With all of the brand power behind the music, the marketing and history of the Beatles and other famous bands (greatful dead artwork, for example) makes their merchandaise quite collectible and valuable to fans all around the world. While shopping in a local antique store recently, i’d spotted a set of Beatles dolls. There was John, Paul, George and Ringo; dressed in Sargent Pepper era silk suits, standing about 24″ tall. Each one was in very good condition and displayed on a metal stand and still had their original hang tags. Applause had made these dolls in a limited production run (officially licensed by Apple records) and each doll was numbered as part of a set. I inquired about their price and was told by the shop owner that the set was an even $200.00.

Now, our golden rule has always been, “If you don’t know how much it’ll sell for, leave it alone.” This has proved to be a great strategy for us in that we’ve become very choosy about the store items we buy for our inventory. We only buy items we know will sell well for us and don’t take chances if we aren’t certain. No impulse shopping is allowed. If you can stick to that, you won’t get stuck with items that don’t sell.

So, after coming home, I did a little research online using Hammertap. Hammertap is a great research tool for sellers on ebay, because it tracks both the active and completed sales for items and can tell you what the sell through percentages are. So, by doing a little research on ebay on “Applause Beatles Dolls,” I found out that these items sell really well online. The John Lennon doll alone usually sold for over $100.00 in most ebay transactions. I knew that if I purchased them cheap enough, that i’d be able to turn a profit on them.

Armed with my hammertap knowledge, I returned to the antique store and talked them down to a sales price (after taxes) of $180.00, so a little bit off the asking price. That was fine, because I knew I could get far more than that on ebay. I listed them with no reserve. Surprisingly, John sold for the least amount at $77.50 (270487168137). George ( 270527499004) and Ringo (270527500166) sold each for $102.53 and Paul (270527500105) sold for $101.22.

Final sales total: $383.78

Cost: $180.00

Profit (before ebay/paypal fees): $203.78

Beatles items sell

That same week, we’d also found a Jerry Garcia Applause doll at a garage sale complete with paper guitar around his neck. Jerry was purchased for $2.00 and we sold him for $15.50. Not too shabby, so keep your eyes peeled for music collectibles and toys from bands people know and love.

All you need is love, love. Love is all you need.

Part of being a great ebay seller is finding some nice niche hot items from time to time. We were lucky enough to find just such an item a little over two weeks ago. While visiting our local church’s rummage sale, my fiance spotted a pair of brand new Technica ski boots still in the box. I’d passed up the box because it was rather beat up looking, but being the thorough investigator she is, my sweetheart opened it to find the ski boots were brand new, with their hang tags and original retail recipt still inside the box.

Flip for cash!

She knew that high end ski boots and other sports equipment can be quite expensive, and finding a nice size 11.5 pair of men’s Technica ski boots was perfect for this winter. They had a hot form liner, which is a special type of heat pad-style lining that plugs into an adaptor for warming your legs and feet in the boots, or just prior to putting them on and hitting the ski slopes. With all of the snow we’ve had this year, there are thousands of people spending time on the slopes over the weekends. The Winter Olympics are also set to begin, so winter vacations and ski destinations are definitely on people’s minds.

Purchase price: $5.00

Final Auction Price: $122.50

Keep your eyes peeled for other winter sports apparel!

Treasure Hunting

This weekend was an ideal time for finding some really nice things at garage sales. Garage sales are very popular means for raising a  little extra cash from items you have around the home that you just don’t use, or can easily part with. Living in Florida, going to garage sales can be a great year-round activity for the entire family. You really never know what treasures you might find at any given garage sale.

For the past two weekends in our area, we’ve been inundated by heavy rains and cold weather. This weekend’s weather was shaping up to be more of the same, but we got lucky and the latest stormfront blew out just in time for early morning weekend bargain hunting. It was a cool but sunny windy day, and with so few garage sales for the previous two weekends, there was an explosion of garage sales in just about every neighborhood we drove to.

