I see now that vase with the broken finial lid on The Saleroom. Do you know at how much it has been sold there?

Giovanni

Dear Giovanni,

The vase seems to have sold for £38 on the saleroom before being listed on eBay as Chinese.

Best wishes.

Thank you. It was evidently recognized as such. Without the Samson mark, I too had thought that it could be ok for Chinese, although I have never seen that decoration before, especially the band of circles in the lower part.

Giovanni

That is ok, yes it is quite an usual style. I myself have researched it quite in depth and have found five pieces with this style. One vase at Sotheby's, another vase at Christie's, two punch bowls online and a fish bowl a few years ago at Bonhams. The exact age of them are disputed and the prices vary quite a bit.

Best wishes.

What did the Samson vase with the missing red 'S' sell for in the end? Ebay have made it nearly impossible to find past lots and it wasn't in my watch list. J

Hi James, I believe it went for £311. The new eBay mechanic is irritating for sure.

Best wishes.

Hi Giovani,

I must say that I think you were frustrated with the price you paid for that dish because I honestly think your accusations to Catawiki are not fair.

To me it is very clear how you can bid. Quick bid - choose one of the amounts mentioned at the top, direct bid is the amount you DIRECTLY want to bid, and an automatic bid is a bid that will increase your bid every time somebody overbids you up to the maximum amount you put in there. You were used to ebay where everybody stupidly waits for the last seconds and only then leaves a high bid hoping it is high enough. Ebay only works with automatic bidding what causes that strange phenomena, with Catawiki you have more options to bid.

You cannot blame them that you picked the wrong button and waited with bidding like with ebay until the last second. 

Then the article that you shared. Now that is a scam. That must have been written by competition because it is really filled with incorrect statements.

To pick some :

At registration, sellers need to submit a copy (read picture or image) of some identification document, but doing this via the internet is naturally far from watertight. The trick with it was that, when you hold it in your hands, you can really see the document is not fake and, above all, the face on the one opposing you is the same as the one on the photo on it. But this essential step is skipped for convenience. Still anyone can become a seller at Catawiki using his own identification or that of his mom. If you once lost an identification, you might be a seller according to Catawiki right now!

How ridiculous. How will you get paid if you have used somebody elses ID ? Or do you also have access to their bank account ? Catawiki is the one paying you and as you know there is a bankaccount name and number check. 

Buyers can give feedback on sellers. The sellers can only hope that feedback is sincere. On the other hand, if sellers fear negative feedback, then they can just fail to put their item to ‘sent/picket-up’. When there is too much negative feedback a seller can just create a new account of course. 

Again completely false.you get paid only 14 days after you have shipped and you have to leave a track and trace number. So if you fail to put their item to sent you won't get any money.

So bought items can also get picked up at the seller. In this case a real pick-up address is communicated from the seller to the buyer. Submitting a fake address here would get too much notice of course, but when a seller does rather not show himself to buyers, he can always give an address in a remote corner of the country, or at least far away from the seller.

So what is the sense of that ? You give  a remote address because of what ? and then drive there yourself to hand it over? Because in the case of a pick up, that needs to be confirmed too. Without that confirmation you won't get paid, so if the writer means you let the poor bueyr drive for nothing to "a remote corner" well you won't get paid. 

I am selling for quite some time now and I am very pleased. I only pay 12,5% in stead of the 25% I have to pay when I sell via ebay, ebay costs and paypal costs combined. 

I am going to stop here because I can say more about  their experts and how they work judging the items you sell, but I will leave it. 

This whole rant is just not fair.

Kind regards

Staartmees

Dear Staartmees,

are you part of Catawiki staff? I suppose yes for what you said.

I do not comment all what is said in that site, I am not interested in reading everything because I will never more be active on Catawiki.

Some comments about what you said:

“To me it is very clear how you can bid. Quick bid - choose one of the amounts mentioned at the top, direct bid is the amount you DIRECTLY want to bid,”:

Really? Then or you are a genious and are able to read what Catawiki is not saying, or myself and, as I am convinced, the MANY users that approach Catawiki for the first time, are idiot. May be. Congratulations.

