Hi, I heard that some people make a living trading on e-bay. I don’t mean the common retailer who sells his goods. Rather for example some kind of “arbitrageur” who will purchase products sold at a badly organised auction and sell them for a higher price on their own auction. So, do you think this is possible ? Have you ever heard of similar trades on e-bay ? Just curious. Txs.
I would not be surprised if a knowledgeable person could make money this way. However, I doubt that you could make enough to make this worthwhile to do full time.
You could always enter the grocery arbitrage business. Buying oranges in Florida and selling them at a margin in canada. buying cranberries in massachussets and selling them at a margin in mexico.
having sold on ebay quite a bit, i would assume that the costs of execution are too high to make “ebay arbitrage” worthwhile…
I don’t know how profitable it is, but I know a number of people that are at least able to generate some nice supplemental income. Basically, people find stuff at garage sales and figure that they can capture value added by reselling on ebay. Not all that different from the idea of buying at a low P/BV and selling at a justified P/BV multiple. There just aren’t any cash flows from holding the asset (and you may have to pay storage costs).
My colleague sells laptops, cameras and other stuff…buy low sell high. He is always bragging about how he got his hands on cheap stuff.
it’s not at all easy. I did this for awhile and although you can certainly, you can sometimes find something at a garage sale and sell it, I was not able to make too much and I was lucky to have access to scientific and technical books that I could get very low cost (like $5) and sell for over $100. The best deal was a stochastics book I bought for 10 cents and sold (on amazon) for $90. but, the problem is that even if I were able to replenish my inventory, which I couldn’t, there was a small finite supply, there are limited buyers. Most customers were libraries. I sold all over the world and maybe made $1500 at most over a period of years. I also bought 4 pair of manolo blahnik shoes at a grand opening of a loehmann’s shoe store for $70 each and sold all 4 for $1200 total on ebay, but try replicating that, it’s a one shot deal, i never found these shoes at this price again. anyway, I’d say it’s a hobby, not a way to survive. and I was doing this back in 2002-2003 when there was far less competition than now.
Tried doing this several years ago with PS2 & Xbox games (pre PS3 and Xbox 360 days). I followed auctions of popular titles for a couple of weeks and then started bidding on the same titles with max bid 15% or 20% below “market”. I focused on auctions that expired in the middle of the night, figuring the price generally gets driven up in the last 2 minutes of the auction. I won a handful of auctions but was never able to unload anything I won for a profit. Anyone interested in 3 copies of Madden 2004 for Xbox?
Good stuff guys, keep 'em coming. Txs.
I buy/sell on eBay often. Transaction costs for eBay/paypal are pretty steep making arb tough. Ive heard of people getting free stuff via Cl and turning it for a profit.
ASSet_MANagement Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > You could always enter the grocery arbitrage > business. Buying oranges in Florida and selling > them at a margin in canada. buying cranberries in > massachussets and selling them at a margin in > mexico. I saw a six pack of soda-pop for $1.20. That price f***s with your head, man. Because then I though that I would start selling soda-pop. Suddenly I got things of pop with me. “What’s going on, Mitch.” “Not much, looking to buy some pop? Fifty cents a can. It’s not refridgerated because this is a half assed commitment.” --Mitch Hedberg
Somewhat related - there’s a story on Yahoo about some dude who swapped his way from a used iPhone to a used Boxster. It took him 2 years and bunch of swaps, but still. The Boxster wasn’t the first car in the chain of swaps either.
another guy swapped his way from a red paperclip to a house. something else i used to do - sometimes Staples has free after rebate and if you bundle (which may include buying stuff you don’t want) you can often make money on the transaction. Not a lot, something like $10 or so. I’ve done this where I had to buy Quicken or Norton IS just to get the deal then sold what I didn’t need on ebay. I also won a contest and sold the prize for $35 or so but after shipping barely broke even. so like i said, it’s more of a hobby thing but shows there are deals out there for buyers when sellers like me get stuff free and just trying to make a small profit.
I was buying and selling PS3’s and Xbox 360’s on Craigslist. I found this guy in Seattle that repaired broken systems (RROD, disc read errors, etc.). Online I was frequently able to find systems in need of repair going for $50-100. In most cases the repairs were only $20 and depending on the system and hard drive I could easily sell them for $250-300. I did this off and on for a few months but others started catching on and I found myself with less free time to monitor for sale ads and to drive around picking up and selling systems. I would usually buy 5 to 10 systems a week, take them all to be repaired at once and immediately post them for sale.
gamblingeconomist Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > ASSet_MANagement Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > You could always enter the grocery arbitrage > > business. Buying oranges in Florida and selling > > them at a margin in canada. buying cranberries > in > > massachussets and selling them at a margin in > > mexico. > > > I saw a six pack of soda-pop for $1.20. That price > f***s with your head, man. Because then I though > that I would start selling soda-pop. Suddenly I > got things of pop with me. “What’s going on, > Mitch.” “Not much, looking to buy some pop? Fifty > cents a can. It’s not refridgerated because this > is a half assed commitment.” > --Mitch Hedberg Shucks man, I was thinking of buying 2 litre bottles of pop, resealing them into soda cans and selling them on eBay. You mean I can’t make money doing this arbitrage?
slightly off topic but has anyone ever browsed the “weird stuff” section of eBay? People sell some ridiculous things there.
DoubleDip Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > another guy swapped his way from a red paperclip > to a house. something else i used to do - > sometimes Staples has free after rebate and if you > bundle (which may include buying stuff you don’t > want) you can often make money on the transaction. > Not a lot, something like $10 or so. I’ve done > this where I had to buy Quicken or Norton IS just > to get the deal then sold what I didn’t need on > ebay. I also won a contest and sold the prize for > $35 or so but after shipping barely broke even. > so like i said, it’s more of a hobby thing but > shows there are deals out there for buyers when > sellers like me get stuff free and just trying to > make a small profit. Read about that one too a while back. He started off legit, but he publicized his goal somewhere along the way and people started making pretty stupid swaps with him so they could get in on the story. He did turn a paper clip into a house though, so good for him.
i did this with concert tickets to make some beer money in high school. there are a few small but very popular concert venues in NYC that would sell out w/in 30 minutes of the tickets being released consistently. so, having some knowledge of which bands would be in high demand, i’d jump on immediately when the tix went on sale, buy the max allowable at $25-35 per and re-sell on Ebay for 2x-4x the purchase price. this worked out pretty well and i made a few thousand over the summer, though it did involve some hassle like being in front of the computer at specific times and having to manage the mailing process for all of the tickets sold. i believe they’ve also since cracked down on how much you can re-sell tickets for.
people collect handsom spreads when reselling brand new vidoe gaming systems after launch…
They’ve cracked down on an arb I found. Step 1: Buy $1 coins from the treasury at cost ($250 for $250, free shipping). This goes on a credit card, buy on the first day of the billing cycle as much as you can (I did $4k at my height). http://catalog.usmint.gov/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10001&storeId=10001&productId=16063&langId=-1&parent_category_rn=27238 Step 2: Take the pallet of coins to a bank, be sure you’re chummy with someone there so they accept the large cash deposit of coins. Some banks have limits or charge to accept that many coins. Step 3: Deposit in a high yield online savings account and hold until your credit card bill is due. (4% at the time I did it hard). Result - All you’re doing is using the credit card free line of credit for the 30 days. The Visa I have refunds 1% of all transactions ($40 off the cuff). Then, you earn interest on free borrowed money for 30 days. I can see the Treasury is cracking down on this oversight, but it was fun while it lasted.