Miniature Bids - https://miniaturebids.com/

(logo used with permission)

Fed up of eBay seller charges? Yeah. Me too.

Understandably, then, I was intrigued by mention of a new site on various Facebook groups I'm a part of, namely Miniature Bids.

The short summary:

• no buyer seller fees
• pretty much similar approach to eBay in terms of fixed length, sealed max bid auctions
• payment by Paypal
• like eBay, it's just a 'venue' to contact buyer and seller

I've had a nose around (not least wearing my computer security hat), and it looks pretty good and competently put together. So far, there isn't a huge amount in the way of auctions up there, but people are gradually discovering it, and it's not all Games Workshop by a long shot :D

There are a couple of shortcomings at present in that you can't search by tag so (for example) finding all the WW2 28mm figures isn't as easy as you'd like, for one, and there's no way of restricting sale to specific countries, or having different postage rates to different countries. But, they are aware of these, and they're on the list to improve.

I've exchanged a few questions with Gavin from MB on Facebook, from which I've learned the following:

• the basic auction feature (as is currently available) will always be free (win!)
• their business model is to fund the site via advertising and a subscription model, where some site features will only be available to subscribers (but, and I quote, "even at the most expensive subscription package, it will still be cheaper then EBay's version")
• they have plans in place should they need to handle more traffic 
• they seem pretty responsive to questions and suggestions for new features (see above)

In summary? Definitely worth a look. I shall certainly be keeping an eye on it as a source of additions to the lead pile.... although, I'm still completely at a loss to understand this concept of people selling figures... :D