Some of you guys may have noticed that I recently have begun to sell my duplicate / extra mini figures on eBay. This has been a long time coming and i'm just now finally doing it. It all started with this post way back in November titled Making Moolah with Mini Figures which shall be edited soon and now titled: "How NOT to make moolah with Mini Figures". The idea is pretty simple: buy a case of mini figures, keep the one you like and sell the duplicates or the ones you don't like and hopefully selling the extras would at the very least pay for your initial investment. Sounds like a grand plan, right? Well, so I went out and bought a case of mini figures and this follow-up post describes what happens: Armored Core Trading Figure Debacle. That article was in January and a bit less dis-illusioned, I decided to finally put up some mini figures on eBay- especially when the genius I am, discovered that I had actually purchased the same case of Gundam UO figures TWICE. Yes, a savvy entrepreneur to be sure. So finally, I went to eBay and initially posted up five (5) Gundam Ultimate Operation Plus 3 figures. I had never, ever tried to sell anything on eBay so this was a new experience for me. I am pretty impressed with the entire process and it was pretty quick and easy to get my listings up. I now realize why eBay is worth like a ga-billion dollars as they charge you a little fee here and there and if you're not careful, you can rack up quite a bit of fees for all the little extra things they offer. For example, it costs $0.65 to list the item. Fine. It costs an extra $0.35 to get that little "gallery" picture you see in the listings which I think is essential when you are scanning hundreds of other listings. Fine. Then they try to charge you for bold and a fancy template, etc. The list goes on. If I opted for every option, I think it would have cost me like $5.00 to list my little $10 figure!!! Clearly this makes more sense when you have more expensive items to sell.
I am happy to report my first ever eBay sale. It was for the gold Hyaku Shiki figure which is pretty cool. I'd like to think my photography helped my selling efforts, but you never know. The buyer clearly has good taste. eBay only let's you have your listing up for one (1) week so yesterday my initial listings expired with only a 20% success rate. At least I sold one figure. I now very clearly see why eBay purchased PayPal as well. Genius. Like peanut butter and jelly. You can even buy your shipping label with postage direct from PayPal which is very convenient, but I chose the wrong one and overpaid shipping by about $3.00 Ack!! So when the listings expired, I naively thought I could just re-list them at no extra charge. Hahahahhahahha, what a fool!!!! Everyone laugh now!!! Yes, of course there is a charge to re-list your items!!! I had to pay the entire $0.95 cents per figure all over again!! This is now $2.00 selling costs per figure!! I am quickly racking up a bit of debt over at eBay for a few lousy mini figures only after one week!!! eBay is a RACKET!!! Needless to say, I am quite impressed...
Suffice to say, I am quickly losing money with each passing week which will probably force me to lower my prices or take them off eBay altogether. It has indeed been an eye-opening experience. Lessons learned: You need scale and / or you need much more expensive items to make eBay work for you. I'm gonna give it a bit more time and add more listings like the Armored Core Figures. So check out what we have by clicking on the link below and take these suckers off my hands!! If you want to buy them by the set, let me know and I'll hook you up!!
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