We had a budget of $60 to spend, and we wound up spending $57. Here is a list of the items we found:

1. A Professional Kitchenaid Mixer still in the box (retails normally for $300)
2. Two huge boxes of collectible LEGOS (people go nuts for legos on ebay)
3. NIB (New in Box) pair of Easy Spirit Sandals (mens, size 11)
4. New duffel bag filled with a flag football set (multiple footballs, cones, flag belts, flags, whistles, etc.)
5. New pair of Addidas soccer cleats
6. Two Cell phones (see below for the reason why we bought these)
7. One NIB Ship in a Bottle inside wooden case
8. One designer purse with matching wallet
9. Brand new set of five 4″ three ring binders
10. One small fancy notebook

When we go to garage sales, we’re not only looking for items we can use around the house, we look for items we can flip on ebay for a profit. You can pick up all sorts of items at garage sales that will sell well on ebay if you know what you’re looking for. There are literally thousands of things you can find that you an re-sell for a profit. All you need to do is to go find them and do a little research on ebay. Our articles on ebay research at the top of our website will help you get started.

If you’d like to see some of our auctions in action, check us out on ebay here: http://myworld.ebay.com/mr.peanut904/

Now, you may have asked yourself, “Why in the world are these people buying old used cell phones?” It’s true that reselling old cell phones is very difficult to do on ebay, and with so many cellular companies locking their moble phones so that you can’t easily transfer them from one person to another, there really isn’t a whole lot of incentive out there to do anything with old cell phones. So, many of the ones we find are a real bargain. We rarely pay more than a quarter for them whether they’re working or not.

So what are they good for? I’ll tell you. There’s a great cell phone recycling program over at swagbucks.com. Swagbucks offers it’s users virtual dollars that they can trade in on prizes, gift cards and real tangeable items like video game systems and other products for using their services. You can earn digital swag dollars for just using their search engine frontend to search the web, or do fun things like send them old cell phones for free swagbucks. They’ll even pay you the postage. If you’d like to learn more about swagbucks, click below!

Loaded and locked

Sniping ebay auctions 101:  Ebay auction sniper and snipe software explained. There are a few tricks to buying on Ebay, and today’s topic is on Sniping auctions. What in the world is an auction Snipe? Is it like hunting for Snipe? Is Wesley Snipes gonna slay vampires with a sword and win my auction for me? Well, i’ll tell you. It’s neither. An auction Snipe is a bid submitted to ebay in just the last few seconds of the item’s auction time. It can either be done manually, via software or via an online Sniping service.

The main advantages to performing Snipes on ebay auctions is so that you can try to bid on items for the smallest amount of money. When people bid on auctions on ebay using ebay’s auto bid feature, ebay automatically places a hidden proxy bid for you up to your maximum bid amount. If another bidder comes along and places a bid on an item, ebay will compare it to your maximum bid and the new bidder’s maximum bid, and bid up the price of the item to the new price of whoever has the higher maximum bid. For example, let’s say an item has a $1.00 opening bid amount. You think that’s a great price, and bid $5.00 as your maximum bid. Someone else comes along and bids $7.50 on the item. Ebay compares it to your max bid and raises the price to $6.00 ($1.00 over your max bid) and the other person becomes the new high bidder.

This works to the seller’s advantage, as two or more people can get into a bidding war by raising up their max bids in the auction. This is usually how auctions work, in that multiple people will bid against each other until the end of the auction raising the sales price. If two or more people really really want an item, bidding can go way up at any time during the auction. If you’ve ever gotten into a bidding war on an item, you know how this feels. It sucks when you get outbid, especially when you know the item isn’t worth what the new bidder is going to pay for it.

So, Sniping is a way of making the bidding process work for the BUYER, not the seller. If you have patience, you can wait on an item and try bidding on it in the last few seconds of the auction. When you bid on items using this strategy, time works in your favor, especially if not a lot of users are watching the end of the auction at their computer screens. Patience is all that’s required, and a quick click of the mouse. There are a few tools in which you can use to Snipe auctions, and here’s a comparison of which might work best for you:

Manual Snipes: Manual Snipes are the easiest type of Sniping. You have to log into your ebay account and watch the auction in real time, and submit your max bid in the last few seconds. Remember, submitting your max bid won’t necessarily be the final price, it’s just the maximum you yourself are willing to pay for that item. The best way to do a manual bid is to go to the auction and enter in the amount of your max bid anywhere from 10-30 seconds before the end of the auction. Ebay will put the auction time in countdown mode (four… three… two… one… liftoff!) during the last hour of the auction. Simply watch it, and 10-30 seconds before the end of the auction, enter your final bid and click enter. Don’t forget, sign in beforehand and remember there’s a confirmation screen to confirm the bid if you’re not using 1 click bidding. Give yourself a little extra time if you’re on dialup (closer to 30 seconds) and narrower time if you’ve practiced the Sniping maneuver on a good high speed connection.

