Reserve prices

A category can allow listings with reserve prices. A reserve price is the lowest price at which a seller is willing to part with the listed item through an auction listing.

Some categories that allow listings with reserve prices also allow you to reduce those reserve prices when you modify an item. Other categories do not.

An entire marketplace may or may not support reserve prices on items being listed. This value is indicated by the ReservePriceAllowed field returned by GetCategories. If ReservePriceAllowed is true, the marketplace overall allows reserve prices.

Similarly, an entire marketplace may or may not support reducing reserve prices on listed items. This value is indicated by the ReduceReserveAllowed field returned by GetCategories. If ReduceReserveAllowed is true, the marketplace overall allows reducing reserve prices.

GetCategories also returns the value of MinimumReservePrice, the lowest reserve price allowed for the marketplace, but does not set it.

If the ORPA (Override Reserve Price Allowed) field's value is returned under a Category node as true, it indicates that the reserve price can be overridden for listings in that category, but the eBay marketplace's default value for this setting is actually false.

If ReservePriceAllowed is true for the marketplace and ORPA is true for the category, the marketplace allows reserve prices in general but the category does not allow reserve prices.

You cannot set the ORPA field for a category. Categories are defined for individual eBay marketplaces by the eBay marketplace administrator and vary from one marketplace to the next. That is, the US eBay marketplace has different categories than, say, the Germany eBay marketplace.

You can, however, use GetCategories to return an array of categories and parse the response for the values of ReservePriceAllowed, MinimumReservePrice, and ORPA to determine the rules for a given category. Any combination of values for the three fields is possible.

Similarly, the ORRA (Override Reduce Reserve Allowed) field in Category, if set to true, reverses the marketplace's ReduceReserveAllowed setting for the category. That is, if ReduceReserveAllowed is false for the marketplace and ORPA is true for the category, the marketplace does not allow sellers to reduce reserve prices in general but the category does allow sellers to reduce reserve prices. If ReduceReserveAllowed is true for the marketplace and ORPA is true for the category, the marketplace allows sellers to reduce reserve prices in general but the category does not allow sellers to reduce reserve prices. You cannot set the ORRA field for a category. Parse the response for the values of ReduceReserveAllowed, MinimumReservePrice, and ORRA to determine the rules for a given category.

Depending on the marketplace and category, you also may need to call GetCategoryFeatures and check MinimumReservePrice.

Remember that:

• ReservePriceAllowed and ReduceReserveAllowed apply to the marketplace overall.
• The ORPA setting defined in Category reverses the value of ReservePriceAllowed for that category.
• The ORRA setting defined in Category reverses the value of ReduceReserveAllowed for that category.
• MinimumReservePrice defines the lowest reserve price allowed for the marketplace overall. If the category or marketplace does not allow reserve prices, it will be ignored.