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I love finding items that I use personally that I would buy at full retail, or pay big $ on eBay for.
My biggest “personal” find in the last year is 5 toner cartridges for the beast of a laser printer I have for shipping labels. I have an old oddball Samsung printer and they cost $100+ on eBay, and more at Staples and other office supply retailers – I bought all 5 for $5 each. I’ll hold onto them until my printer dies and sell the remainder!
My greatest personal find recently is that I have a vintage late 1960’s BBQ that I have lovingly restored by the grate was worn and it isn’t something that you can easily recoat. I’ve been looking for a new or better grate for years (couldn’t find one on eBay even at any price), and just happened upon one for $3! I would have easily paid $200+ out of pocket if I could get one even in worse condition.
The other items I like buying for myself are replacement remote controls or power cables for devices like my phone, TV, or laptop. I always lose them, or they eventually wear out – or get chewed by one of my cats. If I buy one for a device I have as I find them it is a good way to save money when the eventually die and to have a immediate spare on hand is always handy.
And as a seller of retro video games, I always play them before I sell them to make sure they are thoroughly tested for several hours before listing 🙂
I agree with Jay – you may not win this battle, but overall eBay will make sure that all sellers will win the war on this guy. Too many red flags will catch up with this guy, and may involve the police one day.
I had a buyer do the same to me once on a item where the serial number didn’t match and the returned item didn’t work, and 6-8 months later I was contacted by the police for a report. Don’t know what happened to them, but these scammers don’t get away with these scams forever.
On a weird side note, I also have had 3 returns for no reason on Panasonic Personal CD Players in the last year – I probably sell 1 of them for every 10 Sony ones I sell, never have issues with Sony ones, but buyers for some reason are a pain with Panasonic ones of late. I just have bad luck on Panasonic CD Players for some reason lately. None of the returns have been INAD – just normal returns paid by the buyer, and they have been returned in the same condition.
The only problem is you may run into a customer that has allergies to dryer sheets or perfumes.
I use to just wash my clothes I sell using Gain detergent, and a few people complained about the smell of the detergent, so I switched to using just baking soda.
You’ll never please everyone I find!
Smoky items aren’t a deal killer I find – just be honest in the listing and say that the item has a smoke, or faint smoke smell and people still will buy it.
You won’t get top dollar, but you will get 80-90% of the value. Anyways, a lot of people still smoke themselves and they may be smoking around the item and not care!
For about a year now I’ve been using LED light bulbs – just the basic replacement ones that look like a old filament light bulb. You can get them very bright (I use 100W equivalents, I tried 200W equivalents but it was like the sun was in my basement). The good thing is that the 100W equivalents can work in any light fixture (even those that take 40 or 60W regular bulbs) as they use less wattage.
Most LED bulbs come in two colors – a natural “Sunlight” white light, and a more traditional yellowish color – we found that the white/natural/sunlight works best for making the pictures bright. The “incandescent” yellowish ones mess with the colors of our photos.
I have a couple fixtures with the bulbs in them – a old pull chain ceiling mount, an old desk lamp, and a automotive repair trouble light that I can hang if needed.
It’s not perfect, but I usually have to do my photography in the early morning or evening due to my work schedule, and in the winter the sun is never out when I am home. I still have the odd photo that just doesn’t turn out perfect no matter what I do with the lighting, but live with it.
When I reuse a box, I always wrap it in kraft paper like a present – then there is nothing that the post office could get mad about.
I find kraft paper comes in handy to wrap items, fill voids in a box by scrunching it up, or put in items like shoes when shipping. It is also clean unlike used newspapers which some sellers I have dealt with ship items in that leave ink all over the item.
It is cheap – I find a roll lasts me a good 6 months for about $15 from Staples. I also have a neat holder for it that I can pull out what I need, and tear it off (kind of like a cling-wrap or aluminum foil box/roll but on a larger scale).
You can also use highly printed boxes with kraft paper around it as nothing will show through.
