DrT's Commission page

I am scaling down my consignment services. I now accept only what I think is profitable for me to sell. Contact me with a list of items for sale and I will tell you if this is something I am interested in selling.

Ebay is raising their fees. My average selling fee on ebay right now is between 25-30%. Why is this happening when ebay fees are 12-15%? There are two reasons:

1. Ebay charges this fee to the entire amount collected from the buyer, which includes shipping and taxes. So, if something sold for $10 and shipping was $7 and with taxes the buyer paid $20, ebay is charging me 12% on the $20, not the sale price ($10). So, I pay $2.20 or 22% of the sale price.

2. In order for my fixed price listings to be seen, I need to promote. I usually promote a fixed 3%. This raises my fees by 3%.

Starting in 2024, I am raising the amount I keep (or reduce the amount I give to the consignee).

I now give the consignee 40% of the sale price for up to $100, and 50% for any amount above that. I pay all fees.

Price Realized Per ITEM	I pay	Examples of my payouts to you
Price Realized Per ITEM	I pay	Sale price (per item)	Consignee (you) gets	General Formula (sale price = A)
First $100	40%	$50	$20	A*0.4
Any amount above $100	50%	$500	$240	40+(A-100)*0.5

One way to think about this: If something sells for $100, ebay keeps about $25, the consignee keeps $40 and I keep what is left = $35. Sound fair to me. Still better than the 50/50 split after ebay fees that most others do.

I continue to do my best to get as much as I can for you, by splitting items into smaller lots using good judgment, advertising in various interest groups, writing good descriptions and pictures, and maintaining high ebay selling standards (that give me better exposure) and good feedback (which attracts more buyers).

Consider having me sell these items for you, either on ebay or through email/mailing lists or in various stereoscopic conventions/gatherings.

While you can try to sell these yourself, most likely I can get more money TO YOU, even after I keep my standard commission fees because my auctions (or sales) tend to close higher than the average auctions, thanks to my reputation & knowledge in the stereo photography field and my clear descriptions and good photographs. (If you do not believe this, just read some the stories below...)

I will take care of the rest. After the payment is cleared, I keep my commission and transfer the funds to you (with paypal personal payment or a check).

I do this monthly, or, if the amount is small and sales are coming in slowly, every 3 months.

" Your pictures and descriptions looked so good, I was tempted to buy back my own items !!! "

What follows is a bit dated. I could be add more recent stories but I think this is a good sample:

In 2000 I was asked to sell a collection of mostly vintage photographic equipment (Leica, etc). This customer had received an offer to sell the collection to KEH for $2,500 but she knew that the Leica cameras were not working well and she was afraid that KEH will return everything instead of buying them. I had the Leica cameras repaired and then auctioned all the items over several months, in about 150 auctions. The total amount realized was $12,000 and my costumer received $9,000.

On March of 2003 I was contacted by a lady here in Cleveland Ohio. Her father had passed away and had left a large collection of photographic equipment, including some stereo items. Someone gave her my name as an expert in selling stereo items. I visited her house to see the collection. The stereo items were in a corner of a room and consisted of a few boxed stereoview sets and a couple of stereoscopes. While looking around I found two Baja cases with stereo slides from the 1950s. Also, a TDC Stereo Projector but it was missing the slide carrier and the power cord.

She told me: "I would be happy if I could get $500 for that stuff". I did a quick mental calculation and estimated the items to worth about $1,000. I assured here that she will get $500 and told her that the best way to sell these is through ebay because some of the stereoview sets were unusual. She made a list of the items I took with me, a total of 10 items.

I started by auctioning the Java and Ceylon boxed sets. These are small sets of 24 and 36 pictures. They are listed in John Waldsmith's book for $150 to $200. The Java set closed at $511. The Ceylon set closed at $423. These were record-breaking selling prices!

I left one boxed set to sell later... This was a World War I set of 100 views. This was the least valuable set in my mind. When the time came to sell this, I was debating whether to list the titles all 100 views (very time-consuming task, lots of typing!) or just put it for sale without such a large description. Finally, I decided to list all view titles, as I had done in all previous stereoview sales. And, of course, I had plenty of scans to go with the descriptions. I put it up for auction and I watched the bids go up. When it was at $250 I was sure that this was the final bid but I was a bit surprised that it came a bit early. And then it went to $400, $600, $800 Final closing bid: $984. What is going on here????

