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Retro, funny I had a kind of similar idea last week. I was thinking of putting advertising in one of the local free “rag mags” advertising free home electronics disposal/recycling. The challenge would be what to do with the truly worthless stuff of which I’m sure there would be a lot.
I think the biggest challenge with dumpster diving is that going through the trash goes against social norms and as a result is viewed as taboo. Also, like Jay said, people leave some great stuff out on the curb which is why dumpster diving is a thing in the first place. Heck, my neighbor two doors down left a nice gas grill out on the curb on trash day last week and I really wanted to go take a look at it but he was out working in his yard and I was not sure how he would react.
Yep, I’ve sold my fair share of “clicky” keyboards too. Again, the IBM ones are very coveted. This whole idea of “vintage” computing and the crazy prices people pay on eBay really makes me feel old sometimes. When I was in college my roommates and I were true computer nerds. We would go dumpster diving behind the computer science building and pull out all manner of old computer systems, IBM PC XTs, Apple II’s, Sun SPARC systems and loads more. We would bring it back to our dorm by the car load and tinker with it and get it all running again. To think that stuff is now worth $1,000’s of dollars! I actually still had quite a few of those old systems when I graduated but after a few years my parents got tired of storing it for me and I didn’t have space for it so in the dumpster it all went.
Week Nov 20-26, 2016
Total Items in Store: 306
Items Sold: 17
Cost of Items Sold: $35.75
Total Sales: $531.64
Highest Price Sold: $75.49 (Old IBM Thinkpad Laptop)
Average Price Sold: $31.27
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: ~20I don’t think I’ve ever posted my numbers before but decided to start doing it. Overall the week was dead until Friday night but I got a nice bump in sales Friday night and into Saturday. I think I sold over 50% of my items just in that short time-frame. The IBM laptop was an interesting sale since I used to just pass over old computers. This one wasn’t too old, late 90’s so not “vintage” but old enough to be pretty useless by today’s standards since it was running Windows 98. The important thing is that the guy at the yard sale let me test it before I bought it and I was able to verify that everything was still working. I guess there is a market for anything IBM, especially the old Selectric Typewriters which I’ve sold in the past for $300. I’ve even sold freebie keychains with the IBM logo on it and instruction booklets for old AS/400 terminals.
I’m honestly surprised you sell your plush for $20+. I did a small experiment about 2 years ago with about a dozen Disney, Gund and Webkinz plush and I ended up selling most of them for like $5 just to get them out of my sight! I think I still have a Figment plush from 1980’s Epcot that I can’t sell for $15 even though there are TONS of Disney fans that love Figment. I just don’t have the plush touch I guess.
I have a feeling any 1K+ sales are troll buyers that never pay. Funny, when I was in line for the NES Classic a week ago half the people there were trying to buy those Hatchimals so it is definitely a hot item this Christmas. I’d strike while the iron is hot. Most of these items are only worth this much when they first come out while supply is limited and there is media “buzz” about them being sold out, then the stores get restocked.
I’m going to avoid the direct politics but I am curious, has anybody on here done eBay full time during a recession? I’ve only been doing this for about 3 years so I missed the worst of the last recession. When picking a normal employer I’ve always tried to work for a firm that I felt could weather economic headwinds. I’m curious how eBay would fare. Normal logic would say retail declines during a recession but eBay is not quite “normal” retail. Would people maybe opt to buy used on eBay when they are tight on money?
Oh, and TING is called an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator). They don’t own the actual cellular network, they just piggyback on somebody else’s infrastructure.
I was a fan of her eye glasses videos, its really tragic to hear somebody so young dying so suddenly.
I guess anything is possible but like you said, they would need to invest quite a bit in all the support services that go along with running an online marketplace as robust as eBay. Since Facebook’s “core” business is really selling advertising and media placement I just don’t see them going whole hog on a true “eBay killer” type marketplace.
I’m honestly more concerned with what is going on with apps such as OfferUp and LetGo. They seem to be getting a lot of traction in my area and it’s actually making it harder for me to source some things like electronics. Instead of selling the stuff for a few bucks at yard sales or donating it to thrift shops people aremselling on those apps and often for prices that are too high for me to buy and resell.
I’ve used that method before. My favorite is to use this cleaner:
I have not come across another method that even comes close to working as well as that cleaner.
I’ve bought and sold on Facebook a few times. I belong to quite a few local resale groups and will occasionally browse them. Honestly, I think Craigslist has more to worry about than eBay because all the transactions are local. The same annoyances that come with selling/buying on Craigslist apply to Facebook too. I sold a really nice Nintendo set once for $200 that wasn’t moving on eBay due to the shipping weight. It took a lot of patience though. I had to fend off quite a few annoying dealers who kept messaging me trying to get it for next to nothing and quite a few people who sent messages expressing interest but then fell off the face of the earth before we could seal the deal. Then when I finally sold it the guy that bought it insisted that I hook it up to show it worked before he would pay but didn’t mention he wanted that until he was at my door. Honestly, after that I decided it was better just to buy stuff and leave the selling on those platforms to people with more free time than me.
Ok, I guess you could call this a little bit of both “thrill of the hunt” and “eye candy” but mostly for video game nerds. This isn’t super recent (about a year and a half ago) but is probably one of my better video game finds. I was talking with a guy on Craigslist about buying a Sega Dreamcast he had posted. I was already happy to be buying that, then he says he has more game systems to sell so I tell him to bring them all and I’ll look them over and make an offer on the lot. Well the photo shows everything he had. When I saw the Turbo Grafx 16 with all the accessories I had to try very hard not to show him how excited I was. The original Nintendo mint in the box was a really nice score too. We settled on $200 which I gladly paid. Total value of all the stuff in the photo was well over $1,000.
This is an interesting topic that I’m surprised does not come up around here more often. eBay is in the middle of a bit of an identity crisis. Your average person thinks of online auctions when they think of eBay but we as sellers know that fixed-price sales are a major part of the eBay experience now. The big question is, would people still feel inclined to shop on eBay vs other places if there were no more auctions? I don’t want to go too deep into this but I think there is a perception of eBay as a place to get a deal and that perception is partially promoted by the presence of those auctions.
eBay obviously sees this trend too, I have a feeling that the “or best offer” feature was partly eBay’s attempt to keep their platform from becoming a static fixed-price shopping experience. I’ve also seen some recent marketing where they are guaranteeing a certain price to the seller on items listed for auction in certain categories.
Long-term it will be interesting to see how things develop. It’s not like everybody is going to suddenly stop buying on eBay but it may become more difficult to be a “one platform” seller down the road.
The buyer got his game system on Monday and immediately left positive feedback so I guess he was happy to pay over three times the retail price 🙂 I honestly kind of wish I had snagged more than one, maybe I’ll find another one before they are back on shelves in large quantities.
On the flip side I saw a bunch of people posting on twitter with photos of stacks of NES Classics, basically taunting all the people who were mad they didn’t get one on launch day. These are the people who will ruin things for everybody. I could see large companies give in to customer frustration and work with eBay to put some sort of embargo on reselling these types of items for the first week or so that they are out.
