E bay truth

When I put stuff on ebay its for whats its worth to me plus 15 percent. Thats my starting bid. Then I also charge shipping plus 15 percent. That way if it sells it get what I wanted for it and the 15% markup covers all the fees.

Timing can be everything as said above. I try to end all of my auctions on Sunday mid to late afternoon or early evening. I have found that there are a lot more people poking around at that time.

E-bay is NOT the evil entity that some will have you believe. There is no other way to get your item in front of soooooo many eyes and the fees are far less than you will ever pay at a local auction house.

With that said. Why would you want to sell copper on E-bay. Take that to the yard. Shipping will kill that deal any day of the week.

Originally Posted by parrothead

Timing can be everything as said above. I try to end all of my auctions on Sunday mid to late afternoon or early evening. I have found that there are a lot more people poking around at that time.

E-bay is NOT the evil entity that some will have you believe. There is no other way to get your item in front of soooooo many eyes and the fees are far less than you will ever pay at a local auction house.

With that said. Why would you want to sell copper on E-bay. Take that to the yard. Shipping will kill that deal any day of the week.

Parrot that depends on where you live. Scrap master J sends me large flat rate boxes of copper from alaska and I take them to the yard for him and paypal him the money. I take $10 a box for my time and trouble and he makes double what the yard will pay him for it. I have done this with brass for him as well. If his yard is only paying $1.50 a pound because hes way up north and no other yard around he can definitly make more selling it on ebay. I think my mail lady is starting to hate me. Shes is all of 125 pounds and when some of these boxes come in she back her truck up to my door so she can just flop the boxes out of the back

Originally Posted by PartTimeScrapper

Parrot that depends on where you live. Scrap master J sends me large flat rate boxes of copper from alaska and I take them to the yard for him and paypal him the money. I take $10 a box for my time and trouble and he makes double what the yard will pay him for it. I have done this with brass for him as well. If his yard is only paying $1.50 a pound because hes way up north and no other yard around he can definitly make more selling it on ebay. I think my mail lady is starting to hate me. Shes is all of 125 pounds and when some of these boxes come in she back her truck up to my door so she can just flop the boxes out of the back

Hope you gave her a nice Christmas gift!

Originally Posted by PartTimeScrapper

Parrot that depends on where you live. Scrap master J sends me large flat rate boxes of copper from alaska and I take them to the yard for him and paypal him the money. I take $10 a box for my time and trouble and he makes double what the yard will pay him for it. I have done this with brass for him as well. If his yard is only paying $1.50 a pound because hes way up north and no other yard around he can definitly make more selling it on ebay. I think my mail lady is starting to hate me. Shes is all of 125 pounds and when some of these boxes come in she back her truck up to my door so she can just flop the boxes out of the back

But no matter where you are, 4 pounds would not cover the postage.

Originally Posted by parrothead

Timing can be everything as said above. I try to end all of my auctions on Sunday mid to late afternoon or early evening. I have found that there are a lot more people poking around at that time.

E-bay is NOT the evil entity that some will have you believe. There is no other way to get your item in front of soooooo many eyes and the fees are far less than you will ever pay at a local auction house.

Um, eBay not the evil entity people say it is? Yes, it is. Strongly disagree with you here.

And my local auction house charges me 25%. This place is an hour drive from me, so I only go when I have a truckload.
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Originally Posted by BurlyGuys

Um, eBay not the evil entity people say it is? Yes, it is. Strongly disagree with you here.

And my local auction house charges me 25%. This place is an hour drive from me, so I only go when I have a truckload.
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25% is way more than I get charged from E-bay and paypal combined. Plus I will get a higher price there than at a local auction based on the number of people that see it. This goes out the window for large items though.

Originally Posted by parrothead

25% is way more than I get charged from E-bay and paypal combined. Plus I will get a higher price there than at a local auction based on the number of people that see it. This goes out the window for large items though.

i secont that, the fees combined are under 15% and the exposure to alot more of a buyer pool greatly exceeds a local auction house, but again they are doing all the work and there time is worth somthing so i see that side of it also

Originally Posted by parrothead

E-bay is NOT the evil entity that some will have you believe.

That could certainly be debated Parrot ; ) There are precious few organizations one can google search, adding only their name and any one of a number of choice cuss words, and find not only a post or two containing these keywords, but whole websites named using them, and not only websites named using them, but websites named using them which are filled with posts containing them. I for one, do not believe all those websites and the posts they contain to be totally without merit

But, as you also said, Ebay has the traffic, 75% of which are buyers, and too many of those are also there to scam, and are in many ways protected and even encouraged by Ebay policies. It's a lot like walking down the street in a mixed neighborhood of good folks and bad, as long as you stay completely alert and keep your guard up, you stand a chance of getting through it unscathed, because the ones looking to scam are actively searching for the weak, the unprotected, the vulnerable, the unaware, the ones they can easily take

Originally Posted by Bear

That could certainly be debated Parrot ; ) There are precious few organizations one can google search, adding only their name and any one of a number of choice cuss words, and find not only a post or two containing these keywords, but whole websites named using them, and not only websites named using them, but websites named using them which are filled with posts containing them. I for one, do not believe all those websites and the posts they contain to be totally without merit

But, as you also said, Ebay has the traffic, 75% of which are buyers, and too many of those are also there to scam, and are in many ways protected and even encouraged by Ebay policies. It's a lot like walking down the street in a mixed neighborhood of good folks and bad, as long as you stay completely alert and keep your guard up, you stand a chance of getting through it unscathed, because the ones looking to scam are actively watching for the weak, the unprotected, the vulnerable few whom they can easily take

I wish I could give MULTIPLE thanks for this post Bear! It is way too hard to do anything with eBay. I even get screwed on small items, I certainly am not going to throw away an expensive item on eBay. The predators lie in wait for the expensive items.

Originally Posted by Copper Head

Since I did build a good rep on ebay - I wont let it go to waste 15% markup on item's and shipping sounds like a good foundation to start.

I also always do a buy it now for around 10 to 20 percent more of my starting bid. Ide rather sell it now for a good profit than wait for a bidding war. Im all about averages. Ill give you an example. I buy an 80gb sata hard drive for $2.50 We all like to at least double our money so thats what I try to do. Ill list it for starting bid of $8 and a buy it now for $10. If it sells for $10 i have $2.50 invested into the drive. ebay and paypal fees will be about $1.50 shipping materials another $.50. So i now have $4.50 invested int he drive and I made $5.50. now if it only sold for 8 I would make about $3.50 profit. Average the 2 out over a single bid winner and a buy it now winner who didnt want to wait for the auction to end and I made $4.50 Doubled my money.

Pat found a really nice McLaughlin sleigh tag on a rotten piece of wood laying in the woods, which obviously had been part of a sleigh at one time. She hung onto it for a year then one evening she wondered what it would sell for on ebay. So she listed it without wanting to sell the tag with a $250.00 reserve.

Within hours of the auction being posted some guy comes along and bids this thing up $5.00 a pop until he reaches the reserve the tag sat there at this price until the end when another guy snipped the tag.

You just never know with an auction how its going to end., but then I've been selling since June of 98 and have plenty of weird and interesting ebay endings - stories.

Here;s a similar tag to the McLaughlin.