[nochkin]

datuk_kk,
There is no much point in it anyway. The time will be extended automatically when you snipe at last seconds. It's called "Dynamic Bidding Rules".

[mario]

datuk_kk, I get many similar requests. Unfortunately none of these markets is anywhere close to ebay's size to make it worthwhile, at least not at these prices. While you may be ready to pay a substantial fee for such a service, most other users probably wouldn't, and it's the volume that makes such businesses succeed, not a few users paying high fees.

[datuk_kk]

I would be very happy if Gixen starts something in Malaysia. Every Wednesday, there is a superbid for one day only, where iphones and LCD TV starts biding at RM1.00. If I can win 10 iphones and 5 42" LCD TV, I will donate all of the savings to Gixen for the research cost. Check out .lelong.com.my
I just want to use Gixen there too.

[frost]

I am a collector in a very specialized niche and eBay is far and away the largest marketplace for what I am interested in. I did go thru the rest of tumbleweed's sites and disregarding the same items offered on multiple sites only found a handful of items of interest to me. Currently there are over 800 items in that category on eBay.

For my purposes it would be better to lobby these auction sites to provide better automated searches so I wouldn't have to spend the time to manually search them than to ask Mario to provide sniping services for them.

[Cupid]

Yes, that is right.

I agree with your findings, so far, in addition other sites do not have the diversity of listings that I need/want... I very rarely find anything that I am interested in on them, so my time is not well spent trying to use them.

I think the issue with high prices is also related to the lack of sales that sellers get through these sites, they need to price high in order to make it worth their while, time wise, to support these sites. Yes the fact that they dont pay listing fees compounds that to some extent, but if they introduced them the sellers wouldn't bother with those sites at all.

The lack of sales I think is related to the lack of overall visibility of the listings, buyers like myself dont find it worthwhile searching many different sites when they are unlikely to find what they are looking for. Perhaps they all need to club together to fund and produce a global search tool that would actually attract buyers across the sites since they would then have one place to go to see if anything they want is available across all their sites... the only real contender in that space at the moment is google, but that is not well suited to finding things quickly enough and informing buyers that items they are interested in are available in an automatic manner.

It's a shame that none of the alternative sites has yet reached 'critical mass' on its own, as a buyer, I would be quite willing to use a real alternative to eBay, probably still in conjunction with eBay itself, if there were such a thing.

[frost]

Ah, Delcampe serves 'continental, western Europe'. Thanks again.

You know, the problem with these web sites that offer free auction or store listings is that the sellers have no motivation to set a realistic price. They just set a high price and hope that some sucker bites. For my purposes I haven't seen any sites save eBay that would be worth sniping. But then I haven't been thru tumbleweed's full list yet.

[Cupid]

frost,

I think the one that you have found is the one that was being talked about.

[frost]

I was able to find Delcampe at delcampe dot net but does anybody know the web site for the "continental" collectible auction site mentioned earlier?

Thanks.

[billyNomates]

I would like to throw out delcampe again. Since March 2008 it has rapidly grown. Snippys.net and Bidnapper both support them but they are a lot more than $7 a year. I would even be willing to pay a second $7 for delcampe.

[Cupid]

[breboen]

How about Delcampe ? It's a collectors only site

[tumbling-g-g-gtumbleweed]

People have made comments about picking one site or spreading to multiple sites. Going to one site would help in buyers and sellers finding each other, but it could end up with another auction monopoly in 10 years. Using and building up different sites would give competition, hopefully, and people would not have to depend on one good site to sell their items.

Yeah, that pesky cost to develop and operate is a problem. But if sellers are spreading to the 4 winds, it might be a good venture.

[Cupid]

[tumbling-g-g-gtumbleweed]

Hi, sorry I disappeared for awhile, kept forgetting to come back here when I was on the computer.

Some of the sites that has been talked about on ebay forums are, ebizauctions, blujay, bidville, epier, ecrater, onlineauctions, overstock, ioffer, digg, ewaey.

It is probably going to take a while for any of the sites to become large enough to even consider adding them to this site. Sellers are scattering to different places.

Bad thing is finding stuff. It is just not possible to look at multiple sites for things I normally search for on ebay, at least for me.

Going to be a while before the dust settles.

[Normandy_Niemen]

Hmmm, the English help pages look like a rough translation from French... The latter are much more detailed, just replace the "language,E" with "language,F" in U.R.L.s :shock:

The major drawback I see with that option, is that for some unknown reason, there's no way no know from the beginning if the seller has activated it. In short, it will appear only at the end of the sale...

Mario, you're right in writing that there's no other auction site which has more than couple of percent of ebay's traffic. It's just that Delcampe has reached the critical mass thanks to free listings and automatic relisting of unsold items, for some specific items like collectibles, it has hundreds time more than eBay.

Best,
N-N

[samhale123]

[mario]

Well, it wouldn't be like doing everything from scratch, but it's a lot of work nevertheless. The size it is now, it just doesn't make sense. I'll keep looking, who knows, maybe it becomes bigger soon.

[GaryKyle]

Whilst this may help you out, I think you've got to consider that poor ol' Mario has enough on his hands with improvements to Gixen, and is unlikely to see any benefit in starting from scratch on a whole new system (which is what it would be) for another auction site that gets barely a single percent of the traffic that eBay does...

Maybe this is something you could investigate doing yourself?

[Normandy_Niemen]

[Cupid]

[nochkin]

[Normandy_Niemen]

Hi

The growing site for collectibles in continental, western Europe is Delcampe. Mario, is there a chance you can do something for us here ?

Best, 8)
N-N

[nochkin]

[samhale123]

Ideally I want one for swapitshop :D

Unfortunetly there's no API :(

Is there a way where php can 'remove' information from a webpage, than fill in a form based on the ifnrotmation it recieves?

I thought not :D

[nochkin]

[samhale123]

There's Yahoo Auctions, but sniping wouldn't work on that as it automatically extends by 5 mins if you bid in the last 5 mins.

[Cupid]

The ones I see mentioned most often in the UK are eBid and tazbar.

However as a buyer of rare collectibles neither has reached what I would call 'critical mass' yet, meaning there are not enough sellers to make it worth my while trying to find anything I might want to bid on.

I keep trying every few months but I still find its not worth my time yet.

[mario]

What other auction sites do you have in mind? At this point I don't know of any that have more than couple of percent of ebay's traffic.

[Tumbleweed]

Any chance of expanding this to other auctions sites? Since ebay has broke its search feature, how about a search feature to include ebay and other auction sites. Since the new fees, no buyer feedback, and possibility of Paypal holding money for 21 days, sellers are jumping ship and going elsewhere.