Putting Stuff on eBay

I sort through my life and offer bits and pieces to the highest bidders on eBay. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-19683482-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

[puttingstuffonebay]

If you're looking to change the way you look, try this!

[puttingstuffonebay]

Charlie Sheen and poetic justice?

Okay, I thought I was just sort of being crazy when I recently wrote that you should gather up all your Charlie Sheen stuff and list it on eBay.

Crazy like a shark.

A book of poems Sheen self-published some 20 years ago entitled—and I’m not making this up—“A Peace of My Mind,” is doing quite well on eBay. When I checked it, seven bids had pushed the slim volume up to nearly $600. An autographed copy of the same poetry book with a starting bid of $2,000 didn’t have any takers so far.

I offer my own Charlie Sheen poem:

Roses are red

Charlie’s gone mad

before all of this

just his acting was bad.

When I did a search for “Charlie Sheen” I got more than 12,000 items found on eBay. While it’s true that the United States has lost a great deal of its manufacturing to Third World nations where the average yearly wage is $12.42, there is one segment of manufacturing where we still dominate:

T- shirts designed to cash in on celebrity burnouts.

 There are currently about 8,000 Charlie Sheen t-shirts on eBay.

And they say Americans don’t show initiative any more.

By the way, I’d love to hear your Charlie Sheen poetry, especially haiku.

[puttingstuffonebay]

Going once! Going twice! Going three times! Gone, Charlie Sheen!

I suppose if you have any Charlie Sheen items, now would be a good time to put them up for auction on eBay, although some people might consider it wiser to wait until he’s dead.

Sometimes celebrity memorabilia increases after an untimely demise.

I reviewed my collection of DVDs and I don’t have any Charlie Sheen merchandise. Drat!

Frankly I wouldn’t wait until he chokes on his own vomit. I would list Charlie Sheen items for sale on either eBay or Half.com right now. First of all, the improbable might happen and he could survive this flameout. If he does, it will rank right up there with the time Chuck Yeager lost control of the X-1A and plummeted 51,000 feet in 51 seconds before he was able to somehow right the aircraft and land safely.

And if the what-looks-to-be-inevitable does happen and Sheen moves on to star in that great sitcom in the clouds alongside John Belushi and Anna Nicole Smith I don’t think our interest in him will last long.

In other words, it’s highly unlikely that Charlie Sheen will ever be a hotter property than he is today. All the agents, lawyers and entrepreneurs (aka porn stars and strippers) that are currently hovering around him like vultures over roadkill are indicators of this truth.

So gather up your autographed copies of “Major League,” copyright your recipe for “Tiger Blood” and offer them up for sale on eBay before it’s too late.

I have just two words for people who think they can wait until tomorrow to cash in on this narrow window of financial opportunity: Beanie Babies.

[puttingstuffonebay]

eBay Dispute: To refund or not to refund, that is the question

I hate conflict as much as anyone, so when I was greeted the other morning by an email from Paypal declaring that someone had opened a “dispute” with me, my heart sank.

The person who won my eBay auction for our old kitchen light fixture said he never received the item. Here’s his dispute message:

ITEM NOT ARRIVED. IF YOU KNOW WHO SIGNED FOR MY PURCHASE PLEASE FURNISH INFORMATION SO I MAY ADD TO THE POSTAL INSPECTORS REPORT. THANK YOU

The first thing I did was go over to eBay and check my shipping information. Fortunately I paid the 19 cents for delivery confirmation and according to the Post Office, the package made it to my customer’s home. So I responded:

I have "delivery confirmation" from the Post Office, but I don't believe a signature was required. Could it have been left at a neighbor's place or something? Was the shipping address correct? I just printed out the label via the Paypal function. It went to 355 N 34th Ave.

This was the first time one of my packages didn’t seem to make it into my buyer’s hands. However, I did know that the USPS “delivery confirmation” notices aren’t always accurate. Just a few weeks ago, AT&T shipped a new cellphone to my son. He had the tracking number and was checking its progress as it seemed to zero in on his office.

One day it was “out for delivery” and then later that same day the online status showed that it had been “delivered.”

But my son hadn’t received it. He asked around his office and neighboring offices. No luck. He was bummed.

Then, the following day the mail carrier showed up with it. How is it possible that it showed “delivered” online a day before it was really delivered?

