eBay's growth in particular suggests the field is entering the third and final stage in its transition from fixed prices to a market derived bid and ask. Let's look at some numbers to understand where the market is today and start with this. Over the past six years Abe's growth in the number of listing dealers and eBay's growth in book lot listings increased by similar percentages: 2.37 times for Abe and 2.48 times for eBay. To that we add Abe's current published estimate of 20,000 sales a day annualizing at 7,300,000 items, a heady number that loses some luster when compared to its total listings of eighty million. This works out to an annual sales rate of 9.125%, nice compensation on a triple A rated bond but a weak return on material posted to sell. eBay, by comparison based on anecdotal analysis, seems to be selling about 50% of the books, manuscripts and ephemera posted each week. Assuming then that its current 528,000 books are typical, that the average auction is 7 days and the auctions never ending eBay numbers looks like this:
528,000 x 52 weeks x .50 rate of sales = 13,728,000 book lots sold in one year
This is well beyond what Abe is selling. Now let's estimate what the other listing sites are doing. I assume that 3/4 of the listings on Abe are also listed on other sites and that other sites sell a similar percentage:
60,000,000 x 9.125% = 5,475,000I also believe all other sites have in total about 40,000,000 books that Abe does not have and I assume the same rate of sales for this material: 9.125%:
40,000,000 x 9.125% = 3,650,000Based on these assumptions the listing sites together are selling:
7,300,000 + 5,475,000 + 3,650,000 = 16,425,000 itemsThus the listing sites remain a larger seller than eBay but not by a significant margin:
16,425,000 items on listing sites versus 13,728,000 on eBayOn an efficiency basis eBay is overwhelmingly superior. Twenty-seven million book lots on eBay quickly convert into 13,500,000 sales whereas 120,000,000 items on listing sites turn into 16.4 million sales. So why aren't more dealers listing on eBay? It's simple. The prices are lower, often much lower than many sellers on listing sites expect based on what they see others asking.