The seller had a great feedback record. I emailed with the sale details, and he replied with an explanation of the high bid: "That bid was certainly at the high end of what I wanted to pay! You did yourself a great service by listing the card numbers and titles. Instead of a run-of-the-mill 100-card set of Keystone WWI stereoviews, you were actually selling parts of 2 sets. The first 50 cards are fairly common from the 100-card 1917-18 set but the last 50 or so cards are very rare. They appear to come from a previously unknown version of the 1919 set. Bob Boyd's book doesn't have 14 of these cards listed in any Keystone set and another 29 of the cards are fairly scarce since they were only released during a very short period of time."

The moral of the story: Always list all the contents and details of every auction because you never know.... That's what I always do. It takes time, but it results in higher bids.

After selling several smaller stereoview lots, I then moved to the 1950s stereo slides. I could have sold the two Baja cases with the slides in one lot for maybe $100. Instead, I took the slides out, organized them per topic and sold them separately and then sold the cases too. The total for these slides and cases came to $518. As an example, on lot of 117 stereo slides of Mexico from 1955 closed for $122.70.

Finally, I looked at the TDC projector. I was tempted to keep it myself for parts. But I noticed that it had 4" lenses (desirable). I decided to put the lenses for sale. They closed for $188! Then I took the projector apart and sold it as parts. The total sale amount from this "parts" TDC projector came to $367.

I was given a list of 10 items to sell on ebay with the hope of getting $500 for them. I ended up conducting 40 auctions which grossed $3,886. I gave my customer $2,737, that's quite a bit more than the $500 she expected. Everyone was happy at the end! :) This lady later gave me me all the photographic equipment (not 3d) to sell on ebay. Last time I visited she told me "God sent you"... She also said that she had someone else visit to appraise the collection. This person offered $500 for everything and said he was going to have a house sale one day and he also did not want anyone from the house to be around during the sale. I continued selling 2d items until 2007. Her commission payment from the sale of the 2d items is now over $5,000. (I still have a few things left)

In June and July of 2007 I sold some of my own stereoview sets. The prices I got were amazing! Examples:

Someone posted in a yahoogroups 3d selling group, the sale of 2 lenses (PENTAX SMC FA IF 135mm f2.8 autofocus) for $350 for the pair. I bought these lenses and put them on ebay back in February in two auctions, one after the other, starting at $0.01 and no reserve. Lens #1 closed for $516, Lens #2 closed for $465. Result: I paid $360 (with shipping), and got $981. If this person had commissioned me to sell the lenses, he would have received $713 instead of $350.

I was contacted by Erlys to sell her Olympus 2d equipment. She was very pleased with the sale of her 3d equipment last year and she asked if I wanted to sell her Olympus cameras and lenses. She had already received an offer from a camera dealer to buy the lot for $400, provided that the camera & lenses were in good condition (in other words, $400 is the most he is paying). I accepted the challenge to sell the Olympus stuff on ebay and get her more than $400.

Result: I conducted 34 auctions, grossed $1,597, and gave Erlys $1,062. Again, a lot more than the $400 she was offered.

My friend Joe from our stereo club has switched 100% to digital and he wanted to sell his FED (which was modified for full frame - 8p) and mounting equipment. He put everything on ebay, in one auction, starting at $150. 5 days into the auction, there were no bids.

I saw Joe at a camera show, while the auction was still going on. He was selling his camera for $250 and the mounting equipment for $50. I negotiated a sale and bought these two, plus a Vivitar Flash (priced $35), plus a Loreo stereo attachment for Canon digital cameras (priced $50). I gave Joe $300 (his asking price for the entire lot). He sold me the items and ended the auction.

I went home and prepared 4 auctions: 1) FED camera, 2) Mounting equipment, 3) Vivitar Flash, 4) Loreo stereo attachment.

