E bay truth

I find one of the best uses for ebay is to find people who want to buy things on a routine basis. For example, if someone wins a bid for copper, it is likely that they will want to buy a lot more of your copper at the same price directly. That allows you to save the ebay fee. I am willing to give up the money in terms of ebay fees in order to find customers.

Terry, in terms of your hard drives, there are some ways to sell all of them without necessarily going on ebay. There are people such as myself that will buy most of the laptop hard drives you have. Others will buy all of the desktop ones as well. I would much rather sell 50 units at $8.50 in one fell swoop than list 50 one at a time on ebay for $10. Take the $1 in ebay fees out and the time and the $8.50 is a better profit at least in my eyes.

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Originally Posted by ROKrecycling

I find one of the best uses for ebay is to find people who want to buy things on a routine basis. For example, if someone wins a bid for copper, it is likely that they will want to buy a lot more of your copper at the same price directly. That allows you to save the ebay fee. I am willing to give up the money in terms of ebay fees in order to find customers.

Terry, in terms of your hard drives, there are some ways to sell all of them without necessarily going on ebay. There are people such as myself that will buy most of the laptop hard drives you have. Others will buy all of the desktop ones as well. I would much rather sell 50 units at $8.50 in one fell swoop than list 50 one at a time on ebay for $10. Take the $1 in ebay fees out and the time and the $8.50 is a better profit at least in my eyes.

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Oh yeah I agree randy and I sell local as well as ebay. I havnt found a good buyer for the desktop drives yet. I usualy sell the smaller drives in lots of 10 on ebay. Ill gladly sell anything via paypal invoice outside of ebay.

You guys should try selling from Canada, outragious postal rates along with two postal systems Canada and the USA then your guaranteed customs delays.

These are the groups that I sell to.

Vintage Camera’s and Photo
Vintage Stereo and Radio domestic and WWII, vacuum tubes
Vintage car and truck parts, taillights, headlamps the bucket type and all sorts of chrome, 8v-71 Blowers, hood mascots, diesel fuel injectors, posi and limited slip differentials 3rd member only, bow tie Chevy heads with the 2.02 valves, certain parts out of turbo 400 transmissions the list is endless.
Vintage tractor parts, parts from hit n miss engines
My fishing weight molds

Nary a complaint on shipping time or postal fees, until I started selling ball winders, wool combs and other goods I was making for the wool and fibre folk, the woman are the worse most impatient lot I have dealt with when it comes to cross border shopping. Now I stick with the easy to please crowd.

The centre pull ball winder was fun to make, spent weeks researching old patents.

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Originally Posted by Copper Head

I'd like to pose a question ?
So far I have sold items on e-bay I have tried to sell items below cost with my reward being I lost Money & also I sold items at current value that is really not so great when you get all the fee's tabulated against your Pay Pal,The bottom line I never get the good BID wars for my stuff . Does any one think that MANY of the bid wars on Ebay are with the help of Shills...

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To the opening question, I would answer that SOME of the bid wars on Feebay are with the help of shills -- I experienced this about 7-8 years ago, I kept bidding on skis from a seller who owned a shop in Colorado and kept losing to the same buyer. The buyer had good feedback, but it was only from that one seller. The buyer "bought" something like 80 pairs of skis from the seller. I made a stink, and Feebay shut down the seller.

Mostly I trade in vintage brochures and other paper collectibles, postcards, vintage ski patches, and I haven't noticed any shill bidding in those areas. One guy I thought might be a shill bidder until he bought a rather pricey item from me. Another guy I kept butting heads with as a buyer turned out to be a friend of mine. Small world.

I dislike Feebay, but continue to use it. I've only sold one item (that I can think of) that I picked up scrapping.