I didn’t know that old/used Pantone books were worth anything either! My office throws away at least a dozen every year as we replace them annually to ensure accuracy on our graphics. There are lots of variations of these books and we use them all…
Next time we switch to new books, I’ll have to sell them for the team – will get us a lot of Pizza Days!
And anytime I have something that is slightly off color, I’ll know the printer cheaped out on used color books!
Thanks for the tip – I’ve had a lot of luck with old Commodore brand calculators (same company that made the Amiga, 64, PET computer) as well going for $50+ and they are usually only a few dollars when I find them.
I’ve been on the opposite side of the GSP where I received an item in Canada that was broken – eBay just refunded my money and didn’t get the U.S. seller involved.
I have accounts with the major carriers and they tend to email me promotions. Sometimes I get them in the regular mail as well. In July, I had a promotion from PayPal offering 15% off postage using there shipping tool.
UPS sends me emails all the time when I don’t use them for a week offering huge discounts or a free item shipped – seems to be every 2 to 3 weeks.
FedEx also sends me offers for a heavily discounted shipment every 4-8 weeks. Last November during Thanksgiving/Black Friday, they had a flat 50% discount.
DHL has a few a year – I can’t remember the last time I used them though as they were a pain to come pick up items at my home.
Shippo has had some offers, but I haven’t used them yet.
I’m in Canada so the offers may vary, but I would assume that the major carriers would offer similar discounts/promos in the U.S.
I also take them up on free boxes/envelopes or other supplies. I’ve noticed the post office doesn’t care if you use a FedEx box, etc.
Goodwill had dozens of locations that shut down overnight in Toronto over a year ago, putting hundreds out of work while the CEO and other top dogs collected millions in salary and bonuses. It was a huge scandal:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/charity-case-why-goodwills-failure-in-toronto-was-anything-butsudden/article28359611/The Goodwill stores in the community I live in are hit or miss. Some are helping ex-cons get work experience, while others seem like a business similar to Value Village/Savers. Goodwill also runs some concept stores called “Goodies” in my area that focus on books, games, DVD’s and other media that are upscale and have a coffee bar.
Like any franchise system that doesn’t have oversight, there will be amazing franchisees, and others who are absentee and don’t care.
I get a lot of my boxes from work, but I also get a lot at local grocery stores and liquor stores. Not sure if it is common in the U.S., but stores in Canada (the discount ones) typically don’t offer bags and have a huge stack of boxes at the front of the store as seen in the photo. They don’t care how many you take, as long as you get rid of their garbage for them! The good thing is you can usually find any size you are looking for easily in the pile.
I sell on some of the international sites (mostly Canada, a bit on UK) and they are still offering 30 free listings to me a month. ebay.com hasn’t offered me any free listings in several months.
Over the last few years I noticed the best promos were in October – both for listing, and also ebay cash rewards to buy items (last year if you sold a Halloween costume they gave a code for $10 off a purchase). Also had a lot of free shipping promos from various carriers in October and November last year – if eBay doesn’t have a promo, always see what the shippers are offering – I jump from the postal service to UPS to FedEx whenever they have good or free offers.
@Habnab – are your children old enough to help with some of the eBay tasks (photos, packing, sorting inventory)?
It could be a good learning lesson on business/finance to have them involved, and they may enjoy seeing how money can be made from someone else’s junk. If you share some of the profits with them as well, they may become really motivated themselves to help sell items.
I don’t have children myself, but I do have my nieces and nephews (between 5 and 8 years old) involved on picking trips when I am in their towns, and I let them pick out some items that I list for them and give them status updates on (unfortunately, they pick out junk that never sells…). I also keep them up to date on the items I found when I was with them, and share a few dollars of the profit with them on those items – they get really excited when I give them the money.
My opinion is to list things quickly, don’t overthink it, and just add the keywords and information necessary for someone who wants to find it quickly.
In the example of “Jeans” above, if I wanted a pair of men’s black jeans by Jordache with a 40″ waist and 34″ inseam, I would search and narrow down the results by brand, colour, size until I found the item I want – I wouldn’t scour through 1000’s of “jeans” listings to find it.
I believe most people narrow down their searches to a specific requirement – and then they only have a few selections (if any) available.
