Is it getting harder to find good doll stuff on Ebay?

I agree. I've looked on Ebay extensively trying to find a secondhand BJD, because I love bargains. XD But it's difficult to find good deals with all the fees they have...

 

I've noticed Ebay has gotten pretty lousy myself. I used to sell alot of stuff on there, like old My Little Ponies (but only ones I had doubles of lol), but the fees have gotten so high its just a big pain now and the whole issue with being unprotected as a seller is stressful. As for buying stuff, I've been looking for a doll wig FOREVER and Ebay and the selection is terrible. Its all the same styles at painful prices. I've bought a few things from Mimiwoo, which yes is cheap, but how hard are my dolls really going to be on their shoes? I've pretty much resigned myself to looking on the marketplace anymore.

 

I do still buy and sell on ebay but I'm sure there's less doll stuff to choose from these days, both second hand and new. I hate the fact sellers are given a raw deal there and the price increases because of their fees so I can understand why it's become less popular. Having said that, I do find it more enjoyable to surf than the marketplace as the visual results make it much quicker to browse. And there are some good sellers there like the aforementioned Mimi Woo, cool Cat etc.
Etsy still has a long way to go before I consider it a major source of doll stuff but I do look there occaisionally.

 

I buy my dolls from the company website or a US dealer of the website. But I always use one ebay dealer (boggie0909) for all my doll clothes and shoes and wigs. Their company is based in China, but they offer free shipping, plus their clothes are well made and fairly cheap compared to other places.

 

I agree. I see almost nothing of real value anymore. And as for the dolls, I'm a little scared to buy just because of lack of pictures or communication from the seller..

 

I'm not sure it's so much a matter of there being fewer interesting items on eBay than there used to be. It's more like there are the same number of good things, but they've been buried under an ever-expanding pile of poorly-fitted tube-tops, fur wigs and cheap Chinese shoes. o_0

The interesting listings were a lot easier to spot when there were fewer auctions over-all.

 

*nod* I gotta say I agree with Brightfires...

 

That explains my experience exactly. Everything nice that I have found for my dolls has been created for other dolls, but the size works for me.

 

That's my experience. 85 pages of stuff, and maybe one item every two pages that I care to look at.

 

I like boggie0909, too!

The problem I have isn't that there's too much stuff to wade through, I usually get to the end of the listings for any particular bjd-related search before I get fatigued and give up. It's just that there's not enough good stuff. Perhaps this is because I primarilly use ebay.co.uk. It does show international results (only a minority of stuff is in the UK) but maybe I'm not getting as many as ebay US users ....oh yeah, probably because there are a lot of individual ebayers in the us not shipping internationally. I still see a lot of tube tops and fur wigs though.

 

I rarely buy off eBay anymore, and I've never really found it useful for doll stuff. There's too much junk to sift through and even when I do, I find the fees they charge to try and make-up for eBays cut of their profits... well just plain gross. I love etsy and DoA's marketplace. Other than that I seem to hit doll dealers directly and in local group orders.
Selling wise, I try to avoid eBay now. They take too much money and the last few auctions I did do... well they were mostly horrible experiences with people who were pretty darn mean unless you licked their shoes basically. TT_TT

 

I still sell on ebay, but not as much as I used to. I have noticed alot more unrelated BJD items over the last year or so. The good stuff is there but you have to dig for it, I still buy BJD items from ebay. The people I have dealt with when I have sold my BJD clothes have been pleasant enough and I have alot of regular customers who still buy from me when I sell clothes. I think people have been put off by the fees, I have been put off slightly. I have never opened a BJD shop as I make and sell clothes as a hobby rather than a business so I cant comment on how businesses who sell BJD items on ebay are doing. I also sell my second hand doll items on there and they always do well. Mainly I sell to people who do not know this forum. I think you have to really dig but the good stuff is there under all the fur wigs and 'dollfie size' items.

 

DoA and trying to find new BJD sites imo are a better. I find that when I look on ebay for things I have to be very specific. Being such a wide ranging auction site its not really a 'browse window shopping' friendly site. Also I suppose the high fees and the newish odd feedback systems are enough to put most people off. So in a way yes, I think it has become more difficult to find good things. I suppose it also depends on what your idea of 'good' is? I don't really go on ebay anymore to find doll stuff for that reason now, unless I know exactly what I'm looking for.

