Goodwill, Ebay, or Trash
Right now, we’re undergoing a junk purging at our house. It’s kind of liberating, in a way, seeing piles of stuff you no longer use or want going out of the house. I had a bit of a dilemma with it recently though. What do I do with all that crap?
To date, whenever we do this sort of thing, we’ve generally separated things into two piles - good enough to give to Goodwill and trash. Embarrassingly often, the ‘perfectly good enough to give to Goodwill’ pile is bigger by an order of magnitude. However, as I was getting rid of a batch today, I realized some of this stuff might actually be worth something.
The stuff in question was toys, specifically, ‘collectible’ dolls. I wondered, “would it be worthwhile to try to sell any of this stuff on Craigslist and/or Ebay?” I fired up the ol’ interweb and hit Ebay to find out. Turns out that, yes, some of this stuff was being sold and for half-decent coin.
Now I had a problem. I could either separate stuff into three piles - Goodwill, Ebay, trash, or I could continue with my two-pile system. Guesses what I did?
I stuck with two categories - Goodwill and trash.
Why? Simple - I did a quick calculation of how much time I’d spend selling the stuff compared to how much I’d make. There was no contest; it’s not worth it to me to take the time to sell it. I’ve never sold anything on Ebay, but I figured these would be the steps:
- Separate all this stuff.
- Take pictures of everything I wanted to sell.
- Create a listing with words and everything (me not so good with words).
- Start auction.
- Wait.
- Wait.
- Wait.
- Deal with person who won the auction (transaction, emails back and forth, etc).
- Go to post office, box and mail stuff.
- Repeat.
No thanks. I think I’ll just stick with giving it to Goodwill and taking a small tax deduction.
There’s probably a business in there somewhere. I give you my piles of possibly-salable crap, you sell it and keep a piece for yourself. Everybody wins I guess. There are probably people who do this already, though. I’m not a very creative person, so this idea’s probably being done.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
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December 1st, 2007 at 9:47 pm
eBay has never really been the goldmine its sometimes hyped up to be (except for the founders of course). There are some people who make their living on eBay but by no means do great. The landscape has changed a lot over the years as well. From what I’ve read on blogs, 4 or 5 years ago the profit opportunities on eBay were much better, but like all markets an excess profits eventually get wiped out, especially when there are no barriers to entry. Now you have a market that is more efficient, the sellers have a lot of competition especially amongst all the large retailers who have a presence on eBay. And the buyers are much more experienced and knowledgable.
I agree with you completely, its not worth it to try to sell your old junk on eBay unless it is quite valuable. I would also love the option of giving my stuff to someone who would sell it and split the profits. Like that “We Sell Your Stuff on EBay” store from the 40-Year Old Virgin. I do have a lot of stuff that I don’t want anymore but have a hard time throwing out because it is not really garbage. I wouldn’t mind someone else doing the work and me just getting a small amount of cash for it, at least then I’ll feel it wasn’t a total loss.
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:26 am
As the bloke upstairs mentioned, it appears that the “glory days” of eBay for many small-time sellers is over.
In 1997 I took the plunge and started placing goodies on eBay.
I had returned to college where I, an old coot of 41, stymied the professors there due to their inability to brainwash me.
Anyway, ebay sales paid a lot of tuition. I sold most of my record collection, one record at a time. Wheeee!!!! $15 to $550 per record. Life was great. I likely wouldn’t do as well today what with so many more sellers.
I also roamed the thrift stores, grabbing stuff I thought would sell; books, records, everything (but clothes).
It made my liver quiver with unadulterated delight when a 49-cent vinyl LP record auctioned off for $27, with the buyer paying shipping.
Sold an old 1980s era unopened plastic-wrapped bos of Apple/Mac software I paid 99 cents for, receiving $65 from some college professor who was creating a public display of “ancient” computing hard and software.
Wheeeee!!!!!
Sold to many countries; Australia, Japan, Italy, Britain, Germany, Belgium and more. All the foreign buyers sent cash…American dollars.
Out of many transactions only had a couple that went bad, the buyer never sent the money. No problem. Got the eBay fees refunded and put the goody back on sale.
Originally, I held onto checks for 10 business days. Quit doing that after awhile, never did get a bad check.
Finally had to quit. Two reasons: did not want to become a business in the eyes of the IRS and have to start doing all the onerous paperwork and the eBay experience was starting to change. Secondly…. others apparently started doing what I was. I noticed an obvious lessening of the amount of saleable goodies in the thrift stores, something I notice to this day.
eBay used to be a seller’s market but, anymore, it seems to be more of a buyer’s market.
Yah’ know….. regarding that IRS paperwork… the proposed flat tax may be what the USA needs. Why place artificial hurdles in front of those who want to do business? make the flat tax/national sales tax the way to garner revenue. Less paperwork for firms.
In a way I miss the “old days” on eBay. Kept me from having to borrow money to attend college.
December 4th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
For me, I have to be getting 20 dollars minimum for an item or it’s not really worth the time putting it up and shipping. Ebay and Paypal fees are excessive in my opinion. There is the listing fee and the the final sale fee…. and then 2.9% Paypal.
December 5th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Yeah, $20 seems like a bare minimum. For me, it might even be higher and I don’t think any of this stuff got there.
December 5th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Yep, it’s time consuming: I sold vintage clothes on eBay from 1999 to around 2002. I used to be a picker for a vintage clothing company, and I still had the eye, so I found good stuff in the thrift stores — lots of vintage designer stuff (Pucci, Correges, Dior) at a time when it went for a good deal of money. I did well: I would often sell something I’d found for 5 bucks for 50 to 100. But when I finally figured out the amount of time I was spending to wash, iron, measure, photograph and describe the item, the amount I was earning turned out to be about 2.00 an hour.
Eventually I sold the whole shebang — several thousand pieces — to a friend who was starting his own online store. I made money on that deal, thank heavens, and I’ve never been tempted to start up again.
That said, though, if you’ve just got a bunch of basically free items that you know have value, it’s worth it to sit down for a weekend to list them — it’s no more time than it would take to hold a yard sale, and it’s much more profitable.
December 5th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Hey — I just tried to leave a comment, and the stupid spam appeared instead!
December 6th, 2007 at 11:16 am
@jrochest -
Sorry about the comment error.
Yeah, I’d guess ebay is superior to yardsale, which means (for me) a yardsale would really be a waste of time.