Can I make an auction for 'pick your own dvds out of these'?

[brettwilson1807]

I have LOTS of dvds and after many many failed attempts to sell individual dvds for better than bargain prices, I just want to make a listing for bulk dvds, but I want to give them the option to choose their own from a list. Can I do that?

[kopenhagen5]

Yes you make a listing for 10 dvd's for example and add the list in description the 10 to be chosen from.

Then you relist after the buyer has made his selection subtracting the 10 from your list.

And so forth.

[englishrosegardens]

Choice listings are against the rules. I once got a violation for it! I know it depends whether you get reported or not, and whether or not they do anything if you do get reported.

OP, you have to do it as a variation listing so that they can choose the one they want from a dropdown list. See this page:

http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/policies/listing-circumventing.html

I'm not sure variations will help if you're wanting to list say 100 and they can buy any 5 from the list, unless you do lots of different variations of what's available.

[kopenhagen5]

I had forgotten about that part of the policies as many have listed as such citing it as not coming under the Not Allowed groups.

• Selling different brands of an item, such as jeans, in a single listing

• Offering a choice between two entirely different items, such as a watch or pair of shoes

• Selling items that aren't in similar condition, such as a new and a refurbished laptop, in the same listing

  My argument would be there are simply too many to list as variations especially if OP has 500 dvd's.

[transport-posters]

I tried the exact same thing with DVDs on Gumtree once.  I got one request over a month which went nowhere.

[heihachi_73]

DVDs are dead on eBay unless they're new releases or still sealed. You can't make anything on them when it costs as much as the second hand DVD for postage ($2 not counting the bubble mailer; people who charge $7+ to send DVDs are idiots).

[transport-posters]

I listed 200 used single-disc DVDs earlier this year and sold about 20 of them, at $7 to $9 each.

My postage was $2.50 which consisted of a C5 envelope with a plastic projector sheet wrapped around the case inside.  I had a pack of these lying around so had to do something with them.  All got delivered reliably.

Was an okay experience, but the most time-consuming part of it was taking the photos and listing them all individually.  What I did was lay them all out together and take a "group" photo and then edit the photo to extract each a photo of each case to create my item listing.

The horror/gore DVDs seem to sell the best.

[*tippy*toes*]

I had a buyer a few months ago who was going to list his dvds. It didn't go down well when I told him he wasn't going to get back what he paid for them plus a profit, especially if he was going to charge $8 for tracked postage.

I said he be lucky to get a few bucks for them. He replied with what would be the point in selling them if he couldn't make a profit? I asked him if he'd pay $20 for a used dvd when new was cheaper? No but others should. Indeed. 

[englishrosegardens]

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@kopenhagen5 wrote:

I had forgotten about that part of the policies as many have listed as such citing it as not coming under the Not Allowed groups.

• Selling different brands of an item, such as jeans, in a single listing

• Offering a choice between two entirely different items, such as a watch or pair of shoes

• Selling items that aren't in similar condition, such as a new and a refurbished laptop, in the same listing

  My argument would be there are simply too many to list as variations especially if OP has 500 dvd's.

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I don't know that your argument would wash with ebay.  The policy isn't as clear as it used to be on what isn't allowed but I still think you'd only be allowed to use a multi variant listing.  There are heaps of people with choice listings in one of the categories I sell in but it's a waste of time reporting them, and same with the hundreds of duplicate listings in the same category.  One seller has about a hundred different items and five or six listings for each one - with just a slight change in the title of each one.  They don't sell much because they're rubbish, but it makes it so much harder for anyone else to be seen in that category.  The ones with choice listings don't sell much either because theirs are also rubbish, but they never give up.

[kopenhagen5]

Perhaps, I know amongst banknote sellers they have 1000's of a particular note with different serial numbers and ask buyers to choose which ones they want as they cannot list so many variations.

Also sellers with a particular same brand of lollies, buy 10 packs choose your flavours, just different flavours and too many to use variations.

OP, you could simply make some groups of the same genre. I know if I was looking for a particular movie and found 6-8 of similar bundled together for a great price, I would feel lucky.