Hipstamp Sales Were Slim

We got a lot of new material listed on Hipstamp and joined in on some of their holiday sale events.  First we ran a 20% discount for three days, then 30% off for Black Friday, each sale affecting over 3000 items.

We were gearing up to ship a lot of items, but the actual outcome was disappointing.  We had less than $100 in sales across that entire spectrum of material.  Is there no way to actually sell collectibles anymore?  Every once-reliable market is so oversaturated with tens of millions of items, what can we do?

To cap this off, we got sick for the whole Thanksgiving weekend, cough and fever and sore throats.  And on Thanksgiving, one user sent me about 75 offers ... almost all of them insultingly cheap.  When you set up a sale/promotion, there's a checkbox to turn off offers on the discounted items. On that 20% sale, I forgot to check that box.  So this flood of offers ended up like this: a $9 items is already discounted to $7, so this guy offered me $3.  Less than half the sale price, a third of our original price.  Over and over, on one lot after another, most of the bids being less than $2.  This went on from about 2pm to 7pm. I did accept a few of them because I looked at the lot itself and figured, "it's cheap stuff, why not get a few bucks?"

And now, three days later, he has not paid for the order.  After using over three hours of my holiday poring over his cheap offers.

 

A sample of those endless offers...

That's how this big sale turned out for us.  Maybe the stamp business is dead.  I don't want to have to go back to eBay and deal with all those fees, even if they would accept me again after erroneously dropping me over ten years ago.  Maybe we just have to pay to promote key listings.  Maybe next time we go 40% off on the big bulk lots.  We need to clear out some space, and have some big sudden bills we were hoping to cover.

With the monthly Sandipex show closing as well, I'm not sure what the future is for this side business of mine.  I have been selling stamps since high school.  Forty years later, here we are...

Update 12/4: We ran all our $10 to $100 lots at 40% off for Black Friday.  Got two sales for $35.  That's pretty much nothing. And the guy who flooded us with cheap offers on Thanksgiving has NOT paid for those lots yet.

Update 12-8: the big order was finally paid for and he added $25 of other offers last night.  These offers were still low, but not as bad,  because they were half our listed price instead of half of the 30% sale price.  Always remember to turn off offers when creating a scale event.