Anyway, I was hoping that this might be the case with my kitchen light fixture. But, it wasn’t. A few days later I got another message from my disappointed (disgruntled?) buyer:

I HAD SEVERAL ITEMS DELIVERED THE SAME DAY. POSTAL MAN OR LADY JUST LEFT IT IN FRONT OF HOUSE I FEEL THIS PURCHASE AS WELL HAS BEEN TAKEN. NOT SURE WHAT TO DO. IM LOSING MONEY AND SOMEONE IS STEALING MY GOODS. I HATE THIS.

I searched all the “help” files on eBay and Paypal to find out what happens when the seller has a USPS delivery confirmation but the buyer says he never received the package.

It wasn’t easy information to uncover, but eventually I came across an article on eBay and a forum conversation saying that the seller was not responsible and a refund was not required. I learned that if the buyer bumped the “dispute” up to a “claim,” the claim would be denied. So here’s my final message to this eBay auction buyer:

I don't think there is anything I can do about this from my end at this point. Hopefully the Post Office will be able to find your package if it was improperly delivered.

I think you can ask PayPal or eBay to issue a refund, but I believe that when there is a delivery confirmation, refunds are not issued.

Again, I'm sorry that someone either stole your package(s) or the carrier lost them.

The buyer told me he had lost more valuable packages and was going to let the issue drop. He closed the dispute. I left positive feedback for him when he originally made the purchase. So far, I don’t believe he has given me any feedback, but according to what I read on eBay a buyer should not leave either neutral or negative feedback when there is delivery confirmation.

The bottom line is that the 19 cents paid for delivery confirmation is money quite well spent.

[puttingstuffonebay]

With a quick nod to Vito Corleone in “The Godfather,” not long ago Omaha Steaks made me an offer I could not refuse.

I got a whole bucketful of beef along with some fish and side dishes for something like $60. I had been wanting to try meat from Omaha Steaks for a long time and this deeply discounted introductory offer seemed the perfect opportunity.

But what clinched the deal for me was the fact that they were also throwing in a set of knives and a cutting board. I could take those knives and immediately offer them on eBay and maybe pocket a few bucks that would make the meat offer even less of a burden on my bank account.

I started my auction at 99 cents with one picture. It didn’t cost me anything to post the knives on eBay, so at least I won’t lose any money on the deal. As I did a little research to see what I might expect from this auction, I discovered that I’m not the only Omaha Steaks customer to put his free knives on eBay.

Maybe my 99 cent starting price will stir up a little interest. I give my auction about a 50-50 chance to find a buyer.

However, for those of us who like to make a few extra bucks listing unneeded items on eBay, those “free” premiums we occasionally receive are a decent source of merchandise.

[puttingstuffonebay]

It seems to me that selling on eBay and its sister site, Half.com, fulfills two of the biggest current goals in our society:

Simplifying, and

Reusing

Today I was again scouring our shelves for books to sell on Half.com and eBay when I realized that I own three North American bird identification books. It’s a little embarrassing to admit it here, however I suspect I’m not alone.

If you were to go through your books you would probably find several that are virtually the same. I’m a Christian and used to teach adult Sunday school very often. Occasionally I would ask my students how many Bibles they owned. The average was probably somewhere between six and 20. There are millions of Christians around the world who don’t own a single Bible. I wanted to encourage people to appreciate their wealth, see it in perspective, be good stewards and help provide Bibles for less fortunate Christians.

Anyway, back to my bird books. Do I really need more than one North American bird  identification book? So far I haven’t been able to come up with any legitimate reasons, although I’ve tried, unless it’s to support the publishing industry.

The best thing about this it that it has forced me to sit down with all three books and really think about which one I find most useful.

Ah, critical thinking skills!

If I remember correctly, those are supposed to be a good thing to have. And, by getting rid of two of my North American bird identification books, I’m reducing clutter and simplifying my life.

Further, when people buy them from me, together we’re participating in the act of “reusing,” which from what I heard is even better than recycling.

Watch out guys, I’m going green.

By the way, I’ve decided to keep the “Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North American” for two main reasons:

I’ve already put a bunch of check marks in the back next to some of the birds I’ve seen, and

On the cover it clearly says that Kaufmann guides are “the easiest guides for fast identification.”

Now that I’ve made the decision to jettison two of my North American bird identification books the next thing that will happen, if my life continues to form, is I’ll misplace the one I’ve decided to keep.

Well, at least now I know where I can get used copies cheap online.

[puttingstuffonebay]

Are we the only people with DVR?

Dear Half.com buyers: Would you please stop buying the DVDs I listed over the weekend? For crying out loud, all these movies are on cable. Do you not have DVR?

