Have you had any luck selling items using an online selling agent (think eBay) recently, and if so, where?

I buy mainly rare vacuum tubes on Ebay from North America and Europe. Ebay sells all over the globe. exposure wise I don’t think that any other marketplace can touch Ebay.

I use ebay regularly – mostly to buy, occasionally to sell – not familiar with others.

My sister in (mostly rural) Wisconsin makes a third income off eBay sales. She also works full-time and rents property in Florida.

Her strategy is to attend flea markets, garage / tag / estate sales, secondhand stores to shop for items of quality, then buy it for pennies on the dollar and offer it on eBay for dollars on the dollar. I questioned the utility of the strategy (since she’s buying on speculation of being able to find a buyer, after all), and she admitted that it’s not 100%, but she claims that the markups on the “good stuff” (and we’re not talking priceless antiques here, just serviceable, quality household items like china, glassware, flatware from the past half-century or so) make up for any losers. And if she misses on an item, then she just unloads it at one of the secondhand stores that she frequents, takes her small loss and moves on to something else.

When we drove through rural Maine last year it was all I could do to keep the car on the road, since she wanted to stop at every “antique store”, garage sale and “alternative lifestyle choice” (people who leave all kinds of stuff in their yard, making you wonder whether it’s a yard sale, a fire or flood recovery, or what).

She’s pretty hard-headed when it comes to investing, business and turning a buck, so I take her word for it that she’s doing well at what she does.

^^ Does your sister factor in her time, your gas and the effort to reload things when she calculates her net profit? Does she make serious money? Or is it a hobby she enjoys? It sounds exhausting to me, but I hate the stuff I have in my life that I Ioved buying when I was younger.

My dad still sells books almost every day on Amazon. His business is slower than 10 years ago. Partly because he is not buying and listing as many books, but also he figures devices like Kindle have dented his business. A portion of his business you can’t find those books electronically, and probably never will be available electronically, so those books still do well and sell for a lot of money. He can buy a book for $2 and sell it for $120. Most books it’s a much smaller margin, just several dollars, but quite a few have very large profit margins.

Another reason he makes less money now (this isn’t necessarily directly related to your question) is he used to scout for booksellers. They had books of what they were looking for and what they would pay for them and he could just buy the books, box them up and send them and received a check in a couple of weeks. The main company he did that for went out of business. They cited the internet was reducing their business.

I know my husband still goes online when he wants to buy a car. I think he still looks at ebay and I think also some car websites. I don’t even know for sure. I know some of our friends still buy cars on ebay.

because google works.

To answer your questions, @gailcalled, I’m sure that she accounts for her time, because she does have a pretty full life already with her job, her rental properties, and her guy. As for the trip through Maine, that was more than a simple excursion: I was driving a party of four from “Point A to Point B” (a planned trip, in other words) and all of us in the car – including her – knew that we wouldn’t be stopping for yard sales. (That’s why she’s planning the trip differently this year, and we’ll take separate cars, a week apart. I can’t wait to see her results.)

As to the financial return, I can only speculate, but since the guest room at her house is one of the storerooms for her booty-in-process – and the booty does change from year to year, I can attest – it’s not an inconsiderable amount. On the other hand, just as a gambler will only tout his big winnings and will never admit to the long string of counterbalancing losses … I can’t say for certain that she does make money at it.

She does enjoy the heck out of the whole shopping-and-trading process, so if it is a hobby, it’s at least one that seems to pay for itself.

My dad definitely makes a living at it. He doesn’t feel like he is working when he packs up books (he does it while at home, sometimes in front of the TV) or goes searching for books (he loves looking). So, I’m not sure how he would calculate his dollars per hour, but his overall income during the year is definietly livable in average America. He has a pension and social security, so the book business is “extra” money for him.