But you should honestly explain why Catawiki felt the necessity of explaining how the progressive bidding works, which is notoriously known even to an idiot like me, and NOT explain what seems clear to you but not to MANY, especially being it a Catawiki’s exclusive feature. Come on, how can you honestly defend them on this point?

“…. You were used to ebay where everybody stupidly waits for the last seconds and only then leaves a high bid hoping it is high enough.”

The above sentence clearly tells me that you should be part of Catawiki staff. Only Catawiki and Ebay, i.e. the auctioneers, are putting stress on this point, to not wait for the last minutes. The reason is obvious, not worth to explain.

 “Ebay only works with automatic bidding what causes that strange phenomena, with Catawiki you have more options to bid.”

Please do not be offended, but that is ridiculous, I have no other words for that. More options? Do you think that someone is preferring Catawiki because of this further option? Totally ridiculous. Is that an option? Which advantage has it over your maximum bid that you place on the progressive bidding? PLEASE tell me which is the advantage. Please tell me if you think to have advantage in placing the same sum on such “Direct bid” (which can mean a lot of things, and not clearly and only that sort of “Buy it now” as it seems obvious to you) or on Progressive bid.

There is indeed an advantage, and is that Catawiki gets more money through that blatantly not honest behavior. Why are them not changing the name of such button or at least add an “how it works” link, as I am totally convinced is requested by the many daily protests from the users?

They are acting in fraudulent way, and they know that!

There is another point that is not good about Catawiki. I am not sure if it really is like that, I do not even have interest in verifying it after my experience, but it seems that interested buyers can’t contact the seller before the auction end. They can contact him only if they win the auction. If that is true, it is a BIG limitation. One often needs to have more information about what he is looking. And contacting the expert in place of the seller is totally useless, obvious.

Giovanni

Hi Giovanni,

No I am not working for Catawiki. I do not understand your aggressive language by the way. I did not call you an idiot. You are being sarcastic and trying to insult me because i do not agree with you. 

To me that was indeed clear yes and I am not a genius. I agree that Catawiki could have explained it better, as they do with the automatic bid. You can suggest that to them. I honestly think you were too much used to ebay, putting in that max bid a few seconds before the end of the auction. 

You are blaming Catawiki for a mistake you made, and you are upset because of what exactly? You put in the price you were willing to pay as a maximum and now you have it for that price, you are upset because you could have gotten it cheaper. What if you would have put that maximum price in automatic bid and there were other bidders but in the end you were the highest ? You would have paid the same price and be happy. 

Than to strengthen your point you copy in an article, that already is suspicious looking at the website, as it seems to be specially made to talk about how bad Catawiki is as I could not find any other article there, and that is filled with things that are just absolutely not true and from a level that actually makes you cry. Why do you do that ?

About ebay costs, I pay , together with the paypal costs and percentage they also take on shipping costs, 25%. not 12,5% like Catawiki. I wonder how you get to 10% ? I know you are in Italy so like me you have to pay paypal costs ( you don't when you sell via Catawiki) and you get a lousy conversion rate for the dollar. Did you take that into consideration ?

To me ebay is becoming ridiculous, I have to pay 25% to be swamped between a bunch of fakes, people not bidding until the last moment , high costs to put in a reserve which makes aa successful sale harder. That is for free with Catawiki, to put in a reserve. So what you are saying about that is not true as well. 

I have been selling on ebay for about 12 years. I have stopped now and moved to Catawiki and I am very happy. I have seen other big sellers move to Catawiki as well, sometimes their items are up on both sites and you can actually see the difference in prices they get. ( not sure why they do that )

Catawiki has more options to bid and yes, I do think that is much better, especially for sellers, but also for buyers.

Now, with ebay, even when somebody put 1000 USD in there, starting price is 99 USD, you are depending on other bidders to increase the price. Even when somebody was willing pay much more, without other bidders you won't get a higher price.With Catawiki you can use the direct bid to scare away other bidders. As a seller you will get a higher price and as a buyer you can scare away others and still get it for a good price if you are lucky.

I do not see anything that is not honest with Catawiki, and not fraudulent either. Not even sure why you think that.

I think you made a mistake and it is a pity as you could have gotten it cheaper. But once you get used to it it is a good, honest and transparent auction site.