On either Friday or Saturday I sat down with a pile of about 20 DVDs we decided to sell online. Half.com makes selling them very easy. Go to their multiple entry page and enter the UPC for each DVD. Tip: Although the interface says you can use the ISBN number for DVDs, don’t do it. It doesn’t work. I tried that first, then had to go back and enter all the UPCs.

After they were online about three or four hours, I got an order. Great, I thought. I packaged it up and when I was out doing some errands I dropped it off at the Post Office.

When I came back and checked my email, I had two more orders. More packaging and another trip to the Post Office.

This pattern kept up over the weekend. By the end of the evening on Sunday I thought I was caught up. Then, as I was about to turn out the light and go to sleep, the Paypal app I have on my iPhone pushed through a message saying that I had received an instant payment.

To make matters worse, when I woke up on Monday morning, I had three more orders waiting for me.

When will this madness stop?

Granted, most of these DVDs are just selling for a few bucks. My wife thinks we might be better off taking them to a used bookstore and selling them for store credit. Fair enough. But with store credit we end up with just more stuff to clutter up our home.

With a cash sale, I can buy a candy bar, or something.

You might be interested to know that I got the most money from a DVD that I remember buying off a bargain table. It was an old noir film that had been transferred to DVD. I think I paid about seven bucks for it and ended up selling it for about the same price on Half.com.

It looks like a video rental place bought it.

[puttingstuffonebay]

Woulda coulda shoulda set a reserve price

I’ve never used a reserve price in any of my auctions so far, but when our halogen kitchen light bar sold for about $10, I wish I had.

The auction had a few watchers and an early opening bid at the minimum price. I was certain there would be a few closing bids to push the price up to a decent level.

I was wrong.

The guy who won the auction got an incredible price on a great light fixture. I told him so in the note I sent him when I waved goodbye to my fixture down at the Post Office. To add insult to injury, I had to buy a pack of packing peanuts to properly pack the package (say that five times fast). By the time I paid for the peanuts, I think I made about a buck three eighty off the light fixture.

Enough whining, back to the subject of reserve prices. Unfortunately there’s an extra fee that comes with setting a reserve price and it’s not cheap. For reserve prices set at less than $200 the fee is $2. Above that, the fee is one percent of the reserve price.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that if your item sells, you get the reserve fee back. You only pay the extra reserve fee if your item doesn’t sell. So, from one perspective it’s a gamble but from another point of view it’s an insurance policy.

Hmmm. Ambiguity. You gotta love it, or not.

There is another approach, and that is to set a higher starting bid level if you’re really convinced your item is worth a certain amount or you don’t want to see it fly out the door too cheaply. Of course, with higher starting bids, eBay charges higher listing fees. So again, it’s a trade off.

However, if you do sell your item with a low starting price and a reserve, your final fee will be less than setting a higher starting bid without a reserve.

There is another drawback with higher starting prices. They chase off a lot of buyers. So there you go.

By the way, if you do start an auction with a reserve price, it’s okay to tell bidders what the reserve price is. There’s no rule against it and buyers tend to appreciate your willingness to be honest and open about the situation.

[puttingstuffonebay]

Barbie doll clothes, humidifiers and more

I can’t seem to give away this one vacuum sealer I’ve been trying to sell on eBay the last few weeks. I guess It’s just going to have to go in with our kitchen appliances.

It’s a Rival sealer. I’ve had great luck selling FoodSaver vacuum sealers, but no one seems interested in this one. Oh well. It only cost me $10. I tested it and it works fine, so I don’t mind keeping it.

I bought two humidifiers to resell on eBay. I had no idea how well they would do. I couldn’t find very many comparable sales when I searched eBay, but the first one sold last night and I more than doubled my money. That’s always good news.

Another one of my eBay auctions ends this evening. I’m trying to sell the kitchen ceiling light fixture I took down when I installed new lighting a couple of weeks ago. Someone bid my opening price, so I know I’ll be boxing it up and shipping it out of here, but I hope the price gets bid up a little bit more this evening.

I have a few watchers on this one, so I’m mildly hopeful.

However, I’m also reminded that occasionally something gets sold at the opening bid price. This is really good to remember if you want to buy something on eBay and don’t need it really quickly.

Find an eBay auction for the item you want that doesn’t have a reserve price and put in the opening bid. You might luck out. If someone out bids you, just go find another auction for the type of item you need and put in another opening bid.

Sooner or later you’ll probably win one of these auctions.

My next major project is to list a lot of the Barbie doll clothes from Pam’s childhood that are sitting up in our attic.

I’ve been given strict instructions not to touch them until she goes through the stuff, so I’m hoping we can pull it all down this weekend and see what’s there.

