In the darkness the trees are full of starlight (henwy) wrote,
In the darkness the trees are full of starlight
henwy
  • Mood: blah

Christmas means $$$

Even with the economy as it is, the christmas consumer frenzy continues unabated. Well, unabated on ebay anyway. I have no clue how the local malls are doing but it seems like business as usual online. I can still remember back when ebay was a place you could still get really good deals on so-called hot products. It was almost like being able to shop from home and save a couple bucks for new releases or anything along those lines. Now, you get bunches of people who seem to have this pathological need to bid things above the price of retail. Remember the Wii frenzy of last year? That was at least somewhat justifiable due to the shortages in production. Would you believe that they're still paying well over retail for a Wii a year later?

In the end though, it is a zero sum game. The willingness of some people to overspend makes sellers like me very happy. I only wish that I had more things to sell and unload into the piranha tank. The advent calendars were going like hot cakes, so much so that I bumped the price up a buck going to just skim a little more. In addition, I picked up a few copies of the WoW: Wrath of the Lich King collector's edition on Amazon yesterday and listed them immediately. The first one has sold and I don't even have the game in hand yet. It's not a lot of money in the end since we're talking small quantity and pretty good overhead with the ebay fees tacked on. All in all, I'll probably make a bit over $10 a game which normally wouldn't sound like it's worth someone's time. The difference is that I have nothing but time.

If only I were a bit more mobile, I could easily see selling things on ebay more often. There are plenty of people out there who just roam from sale to sale or from flea market to flea market to find things to flip. The fact that I don't go out much just makes things harder. There have been plenty of times where there have been huge YMMV sales where I just couldn't bring myself to go to half a dozen Walmarts or Circuit City's hoping to score big. Not to mention, I'm not really all that in touch with what's hot and what's not nowadays. I wouldn't have known that the WoW game was big if I hadn't been watching on amazon when it sold out the first time and curiosity got me to search for it on ebay to see what it was going for.

Oh well.
Tags: ebay, holidays
Subscribe

  • Post a new comment

    Error

    Anonymous comments are disabled in this journal

    switch
    default userpic

    Your reply will be screened

    Your IP address will be recorded 

    Help
  • 0 comments