Ebay sellers thread (other platforms too)

[disneysteve]

That's a big score. What kind of cereal bowls were they? Some vintage stuff?

Snowman Serenade by Meiwa china.

https://www.replacements.com/china-meiwa-snowmen-serenade-ii-rim-cereal-bowl/p/108199431

[EasyMoney00]

Snowman Serenade by Meiwa china.

https://www.replacements.com/china-m...wl/p/108199431

Those are nice bowls. I never realized there were china cereal bowls. Good find.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Okay steve this is turning into craziness your profits on china

[disneysteve]

Those are nice bowls. I never realized there were china cereal bowls. Good find.

There are though these are stoneware.

[disneysteve]

Okay steve this is turning into craziness your profits on china

At least it’s a good kind of craziness.

[QuarterMillionMan]

Sold my dead laptop today. Buyer offered $33 out of $50 asking price, plus $22 shipping which I accepted no haggling. The shipping is always not so easy for me to figure out. First I packed it in a Medium flat rate priority box and figured that I would give the buyer faster shipping 1 - 3 days and I was willing to pay extra in person at my local USPS of $19.30 but when the clerk asked if the box contained lithium batteries which I acknowledged being it's a laptop it would be considered hazardous material and would need to be shipped ground which is what I first selected in eBay when I listed the item. So, I took the box back home and re-boxed it for USPS ground advantage but printed the shipping label from eBay which came out to $14. I then took it back to USPS in order to get it scanned and asked the clerk to check to make sure everything is correct and I'd pay more if the shipping would cost more but it was all good. I'm happy to have gotten rid of that dead laptop but people must know how to revive it.

[QuarterMillionMan]

$22 was the USPS ground advantage estimate which the clerk gave me while I was at USPS the first time this morning with the Medium flat rate priority box. When I got home to re-box the laptop I figured to use eBay's shipping label and get the discounted price of $14 which is a big difference and I thought maybe my calculations of the weight & dimensions were incorrect but it was correct.

[disneysteve]

Good job on the sale. Yes you should NEVER buy postage at the post office. Also flat rate boxes are almost always the most expensive option. For eBay sales, buy through eBay. For anything else (or eBay too) buy through Pirate Ship. Get the nice corporate discount. Buying postage at the counter is for fools.

[QuarterMillionMan]

I'm always amazed that you can ship fragile items which I would never attempt because I'm afraid it'll be delivered in 10,000 pieces. You are good at it in shipping and in picking out valuable stuff at the thrift stores. Those skills come from decades to a lifetime of experience. To me selling on eBay the shipping is the hardest part where sometimes I took a loss by not charging enough for shipping so I try to overcharge for shipping but it is a balancing act not to go too high and not too low. I barely have USPS shipping prices figured out. FedEx & UPS are different animals. Once I used FedEx's shipping calculator and miscalculated and took a loss where I charged $25 for shipping but ended up costing me $35. UPS is even more of a mystery to me and I've never used UPS.

[disneysteve]

eBay makes shipping easy. Just use calculated shipping. Enter the weight and dimensions and eBay will automatically charge the buyer the correct amount based on their location. Plus if you don’t pass along the eBay discount you come out ahead each time which helps cover your fees and shipping materials.

I do flat rate shipping but I never recommend that for newbies. I’ve got decades of experience.

[disneysteve]

I had a "slow" day. I bought a set of china on Marketplace from a woman about 15 minutes from me. Paid $65. Sold some of it to Replacements for $197. Only a $132 profit.

Of course, I still have all of the dinner plates, salad plates, serving bowls, soup bowls, and mugs remaining which I can sell on ebay.

[EasyMoney00]

I sold the last of the few items I wanted to get rid of. MAde around $680 profit. That's probably what I'll end the year at.

Ive always used boxes we had laying around but we finally ran out. I bought 10 boxes at Walmart for $0.83/each. 11x7.5x5.5. it's the perfect size for what I need. I previously would cut boxes down if I had to. It was annoying. I would gladly buy boxes moving forward just for convenience.

[disneysteve]

Just to show that this isn't all sunshine and rainbows, there are the occasional fails in the reselling world.

A few days ago I bought a set of china on Marketplace. Seller advertised the pattern as Mikasa Kya Smoke. I looked that up and on the thumbnail photo is appeared to be the correct pattern. I priced it out and saw I'd get $288 for it (plus whatever I could make on ebay) so I bought the set for $150. I got home and started examining it and discovered that it wasn't actually Kya Smoke but plain Kya, a nearly identical pattern but with a different color scheme. Instead of being worth $288 it was worth exactly half that, $144. Fortunately I'm driving it down to NC and not shipping it or else my loss wouldl be even more than $6. Hopefully I'll make my profit selling the pieces on ebay that aren't going to Replacements. If not, at least I'm only out $6.

Lesson learned. I need to double check the pattern and not just take the seller's word for it.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

I would argue that people who resell also make mistakes. But it's a learn as you go and unless you do it, you'll never have experience. So you just paid tuition to life!

[disneysteve]

I would argue that people who resell also make mistakes. But it's a learn as you go and unless you do it, you'll never have experience. So you just paid tuition to life!

Definitely. I've made bad buys plenty of times. Other mistakes too. A few months ago I misidentified a china pattern myself. There are hundreds of thousands of patterns and sometimes they can be incredibly hard to tell apart.