eBay Jargon

When you first visit eBay listings, you'll see all sorts of unfamiliar terms. The main purpose of these acronyms, as with most Internet jargon, is to say as much as possible with as few key strokes as you can get by with. Here are some of the terms you'll find in eBay listings, with their definitions.

• BIN
  • Buy It Now--no bidding necessary. The price is listed--take it or leave it.
• NIB
  • New In Box--you'll get more for your merchandise in this condition, so remember that when you're buying eBay merchandise at garage sales or deep-discount stores.
• NWT
  • New With Tags--this one is used for clothing. Again, you'll get more if you're selling new clothes with the tags still attached.
• NR
  • No Reserve--some sellers put a "reserve" price on their auctions, thinking that letting bidders start low for an expensive item, will get the action going and eventually raise the price. Other people, consider "reserve" auctions to be gimmicky, and won't bid on them for that reason. (If an auction doesn't reach the secret "reserve" amount, all bids are canceled.) To make it perfectly clear to your bidders that an auction has no "reserve", us the term NR.
• Dutch Auction
  • This is a complex system for offering multiple identical items in one auction. It saves on listing fees if you have 10 of the same thing to list for 99 cents each, but you might lose out if the supply exceeds the demand. If one bidder is willing to pay more than another, and all of the items don't sell, you'll have to sell the few that do get bids at the lowest price offered. Confused? So are most people. You can do just fine on eBay without ever offering a Dutch Auction.
• Sniping
  • Auction sniping is the term that raises eBayers' blood pressure. There is software available that will wait until the final seconds of an auction, then sneak in with a bid, after it's too late for a human to respond. Those who use this ploy get a big kick out of bragging about it, stating in their emails that they used auction-sniping software to win the item. Those who get burned by these tactics gripe loud and long that they were abused by the unethical use of "cheating" software. See "Proxy Bid" for eBay's answer to sniping.
• Proxy Bidding
  • This is a very convenient and safe method of bidding on an item with no risk of bidding too much, and also no risk of losing out on the item to a sniper, UP TO YOUR MAXIMUM BID. Here's how it works: You find an item that's listed for $4. You're willing to pay $10 for it. You bid $4, then tell eBay to go up to $10. That's all there is to it. If nobody else bids, you get the item for $4. If somebody bids it up to $5.50, you get it for $5.75 (if the bidding is going in 25-cent increments). If somebody else bids it up to $10.25, you lose, because it went higher than the upper limit you set for it.

These aren't the only specialized terms you'll find on eBay, but most of the rest are part of the category jargon, like HCDJ (Hard Cover Dust Jacket) in the books category. Stamps and coins have a whole language of their own. For those terms, all you can do is ask the seller if you can't figure it out by yourself.

To learn more about eBay, please read eBay Overview. If you're already familiar with eBay, and just want a few additional tips, please read eBay Advanced Selling Hints.

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