Lynn’s eBay E-zine Volume II, Issue Number 7

I made $2,000 with my auctions while I was at eBay Live!

While I was exhibiting at eBay live, I was asked to do an interview with Griff and Lee for eBay WS Radio. I love their show and was honored to be included as one of their “eBay Gurus”. One of the questions that they asked was “What are two important selling tips for our listeners?”

There was only time to discuss one because we went into a lot of depth with my first tip… “When to Move Your Items Into an eBay Store.” If you want to know more about this, please follow the link to the Griff interview in the next section.

Since I didn’t have time to discuss the second tip, I thought my eBay Live Newsletter would be the perfect place. It is all about “Collections”.

When you are out buying, try and purchase entire collections. The first reason is that you can get a great price if you take everything and secondly when you list like items that a collector is interested in, you will get buyers that want multiple items and want to save on shipping. They are more motivated than a buyer of a single item. Motivation tends to drive your bid prices higher than you can imagine!

Great example, two weekends before eBay Live I was out garage saling. I typically will not drive to a certain area of my valley because I have never found anything great there. However, the advertisement stated that they had Royal Doulton and Limoge boxes. A collection! So, Indy (my daughter) and I made the 20-minute drive to the sale. We got there at about 10:45 and the two “Collections” were still available. Amazing! But in the Desert during June it gets really hot and there aren’t as many people out buying at garage sales. Also, it was in a bad area of town. Remember, don’t overlook a certain section of town.

The collections consisted of nine Royal Doulton Figurines and 19 Halcyon Days Battersea Boxes. They weren’t even Limoges boxes–they were Battersea. Even better! If you don’t already have my book Money-Making Madness you should definitely get it and read story #13 about Battersea and Halcyon Days. You can buy it here.

Anyway, I asked the gentleman the prices and he wanted between $100 and $200 for each Royal Doulton and $35 for each Halcyon Day Box. I asked “How much for everything?’ and he said that a dealer had told him that he would pay $1,500. I told him that it sounded like it was already sold. The man said that it wasn’t for sure and that he would sell it at a discount because “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush.” We agreed on $1,250.

As most of you know, I don’t usually spend so much for my items. However, these were high quality and I knew that it was a great price from my years of experience. I also knew that selling a “collection” INDIVIDUALLY would drive up the prices. Bidders want to buy multiples because then they can save on shipping. This is a huge incentive and something that I would mention in each and every listing. A kink in my plan was that the seller only wanted cash, so Indy and I had to drive another hour round trip to my bank to get the money!

It was so worth it. While I was at eBay live, I sold every item but two, for almost $3,000. I still have those two items left and I think that I can get $200 for them. That netted me $2,000 on that one purchase! To prove my point about “Collections”, every bidder bought at least two items except for three (out of 21 items). It was a very motivating factor that I had “collections” up for sale.

The item that sold for the most money was the Doulton Fortune Teller Figurine for $286.60 with 16 bids and it is going to Australia.

As a really neat ending note, while the auctions were going on, my Dad saw the Halcyon Days boxes in my office. He had flown down to Palm Desert to watch my kids while I went to eBay Live. What a great Dad! Anyway, he asked me if he could buy one of the boxes. And I said that no, they were all already listed on eBay and would sell for at least $100 each. After he walked out of my office, I thought “How rude was that?”

I followed him into the other room and asked why he wanted one. It turns out that he collects them and I didn’t even know that! I said, OK, which one is your favorite? Even though most of them had bid, I thought I could figure out something. Remember, Father’s Day is this Sunday. My dad never had much growing up and never asks for anything. He wouldn’t tell me his favorite. I said, “Fine, I will just pick one for you.”

So, he took a look and picked the one pictured here.