What have been your biggest ebay surprises?

[Ursus]

I got a 1861 half eagle in a bag of v nickels I paid 20 bucks for!!!!!

Bet that really made your day!

 

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[reapp]

I listed two old photo postcards of a lumber yard in Norway from the early 1900's on ebay. Opening bid was $8 apiece, and I truly expected to get around that amount for the two of them. At the end of the auction, one sold for $400+, and the other in the upper $300's. Do a closed auction search for Norway postcards, and they should still be listed. On the flip side, I've listed "high dollar" postcards (or so I thought), only to get a no-sale. You live and learn.

 

[gods country girl]

picked a perfume bottle stopper out of the trash, at a yard sale.turned out to be Steuben Glass sold for $115 not bad for a free item

 

[gods country girl]

my sister in law gave me some dishes she found in her attic sold the bowls for $400 also not bad for free stuff

 

[mjlalt]

Oh man, we have all kinds of good stories! My wife found a beer sign for 10c that sold on eBay for over $250. I found a huge pile of heavy metal CDs for free, and sold them on AZ for almost $2000 in a couple of months several yrs ago. I bought 10,000 vinyl records on Craigslist for $700, and listed them on the internet for over $40,000. I make $200-500/wk on them. I parted out an old console record player for over $100. I sold several vintage speakers that I got for $2 at Goodwill for $60 last month. I financed my family's trip to Cape Cod with the scrap metal I found last summer. I wrote a book titled Almost Free Money about how to find free stuff to sell and it has a list of 520 items to sell and where on eBay they should be listed. Also my website has over 60 pages about finding stuff at garage sales, thrifts, and for free and how to resell on eBay and AZ

FYI Chrome Blocks some of your pages on your website and gives me an adware alert
This one of the the offending links

garagesaleacademy.com/scrap-metal.html
Scrap Metal & Garage Sales

 

[dejapooh]

Well, I have a few stories. Some are off of Ebay, but I'll start with an Ebay story. My friends and I bought a group of 750,000 Olympic Lapel Pins back in 2000. It seems the company that made them went out of business and delivered pins when they owed Money. The group I bought them from just wanted to free up some space. We made 30 lots of 8000 pin and sold them for $1000 per lot. Made our money back and then some. We then split the pins left to use as traders when we go to the Olympics. I pulled some Equestrian pins out of my share. I had 800 of them. I listed it on Ebay as an auction, starting at $5 plus $3 shipping. Every Sunday night I would list one, and every Sunday night I would sell one. $5, $5, $5, $5, $78, $5, $5, $5 $109, $5, $5, $5... I could never figure out what the people were thinking the weeks they sold for big money. The people who came in second would NEVER take the second chance offer either (of course, I would not list one that week). Anyhow, I've pretty much run through those 800 pins between ebay and going to the Olympics and using them as trade bait. Of the 125,000 I took home from that lot, I have about 20,000 left.

 

[dejapooh]

My best story of all is an Off of eBay story. Back in the early 1980's, I was heavy into coins. I mean I was HEAVY into coins. I was in High School and I would make pocket money going to coin shows and filling orders. A dealer would give me his list of wants and prices. I would run the floor, find the coin he wanted. Pay $20 or $50 or $100 less than he was willing to pay and make a bit of money in the middle. More often then not, I would tell the dealer I needed to show to coin to someone, bring the coin to the buyer, if he liked it, I would get cash and then go back to negotiate the deal. It was good money for a high school kid, and I got the reputation as a bit of a hustler (I wonder why). Anyhow, I was at the 1983 ANA show in San Diego and I saw Walter Breen Hunched over a coin making notes into his notebook. I knew Walter pretty well, and asked him what he was looking at. He told me is was a Die Trial of a 1787 George Washington cent from New York. Back then, the dies were hand cut, and they would take a trial strike in brass or lead or some soft metal to test the die to make sure there were no overhangs or mistakes. This was the die trial for this washington coin in Brass. I asked the dealer how much he was asking and he told me $250. It was all of the money I had earned so far, but I told him I would take it. Walter said it was the only one he had seen so far. Eventually I had the coin photographed and it was included in Walter's Book, "Walter Breen's Complete Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins."

Fast forward to 2006. The economy is HOPPING. Everyone has TONS of cash due to the housing market. I see a coin similar to mine (a proof coin in the normal issue of Bronze from the same die) had sold in an auction for $6800. I Figured it was time to sell the coin. I went to the dealer who was running the ANA show auction and showed them the coin and the entry in the book. They assured me it would sell for more than the $6800 they received for the other coin. They wanted to get the coin slabbed and graded before the auction, and I put a $1500 reserve on the coin. The coin came back and I never received the catalog. I went to the ANA show that year and asked for a copy of the catalog. The PCGS returned the coin as being in Bronze, like a normal issue, and not Brass. I asked them about this and they assured me that they would announce the mistake and it would not effect the outcome. I agreed and they went to auction. They made the announcement and the auction stalled out at $1400... NO SALE. They told me they were going to have an auction of Washingtonana in 3 months. I offered to walk the coin over to PCGS to get the coin reslabbed. They said they would do it, so I agreed. I called them 3 weeks before the close of consignment and asked if the coin had come back. After a while, they told me they forgot to resubmit the coin. They said it would be ok with the announcement. I demanded they send it out overnight with them paying for the rush regrade. They agreed. I called the day before they closed the auction and they still had not gotten the coin back. I was LIVID. I called the VP and explained to him what was going on. He agreed that they had dropped the ball. He would find the coin, he would get it into that auction, and he would make sure they did not charge me the 20% sellers fee. I would only pay for the first slabbing of the coin. I agreed, and told him I expected him to call me as soon as they found the coin. They called back 20 minutes later... it was in the mail room. They walked it to the Auction room, and They called me to tell me it arrived and was correct, and would be in the auction.

The auction catalog came out and the coins were to be internet auctioned before the final auction (starting price the night of the auction was the highest price on the internet). My coin had the $1500 reserve and a starting bid of $250. It had a bid in 15 minutes. by the end of the first week it was at $1500, SOLD... By the end of the second week it was just over $3000. It stuck there until the night before the auction when it jumped to $8000. The morning of the auction, it hit $15,000... and that was where it sold (and I didn't have to pay the $3000 sellers fee).

I found out the coin was sold again in 2009 (after the crash) for $3600, so I guess I hit it right at the right time...

 

[SilverForBrains]

wow that's some big money man! looks like it worked out after all

 

[northwoods]

Thanks for the info. Yes, I checked into that, and one of the affiliate banners that I was linked to had some issue with ad-ware back in the 90s. There is nothing on my site itself that uses any type of adware or spam. That link has been removed. Thanks, and come back and see us.

 

[northwoods]

2 batteries for $50

I just picked 2 defibrillator batteries out of the recycle bin and sold them on eBay for $50. Nice quick profit.

 

[tlowery04]

i found a 1930's electric percolator, looked to have only been used a few times, it was a "Robot" if i remember correctly, sold for 120 + s&h. My dad told me it was junk and to take the coil out and throw it in the scrap stainless bin. But then again he throws away tons of stuff i would have sold.

 

[tlowery04]

how do you recognize defibrillator batteries?