Sniping software: There is some great free Sniping software which is available to you. The one that I use is called Jbidwatcher (click for link) and is open source freeware for multiple operating systems. Software lets you automate the process of Sniping and it allows you to set up multiple Snipes and Snipe scheduling for multiple items. It’s very useful to use these when you aren’t home or if you’re busy doing other things than watching your auctions. Snipe software frees you up to do other things and manage your Snipes on your own time. You simply configure your software with your watched auctions, set up your Snipes, tell the software when to submit the Snipes (in seconds) before the auctions end, and let it do all the work for you. The potential disadvantages to using PC based software are: A) your internet connection has to be working, B) Your computer has to be running and not in sleep mode (turn sleep mode off), and C) you have to enter your account login information into the software. For the last reason, go with an open source auction Sniping program. Open source programs allow everyone to review and potentially revise the program’s source code, so no funny business (ex: account information collection and distribution) sneaks into the program.

Online Sniping Services: There are several online Sniping websites which essentially work the same way as the PC based software. They monitor the actions for you and will attempt to Snipe them automatically just like the PC based Sniping programs. The main advantage is that they’re always running (virtually no down time) and you can set up your Snipes and forget them. The main disadvantage is, you have to enter in your ebay account information and there’s no open source security. You have to trust the Sniping service will keep your ebay login information confidential.

I don’t know about you, but I was one of those parents busily searching all over my little section of the universe trying to find that hot toy this christmas season, the Zhu Zh

the toy aisle

u Pets Hamsters. It seems like every year, christmas time sets the trend for finding THE HOT TOY out there. Kids see it, they talk amongst themselves at school about it, and they get a severe case of  “Daddy-I-Gotta-Have-It-itis.” This leaves you, the good parent, going out of your mind looking for whaver the crazy new trendy toy is. One year, it was Vera Bradley bags, the next year it was Guitar Hero gear, this past year…. the sickly cute little hamsters took over the minds of our little ones who collectively begged their parents for it, en masse.

With some luck and perseverance, I was able to locate my set of them with a minimum of effort, gasoline and added expense. These are some of the best tips that I can give anyone out there looking to spot a trend for the hot toy of the moment, and how to find it.

Local Stores: Always start out first with your local stores. I like to call my local stores first and ask for employees in their toy departments. to save on gas and driving time.  Jot down their names and talk to them using their names. There’s always something more formal and respectful when talking to a person by name on the phone, it’s more personable. Use your manners and say “Please” and “Thank you,” while they scour their store shelves or computer inventories for that special toy. If they are able to locate it, ask them to set it aside for you until you are able to come to the store and pick it up. Some stores won’t let you do this (first come, first served), however you can ask them if you can purchase it over the phone and then pick it up as soon as possible. Also, it doesn’t hurt to learn the manager’s name of a particular store or department and just talk to them like you would a good friend, especially if you are looking for hot toys regularly. Knowing someone on a first name basis will get you far when searching for immpsible to find items.

Restocking Times/Dates: It pays to learn when a particular store re-stocks it’s inventory. Certain toys are so popular that sometimes they’re only available in small quantities, which are equally distributed to all of the stores in any region. By learning when each particular store stocks these items, you might be able to time it right for a visit. This works especially well for night owls and the big chain 24 hour a day stores like Walmart. Typically, restocking occurs in 24 hour stores in the wee hours of the morning between 2:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m.. In big chain stores that do close, they usually re-stock the shelves overnight at any time before the store opens. So, it pays to be the early bird that gets the worm. Some stores only recieve new stock from their delivery trucks on particular days, based upon their regional distribution delivery routes. For example, a local Toys R Us near me here restocks on Tuesdays and Thursdays after their delivery truck arrives.

Gaming & Comic Book Shops: Let’s face it, people that work at comic book shops refuse to grow up. They’re big kids at heart and are fiercely dedicated to collecting any and all items related to games and comics. If you’re on the hunt for a particular toy that’s related to action, science fiction or anything even remotely (excuse the term) “nerd-like,” then the fine folks at Gaming and Comics shops are an excellent resource. For example, the Star Wars Jedi Force Trainer game was a super hot toy this season. The only place I found it were in shops that carried Comic Books. As of the writing of this article, those very same stores are well stocked with Avatar toys.

