Why do people buy L$ on ebay?

I noticed on ebay L$ are selling at around 225.

Am I missing something? Why would anyone buy there?

To save on processing fees? bank time or any number of reasons or to get a better deal or if not so who ever is selling can charge more or someone can not sell out there lindens so they do it on ebay and transfer manualy as a gift after payment?

The main reason would be if there is something you would like to buy but you have maxed your buy limit for the month.

I.e. Suppose I want to buy one of those new sims. I maxed out my buy so I have 2 choices, either sell a whole bunch of property at discounted rates, or I could buy a whole bunch of lindens from someone on ebay (or some other place) and sell them for usd so that I would be able to make my bid.

Reasons not to buy L$ on Ebay:

1) As per LL's Risk API, if someone commits credit card fraud to buy L$ from LL, and you unknowingly buy the L$ from them, LL will proceed to take the L$ away from *you* without compensation.

2) Ebay recently banned all RMT transactions, even from games/worlds that allow it. So it may be a moot point.

I've been wondering this, too, and I guess the buy limit answer makes sense. Explains why the Linden on eBay always seems so expensive: if it's a last-resort or emergency thing, you'll pay, I guess.

I've bought lindens before on ebay when it was once absolutely necessary -- I had been offered a very good deal on some land, had maxed out my 'buy' for the month of december. I went with a powerseller who had 1000+ feedback with 99.8% positive. I had my lindens within an hour and proceeded to buy the land I had been offered a good deal on. There are plenty of highly regarded powersellers selling lindens on ebay and their auctions are not being taken down. Perhaps ebay is only restricting who is able to sell them on their site? I would never buy from someone who didn't have a very good reputation. The fact that LL's TOS says they can take up to 150% of the lindens you bought from you suggests I could actually lose not only the lindens I bought, but additional lindens on top of that.

An even safer approach would be to go with a company such as Gamerzfix which has a website, is highly involved in the island business and is totally legitimate -- they also sell on ebay btw and have 100% positive feedback on over 600 sales. If I ever needed linden again, I would definitely go with someone like them -- buy it from their website and don't even worry about ebay.

In case you're wondering, I'm not affiliated with them whatsoever. As a land baron, however, I have been tipped on who is 'good' and 'no good' when lindens are tight and you have to turn to someone.

I imagine some other reasons to buy L$ on eBay rather than the LindeX would be (2) to avoid having to supply LL with payment info, and (3) to pay in a manner other than credit card or PayPal (e.g. Moneybookers, personal check, etc.).

That's a good point. There still are quite a few people who don't like giving out their credit card information...

How much of a good deal is it when the one you quoted has an exchange rate of L$224/$1 where the LindeX would get you L$276/$1, or 23% more?

When you're already holding land, you could drop prices by 20% and you'd still come out ahead compared to going with a third party for the L$. I still don't see any compelling reason to go with a third party honestly.

Well the auctions I saw were paypal payments and you had to trust them to go inworld to get the L$, so I don't think the type of payment or how fast you get them is a very strong argument.

I guess if you've maxed out your buy for the month, but you'd better have a very good deal pending you'd miss otherwise.

If I were that close to my limits I'd talk to LL about upping the limits.

Why does Second Life seem exempt from eBay's current "Virtual Products" policy?

This may be part of it.

Funny you mention that Jacques, I remember reading somewhere awhile back about the creator of ebay investing in it, thanks for the link

Ralph, I asked for a limit increase but they haven't replied back, apparently that has been happening to alot of people lately -- I've heard of people waiting in excess of a month

Sales of SL items on eBay are allowed ONLY because we are allowed, even encouraged, by the bigwigs of SL to sell our stuff.

On most (if not all) other game systems, you are violating your user agreement by selling anything from the game, because it all belongs to the game companies.

SL is just different. I don't think it has one single thing to do with ownership/etc. That's just an opinion, however, and I could be wrong.

good luck getting LL to up your limits for the xchange. I have been waiting about 2 months.

Thanks for letting me know Rhaorth. I'm saddened to here that for your and my sake

There must be 2 fees involved in there.
First, paypal holds 3,5% from whom receives the money (percentage depends on the country maybe) when a buyer pays a seller .

Second, ebay itself has some fees when a transaction occurs.

And third you have to estimate a margin for the seller .

All these comes down to not a good deal actually, since the buyer actually pays all.

The reason that some do use ebay (i just used this once in the early beggining) is that they need money (Lindens), they hit their limits in the first month in SL exchange and then they have to try other sources of funding.

yes and I am still waiting for my limits to increase. no word no comments nothing from them yet... I know others are also waiting a long time, they should update the page that says they will contact us in 5 business days hehe


and yes there are a lot of fees when ppl sell lindens on ebay via paypal... and it is also very chancy for both seller and buyer, personally I think the seller is taking more chances than the buyer..

anywho bringing up an old thread so the poster who replied to me would not think I was ignoring them.

Ciao

Well it seems like rates got a little better on ebay, there's a guy selling at 240L/USD. Might actually be worth it now.

I think the likely reason you will find people buying Lindens on EBay is familiarity. These people more than likely bought gold for other games (WoW, EQ etc). and being new to SL, approach it like they did in the past, they need funds, they go look on EBay for it. It's simple ignorance of the fact that they can buy it directly from Linden Labs, and the people posting it on EBay are taking advantage of this fact.

I know several people who get all their Lindens on eBay because they're unverified users. One of my friends said there was a problem with her bank not working with Linden Lab, and others claimed that LL didn't offer compatible payment options, whereas eBay did. But yeah, many unverifieds appear to rely on eBay for their in-world cash.

Some third party sites like IGE also support the sale of Second Life cash (and accounts), but I looked at IGE to see what their exchange rate was and they don't appear to have any for sale at the moment.