Do you use eBay’s Pulse page as a research tool for finding “supposedly” hot items or to research what you should sell?

There’s a very interesting thread begun by Jim Kaiser on Jim Wilson’s AuctionHints forum that shows just how easy it is for a knowledgeable seller to grossly manipulate the results of eBay’s Pulse page.

It would suggest the very real possibility that every item on eBay’s Pulse page is there because the seller has, for want of a better phrase, “cooked the system.” If that’s true, and I believe it is, eBay’s Pulse page is a total waste as a research tool.

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There are a lot of eBay experts who will tell you that going to garage sales or flea markets to find eBay inventory is a wast of time and a road map to failure.

I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but it seems to me when they say that, in the next paragraph, they are trying to sell you something they guarantee will insure your success on eBay.

Here are a few examples of things I’ve purchased at local garage sales during the last 5-6 weeks and then successfully sold on eBay. Maybe they will help you decide if time spent at garage sales is worth your time.

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Sometime in the next three days Amazon is going to be depositing $802.46 into my checking account. This money comes from the sale of used college textbooks I sold on Amazon between the 2nd and 15th of August.

Selling used college textbooks on Amazon can be a very lucrative sideline to your eBay business and they aren’t that hard to find. In most parts of the country garage sales and thrift shops are a good source of used college textbooks that you can turn around and sell on Amazon.

But, you need to know what to buy and what to pass on. Here’s how to get started and two simple tips so that you don’t get burned.

If you check out the books at garage sales or thrift shops, over time, you are going to see a lot of used college textbooks priced at $5 or less. Most of them aren’t worth buying, but some can quickly and easily be sold on Amazon for profits of $30 to $50 or more.

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There are five thrift shops here in Grand Forks and three of them put out new books on Tuesdays. That means that Tuesday is thrift shop day for me if I’m in town.

At the first one I picked up a very good copy of “How I turned $1,000 Into Three Million In Real Estate In My Spare Time” by William Nickerson for $.25. This should bring $50 or better on eBay.

I was also able to buy ten vintage records, all in their original sleeves, for $.50 each at the same shop. Some probably won’t sell, but there are some that should bring $10 or more on eBay so the purchase will be profitable.

I found nothing at the second and third shops I stopped at, but at the fourth I was able to buy four volumes of the Charles Scribner’s Sons series of books by Theodore Roosevelt published in 1926 for $1.00 each. All four of them should sell and they will probably average between $20 and $25 each.

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I have 52 auctions running on eBay this week. Each of the items, except for two, were purchased locally in Grand Forks during the last week. The two exceptions are re-lists of two successful auctions won by someone who eBay then NRU’d because their first seven feedback were all negative.

Here’s why I bought each item, what I paid for each, and what my expectations are for each.

1. 1939 Stoeger’s Catalog & Handbook - This is a reprint of their original 1939 catalog. If I had realized it was a reprint - and I should have since it’s identified as one right on the front cover - I wouldn’t have bought it. At the time I picked it up I was talking with Dave, a friend who buys books and records for resale, about a record I currently had on eBay and wasn’t paying a lot of attention to what I was doing. I paid $1 for it and thought I had a $150 - $200 catalog. If I get the opening bid of $9.99 I’ll be happy.

There’s a lesson here. When you’re buying items for resale - pay attention to what you’re doing.

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Each week I will be writing about some of the things I currently have on eBay.

I’ll talk about what I’m selling; where I bought it; why I bought it; what I paid for it; and what I hope to get for it.

Once the sales is over I’ll provide a recap of what sold; what didn’t; and my thoughts on the auction results for that week.

While there are occasional exceptions, I try to schedule all my auctions to start at 9:45 PM CST on Sunday evenings and to run for seven days. In most cases, the only exception to this schedule is when a Sunday is in the middle of a three day holiday weekend. If that’s the case, I schedule them for the same time as above on Monday evening.

You can follow these auctions each week by either using the “My Current Auctions” link in the right hand sidebar or by doing a search for eBay user ID paperpleasures46.

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The Auction Rebel eBay blog is back.

If you’ve read previous versions of The Auction Rebel you are already familiar with my approach to selling on eBay and my thoughts about what to sell on eBay.

If you haven’t, here is some idea of what you will find here.

I’ve been making my living selling on eBay for more than five years. Most of my eBay auction inventory is purchased at antique shops/malls, garage sales, antique shows, flea markets, auction sales, thrift shops and book sales.

Many people will tell you that you can’t experience any kind of success on eBay selling the type of things on eBay that I do. They will also tell you that you can’t find eBay inventory in the places I do.

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