Tag Archives: ebay

Now That’s a Good Price

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For a while I sold lots of stuff on eBay. It was fun to see what I could get for things I no longer wanted. Some of them I found to be useless and they sold anyway. One man’s junk is another’s treasure and all that. I had fun trying to figure out just how to sell stuff. What starting bid price made sense? Should I offer free shipping? How many pictures did I need to include? What was important to include in the description?

I learned that two things sell items the most often: offer a puny staring bid and offer free shipping. This is not always easy to do. I sometimes didn’t care what something sold for; I wanted to get rid of it and get something for it. But other times I couldn’t bear to get a couple bucks for something that was worth much more. Even so, that low price seems too much to resist for some people, or so it seems. If the bid price is too high, it may not sell at all. If the shipping price is too high, it may not sell. So even though it seems crazy to offer something for a low price, it typically pays off.

I had one bad experience where I actually lost money by selling something on eBay. I don’t remember what it was–some item of baby clothing or a cassette tape or who knows what. It sold for $1.99 and I had offered a flat rate for shipping, another couple bucks. The buyer, however, had an APO box. I had never mailed anything to an APO box before and I did not realize that, because of the razor wire and guard dogs that secure them or something, it costs way more to mail to an APO box than your standard address. I think I paid $14 to mail some small item. That hurt.

Today, after a gap of over a year, I decided to sell a printer we got a while ago but never opened. We got a free one by accident–they shipped us two when we only ordered one and then told us just to keep it. I did a few minutes of research and then posted it for sale with a 10-day auction. When you sell an item on eBay, if you are not familiar with the process, they try to be helpful. They offered a stock photo of the printer so I didn’t have to take one myself. And they also offered this tip about choosing a starting bid, copied and pasted verbatim:

Items like yours that sold successfully have an average starting price of $1,217.00 and an average sold price of $4,943.00.

Now I can’t say I know that much about computer printers. I mean, I hear they may have rare earth elements in them, maybe even some gold. But $1,217? Is eBay trying to waste my time here or what? I can’t deny that getting close to $5,000 for an item I got for free would be a grand thing, but my guess is that this fantasy is going to hang out with Alice down the rabbit hole for, well, forever.  I’m hoping I can get 50 bucks for this thing. I probably couldn’t get 100 times that price if I tried to sell it to the military.

Here is the listing if you are looking for a good printer (seriously, we use the same one and it is a gem). Feel free to offer the low price of $1,217. Do that and I will ship it overnight at no extra charge.

 

Old T-Shirts

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This Shirt is Long Gone

This Shirt is Long Gone

How many T-shirts does one person need?  That is the question that has bounced around my little pea of a brain many times.  The thing is, I have a lot of them T-shirts, not brains).  Occasionally, I weed through them and get rid of a few.  I turn them into rags if they are in really bad shape.  I give them away if they are in really good shape.  I sold one on eBay–a 1986 Dartmouth College Winter Carnival shirt with a Where the Wild Things Are theme in egg yolk yellow–that I had been hauling around for years.  I got 14 bucks for it.

I have too many T-shirts right now.  The problem is, they aren’t just random T-shirts.  I got them from all kinds of moments in my life–running marathons, working at outdoor education centers, time with friends, you know what I’m talking about.  Each T-shirt has a story.  I have one red T-shirt from the Atlanta Olympic games, 1996.  I was working at the University of Vermont and the woman whose desk was next to mine was wearing it.  I really liked it so I said to her:  ” I really like that shirt.  Can I have it?”  She said she wouldn’t just give it to me but would trade it for the one I was wearing (aqua, with a person jumping for a trapeze in the woods).  We both took off our shirts right then (I definitely got the better deal there) and I had a new shirt.

It is hard to give up a shirt with a story like that.  What about the high school program I did as a junior?  I still have the shirt, a one of a kind long sleever, but it is mighty tattered.  I keep it, rarely wear it, and decide to keep it again each time I rummage through the pile.  I have shirts that are over 20 years old.  That just seems silly.  I managed to get by just fine twenty years ago without twenty year old shirts, so why do I hang onto these?  Good question.

Nostalgia, that’s why.  I don’t need them all.  I mean, I have a whole drawer full of T-shirts.  So again the question:  How many T-shirts does one person need?  I know there isn’t really an answer to that question; at least, there isn’t only one answer.  But I think I may be ready to pare at this point.  I need to come up with a number so I can make some hard decisions.  I want some to wear around.  They are good summer wear, after all.  They aren’t all 20 years old, so keeping the newer ones seems to make sense.  I also sleep in them sometimes.  And I want some to wearing painting or weeding the garden or even just going for a hike.

Five clean ones and five for messing about?  That sounds good.  But I may have some trouble ditching the memory garb.  Maybe I can try for ten and give myself a maximum of twenty.  That might work.  Maybe I would end up with fifteen.  Last night I wore a marathon shirt from 1998 to bed.  I love that shirt.  Maybe I’ll keep that one.  And get rid of the marathon shirt from 2002.  I have two of those.  And I might be able to sell that Olympic one on eBay, but I like that one.

I don’t miss the Where the Wild Things Are shirt.  I can’t imagine that, once they are gone, I will miss any of the others.  But crap, kids, this could take a while.