More From the Inbox

From Barbara:

I love hearing about your sales AND your purchases! Seeing a realistic view of an normal, everyday person like you (versus these professional ebayers who've made a gazillion bucks over the years) making a go of it is really motivating! It's people like you who keep me motivated to want to continue selling on ebay (because it can really be a drag sometimes)! 

 Thank you, Barbara! An overwhelming majority of the comments on my post asking for questions said that they enjoy seeing my sales. I'm so happy to hear that! That's always an easy kind of post at the end of a long, tiring day, when my brain just can't come up with anything else to write about, but I didn't want this blog to be all about me bragging about my sales. Haha.

I don't know if I would call myself "normal," but yes, I am an everyday person who does NOT have a gazillion bucks in her checking account. :-D


Over the summer, I bought a lot of 25 WWE action figures from a woman on my Facebook group. I paid $10 for them, knowing absolutely nothing about them. I researched each individual one and decided that individually, they were basically worthless, so I put them in a lot for $129.99 or best offer. I got several very low offers. I counter-offered on some, I declined others.

 Then a month or so later, I got another 43 of them at a yard sale for $18. I never even took them out of the book - didn't clean them, sort them, research them, look at them - nothing.

The other day, I got a $50 offer on the original 25. I decided I had had them long enough, and the buyer caught me in an exceptionally good mood that day, so I accepted his offer. Any other time, I'd have probably gotten annoyed at a $50 offer on a $130 item, but I needed the money. Before I accepted the offer, I checked out his user ID and discovered that he resells these things individually (for an average of about $10 with free shipping). It just wasn't worth my time to mess with trying to sell them singly, so I decided I was still happy with that price and messaged him:

Good morning! I am going to accept your $50 offer on my 25 piece WWE Action Figure Lot. I have 43 others that I haven't listed yet. If you are interested in them as well, I will sell them to you for the same price of $2 a piece, for a total of $136 + shipping. Please let me know what you think.

 He immediately wrote me back that he was definitely interested, but could he see a picture of the other lot first. I sent him a few pictures and he offered me $65 + shipping on the second set. I gladly took it! No eBay fees, no cleaning, no researching. So on my initial investment of $28, I ended up making $115 + shipping, and I didn't even have to bother listing the second lot!

Lesson: If a buyer is interested in something that you have more of that isn't listed yet, offer it to them! This is NOT against eBay rules. You aren't allowed to discuss completing an eBay sale off-eBay, but my second lot was NOT an eBay listing, so it was perfectly okay. You never know when you might be able to drum up an extra sale.

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This post is getting long already, so I'll go to machine-gun-style for these other three items:

Yesterday, I sold the last Miche shell from the very first Miche lot that I bought back in the spring.

Here are the final results from that lot:

This next sale was a real surprise. I cannot remember if I had best offer on it or not. I probably did, but it sold for my full asking price Sunday morning:

• Acquired: 8/9/12 (road trip)
• Listed: 8/22/12
• Sold: 9/23/12
• Paid: $3.00
• Sold: $42.99 + shipping

And finally, I have a contact on my Facebook yard sale group who has nearly 30 pairs of Converse that she is gradually weeding out because they aren't supportive enough for her since she had back surgery. I've bought a few pairs from her, and they've all done well. These were my favorites - super-boring shoes, but exciting sale :)

• Acquired: 7/12/12 (Facebook yard sale group)
• Listed: 7/22/12
• Sold: 9/24/12
• Paid: $8.00
• Sold: $50.00 + shipping

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My next post will be about packaging and shipping, which Ashley wanted to know more about. I might split it up into 2 posts - one about packaging and one about shipping. Logical division, don't you think? :)