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I go back and forth on this question and not sure what the right answer is.
I just paid $450 for a lot of 55 John Deere Tractor manuals in binders off of Craigslist. These are really hard to find and do sell for good money. I believe that I can list them for around $3k or so.
I have done big lots in the past (4000 hats almost killed me) and wandering what you guys think? Do you guys like buying smaller lots to keep it interesting or working through big lots where it may get pretty boring.
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Are these 55 different manuals, or 55 of the same manual?
Multi-quantity listings are great because you only have to spend the listing time once and then get continued sales, perhaps for years. If they are all different but similar you still should gain some efficiency when listing them all in batches with just minor changes to the same description and item specifics.
Either way, I look at how long it will take me to recover the initial investment, with the profit coming after that.
You have to consider storage space too. What are you not going to be able to buy because you ran out of space to store things?
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I have the space for now. I have a little over 1900 items and my unfinished basement can hold around 4000.
They are all different ones. They have to be cleaned, researched, listed and stored. It should take me a day or so to get done but some of these are going to be long tail items as not many people need a dealers repair manual for a 1980s tractor.
I like the hunt and sometimes get bored and have a hard time finishing a big lot.
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I’ve found that I can get better value and faster listing when I buy in larger lots. It isn’t perfect, though, because I bought a large lot of radios that I have to test one at a time. It has been slow going, but quite profitable.
I read an article recently that older John Deere farm tractors are in high demand because they are DIY repairable while the newer ones are software driven and can only be repaired with a computer and a specialist. This takes the tractor out of service for a week or so while an older one can be repaired and put back to use quickly. If these manuals are for farm tractors, you may have quite a haul there, and they may sell faster than you think.
I wasn’t able to find that article right away, but I’ll look again later.
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Don’t want to be the negative one, but make doubly sure you can sell them. John Deere is just as bad as Velcro on having a team scouring the platforms and issusing cease and disist letters or issuing a VERO on Ebay. I have had 4 items pulled because of John Deere. 2 hats on Etsy and 2 die cast metal tractors on Ebay.
Now I know my stuff was merchandise, but those letters all said that we were not auhtorized to sell any John Deere items that contained the official John Deere logo, a copyright tag line and some other items.
I would think this falls into the category of maybe re-selling Chiltons auto repair manuals or something like that. But John Deere and Velcro don’t want any resellers to even mention their name, show their logo, and profit from their name and brand. The serious companies all seem to be funny like that and have full time employees using apps to scour the internet for their employers company name and the such.
It has been mention here on SL several times and Jay and others end up saying it is like rolling the dice, speeding and things like that. No harm as long as you don’t get caught.
So think you may want to research out how intense John Deere is on this topic before investing any time in photos, cleaning or listing. I hope you find they don’t care.
I would even go so far as calling John Deere, get to that dept. of employee guard dogs and ask them. Can I sell printed material with the JOhn Deere name and logo on it if I am not an authorized seller-re-seller.
Just wanted to throw that opinion in, not rain on your parade and or be a dooms sayer. Only be catious by asking a few questions or researching reselling JD property.
Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc. in Atlanta
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i have never run into issues with John Deere. I find the whole Vero thing a little frustrating. I see hundreds if not thousands of these for sale and there are at least 20 JD manuals that sell everyday. I have no idea how they come up with which ones are not able to be sold and which ones can.
thanks for the heads up.
hope there’s no speed trap.. . .
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All of us that have been around for a while understand your frustration with “the Vero thing”.
This has been discussed many times here at SL and I will paraphrase Jay’s response he replies with every time.
There are a tremendous number of speeders across the country speeding either a small amount or by a large amount. Only a small percent gets caught, but because it is against the law, they are breaking the law, we have police forces spread all over to try and catch the violators. No, not everyone gets caught, and the average citizen would ask your question, “why aren’t all the violators given a ticket?”. It comes down to manpower.
Just like small cities and large cities have police forces of varying sizes and budgets, same goes for the VERO companies who try to protect their brand name and logo use.
As well all know, Velcro and John Deere are large and have the bigger “police” teams, but not so large that they can “police” the whole internet.