Clearance stores: If it’s a newer toy, you won’t have much luck finding them in clearance stores. However, after the holiday rush and before the next season’s toy rush begins, you just might find some bargains in clearance stores like Tuesday Morning, Big Lots, and others. Some toys retain their value or even go up in price depending on availability. For example, companies like Lego and Playmobil produce certain toys for only limited times (or limited series). Finding a brand new unopened toy that’s been retired or a  limited production can pay off in the future if it’s no longer being produced.

Craigslist: Check the toys section of your local major metropolitan craigslist area. Often, you will find a flood of resales for some toys right after the holidays. This is a great way to pick up some gently used toys for a fraction of their original prices. It works especially well for locating used video games, video game consoles and DVD’s right in our own area. Just be sure to test everything before you purchase it. 

Online: Online websites and ebay are also great places to find that hot toy. Retailers and resellers flood the market with toys around the major holidays, and sometimes it is the only recourse you have for locating a very scarce item. Take advantage of pre-ordering a toy if you can before the holiday rush, or look for reputable stores with an in-stock guarantee. When on Ebay, pay careful attention to a particular seller’s feedback rating. Try to purchase items from sellers with five star service levels with over 98% overall positive feedback rating. It also pays to search for misspelled words in the items descriptions. For example, the Zhu Zhu pets were spelled “Zou Zou” or “Zoo Zoo” pets in many instances. If you can find one spelled incorrectly, it won’t come up in searches with the ones that ARE spelled correctly, which usually means there’s less bidders and you can pick them up for a song.

Here’s some great advise for making money selling cheap yankee christmas candles and retired scents on ebay!

One of the most popular items in malls across the country are Yankee Candles. These wonderful little candles come in jars and are available in hundreds of scents. Many of these scents are limited productions, available for limited times only and/or were retired because their popularity wained or didn’t sell well. Even if they didn’t sell well, there are still thousands of people all around the country that could potentially love that one particular scent of candle, and are willing to pay extra for them when the supply runs out.

 The great thing about yankee candles is that they can often be found in clearance areas of retail stores such as CVS, Walgreens, Tuesday Mornings, Burlington Coat Factory and many many others. Garage sales and thrift stores are also great places to find them. Look for dust free interiors with clean (never burned) wicks inside the jars. Several of the scented candles are very hard to find and sell well for online retailers and on ebay.  Some individual scented candles sell in excess of $30.00 each online. If you can find them cheap enough, for a few dollars or less on some of the retired scents, you may be able to flip them for a good profit.

Here are twenty two of the retired or limited production scents:

• Aloe Vera
• Blue Jack Frost
• Chocolate Truffle
• Evening Primrose
• Fireside
• Ginger Citrus
• Hazelnut Coffee
• Iced Herbal Tea
• Juicy Watermelon
• Key Lime Pie
• Lotus Blossom
• Mandarin Cranberry
• New Zeland Wildberry
• Oatmeal Cookie
• Peony Petals
• Queen Anne’s Lace
• Rice Milk
• Salt Mist Rose
• Tropical Guava
• Vanilla Oak
• Willow Breeze
• Xmas Tree

A more complete list of retired and limited production yankee candle scents is available for a small fee. For a mere $2.00, you can purchase my eBook of  hot Yankee Candle scents which has well over 220+ retired and limited yankee candles. The yankee candle list is one chapter of our new comprehensive eBook of great items to sell online. We update the yankee candle list each quarter for new additions and revisions of resurrected scents, always keeping it as up to date as possible. The eBook is available in .PDF format and will be emailed to you upon completion of the purchase.

Cheap candles here: 20% off any purchase @ CandleBay.com using code CB2020.

Selling items on ebay for fun and profit is a great way for any Dad to raise a little extra spending money. Most people will go through their homes and look for items that they no longer need or use and either sell them at a garage sale or even on Craigslist for a little pocket change. But, did you know that many of those very same garage sale shoppers that buy your items are re-selling them on Ebay? It’s true. There is a whole market of people around the world that are willing to pay good money for your spare and unused items if you’re just willing to take the time to post them up for sale and ship them when the auction ends.

