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Friday, January 27, 2006

An ebay thing

I updated my "about me" page on ebay if you are at all interested.

(TIP: it has pics of the kids)

Yeah, I thought that would do the trick.

8 comments:

Vanessa said...

Thanks! It's just a template, so it's really plain, but maybe I could enlist some IT guys to make it better : )

Anonymous said...

Cute pictures.

Anonymous said...

I never knew we had so much in common! I love old houses and the old stuff I find in them!

I have been thinking about selling all the old treasures I find on ebay for about two years now. I even went out and bought a bunch of vintage fiestaware to get me started. (It just looks too good with all my other fiesta so it now sits proudly in my kitchen and dinning room.) However, seeing your auctions and recent news (we found out a few weeks ago that despite our efforts to not reproduce any more, we are expecting) I think it is time that I get my act together. I have enough stuff just sitting around the house to have some seed money once it is sold.

I wish you lived in the area still. I have always wanted to find an estate sale buddy!

Anonymous said...

P.S. Any hints or tips you have would be great.

Vanessa said...

Oh MY!!!!! (I live in monthly terror of the same thing : ) Congratulations! (translated...better you than me!!!!)

About ebay...you could do really well there, especially in the more outlying GR area...I get all my stuff from garage sales, estate sales, some from thrift stores (but NOT goodwill, they filter out all of their good stuff to sell on ebay) and auctions (in that order). A woman with several booths at a large antique store revealed that she makes over 6 figures selling antiques in her physical (not ebay) booth that she gets almost exclusively from garage sales. People just don't know what they have. Ebay extends the circle so much farther.

To get started you need a couple of things: a digital camera, a decent internet speed (which I don't have by the way), access to stock, and a scale (a bathroom scale will work just fine).

I started with a box of antique silverplate from an estate auction. I just lost my head and bought the crazy stuff without knowing what I was doing. In looking it up on ebay, I got hooked on "research"...looking up stuff I have to see how much it was worth. I began to realize that the stuff I had didn't mean as much to me as I thought it did : )

I don't sell anything that I don't love. I just can't make myself cheerlead for anything that I think is stupid. But I love a lot of different kinds of stuff.

Shipping is the worst for me, but if you order supplies online from the Post office, most of your boxes, etc. are free. I used to beg for boxes from stores, but if you know anybody who works in a K-mart or say FAMILY CHRISTIAN STORE or something, they can save their shipping supplies for you ...like bubble wrap, peanuts, etc. If I couldn't get them somewhere, I ordered bubble wrap in bulk (off ebay). When you are shipping something, just picture a postal worker throwing it across the room and letting it hit the wall. If it will survive that, you packed it well.

As far as selling goes, I just upgraded to a business account, etc. on paypal and it looks like it's worth it. But just starting out, I'd stick to cash, check or money order. Never send out a box until you are paid for it.

If you have more specific questions, email me and I'd love to help you out. It's just like anything: the more time you spend on it, the better you do. I find that this time of year is best for selling because people are bored. And basically, if you like doing it you can probably make money at it. It has been a great boost to our family economy.

I won't lie and say it doesn't have drawbacks: the kids get sick of riding around to sales and they complain about how much I work sometimes. Its always THERE to do, but hey, when is that not true for a woman? My house has much more clutter than most other human establishments. There are some people on ebay who are rather unpleasant, but on the few occasions I've had really bad attitudes, I have been really gracious and usually find out they have deeper issues than just a broken dish that came in the mail. One woman just screamed at me about something and then revealed that her father had dropped dead without warning on Christmas and she was completely heartbroken over it. I can only think of one person who was just a bad person to deal with and I left her negative feedback and was done with it.

Can you tell I really enjoy it? I'm going to shut up now...got auctions ending!!!

Vanessa said...

One more thing, Heidi, somewhere in my cluttered brain I seem to recall that your mom had a small business making slipcovers. Am I right? If you have a modicum of business sense, you'll do fine. And when you make a big sale, you'll be so addicted, you won't be able to quit! My favorite "big one" was the clock I got for thee dollars that I sold for $450!

Anonymous said...

Ness, you could go on all day about this stuff and would never bore me. I'm getting pretty pumped about this!

Um, great memory by the way. My mom had a curtain/pillow/anything she could make out of fabric for the home-buisness.

I forgot to mention that my brother in law drives for fed ex and gets 75% off shipping. HOW COOL IS THAT!!!! I'll have to find out about their boxes and stuff though.

This is great info. I think I'll go find my camera right now and start snapping pics!

What is your email by the way?

Vanessa said...

i'm vryerse at gmail dot com...cool thing on the shipping thing! I think i'd be shocked if the boxes weren't free. I'm on my way to do pics right now. And I started using a picture hosting site, which means you can load more pics of the same item without getting charged for it by ebay (doesn't use their bandwidth, whatever that means) which makes it totally legal. Flicker is the name. Email away!!!

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