Posted on 12 July 2006 by Gary H
There are many ingredients to being successful on eBay but, no matter what your eBay business model, none is more important than finding eBay inventory that will sell profitably on a regular basis. To do that, you need to, as I like to say, put yourself in places that allow quality inventory to find you.
The more often you put yourself in such places, and the more different places you put yourself, the more quality inventory will find you.
Actually, it isn’t quite as simple as that because there are a few other factors that come into play.
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Posted on 11 July 2006 by Gary H
This post has been stewing in the back of my mind for the last week to ten days, but each time I start to think about writing it a little voice in the back of my head says “Get over it. Why should you care?”
But today several things came together that made me see red. They also made me realize that, even though it’s gone through several transitions over the years, caring and not wanting to see people being taken advantage of and paying good money for questionable information about eBay all for the almighty buck was why The Auction Rebel originally came about.
The rest of this post is totally a rant and represents my personal thoughts and feelings. Some of you probably won’t like, or appreciate it, and if that’s the case I invite you to hit your back button and leave. In fact, I invite you to never come back again. But, I believe this needs to be said and, with one exception, I don’t see anyone else williing to say it.
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Posted on 10 July 2006 by Gary H
Stan & Linda Zielinski have compiled a list of 23 different issues of Redbook magazine from the 1950s that contain Dr. Seuss stories.
With the possible exception of “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” in the December 1957 issue, each of these stories made their first appearance in Redbook magazine.
Many authors who, today, are highly collectible had either their first published stories, or stories that later appeared in book form, appear first in contemporary magazines and in many cases these magazine have become highly sought after by collectors.
A quick search on eBay for “dr. seuss redbook” doesn’t return any listings during the last 90 days. A search on TIAS.com shows only one offering - the June 1950 issue priced at $35.00. Searching on Google I found about a half dozen offered on different sites. The highest was priced at $15.00.
Dropping the keywords “Dr. Seuss” from the eBay search brings up a few issues that have appeared on eBay, some selling for as little as $2.95 with no mention in the auction headline or descriptions of Dr. Seuss. It would appear most eBay sellers aren’t aware of what’s inside these issues and I would guess very few general off-line dealers to either.
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Posted on 08 July 2006 by Gary H
In April when I was in Milwaukee for the NCAA Frozen Four hockey tournament, I bought a book titled “A History Of Sigma Alpha Epsilon In The World War” at an antique mall. The book is relatively rare and it sold via an eBay auction for $703.00.
Yesterday, I purchased another copy of the same book at a thrift shop in Grand Forks. This one will go on eBay also. I just finished writing the auction listing for it, and while doing so the book brought several thoughts to mind.
First, what are the odds of finding two copies of a rare item similar to this book within a three month period of time? Whatever they are, it’s happened to me before and I’m sure it has to others also.
The first time it happened, I found two identical licorice tins that each sold for a little more than $2500. I both of them within a week and less than 100 miles apart. I’ve never seen another one offered for sale since.
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Posted on 07 July 2006 by Gary H
Thursday, after going to a few garage sales, I made the rounds of the thrift shops in town.
One of them had two boxes filled with old computer gaming software from the early 1990s priced at $1.50 per game. I bought sixteen of them that were in their original boxes along with their original manuals, disks, etc. One was still sealed in it’s original shrink wrap and most of the others look as though they were never played. All sixteen will go on eBay beginning Sunday evening.
Older PC gaming software isn’t nearly as widely collected as the early game cartridges Atari and Nintendo systems. However, collector interest in early 286 and 386 IBM and IBM compatible computers is growing and these collectors are beginning to look for software they can use with these machines.
I expect most of them will sell for between $10 and $20 with one or two possibly bringing close to $30. If you come across these early games still in their original box and complete with manuals it may be a good idea to pick them up if you can get them for $2 or less.
We’ll see how these sixteen end up a week from Sunday.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Posted on 05 July 2006 by Gary H
During the last ten years rubber stamping has grown into a huge hobby with hundreds of thousands of people around the world. While rubber stamps are available in any craft shop, the Stampin’ Up brand name has become the elite name in the industry.
Thousands of buyers are looking for Stampin’ Up stamp set on eBay every week. At the same time, you can frequent find sets available at garage sales which makes it an attractive ebay niche if you haunt garage sales looking for eBay inventory.
Stampin’ Up sells their rubber stamping sets and supplies through demonstrators who conduct home parties and their sets aren’t cheap. This means the sets you find at garage sales are often priced pretty high also, often $10 to $20 per set.
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