We’ll divide the clothes up into little lots of something like 10 items and see how they do.

Pam has quite a collection of vintage Barbie doll clothes so If there’s a market for these things, we’re rich!

[puttingstuffonebay]

I took our kitchen light fixture off the ceiling the other day and listed it on eBay.

If this works out well, I’ll pry off a few door knobs, the banister and some of the other less integral parts of the house and put them up for auction.

Okay, I’m taking blogetic license here. We bought a new light for the kitchen so this 3-light halogen fixture became surplus.

We have no garage here so I don’t have anyplace to store older house fixtures. In any of our previous homes, I probably would have just shoved the old ceiling light into a dark corner of the garage and left it there until we sold the property.

But, these kinds of items are really found money. They can be in excellent condition and really be a bargain for their new owner.

If you’ve let things pile up somewhere, clear them out and put a few dollars in your pocket.

[puttingstuffonebay]

I love USPS Priority Mail for its speed and simplicity. It’s especially useful when the winning bidder in your eBay auction lives outside the United States.

But, it’s no way to ship live animals.

A woman in Minneapolis tried to mail a puppy to a relative as a present. The pooch went unnoticed until a postal worker knocked the box off a counter and he started making noise—the dog, not the postal worker.

So while using Priority Mail for eBay shipments can be the smart thing to do, I’m afraid this woman’s actions just highlighted how stupid this nation has become.

My son and I were discussing Priority Mail yesterday. He has a few eBay auctions going and it looks like one of his items might go to a bidder in Taiwan. After checking a few rates, Priority Mail turned out to be by far the best deal. Also, when you have an item to be shipped Priority Mail, you can schedule a pick up so you don’t have to bother with a trip to the local Post Office.

If your item fits in a Priority Mail box, international shipping can be fairly easy. One more tip: I’ve found that the customs form you get at the Post Office counter is more simple than the online form that is available at USPS.com. For some reason, the online form requires more information.

Usually when organizations move things into the online environment, they get easier to deal with. 

Well, it is Post Office management we’re talking about here…

(By the way. That cute puppy photo comes to us via The Daily Puppy where you can definitely meet your minimum daily requirement for cute puppy pictures.)

[puttingstuffonebay]

Will you ever read those books again, really?

It only took a day or two to make my first book sale on Half.com so I immediately grabbed a pile of books and listed them all.

Before we moved from California to Nashville, we had a mega garage sale and unloaded about 30 years of collected books. We made some money, but had I taken the time to list them online, I’m certain we could have done far better. However, that would have required us to start listing them well in advance.

We aren’t such good planners.

If you have books on your shelves that you haven’t read, or probably even considered reading, the last few years, why not put them up for sale on Half.com? Believe me, you won’t miss them.

The user interface is really easy. Just plug in the ISBNs, give them a price, rate them, make a comment or two if necessary, and you’re done.

The only thing I’m not completely happy about is that they only pay twice a month. Their parent company, eBay pays whenever you make a sale.

The site integrates shipping with Paypal shipping so you can print your labels and pay for postage online. This is a feature I really love. It keeps you out of the long lines at the post office and you can get tracking for only 19 cents. Also, Half.com orders ship at the media mail rate.

You do, however, need a good scale at home to use this feature.

It seems that over the last decade there’s been a major movement afoot to declutter our lives. Magazines like “Simple” and a whole slew of shows on HGTV are built around this idea.

Clear off some of those bookshelves and put a little extra cash in your wallet.

[puttingstuffonebay]

Half.com isn't half bad, really

If you have a load of CDs, DVDs and books you want to get rid of, you might consider eBay’s red-headed step child: Half.com.

College students with textbooks take special notice of this blog.

eBay bought Half.com quite a long time ago and it specializes in books, music and movies. I listed a few books on the site over the weekend. It’s really easy, especially if you already of an eBay account.

The interface is great. You simply enter ISBNs for books and UPCs for other items. The Half.com system looks them up and fills in most of the important information. You give your item a quality rating, a price and write a brief description, if needed.

The Half.com software gives you great pricing information when you enter your items. It suggests a price, tells you highs and lows and what the most recent identical item sold for.

I was more than pleased to find that one of the books we are listing sells for around $100.

There is also a bulk uploading interface available if you have a lot of items you want to do all at once. If you know how to use a spreadsheet like Excel, this should be no problem for you.

One of the great things about Half.com is that your items stay listed until they sell. With eBay, your auctions typically expire in a week and then you have to deal with re-listing your items.

For sellers who already have an eBay account, you can also have your Half.com items automatically listed on eBay.

