If you were selling an item around £400-500 value on ebay, in your experience/wisdom, are you best to start the bidding at the minimum you want to receive or £0.99 & get lots of people bidding?
The following is an example of how long it took to get the price up to an acceptable figure.

Bidder 1Feedback score is 10 to 49 £410.00
28-Jan-10 12:41:54 GMT

Bidder 1Feedback score is 10 to 49 £410.00
28-Jan-10 12:39:25 GMT

Bidder 10Feedback score is 100 to 499 £400.00
24-Jan-10 16:11:30 GMT

Bidder 9Feedback score is 100 to 499 £380.00
24-Jan-10 13:18:42 GMT

Bidder 8 £330.00
23-Jan-10 07:26:58 GMT

Bidder 7 £320.00
21-Jan-10 21:41:19 GMT

Bidder 6 New eBay Member (less than 30 days) £310.00
20-Jan-10 20:23:53 GMT

Bidder 5Feedback score is 100 to 499 £300.00
20-Jan-10 09:47:01 GMT

Bidder 4Feedback score is 10 to 49 £250.00
19-Jan-10 19:16:59 GMT

Bidder 2Feedback score is 50 to 99 £245.55
19-Jan-10 23:44:10 GMT

Bidder 2Feedback score is 50 to 99 £225.55
19-Jan-10 23:43:19 GMT

Bidder 2Feedback score is 50 to 99 £211.00
19-Jan-10 22:14:53 GMT

Bidder 2Feedback score is 50 to 99 £201.00
19-Jan-10 22:12:57 GMT

Bidder 4Feedback score is 10 to 49 £200.00
19-Jan-10 19:16:43 GMT

Bidder 2Feedback score is 50 to 99 £185.00
19-Jan-10 22:12:32 GMT

Bidder 4Feedback score is 10 to 49 £180.00
19-Jan-10 19:16:20 GMT

Bidder 2Feedback score is 50 to 99 £160.00
19-Jan-10 18:26:28 GMT

Bidder 4Feedback score is 10 to 49 £160.00
19-Jan-10 19:16:09 GMT

Bidder 1Feedback score is 10 to 49 £150.00
18-Jan-10 21:51:47 GMT

Bidder 3Feedback score is 10 to 49 £150.00
19-Jan-10 11:27:42 GMT

Bidder 3Feedback score is 10 to 49 £100.00
19-Jan-10 11:27:28 GMT

Bidder 3Feedback score is 10 to 49 £50.00
19-Jan-10 11:27:08 GMT

Bidder 2Feedback score is 50 to 99 £10.00
19-Jan-10 10:51:35 GMT

Starting Price £0.99
18-Jan-10 19:59:46 GMT

I usually start at 10% of what I expect it to make

Bidding early on ebay is a mug's game these days – there are too many options on sniping etc, so you tend not to get the price creep that once occurred in the early stages of an auction. Most savvy buyers tend to bid once and bid late, either in person or via a sniper.

So if you're confident that it's an item that will be of interest to several buyers stick it on at 99p and don't expect it to get to a realistic price until the last few hours/minutes/seconds of the auction. If not, stick it on at the minimum you'd be prepared to let it go for and hope someone wants it enough to bid more than that.

Obviuosly depends on how little you are prepared let it go for and whether you want to minimize the listing fees.

You were willing to gamble with a low starting price and see what happened. One bidder agreed with your 4-500 estimate. Happy days.
Everyone wants a bargain and only bids at the end. I recently sold a snowboard with start price of £100. The guy who won bid two seconds from the close, having looked at it the day before. If he'd offered cash then I'd have let it go for £100 to avoid packing/posting something as wakward as a board. Went for £130 and he collected!

Stick it on low, if its a popular item its almost guaranteed to make as much as other similar items as long as you've made an effort with the listing. Use the completed items search to check for final selling amounts. And as the others have said, don't worry about the fact it takes a while for the price to rise…I've bidded on items in the closing seconds and added two hundred pounds to the current price, and usually someone else has the same idea so the buyer ends up paying a realistic price.

