My completed listings

[famous turtle treasures]

For the past 6 months I have used eBay hunting as a part time job to pay for my wife's medical bills, I go out and look for stuff at thrift stores,estate sales, and garage sales. Check out my completed listings. I rarely pay more than a couple bucks for most items, unless I know they are hot items.

http://completed.shop.ebay.com/famo...pg=50&_sop=12&_since=15&LH_Complete=1&guest=1

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Agony and Death on a Gold Rush Steamer: The Disastrous Sinking of the Side-Wheeler Yankee Blade - Grab it through Amazon!

[GibH]

Good eye. I haven't done too well lately, but have made some killer coin on similar items. I found some lava lamps that looked like old style Texaco pumps once that sold for $75 and $125. They were both in their box, but I only paid 25 for the pair.

 

[Philmont_709n2]

thats awesome! how do you know what to look for and what will sell?

 

[famous turtle treasures]

It was a steep learning curve, but luckily for me I have a great mentor, my mother. She has been selling on ebay for a living for about 7 years now. I will give you the advice my mother told me when I first told her I wanted to sell stuff on ebay. She told me to find something you enjoy, which for me was glassware, and she told me never to give up.

The name of the game is research. I do research on ebay, by doing completed listings and seeing what stuff is selling. You would be amazed at the things you will " stumble upon " indirectly in the process of doing research on something else. I use my gut instinct on a lot of my buys, and try to think of ways to sell the stuff I find. When my gut doesn't work my smartphone to look stuff up, the more green in the completed listings the better. I read someone else's post about keeping an open mind. That couldn't be more true!

One big piece of advice is don't force buys, coming from personal experience this will only force you to make bad purchases.

I am a treasure hunter at heart. I am also diverwannabe on T-Net, I use to do a lot of fossil hunting, shark tooth diving, coin roll hunting, and metal detecting, but these hunts are much more lucrative.

Feel free to send me a message anyone needs anything.

 

[jnkhntr]

Can you gives us some insight on why you seem to use Buy It Now rather than an auction format?

 

[duffytrash]

i sell mostly marbles on ebay and i buy lotsa stuff at yard sales and i sell stuff i find at the yard sales at flea markets a couple times in the summer...what makes me shy aweay from sellin larger items on ebay is the shipping costs....do you find it hard to figure out shipping costs marbles are easy cause i can ship hundreds of marbles in the small flat rate boxes and just a couple marbles can be shipped for under a dollar....do you see many marbles in your quests

 

[famous turtle treasures]

These are my rules, they seem to work pretty well for me. In my experience I tend to get less money when I use auctions. I can usually get $20.00 higher than the highest sold item sold at auction with the buy it now option. If you want to sell your stuff FAST, then price it below the winning auction prices. Of course there are exceptions. I had a lamp @ $32.00 for a buy it now with 12 watchers for about 3 months, I decided to test to see what would happen at auction and it sold for $64.00 at auction. I a have tried this with other items, and it didn't work so well, but experiment with stuff too, its a good way to learn.

There is one type of items that I have no problem putting up on auction, and that's precious metals but I still put most of my scrap silver on buy it now.

I actually have not seen a lot of marbles at thrift stores, but thrift stores are the only things open right now due to the weather. What do you normally pay for them if you find them? Just for my own info?

 

[duffytrash]

i usually pay 8-12$ for qt jars....smaller jars 3-5$....look out for cateyes and clearies...not usually a good seller...marble games like chinese checkers are good i usually get around 10$ for those...im talkin about the carboard ones with the wood frames...they might have name like san loo or something chimese soundin...the tin kind that were made by ohio art are good for resale at 5$ or more with no damage...havin the marbles in separate boxes are ok but those usually sell sepratly to collectors and have the company name on them...any board games that use marbles are usually sought after by collectors but 5$ is the norm....unless very old or rare...

 

[diggummup]

You remind me of me! LOL I buy for as little as possible, 5 bucks to me for a single piece is a lot unless I actually know what it is i'm buying. For the most part it's a crapshoot for me, I figure if it only costs a buck or two then I can't go wrong. I've managed pretty good so far and I do alot of reading and research so I guess maybe it aint such a crapshoot on alot of stuff now that I think about it. I've slacked off of my selling the last couple weeks but i've got some things on there now. I finally reached powerseller status about a month or so ago,
PS- One of the few good things about S.FL. is you can go to garage sales all year. I got an estate sale to go to tommorrow actually.

 

[famous turtle treasures]

LOL nice. Yes you are very lucky living in Florida. Garage sales all year round * Drools *

You know January is one of the best months for selling with all of the people using their eBay gift cards. I am putting in overtime. I think I am going do my thrift store loop tonight.

Oh that reminds me. I found this awesome clock a couple of days ago.



The video is a little shaky, I need a tripod or something.

 

[diggummup]

One sold for 250.00 a couple years ago

http://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/5495693

Here is some info that may be helpful-http://www.coolhunting.com/design/the-aurora-cloc.php

 

[famous turtle treasures]

Great info thanks diggummup. I paid $3.99 at goodwill for the clock

Oh duffytrash, figuring out shipping expenses is really easy, you just need to get your hands on a good scale that will hold some LBS. I am currently using a 10 lb scale because my other one broke. There is one postal scale that does up to 75 lbs, that will be my next buy.

Go to usps.com and check out the postage calculations. The only problems I have had with postage is international. You need to be very accurate on your postage, or you may end up canceling out your sale. ( Which I have done before ) I have have quite a bit of international sales, I am sending 1 package to Japan, and one to the Netherlands tomorrow. If you are just doing domestic, give it a shot, you will find out its a lot easier than you think.

I just packed up a tension pole mirror that is going to be close to the maximum size limit for parcel post. I may have to go to UPS and send it through them, but im going to try USPS first.

 

[duffytrash]

thanks....keep your eyes peeled for marbles,tho....estate sales is a good source.....in a jarr there might be lots of 10$ marbles.....also look for origional packing and boxes...anything with marbles