Bartertown.com

My participation in trading/selling comes and goes but lately I have had a number of occurrences where an individual asks how much do I want? I explain my reasoning and my prices and they say no. That's it. No counter no barter no nothing? Uhh what happened to the "barter" part? Have I missed a change in the paradigm? It hasn't been just here either. I've always thought well if we can reach a middle ground I'm usually good, but there seems to be a glut of people who just don't wiggle at all. Any thoughts?

Lochlannon wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 01, 2018 7:21 pm

My participation in trading/selling comes and goes but lately I have had a number of occurrences where an individual asks how much do I want? I explain my reasoning and my prices and they say no. That's it. No counter no barter no nothing? Uhh what happened to the "barter" part? Have I missed a change in the paradigm? It hasn't been just here either. I've always thought well if we can reach a middle ground I'm usually good, but there seems to be a glut of people who just don't wiggle at all. Any thoughts?

Did you make a second offer? A lot of folks just assume that your price is your price and stick to that.

I do a lot of haggling with folks all the time and someone needs to take that first step.

Oh yes. I never give up .

You're thinking of "haggling."
Not trying to be a grammar-Nazi here. It's actually an important distinction.
Haggling CAN be a part of bartering, but isn't always. A barter is just an exchange of something for something else. Even a purchase is a barter, of sorts.

I'm with Pretre, though. A lot of people just think that's your price, and so-be-it.
My guess would put you somewhere over 30 (probably over 35) years old. While you see it in every age group, the idea of haggling seems... GONE... in younger people. Just gone.

I think part if what might be scaring them off is your reasoning. If you give me a price and tell me why you think it's worth that much, it's going to make you sound MORE set in stone. Maybe next time, don't explain the reasoning on your first message? If there are multiple things they're asking about, include a line like, "Those prices are as individual lots. The more of those lots you're interested, the more fluid my prices can be." That's something I do a lot.

Eric

Another possible reason is your asking price is too high. I generally won't bother coming back if someone is more than 20% or so higher than what I think the item is worth (based on other trade sites, finished ebay auctions, and the fact that pretty much everyone can get at least 30% off NIB stuff at this point).

Honestly there are a lot of options for buying minis these days and dealing with the laborious task of haggling back and forth when it doesn't seem likely that the person will come down to a reasonable level is kinda tiresome at this point.

And a lot of people view a really high asking price as the seller trying to get over on the buyer. You can look at several posts that seem to have been up for months. Just getting reposted and reposted as others do a brisk business in moving items. The ones that keep being reposted are asking ridiculous prices (usually for in print stuff) or super premium of "rare oop originals".

Anyway.. so yeah. I guess in a way haggling is kind of dead. It's a lot like magic cards, there are more than enough resources available for you to determine what the value of something is, there's no reason to try and deal with someone who wants 2 or 3x the going rate (not that that is necessarily what you're doing, just an example).

I'm doing my part to keep barterting and haggling alive.
My 10 year old daughter has started showing an interest in 40K and painting.
Took her to a gaming flea market this weekend and gave her $20. I gave her advice on what to look for and assured her that (a) I wouldn't let her buy anything dumb or (b) overpay. I made sure she knew she had to to the talking and haggling. I only got veto power. : )

She loved it, even though she was nervous as HELL. LOL

Eric

Gaming flea market/garage sales are the best.

I rather like the haggling bit. I find as much enjoyment in it as I do playing games these days. I do a few shows a year where I set up flea market tables. I always end up bringing more home than I left with.
What gets me is on Ebay where it has the best offer button. You make an offer and its auto-declined until you offer the buy it now price. Whats the point?

BobMcCoy wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 03, 2018 11:45 am

I rather like the haggling bit. I find as much enjoyment in it as I do playing games these days. I do a few shows a year where I set up flea market tables. I always end up bringing more home than I left with.
What gets me is on Ebay where it has the best offer button. You make an offer and its auto-declined until you offer the buy it now price. Whats the point?

I use the Best Offer button when I post on ebay. There's a silly setting that says 'decline below X amount' and 'accept above x amount'. I don't use it because it's too much of a pain to set up, but that's what is happening there.

When I set best offers, I will manually decline/accept all the offers and occasionally even offer reasons why.