction management program or service that includes this type of listing scheduling at a lower (or zero) additional cost.

The post Choosing Different Start Time on eBay first appeared on Tips For eBay Sellers & Buyers.

I like setting a price that’s low enough to get some interested initial bidding going, but not so low that it won’t get up to the price I think the item can really sell for. So how do you know what the final selling price will be? You don’t. But you can get a good idea by searching eBay for completed auctions of similar items. eBay keeps most auctions on file for 30 days, so if anything similar has sold in that period of time, you can find it from eBay’s advanced search page.

At the least, you want to be sure you’re not setting the starting bid higher than the similar items’ final selling price. If you do a search for completed auctions and find that Star Wars DVDs have been selling between $4 and $6, don’t put a $10 starting price on the Star Wars DVD you want to sell. Ignore precedence and you won’t get any bids. Instead, gauge the previous final selling prices and place your starting price at about a quarter of that level. (That would be a buck or so for our Star Wars example.)

Of course, you can always go the reserve price auction routein which you get to set a low initial price and a high selling floor. In our Star Wars example, that might mean starting bidding at a penny (very attractive to potential bidders), but setting a reserve price of $4 or so. But when you run a reserve price auction, you run a very real risk of scaring away a lot of viable bidders. If you want to run that risk, fine; reserve auctions do let you get bidding started at a very attractive level, while protecting you if bids don’t rise to the price you’re looking for.

Don’t waste your time searching auctions still in progress. Because so much bidding takes place in the last hour of the auction (that’s sniping, remember?), a mid-auction price is likely to bear no relation to the final pricewhich you can find by searching completed auctions.

…But Don’t Set It So Low That It’s Not Believable

In some instances you need to worry about setting the starting price too low. If you set too low a minimum bid for your item, some potential bidders might think that something is wrong. (It’s the old “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.”) Although you might assume that bidding will take the price up into reasonable levels, too low a starting price can make your item look too cheap or otherwise flawed. If you start getting a lot of emails asking why you’ve set the price so low, you should have set a higher price.

Make Sure You Recover Your Costs…

Another factor in setting the starting price is what the item actually cost you. Now, if you’re just selling some junk you found in the attic, this isn’t a big concern. But if you’re selling a large volume of items for profit, you don’t want to sell too many items below what you paid for them. Many sellers like to set their starting price at their item costso if the item cost you $5, you set the minimum bid (or reserve price) at $5, and see what happens from there.

Make Sure You Can Live with a Single Bid

What happens if you set the starting price at $5 and you get only one bidat $5? Even if you thought the item was worth twice that, you can’t back out now; you have to honor all bids in your auction, even if there’s only one of them. You can’t email the bidder and say, sorry, I really can’t afford to sell it for this price. If you listed it, you agreed to sell it for any price at or above your minimum. It’s a binding contract. So if the bidding is low, you’d better get comfortable with itit’s too late to change your mind now!

The post How Should You Price eBay Items? first appeared on Tips For eBay Sellers & Buyers.