Monthly Archives: September 2014

By Sandra Snyder on 9/29/14

So, eBay.

This is one party to which I’ve come fashionably late. But maybe “fashionably” isn’t the best word. Not to complain or anything, but the music is loud, the room is crowded, and I might require a taxi to hasten me home.

Still, having taken the time to dress up and show up for the soiree in the first place, I might as well share a few lessons learned. If you’ve ever dreamed of making your fortune on eBay, of sustaining yourself as a merchant in the vast online marketplace/wasteland, of becoming so wildly successful at something so simple that you get three book deals and three times as many summonses to tell your tale on every major talk show around, well, maybe go read something else.

If you want to learn how to lose money (and time and pride), keep it here. Winky-smiley face.

First, the backstory, or part of one. On a recent outing to the garage — those of you who know me know that by “garage” I mean tiki lounge/major renovation work in progress — I was in the mood to take out some frustrations, and the walls looked like easy targets. Attached to the original studs and serving in place of brick or OSB had long been what I’d always thought were “pool walls,” as in remnant pieces of a disassembled above-ground pool. At least that’s what the first handyman who ever set foot in this place assumed, and appearances made his as good a guess as any.

Anyway, on this day I was in a right-fine mood to do some banging and bashing, and the old, tired walls seemed the logical place to start. They needed to come down anyway, to prepare the way for the new tropically painted drywall that’s been showing up in my dreams, so why not?

Fortunately my better angels stepped in and advised me it might be wise to phone a friend first. Or text one. So that’s what I did, explaining something rash was about to happen and if he wanted to put a stop to it, now might be a good time. Fortunately, the image of me having at my own walls, simply because I was not exactly in a chipper mood, did not sit well, and help arrived in a hurry.

“Let me do it, please,” he said, or something along those lines. Very well then, I replied, taking the offered opportunity to scram and take out my frustrations on a boring treadmill instead.

On that mind-numbing conveyor belt to nowhere, I first beheld the pictures, sent via text and indicating pool walls these were not. Hardly. Try vintage advertising signs, in some cases absolutely huge, nailed to the studs in — best guess — the 1940s and now laid out on my grass for me by a cat who’d just discovered a basement mouse, or 12.

Aren’t you glad you didn’t just start your slap-happy sledgehammering? the cat asked, a little too proud. Well, holy Swiss cheese that baited the innocent little church mice, yes, but I’m also sorry I ever rented that spray-painter a few years back and shot “Morning Sunshine” all over the back of these things of … questionable? … beauty.

Have I rained yellow paint on my own parade? I cried out.

I’ve seen the American Pickers take worse, he replied, even as I was already calling up “vintage Coca-Cola signs” on eBay, which I had somehow managed to avoid in all of my exciting, eventful years on this planet.

Let’s just say I was part dumbfounded and part overjoyed at what signs like this might possibly command on the open market. But I’ll not get into the nitty-gritty quite yet. For now, the cola signs have been moved to safekeeping and secure storage while I decide who the heck is going to want them — if anyone, because, see above, eBay newbie means unknown seller and no ratings or feedback — and how the heck I could get them to whomever the heck might want them anyway. Rent a big rig and hit the open road?

Time to phone another friend.

Do you still do that eBay business on the side? Because I might have something to show you …

No, she said, but I can help you get started on your own, show you the ropes, as it were.

And just like that two friends sat at a kitchen table having a few drinks, breaking down life and a great number of its built-in injustices and “putting stuff on eBay,” which was quite a bit easier than I expected really.

We thought it best to hold off on the cola signs for now and see if I couldn’t first establish a reputation on the e.

So the first order of business was my friend walking around my house pointing out, well, everything and asking questions and making bold statements.

Do you need this?

Do you love this?

Can you live without this?

How about that?

This would sell.

So would that.

Basically, people will buy ANYTHING.

Well, didn’t we have ourselves a party?

Truth is we listed one item and did more chatting than anything else, but I did whet my appetite for what I was told could quickly become an addiction. Side note: Uh oh. Be careful, chums, where you step.