 

Is it harder to find what you're looking for on Ebay than it used to be? Why (or why not) do you think that is?
IMO as a buyer it has become harder to find quality amongst all the items for sale. There are some great items to be found but you have to be prepared for some serious bidding to win. As a result I don't shop there as much as I used to. On the other hand, as a seller, I recently sold some of my older bjds on eBay just to move them along rather than wait for a sale in the marketplace, and yes, the eBay fees do make a noticable dent!

Personally, I'm finding the DOA marketplace my favourite place to shop for dolls and doll related stuff and of course, etsy is a great seller friendly place to sell my doll sewing.

 

I have mixed thoughts about ebay personally. Sometimes I can find really nice items that are exactly what I'm looking for, but other days I feel like the selection is mostly junky. I guess (like others have said) it really does just depend when you look for it. I've noticed more nice stuff on ebay pops up around holidays (not just US holidays). I guess people think there will be a better amount of people looking for them for holiday gifts or something. There's always a lot of listing, but you have to sift through pages of really low quality items to find 1 or 2 nice items. It's time consuming.

I have a question, am I the only one that's been disappointed with Etsy recently? I remember last year seeing TONS of things for BJDs on etsy...but anymore I feel like the selection isn't as varied as it was. Maybe it's because some of the etsy members have actually gotten their own personal crafting sites now or something. Not sure, but it just seems to be a bit lacking as well...although I can still find way more of what I'm looking for there, than on ebay anymore.

 

I have to wonder if we might not eventually see a small BJD (or just dolls only) auction site at some point in the future. eBay began as a niche site of that kind, and others have sprung up since as it has become too bloated in many ways. The one that springs to mind is justbeads.com, which was fairly good last I used it a few years back -- all jewelrymaking supplies, beads, etc.

Beyond that, I have to agree with much that has been said. The various seller-unfriendly policies that have gone up tend to make the experience not-so-great for anyone who isn't a powerseller. (I'm not familiar with being a powerseller to know what their woes are, but I'm sure they have plenty of them, too.) Gone are the days when it was convenient to unload random household knicknacks on eBay, and quite honestly? That's what I liked it for -- I could find those things there, and get rid of my own. Small sellers seem to be more or less a thing of the past there in favor of, well, distributors of stuff. This is good in some ways, but it is fairly stifling when it comes to smaller, low-cost items. I probably wouldn't list any of my old fashion dolls there, for instance, unless I knew it was one that would go for a reasonably hefty sum, simply because it's become more trouble (and cost) than it's worth for a small item.

 

I actually did an eBay search for "1:3" or "1/3 scale" items around two hours before I logged into DoA. I don't even think their search engine bothers to display proper results anymore. Or flat out lies! There was a "sponsored" result that had nothing to do with my search. At all. And another that advertised a 1:3 sized car, but when I went looking for the listing, it was advertised as a 1:43 scale. (And my eyes didn't miss the ":4" - they just flat removed it! I saw it on the bottom of enough page search results to know!)

 

'Is it getting harder to find good doll stuff on Ebay?'

You know, I was thinking something along these lines just the other day! It really seems like a lot of artists/creators/seamstresses have moved on to greener pastures (Etsy, for example). I find that for wigs and eyes, Ebay is still a good place to go. For rare limiteds and OOAK outfits...not so much. Now I go to DoA Marketplace or Yahoo!Japan.

 

Ugh, I HATE Ebay for doll stuff! Unless I can use Buy it Now, the auctions are just a pain in the arse. After having a couple of dolls and items sniped from me in the last few seconds of bidding, I've completely given up on using Ebay auctions.> And even then, finding those items required pages worth of skimming through wigs and doll leggings.

 

i've always found ebay very difficult to find things on. There is so much garbage and scammers to try and shift through it's sometimes hard to just find on decent thing. I do though use ebay a lot. I find the shipping on ebay to be nice. For a lot of the doll clothes and such i looked at online on shops they're all over seas and shipping for one item is like 20 dollars or more but on ebay if i find a pair of shoes even if they're over seas it's a reasonable 2-3 dollar shipping charge. So it's difficult to find stuff yes, but when you do find something nice on ebay it's a convenient way to shop.