Amazon’s ‘Make an Offer’ Loaded with Sports Memorabilia

Before logging on to Amazon to wrap up your Christmas shopping, you’ll want to flip through The Art of Negotiation. It could save you a few bucks.

Last week Amazon unveiled “Make an Offer,” a new feature which allows customers to negotiate lower prices with more than 150,000 items. For the initial rollout, Amazon has limited the experience mainly to collectibles – sports, entertainment, coins, history and political memorabilia – and fine art.

The sports category easily lists the most items featuring the Make an Offer opportunity. Photographs, uniforms, balls and trading cards are some of the most abundant memorabilia available, with Major League Baseball and the National Football League represented the most.  There’s even a pair of wrestling trunks signed by Hulk Hogan.

First, the seller must enable the option on an item’s listing. The customer can then either purchase the listed item at the available price or click the Make an Offer button and enter an offer. Amazon sends an email to the seller, who then responds within 72 hours. The seller can accept the offer, reject it or submit a counter offer. Now, this is when that copy of The Art of Negotiation comes in handy. Because now it’s on. Negotiations continue via email. Should the customer pull off their best Donald Trump impersonation and the seller accepts an offer, the item is placed in to the customer’s shopping cart at the negotiated price for checkout and purchase.

For example, check out this Derek Jeter clubhouse chair listed by Steiner Sports, used August 24 when the New York Yankees hosted the Chicago White Sox. The Yankees won 7-4 and Jeter went 0-for-5. It’s listed at $2,500. Now, I’m not a Yankees fan, and while I respect The Captain, I’m not obsessed with him, and I certainly don’t have a disposable income that would allow for such a purchase, though I do need a new office chair. So I made an Arte Moreno-esque take-it-or-leave-it offer of $500 with the ultimatum that my offer will stand for 72 hours. I can’t imagine Steiner Sports accepts my low-ball offer, which is 80 percent off the asking price. But if they do, I think I can sell it to the wife, seeing as I was ready to drop $175 on an office chair from Ikea. Knowing her, she’ll use Lysol wipes to clean off any Hall of Fame lingering germs and drop the value of the chair by 40 percent.

Steiner Sports is looking forward to a better shopping experience between customers and sellers utilizing the Make an Offer service.

“The ‘Make an Offer’ experience gives customers more control and better deals than they may have received prior to this program,” said Steven Costello, Executive Vice President of Steiner Sports Memorabilia, Inc. “The negotiation experience will hopefully get more communication between us and our customers to help us better gauge the price for certain items. We love the ‘Make and Offer’ program, and it is only going to get bigger. Once customers know this is an available feature more offers will come, leading to more sales.”

Amazon emailed me confirmation of my offer within a few minutes. Other customers can still purchase the item at the current list price. So there is risk involved. However, if a customer is looking for value only in the Amazon market place, this shouldn’t be much of a concern.

Amazon said it plans to expand the number of Make an Offer eligible items in 2015. So there’s time to hone those negotiating skills.