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There is definitely money to be made in used books. I specifically look for giant boxes of books at auctions. No one wants to deal with them because of the weight, so I can get lots of books for very cheap. Victorian era books sell quickly, and books in foreign languages also do fairly well for me. Also small, vintage, leather-bound bibles sell easily for me. I’m always happy to take home a boxful of Jesus from the auction!
These sales all came from the same $30 tableful of books I bought, (around 200 books).
https://www.ebay.com/itm/232749245410
https://www.ebay.com/itm/332628717528
https://www.ebay.com/itm/232735874034
https://www.ebay.com/itm/332629520272
https://www.ebay.com/itm/232700693844
https://www.ebay.com/itm/332635277942
https://www.ebay.com/itm/332634527401
https://www.ebay.com/itm/232735866114
https://www.ebay.com/itm/232689798412Books are one of my favorite things to sell. Cheap to source, easy to ship, and a very low return rate. Knock wood, I’ve only ever had one book be returned.
Lots of higher end stores do this, too. Coach, Macys, Nordstrom. I think even Target and Walmart do it now. Retail renters are why merchants ask for id when you return things, so they can keep track of the problem children.
The Dead Cat Lady was the only one that has ever concerned me because she was within driving distance of my apartment. She was legit crazy.
“Will *item designed for one specific purpose* hold up well if used for *purpose other than what the item was designed for*?”
“Your item is just ok. I doubt it will meet my needs. In fact, I know it won’t make me happy or really do what I want. Due to my future unhappiness, I will only offer you 10% of your asking price. I am doing you a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge favor in buying it since it doesn’t meet my needs. You should be grateful! Remember, buying this is super inconvenient for me, and your price needs to reflect that!”
“I have been selling on ebay for 8 billion years and I know you are ripping off buyers by charging so much for shipping! I regularly mail 10 foot long canoes that weigh 200 lbs for 6 bucks! There is no way that a 2 lb ashtray costs $9 to mail. When you come down to earth, do us a favor and charge fair shipping! Then I might consider buying your item!!”
“I bought this mug because it looked like my dead cat. But the eyes are wrong. They are WRONG! So I painted the eyes to match my dead cat’s eyes, and but it still looked WRONG! I threw the mug away and I want to know if you have any other mugs that look like the other mug, but with eyes that look like my dead cat’s eyes. I hated that other mug because the eyes are WRONG! Can you go find a mug for me that looks like my dead cat? I really need one, but don’t mail me one that looks like that other mug, because it’s WRONG!!!”
I love people 😀
Years back, I read “Your Money or Your Life” and counted every item I owned, as part of a “100 things challenge” type of exercise. I don’t remember if that was part of “YMOYL” or from a different book I read. I also don’t remember exactly how many items I owned. Definitely more than 100, but way WAY less than 300,000. It was an interesting experiment at the time, and absolutely made me think about my relationship with “stuff”.
Try contacting Yamaha. They might be able to give you more info.
https://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical_instruments/percussion/student_percussion/index.html
Is there anything inside the case regarding serial number? Sometimes it is printed inside the case. No sticker anywhere on the wood frame?
It’s (probably) a student model Yamaha 2.5 octave glockenspiel. It has the letters of each note on the keys, which a professional musician would not need.
Sorry I can’t be of more help. I was a flute major in college, not percussion!
A couple things to remember if you find Coach bags in the wild:
Coach made purses in many countries, but never in Korea. Turkey, Italy, China, Costa Rica, the United States: yes. Korea: NO. It’s a dead give-away for a fake.
Regarding the creed patch, (the leather square inside the bag that starts “This is a Coach bag…”), if there are any typos, it’s a fake bag. Coach did change the wording of the creed periodically, but there are never typos in the creed on authentic bags.
The serial number below the creed is not unique. It designates what factory made the bag, when it was made, and the style number of the bag. The second half of that number (the part after the dash), is the style number. Identical bags made in the same month in the same factory will have the same serial number. It does *not* mean the bag is fake if two bags have the same number.