Kind regards

Staartmees

Dear Staartmees,

I recognize of having been a bit aggressive, and I sincerely apologize for that.

It has been because you did call the automatic incremental bidding as a stupid feature, which did imply that who is using it is stupid, and this appeared to me to be excessively in defense of Catawiki, hence I thought that you were coming from the staff.

Nevertheless, I still think that they are not honest because I am really convinced that they must have planned carefully the layout of the bidding area in the way of catching many involuntary high bids.

The Direct bid button is placed as a logical further step of the three bids button, and the incremental bidding button has a different background color, which without an appropriate inspection it seems to be related to another area.

As you have seen in other posts in this thread, they should receive lots of messages contesting those buttons, but they are still keeping it that way, and the only reason is that, as expected, they get more money that way. So it is useless to ask them to modify it, in fact they didn’t answer to my message.

Another my fault (thank you for this) is that I didn’t know that they do not accept Paypal. I fully agree that Paypal too is a scandal, in fact his founder become one of the richest men in the World. So I omitted to count Paypal’s costs in the balance, thinking that they were in both places.

But this does not change the fact that Catawiki gets more than the double than ebay, a lot of money.

Once again, excuse me for the tone of the previous message.

Kind regards

Giovanni

Dear Giovanni,

Ah ok, I see where you got that. Of course I wasn't talking about you. It is the system,. I honestly think that ebay is for buyers and not for sellers at all. With those last minute bids as as seller and without a reserve you never know where it will end. Almost russian roulette. 

I am now selling in Catawiki for about a year and they are constantly improving. Of course they are there to make money but I don't think that they intentionally try to scam people, because look what happens ? Like you they might walk away. That is not sustainable. They are relatively new and try to do it different. 

And another point, with a dispute, the buyer is not always right. That is another something I like. With ebay/paypal whatever happens, as a seller you have hardly any rights even when you have pictures to prove the state of a product when it left. Even when you have proof of delivery paypal will refund the buyer. I always feel helpless and that is very different from Catawiki.

I am not offended Giovanni. I know you from gotheborg and we even talked ....Italian temperament I think 🙂

Kind regards

Staartmees

Oh my God! Sorry Staartmees, yes it must be the Italian temperament reinforced by the weather. Today we reached 38 degrees Celsius?.

The buyer policy of ebay is really crazy. They are losing sellers because of that. I had to refund buyers for such stupid things. A real shame.

Giovanni

hahaha Giovanni. You make me laugh. You are passionate and Italian for sure ! we have Italian weather here and i love it !

Dear Staartmees,

after your posts, I must admit that some of the accusation that I moved against Catawiki were due to the irritation of what happened and not considered in deep.

Nevertheless I still think that those bidding buttons, placed that way, are a trap for many new bidders.

About the costs, after your posts, they are indeed lower than at ebay in total, especially for us European sellers because of the US$/€ rate exchange.

I could try to sell something there, but there are some things which are not clear, which answer I have not found on Catawiki’ site. I did contact them asking some questions, and every time it takes a few days to have an answer, which most of the time must be repeated because of misunderstanding.

Being you a seller, I will appreciate very much if you can answer to the following.

I see that the pictures of the objects are small. Why that? Is Catawiki that sets the image size? BTW I have not found anywhere which is the admissible size of the images, and weight. in other words, how many pixels and kB. Do you know that? Is there a limit to the number of images?

What is not clear too is the starting price. Who sets the starting price, the seller or Catawiki? Is it possible to set a reserve price, below which the item is not sold? And what happens if my reserve price is higher than the estimate made by Catawiki’s experts?

Thank you so much in advance if you can answer to the above questions.

Giovanni

Hi Giovanni,

I  can sure answer some of your questions ! And on the bidding buttons, I believe Peter is also in contact with them on this.

I am actually quite certain they will change it, let's bet on it for a bottle or Barolo ! And I am not saying that because I work there 🙂 but because they recently did a change that I still need to get used to, so they are changing constantly.

About your questions :

I don' think the pictures are quite small ? You see small ones through which you can scroll left or right, but when you click on one of them they will become large, and you can scroll than through the large pictures. Did you try that and do you than stil think they are small ?