Turn about is fair play, too. You can make a modest income by being the early worm and going to neighborhood garage sales and finding some items that typically sell well on a regular basis on ebay. How do you know if it sells well on ebay? Simple. Search for that same item on ebay like you were a buyer and see what they’re selling for. A great resource for this is to use a link on the left hand side of any ebay catagory that says, “Completed listings.” This is a link inside of ebay which will just show you the completed listings and you can actually see which of those listings sold recently (or if they didn’t sell) and how much they sold for. This is a powerful tool for understanding if an item will actually sell if listed on ebay, and a rough gauge for what you can expect a similar sale to bring in (so you don’t overpay).

Items that sell well:

• Mens designer clothes (Ralph Lauren Polo, North Face Jackets, etc.)
• Rugby & Soccer Team Shirts (Australian and British Rugby teams, World Cup Soccer Teams, etc.)
• Sports Equipment (name brands, newer the better) for Kids and Adults
• Moisture wicking athletic gear (Under Armor, Dry-Tec, etc.)
• Professional Sports memoribilia and Apparel
• College Sports memoribilia and Apparel
• High end designer suits and sports coats (Burberry, etc.)

This is just a small portion of items included in our comprehensive e-book on how to turn garage sale finds into ebay dollars. Check back soon for the link to our e-book!

Learning how to easily use Ebay for selling your items doesn’t have to be as daunting as you think. There are several ways that you can save some money on your shippng costs. First, ebay has some built in features for using the USPS and UPS as couriers for your sold items with a built in wizard which can help you calculate your shipping costs. It helps to have a basic understanding of how this process works and the tools you’ll need to make it work in your favor.

First step: Acquire a postage scale. There are several on the market, or you might come across a few at garage sales and even online at ebay itself. They come in two types: manual scales (with manual adjustment) and digital scales (with automatic adjustment). Manual scales are usually fine for shipping small items and boxes under five pounds, but if you’re shipping items that weigh a little more, you’ll need a large scale. I use a Pelouze digital shipping scale but any kind will work. Food scales will also work. Mine weighs in both meteric and US ounces/pounds.

Second step: Stockpile shipping supplies. The USPS has a wonderful flat rate shipping service in which you can ship small items in their priority and express mail boxes for a low price. One of the perks for using priority mail flat rate shipping is free shipping supplies, such as boxes, envelopes, labels and tape. You can pick up small supplies of them for free at your local post office, or you can order them online from www.usps.com and have them delivered to your home for free. For parcel post shipping and UPS shipping, start gathering together small and medium sized boxes, break them down so you can store them flat, and save them.

Third step: Estimating your postage costs. This is as simple as placing your ebay items inside of the most appropreate sized box and weighing it on the scale. Typically, i’ll add two ounces to any box weight to help cover packing materials, tape and labels and give myself a little bit of a coushin. For larger boxes or heavier items, you might also need a tape measurer to enter in the dimensions of the box. Round up in your measurements.

Fourth step: After the item sells, print out your postage. You can print your postage through ebay/paypal’s links to the pitney bowes postage printing system from funds right out of your paypal account OR you can sign up for online postage printing account directly at www.usps.com or www.UPS.com to save some money. Both couriers offer discounts for printing your postage from home. You can print them out on your home printer on plain paper or on printing labels for less than the postage will cost you at the post office or a shipping store. You can even request a pickup for your items for free directly from your home, so you don’t have to spend gas driving to the shipper. As a bonus, the postage you print from home doesn’t have the postage price paid on the shipping label anywhere, so your customers won’t know the difference. The savings can be more than a few dollars on larger items which adds to your bottom line.

Several more money saving shipping tips are coming in our ebay shippers resource e-book. Stay tuned!

IF you haven’t joined the ebay revolution yet, drop everything and get with it! I’ve found that there’s no better way to clear out the extra junk that’s accumulated in your man-cave than selling on Ebay. Cruise over to ebay.com and you can enter in keywords to see exactly which items are currently up for sale. Say you have an old pair of oakley sunglasses just collecting dust since your last upgrade. Enter in “oakley sunglasses” into your keyword search and check out just how much cash you could be making on ebay right now.

A great tip is to look at the catagories on the left hand side of any search. There is a clickable box link called “competed listings” that if you click, will show you just the completed auctions for the item you’re researching. Use those oakley sunglasses as your example. Search for them, then click the completed listings box, and check out all of the ended auctions for the actual sales prices. Any auctions listed in green are items that have actually sold (their final sales price). Items listed in red are items which did not sell. Using this information, you should be able to get a rough approximate gauge for which items are hot, and which are not and how much they’ve sold for.