Man, I just love eBay. The world’s biggest garage sale. The world’s biggest flea market. Truly, on on given day, my trash is another man’s treasure. Take in point this week.
For the last seven days I’ve been going through my junk with a fine-tooth comb, just looking for anything which may generate some interest. I find a golf club I don’t use, a racquetball racket that isn’t my style, some old (I mean old) RAM modules lying around from a defunct machine. Even found an old, scrubbed harddrive I no longer use. This is the second time I’ve done this and last time yielded me around $500 (which I promptly blew on important stuff, I’m sure).
So, I blow the dust off these goodies and gather them up, take pics, write up a quick description and post all the auctions mid-afternoon on Sunday. They say you get the best response from mid-afternoon Sunday auctions because people are home, and being lazy on a Sunday — thus they are more inclined to battle it out on the last few minutes of an auction. They are really smart.
My standard fair is putting up an auction with a $1.00 entry point, and a Buy It Now price which is slightly above the average asking price for the item. This way, you nail down the trolls who don’t want to bid it out, they just want to buy the thing right now — and I squeeze a little more cash out of them. So, I put up around 12 items, and five of six big ticket items sell almost immediately. I mean the RAM has been gathering dust for better than two years? Yeah, sold in minutes for well over $100.
So far, I’ve generated around $400 and it could go as high as $550 if the moon and stars align. What to do with all that jack!? I could buy the latest and greatest doo-hicky, or gadget. How about the iPhone? Nah, I like my Treo. Perhaps I should nail the nVidia 8800 GTX? But, nah, there are no games which takes advantage of DX10 yet, and by the time the market is flooded with such vermin, the graphics card I buy today will be outdated. No, I think I’m saving my pennies for one, and one thing only … XBox 360 Elite. Give me the blackness!! I gave my entry level XBox 360 back to Costco, but I miss the monster … and with some fabulous games coming out, I feel the need for the doing, for the ownership, for the online presence.