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.