Confessions of an eBay-aholic.

Posted by Kelmeny Fraser

It all started with the electronic egg poacher. The kind that is in the shape of an egg and removes the need to swirl blobs of white in boiling water.

Said egg had been perched in my cupboard ever since I thought it might be a good idea to cut a few minutes from the time taken to poach an egg.

Now normally, it would be one of the items destined for the scrap heap after the once in a millennia cupboard clean-out, or if I felt it worthy, the St Vinnies bin.

But as I had begun an eBay account some weeks earlier, I thought I might list it, just to see what happened.

So it came to be I found myself one weekend listing down all the quirky features of my little poacher.

``...and chirps when eggs are ready’’..... that sort of thing.

My recollection was buying the poacher some years before for $35.

I made an executive decision. Twenty-five dollars plus postage.

Surely no-one would buy such kitchen clutter? Wrong. They did.

The $25 was deposited into my PayPal account. The egg sent from the coup and a rave review from my customer soon followed. I was in business. 

I am no hoarder. But I soon realised how much equity my cupboards actually held.

The model train set I bought as a present a year ago that has been sitting in the cupboard for months soon found a new, happier home.

That transaction earned me about $80 – almost as much money as I had originally in the store.

Then I got serious. Nothing was safe. Old DVDs, books, the rice cooker aka bench ornament. Gone.

I had become an eBay junkie. But I am definitely not the only one.

Just take a look at the hundreds of used Lorna Jane exercise clothes being recycled through eBay each week and for good money.

You buy it, you wear it, you get sick of it, you list it, someone else buys it, you buy something else.

The key becomes looking after your clothes, electronics, CDs and DVDs in anticipation of the day you grow bored of them.

If you were a child who kept your toys in cotton wool, you can thank your ten-year-old self, for those old Star Wars figurines will soon become sought after items at an eBay auction.

But don’t be disappointed if your item gets little attention upon its first listing. It is catching the attention of the right people at the right time.

You can list the same item a second time and end up getting far more than your starting bid thanks to two or three bidders thrashing it out in a do-or-die contest for it.

And there is another good side effect of selling off your old junk, aside from clearing out the clutter and making some spare change. 

That is you start to take more notice of how much money you actually spend.

After holding out for every extra dollar on an old egg poacher or train set, that next purchase might not seem so desirable.

Now if the buyer who won my masquerade ball mask would only pay up...