What they miss is the detail magnifying feature ebay has, where you can better look at details. I like that a lot from ebay and I think Catawiki should get that too.

I do not know the maximum size and I doubt if they have that, because I shoot my pictures with a camera that has 36 MP and I have no problems uploading. A too low quality is a problem and that picture will be detected via the picture check they recently put in place. ( one of the recent changes they did). I don't  think they have a maximum number you can upload. I had one with 21 pictures and I could still add more. The minimum is 2 and the advised number is 14, but I think that is a standard comment and 2 is not acceptable for chinese porcelain in my opinion. 

Om the starting price, you have 2 options, either it is standard and it starts with 1 euro, or you decide and you fill in your reserve price, so your minimum price, and let bidders only start bidding from that amount. This ticks automatically and you need to remove it if you don't want it. This is new and this is what I need to get used to as i mentioned earlier because they put a very small box that you can untick for this under your reserve price and i already missed it several times . Several of those items didn't sell, even when the value Catawiki thought they had was much higher. I think such a high starting price is scaring bidders away.

You decide this minimum price and Catawiki will give it an estimate.  They will approve the listing if this reserve price  is under their estimate. You can also list without a reserve price and than your expected value should be more or less  in line with their estimate. The tricky thing here in my opinion is that you don't see that estimate until the auction is live, at least I have not been able to find it once my listing was approved but not live yet. And it could mean that you have a reserve price of 200 euro of something that is estimated by Catawiki for a 1000 euro. You will than most probably sell but risk selling it for only 200. So as a seller you need to have quite some knowledge on the marketprice, to set a good price and reserve price for your item. Reserve prices can only be set for items of 200 euro or more, and it is for free. I would like Catawiki to change that and with the acceptance let the seller know at the same time their estimated price. As long as it is not "live" you can still make changes and in the case of a big mistake of a too low reserve you could adjust. But today yo do not see that. 

When you list an items you can put comments for the Catawiki auctioneer in the last page. They will give you feedback in there too, so that is a way to communicate with them before the listing. I also asked sometimes what they thought of the value and they gave me feedback on that via that "tool". If your reserve price is higher than the Catawiki's estimate they will also communicate with you on this. I in fact had a discussion just last week on a Kangxi item, and I convinced her I was right and the listing was accepted. They will also comment if through your pictures they are unsure of the authenticity and require more pictures or more info. So every single listing is checked by a person, it is not automatic. 

One thing I noticed..unfortunately Catawiki also has problems with non paying bidders. I would say that so far about 20% does not pay. That means you also won't get paid and you need ( if you want to) relist the item. And that takes longer than with ebay. They typically have auctions every week, so if you are early you might have listed something that will only come live within a week, or even longer if they recently had a similar item for sale or if there are more sellers who offered already a similar item. They will then put it up one week later to make sure there is an interesting mix of items and not all the same, which I think is good. When then somebody doesn't pay, and they allow a week or so, you have to relist and that takes time again. So in that case it will take quite long before you get any money. Initially I was a bit upset about that but then I realised that it is actually the same with ebay. Selling there I have had many times bidders not paying. I guess that is difficult to prevent, you cannot 'Force" a foreign buyer to pay, as as a company you do not have the tools to force them. 

But if you need money quick, Ebay is the better place provided your buyer will pay. 

The advantage i see with Catawaki is that the prices are more realistic. I once sold a Kangxi bowl via ebay, and the buyer did not pay even when he had it at a wonderful price and received several reminders from me for a week.. I decided then not to open a case but cancel the sale , as I was fed up with yet another non paying bidder. I actually got comments from Ebay on that saying I was underperforming as the item suddenly was not available anymore. So be it. After I did that the buyer got upset and wanted to pay and asked why I cancelled the sale. I guess he realized he made a mistake by not paying ( nor messaging me, if he wouldhave asked for some time I would have given him that) Anyway, that ebay buyer could have bought that bowl for a lousy 185 USD. The value estimated by Catawiki was between 315 and 375 euro. I sold it via them for 340 euro. So, it might not be the case with all items but in this case, to me, Catawiki was the better place to sell obviously, even when it means I have to wait longer for my money.

Anyway..long story ! Hope this helps.

Happy Sunday !

Kind regards

Staartmees.