I had the word Velcro on every hat I ever sold, for years then I got my first VERO against me through Ebay. I took down the one they mentioned, they didn’t see the others I still had listed at first. But then about a month later. BAM! comes the second. Well I did my research, bulked edited and everyone was changed to “Hook and Loop” adjustable band, one size fits most.
Then came the John Deere one maybe a year or so later. Same scenario, only this time was through Etsy and on top of that, I got a personal letter mailed to my house from John Deere’s corporate legal eagles’. Well, all good things must come to an end, so I pulled the few John Deere items and took them offline.
But my point is, I was “speeding” or selling their items and the letter stated I used their name and logo in my efforts to try and sell John Deere products of which they got no percentage of the profits and sale. And they were right, of course. So, I was caught / busted, and I did as the letter stated, “Cease and Desist”.
Then I had another issue but with another product. I was a spray foam insulation business owner for several years and decided to have a local machine shop reverse engineer a few small consumable parts used in our spray gun that applied spray foam. I used them just fine in my sprays guns and did not have to pay the price of replacement parts which were 10 times the cost of the OEM parts. After I quit the business I then started to list and sell them on Ebay. It only took about a month or so and BAM! again a VERO, but I talked with Ebay and did more research and now I have been selling them for years. In that case, I used the word “Aftermarket” and this time I did as Old Dad is saying, I also stated it fits and could be used on a [mfg. name here] spray gun. That did it. No more hassles.
So, I would suggest you approach it with words such as can be used to repair John Deere Equipment or Tractors. Any wording to move you away from stating you are reselling an actual JD item specific piece.
The buyers are not blind, they see the logo, they know what you are selling and if they want or need it, they will buy it. But instead of “this is”, I would go with can be used for. Then that’s up to the buyer if he wants to use it on a JD or to try and fix his washing machine with it. Hey, you are saying what it is, just what and on what it may be used.
Pain in the rear that it is, the VERO list lives. I even put a link on SL years ago that takes you directly to Ebay’s VERO list. There are hundreds and hundreds of them, and I read somewhere not too long ago that the list has topped over a thousand companies on it now, but unsure if that’s fact.
But if you read the list and you have products that state any of the names on the list then, essentially one could get a VERO, but I am sure every one of us have and do speed, and some maybe very often, but when was the last time you were caught and given a ticket. We risk that every day and so do millions of Ebay sellers.
Now think of this whole thing in the light of reselling original one of a kind artworks. Don’t you owe the artist a royalty? Haven’t you heard of singers taking “snippets” even a few notes and then getting caught of taking from another song and incorporating it into theirs without permission or paying royalties. Politicians using songs as anthems then the original artist getting them legally for doing so and issue a cease and desist order.
So, there you have it. We printed the Vero list out one-time reference here but there were so many products that the corporations were still active, we would have had to not list a large amount of our inventory. So, we just take a chance.
This day and time try almost any well-known designer, I think someone selling Channel #5 perfume got hit, and designer handbag, all are on the VERO list if I recall.
So just give the JD thing a thought and choose a wording that does the trick and keep your foot off the gas pedal a little bit and you should be fine.
No offense intended, just expressing an Good luck,
Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art -
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do you think that saying for john deere rather than just john deere keeps the vero away?
that seems a bit odd.
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All I can say is doing that with car brands works with auto parts. I have had take-downs in the past and this is what eBay advised to do in order to prevent that, I haven’t had a problem since. Example: Brake Hose for 1988-1992 Corvette – Rear Right. I don’t know if this actually helps sales results as long as the information is the item specifics.
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I think most of the older smaller tractors are owned by people who have a few acres mini-farms. They may also want to maintain the tractors themself so the manuals should be handy. Most of the older ones just aren’t powerful enough for the demands of modern farming.
At one time in my life I farmed and worked a full-time job, my oldest son has a cattle feedlot and grows all the corn for feed and bales tons of hay with a big round bale baler. I help him occasionally and driving one of his tractors is a world of difference from the old John Deere model 2510 I used. It’s really amazing to see some of the electronics the new equipment has. For example, they measure ground speed and tire slip for best efficiency, have quite heated and air-conditioned cabs, and advanced functions like GPS to drive the tractor when planting and keep it at exact spacing with the last pass. The combine can record what the yield was for each area of the fields he farms and he can apply more or less fertilizer next year based on that. It’s all amazing stuff.
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