If its a bit of an oddity, start low and set a reserve, and make it a 10 day auction. Also, I'm often surprised at how you can make a quick killing by just setting a buy it now price at slightly higher than what most stuff is selling at, and then just adding 'Fast Postage' to the title and a note in the description stating that its packaged and ready to be posted within a day of payment.

The best policy to get a good price in my experience:
1. Good clear photos that are relevent and obviously a private sale.
2. well thought out description, with as much relevent information as possible, sound genuine and honest.
3. Have it ending at a good time when most people will be at home and on their PC ready to bid 8pm-10pm.
4. You need to offer posting, collection only will massively limit your customers (afterall, they pay for the postage anyway).
5. Try to think of the most relevent description in the title that interested people might search on.
6. Do some research to find the most relevent category to put the item in (ebay won't necessarily default to the best category).

This all might seem obvious, but I'm always amazed at the crap photos, descriptions and terms that people sell stuff against.

I've not done it yet, but it might be worth looking at a 99p start price with a reserve price at your minimum expectation. I'm not sure if you get charged for setting a reserve.

Start at maybe £9 on an item worth £400.
It gets people bidding early and hooked & coming back, which is what you want!
If you start at £250, it'll put punters off.

I've been using his "eBay" thing for about seven years now and the bidding and selling has definitely changed a lot in that time as sniping tools (scum scum scum!!!) making bidding largely irrelevant.

I now combine my every-trusty tool of clear photos and a good description with only using Buy It Now – it just works better.

How I yearn for the days when sniping was done manually and had some honour to it…

I start eerything at 99p, if I have a reserve I'll get a mate to put a bid in for that with 24 hrs to go.
Might not be ethical….but who cares!

I don't think there is anything wrong with what colnagokid suggests if it saves you a bit off the OTT ebay fees. However, it has to be done intelligently, it's obvious to buyers if you get friends to bid up the price too soon. I've seen items bid early to silly high prices when all identical items are much less. It's then obvious to the buyer that the price on that lot is being manipulated and so not to be bid on, as you may be bidding against a 'ringer' right to the end. So, if not done properly, It might put many buyers off, when you are just trying to establish your mimimum selling price.

I always end my items on a sunday evening, this weekend should be good as it is most peoples pay day

I have had my best sucess with the 99p start and no reserve. Only one item has ever gone for 99p and thats probably what it was worth TBH

I used to have a starting price that reflected what I wanted; until I once tried to sell a guitar effects unit for 110 quid and got no bidders. Took the plunge and put it back in for 99p and it got bid all the way up to 130 odd quid!

I am always BRUTALLY honest, too (the punters seem to like that) I once sold a battered PS2 with a broken CD drawer for 62 quid when argos were doing them 99 quid new with a Steering wheel and loads of games. Madness.

I never set a reserve as it puts people off (I never give reserved auctions a second look) So far, I think I am "up" but you do loose out sometimes 🙂

edit, of course for the bigger money, I wouldnt do this! (I use other mediums for that; usully if something is worth 100 quid plus, ill do the classified's route)

edit, of course I dont own anything worth 100 quid plus (apart from me bke)

The cost of putting a reserve price on something on E-bay can mean you pay some pretty hefty fees. It's better to have some one bid it up for you a while before it ends. The reserve fees on Cars are capped at about £3, but I remember the sellers reserve fees alone for a bike being around £20.

I do the same as Dancake, 99p no reserve and let the market decide the price, I try and keep the costs to a bare minimum as the charges once the final tally of listing fees, Selling fees, and PayPal fees are taken into account they are quite prohibitive!

the day and time the auction ends is important too. I learnt that after setting an auction to end at 8:30 on Saturday night when the final of X-factor was on, DOH!!!