Those of us who use the Amazon marketplace and eBay, should pay attention to the following changes:
1. eBay recently announced the new Global Shipping Program. This program allows you to ship your items to foreign buyers without shipping internationally or worrying of items disappearing in transit. You ship to eBay center in the US and they’ll take care of the rest.
However, Global Shipping Program (GSP) overrides your exclusions list. So if you do not want to sell your items to people in certain countries – using the GSP will override these exclusions and people from these countries will be able to buy your items.
What should you do? You need to protectively opt-out of the override. You can opt-out from GSP entirely, or go here to specifically opt-out of the override feature. You can also do this through this location in your account settings: My eBay > Account > Site Preferences > Shipping Preferences.
2. eBay also announced that several listing categories, you’ll be able to list up to 100 auction-style listings without insertion fees. However, for fixed-price listings you’ll have to pay $0.30 per listing unless you have a store subscription. See more details here.
3. Amazon also announced that starting of August 1st, US coins, bulions and mint sets can only be sold through a “collector store”. You can apply for such a store here, if you qualify. However, to qualify you must be a member of NGC, PCGS, PNG or ICTA. Members of other organizations (like ANA, PNNA, FUN) can only apply if they’re also members of one of the first four. The meaning of this qualification requirement is that small-scale individual collectors are effectively barred from selling on Amazon. Welcome to eBay.
Happy selling,
Your Little Advisor
