Best Offer is one of those eBay services that just about everyone has seen but not everyone knows how to use. In short, if you see an item that you want on eBay but you don’t want to pay that much for it, look for the “Make an Offer” button on the listing. While not every seller enables this, a large majority of fixed price listings have it as it’s a free upgrade. Some My Little Pony sellers intentionally price their pony items a little high because they are either not sure of the value of the item or are expecting people to haggle* so if you aren’t using this feature, you’re missing out on some great deals.

If the offer button is there, go ahead and offer the price you are willing to pay for the item. If the seller likes it, boom!, the item is yours and you just named your price. If the seller doesn’t like the price you offer they will either reject or counter-offer. You, then, have the option to either counter-offer to their counter-offer or just make another offer. You only get a total of three offers on any single item so just make sure you remember how many you’ve done. Once you run out of offers, your only option is to buy the item at full price.

It’s remarkably like haggling at a flea market or garage sale. 🙂

Some quick tips for Best Offer success:

  • The closer the offer you make is to the listed price, the better your chances are of it being accepted. You’ll have a better chance with an offer of $7 on a $10 item then if you make an offer of $0.01.
  • If you are making offers on multiple items from the same seller, mention that in your offer note. Sellers will often take a slightly lower offer if they know they’ll be saving on shipping and fees with a multi-purchase sale.
  • Don’t be a jerk. This is a big one. Speaking as someone who sells, if I get a snippy note that says something like, “WTF is wrong with you, this item isn’t worth that. You should take my $1 and be happy with it!” I’m not going to look very favoriably on their offer, even if it’s one I would have normally accepted. You’d turn on the charm when haggling in person, the same applies online.

Want to test out your new eBay negotitating skills? Priced Nostalgia *just* happens to have over 115 Best Offer enabled My Little Pony items up on eBay right now with more coming through out the summer. Check them out here to start making offers.

*= or, like me, they are just tremendously lazy and just price everything at the same price because it’s faster 😉