Best Offers
Take the offers worth taking without reading every one. Set the price you will always accept and the price you will never accept, answer what falls in between from one page, and send discount offers to watchers by rule instead of one listing at a time.
Where Best Offers Sit in the Workflow
Offers happen while the listing is live, before anything gets packed.
Offers Are Only Free If You Have Time to Read Them
At thirty thousand listings, every offer is a decision you have to make.
Best Offer sells cards. It also turns every listing into something that can interrupt you, and a buyer offering $1.20 on a $1.48 common has cost you a decision worth more than the card. Most sellers respond by turning it off entirely, which loses the offers that were actually worth taking.
The fix is to only look at the offers you have an opinion about. Name a price you would take without thinking and a price that is not worth a reply. Everything above the first gets accepted and everything below the second gets declined. What is left is the handful in the middle where your judgement is worth something.
Best Offer Terms per Game
Magic buyers haggle differently from Pokémon buyers. The settings follow that.
| Setting | What It Does | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Best Offer on | Whether cards in this game publish with Best Offer at all. Off until you turn it on. | On |
| Minimum price | Cards below this publish without Best Offer at all. Cheap stock never generates an offer. | $5.00 |
| Auto-accept | Percentage of your asking price you will always take. eBay accepts it for you. | 90% |
| Auto-decline | Percentage below which an offer is refused without reaching you. | 70% |
Offers You Receive, Offers You Send
Offers arriving from buyers, and offers you put in front of watchers.
- Land on one page as they arrive
- Accept, decline, or counter
- Decline many at once
- Expired and answered offers stay visible
- Written as a rule, not per listing
- Goes to buyers already watching
- Price floor, age, and daily ceiling
- Two week cooldown per listing
Sending Offers to Watchers
eBay lets you offer watchers a discount. It just makes you do it listing by listing.
Someone watching a card is the closest thing to a buyer you have. Offering them ten percent often closes it. In Seller Hub that is a per-listing action, which is fine at forty listings and pointless at thirty thousand.
A send rule is that same decision written down once, in the same shape as your pricing rules.
Things Worth Knowing
Behaviors that decide which offers you see and which ones go out.
Missed Offers Do Not Vanish
An offer lapses after forty-eight hours. The page keeps the last thirty days, answered and expired alike, with the ones you can still act on shown first. Nothing disappears just because you were away for a weekend.
Decline in Bulk, Accept One at a Time
Clear out a screen of lowballs in one go. Accepting and countering are one at a time, which is eBay's rule rather than ours.
Counter in the Price You Think In
Type the price you want per card and send it. If you counter above your own asking price, you get told before it goes anywhere.
The Same Listing Is Not Offered Twice
Once a listing has had an offer sent on it, it is left alone for fourteen days. Watchers get one nudge instead of a weekly habit, and a daily ceiling caps the whole run on top of that.
Nothing Sends Until You Say So
A rule shows you exactly which listings it would send to before anything goes out. Worth looking at the first time, because an offer that has reached a buyer cannot be taken back.
Add a Message
A sent offer can carry a short note. A line about combined shipping or the rest of the set you have in stock turns a bare discount into something closer to a conversation.
Known Limits
Where eBay's rules take over.
- Settings apply going forward, not backward. Cards you list from now on get your terms. Listings already up keep what they went up with, and eBay Seller Hub is the quickest way to change a lot of them at once.
- Your thresholds have to make sense against each other. Auto-accept sits below your asking price and auto-decline below that. A number that breaks the order is left off, never adjusted for you.
- Sent offers cannot go below five percent off. That is eBay's floor, not ours. A smaller discount will not send.
- A buyer cannot counter an offer you sent them. Counter-offers on sent offers are not supported yet. Those go out as take-it-or-leave-it.
- eBay only. Best Offer is an eBay mechanism, not something PowerList TCG layers on top, so it applies to your eBay listings.
Best Offers: Common Questions
Do I have to answer every offer myself?
Only the ones in the middle. Set a price you will always take and one you will never take, and eBay handles both ends without you. What reaches your inbox is the band you actually have an opinion about.
Can I keep Best Offer off my cheap cards?
Yes, and you should. Set a minimum price per game and anything under it publishes without Best Offer at all. A twenty percent swing on a $1.48 common is thirty cents, and answering it still costs you a decision.
Does turning it on change my live listings?
No. Your terms apply to cards you list from that point on. Anything already up keeps the terms it went up with, and eBay's own bulk tools are the quickest way to change a lot of existing listings at once.
What is the difference between receiving offers and sending them?
Receiving is buyers making you an offer on a listing. Sending is you approaching people already watching a card. eBay lets you send those one listing at a time in Seller Hub. That works at forty listings and not at thirty thousand. Here you write a rule instead.
What does a send rule look like?
Something like: ten percent off any card over $20 that has been listed thirty days or more, up to fifty a day. Set it per game or once for everything, and add a short message if you want one.
Will it keep pestering the same watchers?
No. A listing that has been offered on is left alone for two weeks before it can be offered on again, and there is a hard daily ceiling on top of that.
Can I see offers I already missed?
Yes. An offer expires after forty-eight hours, and the last thirty days stay on the page whether you answered them or not. One that lapsed while you were at a card show is still there to look at.
Can I counter?
Yes, one at a time, which is eBay's rule and not ours. Enter the price you want per card. Declining is the one thing you can do to a whole screen of offers at once.
Will an offer ever be accepted for less than I meant?
No. If a number you enter would not work as a real price, it is left off instead of being quietly changed into something near it. Nothing accepts an offer at a price you did not set yourself.
Keep Reading
Every feature below is included on every plan.
Stop Reading Every Offer.
Set your terms per game, and answer everything else from one page.
