Why we built this site (for sellers and collectors)
eBay, the early days
Why Bidamountlive was built.
When online selling first began, sites like eBay got off to a good start. Dealers and collectors of antiques and Asian art in particular had a nice outlet for their objects.
Setting up an account was fairly simple, sellers could decide how they got paid and it wasn’t too flooded early on with fakes, copies, and otherwise misrepresented items.
It all worked pretty well, eBay provided a platform, you could accept any payment form you wished, commissions were reasonable and you could do business like an adult without too much hassle.
Things changed.
Then came massive numbers of fakes and copies. Items were openly misrepresented, objects weren’t shipped carefully. Complaints grew and what did eBay do? Nothing.
As a result, sellers left the site for other venues in droves. Quality declined, volumes declined and here we are. We all have our horror stories in dealing with eBay’s illogical policies, so I won’t elaborate.
Alternatives
As a result, some sellers set up their own sites, others went to fixed-price business models on eBay or ETSY, some consigned things to online auctioneers, or went to CATAWIKI and so on.
None of the current alternatives offer both Fixed Price and Auction options for sellers, and all have fairly steep Commission structures with end costs of 12.5% to over 21% at CATAWIKI, not including PayPal or Credit card fees. Some sites even charge sellers Commissions on applicable taxes and the shipping charges which on antiques can be very expensive these days.
So we did what we hope will make things better for both dealers and collectors.
Bidamountlive Auctions and Fixed Price Objects
We looked at the issues, thought about it for months, contacted our web-tech folks for advice. We then asked you, our thousands of users on Bidamount.com for suggestions. Many, many thanks to all of you for your participation, you were amazing!! and Helpful!
In the end, we’ve put together a site where you can:
- Create an account for Free. (of course)
- Pay only an 8% fee of the cost of the item sold excluding all taxes and shipping fees.
- Build your own seller profile for users to see and contact you directly to build your business.
- Post as many images as you wish to present your items.
- Rest assured we’ll take immediate steps to prevent the sale of fakes and copies that will harm the reputation of the site.
- Get paid by any method you wish, including PayPal, Credit Cards, Wire Transfers, Checks, Cash etc.
- We will help you any way we can of course and make well thought out changes and additions as time goes by.
In Conclusion
In the end, after nearly 6 months of work, we have created this site. We think it’s a good start and hope you do too.
If it works and everyone likes it, we’re committed to making improvements, adding new options that make sense, and expand what’s just been started.
We hope you enjoy using it and do join us in building a better place to buy, sell, make friends, and mutually enjoy our communal interest in the Arts of Asia.