Collecting Swatch Watches for years, as well as design items, I was a member of a collector club based in New York. Faxes, phone calls and classified ads allowed me to buy and sell worldwide from my location in France. Late in 1999, I saw an ad banner for eBay, and a few clicks later I was an eBay community member and had soon achieved my first deal with a seller from Taiwan. Cash in registered letter was the convenient way to pay. Since then, I've discovered the cross-border benefits of eBay and learned about other web services, such as Ipix, PayPal and Andale.
Selling on eBay.com was the best marketplace to use in order to achieve good prices and exposure for collector's items. In France, a competitor launched in 1999 called Ibazar.fr. It was acquired in 2001 by eBay France. Aucland.fr (still in use) and Qxl.fr were other challengers, but with less traffic on their websites.
An outlook of eBay in France is different from the marketplace in the US. For years, the French marketplace has grown on antiques, collectibles as well as rare wines (you have each week, single bottle of wine traded for over $2,500 in France).
France is considered the "Attic of the World" for antiques (Parisian flea market "LES PUCES" has an outstanding area of over 7 hectares), and items on eBay France are mainly second-hand items. But now, you see more and more high-tech items as well as DVDs and clothes, for instance. Even a car is sold every 15 minutes in France.
There are not as many professional sellers as in the US (around 15,000 people live for a part or totally with their eBay sales in France), so often you can find misspelled keywords in auctions as sellers make mistakes. The Buy It Now option is not widely used by French sellers. Unfortunately, the English translation of the description is not ever done. Most auctions start at 1 euro, so bargains can be found.
An average day on eBay France will have 2 million items and around 7,000 eBay stores available. There's no integrated shipping partner on eBay France, and keep in mind that popular express carriers as UPS, DHL or FedEX cost three to four times more than in the US. Regular Postal Service (LA POSTE) offers convenient, economy and reliable deliveries. A basis registration for a parcel will cost a $5 fee and insured up to $70, no on-line tracking being available.
French eBayers might sometimes be disappointed they cannot bid on eBay.com items, as overseas shipping is not offered. For hard-to-find items, it might considerably improve final value price to US sellers if they shipped to France. PayPal can be used for a secured payment. While express carriers are expensive from the US, it seems that USPS offers good value for delivery to Europe.
The year 2005 was outstanding in France with a published growth over 100 percent from 2004. From time to time, eBay organizes "eBay Universities" in France, but there has been no eBay Live event so far. Italy has had an eBay Live event to both celebrate the 5th birthday of eBay Italy as well as the 1st birthday of PayPal. Over 2,300 members attended a 1-day celebration in Milano last February. The German site will hold a big eBay Live in Dusseldorf at the end of May (26 and 27) this year (http://ebaylive.ebay.de/index.html).
