How to Find the Best Offer Sale Price for an Item on eBay

How many times do you see that an item sold for a "best offer" price on eBay, and you wonder what that actual price was? Here's a short and simple tutorial from Stuart Turnbull which shows you how to find the actual sales price for items where the seller accepted the buyer's best offer.

By the way, I've been doing most of my listings on eBay as fixed price items with the best offer option enabled. Many times, buyers just go ahead and pay the listed price, but I do have some interesting price negotiations through the best offer process.

Do you accept best offers on your fixed price listings?

Is That Your Best Offer? Ideas on eBay Listings

I've been doing a lot of fixed price ("buy it now") listings rather than many auctions lately (although eBay just sent me a promotion for free auction-style listings, so I may well be running more auctions in the next week or so). I've read up about auction vs. fixed price on a lot of blogs and Facebook groups related to eBay selling, and for much of what I sell, fixed price makes sense because the listing stays up longer, which means there's a greater chance of an interested buyer finding my item.

I do like the auction format for items that are potentially popular enough to generate some bidding, of course, and when I'm doing a lot of listing, I throw in a few auctions just to see what might happen on items that I bought at a super-low price.

Sometimes I'm just fine with a tiny return on a tiny investment, and for me, part of the fun of eBay is helping someone score a nice deal on an item they'll really enjoy. For example, I got this boy's necktie for next to nothing at the Goodwill Outlet and was happy to find someone who would enjoy it (I like to imagine a kid wearing it for a school photo, ha!).

When it comes to doing fixed price listings, one of the main questions is: should you allow buyers to submit best offers? For the most part, I like to allow best offers because I think buyers enjoy the freedom of making an offer and the idea of feeling like they're saving some money. As a buyer, it's kind of like the thrill of using a coupon when you make an offer on an item and the seller accepts it--you just saved money!

I'm finding that many sellers factor in the potential best offer when determining the price for a fixed listing by "going high" and considering offers as they come in. For most items where I'm open to best offers, I set the price a little higher than I'm willing to accept for the final sale; with an item that seems very rare to me, I'll set the price a bit higher than that.

I know that some sellers use a feature on eBay which allows for automatic decline of best offers below a certain price point, and while I haven't used this myself (in part because I don't have the volume of listings where I'm getting a zillion offers to review), I can understand why you'd want to use it. Sometimes buyers make really, really low offers; I wouldn't even call these "best" offers. It can be a little irritating to have someone offer $3 for something that you know is worth $20, but it's easy enough to decline the offer. This page from eBay explains how best offers work and how you can set up automated accept/decline features for an item where you're using best offer.

When I first started doing fixed price listings, I would always allow for best offers because as a buyer myself I enjoy them, but recently I've eliminated best offers on a few listings where I have a specific price in mind for the item. For example, I found an unopened USB hub at a garage sale, and this is an item which generally goes for around $10, so I've priced it accordingly and just let it be.

As with everything on eBay, it's a learning process, and it can be fun to experiment with different ideas on different listings and make adjustments as you go.