In my auction, I stressed a couple of things that Joe did not mention, which, in my opinion were extremely important: 1) Joe has used this camera and has gotten award winning pictures! 2) His FED full frame images were successfully competing with my full frame pictures, taken with my $4,000 RBT S1 stereo camera! 3) He is selling the camera because he has switched to digital. I borrowed some of Joe's stereo slides to illustrate these points. Just to show you the difference in exposure between my auction and Joe's auction: Only 80 people viewed Joe's auction. 2,880 people viewed my auction (this is a record for me!)

Bottom Line: I bought Joe's items for $300 and sold them for: $428 (camera), $77 (Canon attachment), $42 (Vivitar flash), $79 (mounting equipment) - TOTAL $626.

Had Joe commissioned me to sell his stuff on ebay, instead of selling them to me for a fixed price, he would have received more money (over $400). (OK, I owe him a dinner or something)

I heard a story about two ebay sellers having a $20 challenge competition. Each ebay seller went to a Good Will store with $20 and bought items to sell on ebay. They spent their $20, went back home, and put the items on ebay. The contest was who will make the most money for their $20 investment. In the end, one seller made $90 and the other $120. You can read about it here: http://www.theebayentrepreneur.com/2013/11/18/the-20-challenge/

I did the equivalent of this challenge myself as follows: I got an email from a well-known internet company that sells used photo equipment (KEH in Atlanta) about a sale in camera bags. I bought the bag they had on sale, plus I looked at their 3d equipment and bought a number of them. I spent a total of $80.25, which includes shipping. I then put ALL the items for sale on ebay.

There is a big difference between the guys going to Good Will and buying things, vs. me buying things from the internet. The items that I bought were available to anyone with access to the internet! So, they are priced more competitively than the items at Good Will that are for sale only in the store. I am competing with anyone with access to the internet, plus I have to pay shipping. But I still managed to do well as you will see. This is still on-going and here are the results so far:

KEH Order	Paid	Sold
TENBA VECTOR SHOULDER BAG 1 KRYPTON GREEN (63 712092	$17.95	$39.95
STEREO REALIST SKY 1A (PR) filters 75796	$4.00	$14.95
STEREO REALIST HAZE (PR) filters 75803	$1.49
STEREO REALIST FLA SH (PR) filters 144964	$1.49
REALIST ST54 W/SERIES 5 RETAINING RING (PAIR) 322653	$12.00	$24.95
FRONT RUBBER (REVERE) lens cover 594283	$8.00	$10.45
FRONT RUBBER (WIRGEN) lens cover 75812	$5.00	$24.95
KODAK STEREO case 306703	$10.00	$9.95
REVERE STEREO case 126376	$0.29
REALIST instructions 75821	$0.99
REALIST CUSTOM instructions 146350	$3.00	$9.95
BOX REALIST STEREOSCOPIC VIEWER 192313	$3.00	$85.00
VIEW-MASTER LIGHT ATTACH F/BATT(STEREOSCOPE)B 75847	$1.99	$24.95
VIEW-MASTER LIGHT ATTACH F/BATT(STEREOSCOPE) 172395	$0.99
Shipping	$10.06
	$80.25	$245.10

The first item is the case that started the order. I bought it for $18 and sold it R for $40. Some other items that did well: View-Master attachment I bought for $2 sold for $25. Realist skylight filters bought for $4, sold for $15. Realist shades, bought for $12, sold for $25.

Two surprises: The lens cover (Front Rubber) for Wirgen was actually for the Wollensak camera (much more desirable), I bought it for $5 and sold it for $25. The biggest surprise was the item marked "Box Realist Stereoscopic Viewer" that I bought for $3. I thought I was buying a box for this price, so I was surprised that I got a viewer in excellent condition with the box! I serviced the viewer and sold it for $85.

Some items did not do well, like the Kodak case that I bought for $10 and sold for $10. Some items are still on ebay (I am asking fixed prices).

So, so far in this experiment, I paid $80 and collected $245 via ebay. To be fair, take 15% off the ebay net income for ebay/paypal fees. This leaves $208, or a profit of $128. Now, someone sold these items to KEH and made even less money. Wouldn't this person have been better off selling them to me to sell on ebay instead of selling them directly to KEH?

While I cannot guarantee that I will have a similar success, I can promise that I will try to get the most money for your items.