Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Ebay Bust!!

Earlier I posted about the four items I had up on Ebay, well they all went up for the first auction and not a single one of them sold... :( So I ended up relisting all four of them, hoping that the next time around I'd get some takers. Well I've officially sold one item on Ebay now and lost a couple bucks in the process...

See when you first start to sell things on Ebay they tell you the best way to sell something is to start it out at 99 cents and let folks bid it up. In fact they incentiveize you to do this by charging you if you set a starting bid at higher than 99 cents. So as a first timer I went ahead and posted three really nice glassware items, thinking that because of the quality of them they'd surely get bids. I was wrong.

I ended up selling my German cut crystal bowl, complete with the manufacturer's label for 99 cents... I'm lucky in the fact that I had bought it at an auction for $2, but it retails for anywhere from $25-60 per piece. So now I'm out the $1.01 more that I had paid for it and about $.50 for my Ebay posting, not to count the cost of the other Ebay items I ended up not selling. Oh and the shipping, I had estimated the item would weigh about 2lbs and it ended up weight 2.29lbs, so the buyer paid me $7.05 and the actual postage cost me $7.50, so another $.45.

So far it's Ebay (the company) up $3 and Mandy down $2. While it may not be a lot of money, it's still disheartening.

Lesson learned - set prices for items on Ebay, even if it costs more up front you won't be completely hosed later...

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