Selling on ebay

[AdamsSamoa]

I have been searching the old ebay threads this morning, but can not find what I am looking for. Does anyone have any advise on buying a hundred or so one troy oz bars from a dealer, then flipping them on ebay in one oz lots? I have never sold on ebay. l understand there are fees... other expenses like packaging and shipping. It just seems to me that one could make a few dollars a transaction....... seeing how my wife is currently unemployed and i would be happy to keep any left overs if it does not work out..... Any thoughts?

[beauanderos]

ask Thogey... but I'm thinking it would be more trouble (recordkeeping/regulations/fees) than it was worth. A lot of effort to make (possibly) a little bit of money. And if the price dropped, even marginally, from your original purchase price... you'd be lucky to break even.

That said... if you can buy something like you're talking about, during a significant dip, then you can resell for a profit... just do it here or at bullionstacker.com to avoid all the fees.

[blackrabbit]

Lots of competition on e-bay these days from Apmex and other big companies. My advice is try to find something to buy that is not being sold there that is still really cool.

[mrrosado]

A company called tictail.com exists. I'm building a web store to give Evangelization tools away or at low cost at fatherrosado.tictail.com I don't know anything about regulations and stuff but tictail doesn't have fees unless you buy their apps. You might want to buy the domain name app though. I think it's $1.99 a month plus the cost of the domain name itself. I only pay about $15/year per domain name (it's high but I like the company I use.)

[natsb88]

eBay fee calculator: http://www.fees.ebay.com/feeweb/feecalculator

Your insertion fees are free for your first 50 listings per month, after that it costs $0.30 to list an item.

eBay takes 10% of the grand total (auction price + shipping price) and PayPal takes another 2.9% + $0.30.

You are competing against thousands of individual sellers and several large dealers who get big breaks on the fees.

So let's run some numbers, based on 50 listings a month so there are no insertion fees.

Spot is $20.
Let's say you get some generic bars for $1 over spot, $21.
Based on items sold in the last 12 hours, you get $24.50 each, offering free shipping.

$24.50 sell price
- $21.00 cost
- $2.45 eBay fees
- $1.04 PayPal fees
- $1.98 First Class postage
- $0.50 bubble mailer, tape, shipping label, packing slip
= NEGATIVE $2.47 Profit

If you pay for a basic eBay store subscription, you get 150 free insertions a month instead of 50 and the final value fee for the bullion category drops to 6% (9% pretty much everywhere else). Then it would look like this:

$24.50 sell price
- $21.00 cost
- $1.47 eBay fees
- $1.04 PayPal fees
- $1.98 First Class postage
- $0.50 bubble mailer, tape, shipping label, packing slip
- $0.16 eBay store fee (assuming 100 listings a month)
= NEGATIVE $1.65 Profit

Then you always have the risk of spot moving against you, packages getting lost, buyers filing false claims, etc.

Unless you can buy for less than spot, and/or find something that nobody else is selling on eBay so it commands a higher premium, trying to flip generic bullion on eBay for a profit is not a very viable venture. Individuals that are selling may have purchased at lower spot prices. The mid-range sellers get Powerseller and Top Rated discounts on fees. The big bullion companies that sell on eBay have special arrangements with minimal fees because they draw traffic to eBay.

If you buy during a dip and sell when spot goes back up a couple bucks, then you can squeeze out a small profit. But you would be just as well off selling here, as the lower selling price would be offset by having no fees.

[silverstacker]

I have had some luck selling "Art Bars" and unique silver but thats it. If your thinking of flipping standard generic rounds or bars there is way to much comptition out there. Unique items and poured bars can be rewarding as these items can bring a nice profit.

[Thogey]

E-bay is a good place to sell those low purity foreign coins.

I've bought that kind of stuff here for a nice flip on e-bay.

[AdamsSamoa]

Thanks.... that is whated to know...

[AdamsSamoa]

Thank you all..........