So after my friend departed for her own magical land of hidden gold, I got busy, taking things off shelves and snapping pictures, sometimes three or four times — oh, cursed glares! — and then transferring from camera to computer. After five or six items, I was tired. Please note I had to write captions and sales pitches for these things as well and fill out all kinds of other specifics, such as country of origin, condition, name of firstborn son.

Maybe this wasn’t so easy after all, especially considering I thought it best to play Miss Nice Gal and try to tempt buyers with my low prices. Again, no previous sales, no ratings, better sell low and underestimate shipping, I figured.

All told, I got 18 items listed in a day or two and sat back happily as my screen showed me instant views, most times two or three within three seconds of listing.

This is so cool, I thought, regretting how many things I’d let go for way too cheap at yard sales. This was so much simpler, and you didn’t have to get up at 5 in the morning and fend off early birds hovering over you as you unpacked boxes.

But then all got quiet. Strangely quiet. Eighteen items had a total of maybe eight times as many views after a few days, and I started suspecting “watchers” were more competing sellers than interested buyers. Let it be known that just about everything you can think of to sell on eBay someone else has thought of as well, so in this world, you will ALWAYS have competition.

By way of just one example, my Ravi instant wine chiller — NIB in the eBay world, or “new in box” — which I was willing to hand off at one fifth of its sticker price — had 14 little friends just like it, and I had to wonder upon the wisdom of one with a starting bid of 99 cents with free shipping.

Hotshots everywhere, I guess.

Ditto the competition on my designer purse, my Pampered Chef micro-steamer, my Longaberger pottery … That last one I decided not to list at all after seeing the full marketplace and picturing the devastation at my friendly neighborhood post office when that baby hit the scale and broke it.

Now I know, or at least have heard, that some people, can sit and watch their “my eBay” for hours, or that they get up with the chickens to check their progress and start their days off cheerily, but I took my friend’s advice and walked away.

You’ll get an email, she said, and a message. She even attempted to mimic the soundtrack of what I’d hear. And, sure enough, a few days later, ding, ding, ding. You’ve got sale!

My phone chimed with the happy news. Ron in California had bought my “chaplain’s diner mug” for $12.

A mug. For $12! At garage sales, you can’t give mugs away!

And better yet, he’d already paid my PayPal account $18, the $12 plus my $6 requested shipping.

Also on my friend’s advice, I checked to make sure first, before boxing and shipping. No fool am I.

First disappointment: The balance was actually $17.12. Oh yeah, PayPal gets a cut. My friend had said that. And eBay, too. Still, not bad. $17 is cool. Off to the post office I went, requesting the cheapest shipping possible, for I’d promised nothing more.

Now did my tired eyes deceive me, or did that screen show $12.78? Why yes, yes it did. Share my “joy” at learning that I was now obligated to pay $12.78 to ship to Ron from California a mug for which he had just paid $12.

Fortunately, I cut that loss in half by having charged $6 for shipping, right? Well, sort of. Remember PayPal had already taken its cut, and I think eBay might still take a share besides, and if you consider what I paid for the thing originally — about $5 at a little secondhand shop — and the gas I used to take it to the post office and the box I shipped it in and the packing material … Well, you do the math.

Ding, ding, ding. You’ve got FAIL.

“Some people get their kicks stompin’ on a dream.”

Mr. Sinatra, didn’t you sing the truth?

Chin up, my friend told me when I texted her my sorry news. It all evens out in the end, she said, noting the added sting of discovering you’ve found yourself a West Coast buyer. You’ll make it up on the next sale, she added.

The next one? Oh, you mean I should stick around this crazy place? Um …

Oh wait, looks like I have to. Seems I have an $18 bid on a bracelet. Ding, ding, ding.

Please, for the love of justice in the world after all, let her — I’ll assume her — be from the East Coast, or better yet from Pa. Maybe even down the street. I’ll walk the thing down. Watch her put it on and tell her how stylin’ she looks.

If I have to pay $12 to ship a bracelet to, say, Seattle, I’m outta here, eBay. Peace out, and nice to know ya.

~ SJS (AMDG)

“Human beings will line up for miles to buy a bucket of catastrophes, but don’t try selling sunshine and light. You’ll go broke.”
— Chuck Jones