Auction or BIN? Starting price?

[mugsisme]

I have tons of silver that I got from all my jars. It's either marked or tested. I have over 120 pieces. It's 809 grams of silver. No scrap, all perfect for resale. Some of them are really, really good items. I just don't have the time or patience to list them all.

I put in pieces that I bought that I can't sell at a profit. I have $206.63 of my stuff in there. So double that and fees brings me to over $500. Should I not be greedy, and do an auction and start it at $550? Or should I do a BIN of $699 OBO?

It seems that the auctions in general don't get as high as BIN.

 

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[kali_is_my_copilot]

I had a small sterling jewelry lot auction that started below scrap and generated absolutely no interest. I ended up ending the auction early on the last day because it would probably have been sniped at the last minute and I was a little annoyed.

Selling those same items individually as BINs has already brought in 2x what I started the auction at and there are still a few of those pieces active with watchers in my store. I guess the moral of that story was that in my experience, whatever scale you're selling on, BIN more consistently brings top dollar but is a little slower unless your prices are crazy low. Now the only thing I'm selling auction style are bulk costume jewelry lots.

If I were going to list the lot you're describing, I'd 1. take a really great set of photos, 2. list any identified makers in the description (even the title if you have any higher end (Yurman) or extremely saleable (James Avery, Silpada) pieces) and 3. list it BIN at $1-1.10/gram. Step 4 would be watching for a week or so, if it's getting views and has watchers let it ride for a bit, if not bring your price down maybe 5¢/gram and see how that goes etc.

 

[cyberdan]

right now the value is $507.94 I am sure you do not want to break even. I like kali's idea above, but $800 is a lot of money for one person to shell out. I might break it up into 8 lots at @ $100 each. Take 8 photos and write one auction ad. Post all at once or over a few weeks.

 

[mugsisme]

Awesome ideas. I just got more silver today. So it works to break up the auction into bits.