Double the pleasure, double the fun!

[puttingstuffonebay]

Shipping in plain brown paper...

Kraft paper, my newest best friend.

I’ve simplified a portion of my eBay shipping routine. If I’m sending something that is in its original packaging and the item is securely held with custom molded styrofoam within its box, I’ve started to just wrap the box in brown kraft paper, tape the bejeezus out of it and send it on its merry way to my eBay customer.

I don’t think putting a box like that inside of another box really provides very much extra protection. If I’m ever shipping an eBay item that is fragile (pronounced frah-gee-lay) I may go to the box-in-box strategy, but for many items I don’t think it’s necessary.

You can get a roll of kraft paper at your local office supply for next to nothing. Make sure you tape over all your seams and reinforce the corners when you’re doing your wrapping job.

My biggest hurdle when I first used kraft paper to cover a box to ship an eBay sale was my innate inability to neatly wrap a box. I’ve gotten a little more proficient now with a few boxes under my belt (hmm, I don’t think I like that imagery). The key, I believe, is to go through the same steps every time. Successful wrapping is all about repetition, just like successful rapping.

And by next Christmas, the presents I wrap for my wife shouldn’t look like disasters under the tree.

All thanks to eBay.

[puttingstuffonebay]

Bad Spellers of the World: Untie!

I remember watching Jay Leno do a bit once about eBay listing where the seller had very badly misspelled the name of the item he was trying to auction.

Luie Vutton Purse, $5!

Savvy eBay shoppers can get some good deals on these items because often they don’t show up properly in search results, therefore hardly anyone—except for equally poor spellers—finds these auctions. 

One eBay seller recently listed a “Vintage All Brass Chandalier French Quarter New Orleans” with a starting bid of $125. It came from a 200-year-old home. The item received no bids, maybe because the seller misspelled “chandelier.”

Today I found a great tool to help you discover bad spellers’ auctions. Head over to this page at New Life Auctions and get busy cashing in on the inability of our nation’s public schools to teach the basics. I knew there had to be a silver lining inside the black cloud of our educational demise.

(Before you get too angry at me for criticizing public schools, you need to know that my wife teaches in a public school and I believe that almost every social burden has been placed on the backs of public school teachers.)

Anyway, I think you can have a lot of fun with this tool New Life Auctions has given us. With a little time and creativity you can probably find some badly misspelled items, purchase them for a song, re-list them with the proper spelling and make a few bucks.

Gud Luk.

[puttingstuffonebay]

Pinup Calendars and Michelangelo

My wife and I recharged our cultural batteries when we spent the Martin Luther King three-day weekend in New York City and I almost forgot about putting stuff on eBay through the entire experience.

Almost.

The one exception was when Pam was standing in line to buy a few things at the Metropolitan Museum of Art gift shop. I spied a display where they had some famous artist “sketch pads” on sale for $150, marked down from $750. That’s the kind of margin I’m looking for when I buy something to resell on eBay.

I didn’t have time to pull out my iPhone, go to my eBay app and research sketch pad sales, but I was tempted.

After I got home I took a few minutes to see if reproductions of artist sketch pads sell well on eBay. The answer was a definite “yes and no.”

There were a number of artist sketch pad reproductions listed and sold on eBay, but the style of art featured wasn’t exactly like the “old masters” reproduced in those sketch pads I saw at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The eBay items were all vintage sketch pad style pinup calendars. Quite, ahem, appealing in their own right, but obviously not exactly the kind of item I found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s gift shop.

However, the museum seems to be suffering something of a budget crunch right now, so they might consider adding some of these “sketch pads” to their gift shop inventory.

I’m just sayin’...

[puttingstuffonebay]

Professor Layton and Luke are in the mail

Thanks are due to Professor Layton and free shipping.

I was able to sell both of my used Professor Layton Nintendo DS games on eBay for nearly $16 each including free shipping. That’s seems to be about their fair market value.

My worry was that they wouldn’t sell at all. When I first put them on eBay, I had them listed to ship for $4 and that decision buried them in eBay searches. Once I switched over to free shipping, the games jumped up in the search result pages and they started draw the interest of eBay shoppers.

Fortunately these games are very inexpensive to ship via the U.S. Post Office first class mail. Their cases do a great job protecting them, so I was able to just stuff them in envelopes and send them on their way for less than $2 in postage.

Now it’s time to see what other Nintendo DS games I have sitting around that I’m unlikely to play very much in the future and get them listed on eBay ASAP.

I have two “Brain Age” games. I’m sure I can live with just one of those.

My brain probably won’t know the difference.