Seems to have happened with all the low start auction listings disappearing.

[ifidget]

Everything seems to be buy it now with the auction format dead.

[andha-21]

@ifidget 

Which categories are you referring to?

[ifidget]

Looking at camera lenses. As a past seller I just miss the days when you could list with a .99p start and gain a reasonable price. It doesn't seem to work now though.

[andha-21]

I don't know that market but if it's been anything like the markets I watch then the auctions may have been bottoming out.

Warhammer models, Hanwags boots and Paramo clothing have all taken massive hits on auctions since the BPF started.

[department28]

Yes, as a buyer it isn't the same having 99p start auctions actually start at £1.75, for private sellers. Even though an item starting at 99p may not be destined to be won for 99p, there was always that happy possibility... which is what encourages bidders in the first place.

I recently won an item for the opening bid of £1.75, but in the auction bid history, it displays 99p as the opening & winning bid price. From all the heated debate about this, given the choice, most private sellers would prefer to have reverted to a seller fee, rather than have this awkward BPF tacked on.

[nigel_paul_wright7557]

I rarely buy auction items.

Why wait for a week only to be outbid at last second ?

[1956glyn]

I must admit that when i do list....its usually on a 5 day auction format.

This is because usually i am not 100% sure of what i should ask for an item 😞     Yes i can look at completed listing but usually mine tend to be in a better condition than those sold.  Often my items do surprise me at the price they sell for 🙂

[1956glyn]

Nowadays i agree that is a very risky strategy.  

[tommystrezures]

We mix our offerings up so ranges of bins, but all our auctions do start at 99p last night only one lot unsold. We have (and I know many will disagree) always done this. EBay in its infancy was an auction site and we use it as such still. I am sure though in part it really depends on the item being sold in the Collectables area.

[m25jet]

I think to some extent the reason why auctions are no longer as popular as they once were is because the market has changed so much over the years.  When eBay first started out it was quite easy to get items for a bargain price, whether via Auction or Buy It Now listings.  In those days the site was not overly complicated to use, as it is today, and people in general seemed to be willing to allow a reasonable amount of time to wait for the item to be delivered once they had either won the auction and paid for the item, or bought the item outright via a fixed price listing.

Fast-forward to 2025 and we're now in a situation whereby eBay have totally ruined the site in just about every way possible, as well as the fact that a lot of people nowadays seem to want everything instantly and are less willing to wait for around a week for an auction to complete in order to see if they managed to submit the highest bid, or whether they got outbid at some point during the auction.  When you consider the fact that a lot of people nowadays want items delivered as soon as possible the 2025 version of eBay is not the best option on the market anymore, especially when there are other sites such as Amazon who provide their own delivery service and can get the item to you the day after you've purchased it, something that eBay have never offered their buyers in all the years that they have been in business.  Even if eBay did try to introduce an eBay version of Amazon Prime they would more than likely make a complete and utter pig's ear of it and end up delivering parcels to the wrong buyers and then penalise sellers for late or failed delivery, such is the extent of their incompetence.

In summary due to eBay's failure to keep up with changing market trends - and to some extent due to the fact that they have introduced so many badly thought out changes that have competely ruined the site in just about every way possible - they are no longer top dog in the online buying and selling market, as they used to be when the site was first launched.  eBay only have themselves to blame for this mess, but it's the buyers and sellers that get to suffer as a result.