Buyers want to see a clear picture of the creed patch, so always include that in your listings. Include the style number in your title. If you google the style number, you will probably be able to find out the name of the style as well, which will help it sell faster, (and also help you figure out whether a bag is worth picking up or better left behind at the thrift store).
Leather bags clean up really easily and nicely with a little leather conditioner,(not shoe polish!), and a horsehair brush. Fabric bags are a pain to clean.
I have bought and sold a lot of vintage Coach on ebay.
The jacquard fabric monogram purses generally don’t have much resale value, with a few exceptions: bags from the 80s/early 90s in British tan, 65th Anniversary leather bags, Bleeker leather bags, Bonnie Cashin era bags.
Like a lot of things, it depends on condition. Coach was heavily faked, the most common fake being fabric monogram bags.
The designer handbag market has gone flat. I don’t even bother anymore picking up fabric Coach bags for 3 or 4 dollars, because they have very low resale value.
I have a Kia Soul. People are always surprised by how much junk I can cram in there. I can’t haul large furniture, but I have shoved big coffee tables in the back and closed the hatch, (to the great surprise of the person giving me the tables).
Just for grins, I looked up my old apartment in the suburbs of Chicago, and it’s for sale! It was about 600 square feet and is selling for $149,000. My house here in Texas was $149,000 and is 4 times the size on 3/4 acre out in the country. I pay about $100 a month more on my mortgage than I did for rent, due to a recent tax increase. All my other utilities stayed about the same price, even electric. There’s no cable tv out here, (too far out in the country). Tried satellite for awhile, but it wasn’t great. We’re 2 miles from the power company, and they recently ran fiber out to us. This allowed us to ditch satellite and go with Netflix and Hulu, which is cheaper. Then we ditched Tmobile and went with Ting (which uses the Tmobile towers out here anyway).
Moving here was a great financial move for us. My husband got a big raise to come here, but all of our expenses stayed the same, and we no longer had to pay $1000 a month for “inexpensive” daycare. We’ve been able to afford for me to stay home to run my ebay business and homeschool our son. Ebay income has paid for our new Speed Queen washer ($$$), repairs to our house after Hurricane Harvey ($$$), and new central air as of yesterday ($$$$$). All paid for with cash.
The trade off is that we no longer have family in the area, (inlaws are 3+ hours away, and mine are back in Chicago). But none of us are stressed out anymore, so that makes up for it. No more crazy veterinary ER job! No more mad dash in traffic to get my kid from daycare! No more teeny apartment!
Wow, my experience has been different. I moved to Texas from Chicago, and people have been very accepting of me. *shrug*
03/26/2018 at 6:32 pm in reply to: Is Ebay Considering Returns to be Defects Again but not telling its Sellers? #36264I got the same message. My return rate for INAD is 0.56%, which equals *ONE* transaction. And it was a transaction that I didn’t feel like arguing about, so I refunded and let it go.
*eyeroll*
Returns are absolutely an industry practice. I can’t think of any retail store that doens’t have a return policy.
Most consumers are not going to run into problems returning items occasionally at JC Penney, Best Buy, Coach, etc. The return database is going after people that are chronic returners. These are the people that spend $2000-3000 on 10 purses at Coach, knowing they will return 8 or 9 of them 29 days later.
They can’t actually afford 10 purses, but they love the experience of shopping. They rationalize it by saying “It’s not like I used the purses. They are all still new-with-tags. Coach can just resell them later”. Those items aren’t always easy to re-sell, however, and a lot of returns end up on clearance at the outlet. Demand for the “must have” purse for spring is no longer there when the return comes back a month later.
I just make a reasonable counter offer, and I don’t offer up a defense of my pricing, either. So, no comment from me in the “message to buyer” section. I don’t really like playing head games with buyers. The only people that get an immediate decline/block are ones that demonstrate they are crazy right out of the gate. Those offers usually come with rambling messages. No thanks!
I had a buyer offer me $6 on a $60 item the other day. I countered with $45, no apology or explanation.
As a buyer, I get really irked when sellers don’t respond to best-offers. Why even put it on there if you aren’t going to respond or come down off the price at all?
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