[Today’s run: 4 miles]
I’ve gotten most of the spectrum analyzer parts cleaned up, scrapped out or sold. There are a few things yet to do.
I have some valves and things that I’m still trying to sell on Ebay. The big pieces are all sold and gone. I didn’t make a whale of money on any of it, but it paid for itself (the real income turned out to be at the scrap yard).
Ebay charges fees for things. They charge “listing” fees if you use a lot of pictures or put your item up on multiple category areas. Then, if it sells they charge “final value” fees. That is 10% of the price it sold for.
I just was reminded the other day that Ebay also charges 10% on the money that the buyer pays for shipping. That comes out as a seller’s fee.
The last large piece I sold went for something like $50. I went to Office Depot and bought a box and some packing peanuts. That cost $15. The shipping was just under $50. So Ebay hit me for 10% of the purchase price ($5) and another 10% of the shipping costs (~ $5) Out of the $50 purchase price I actually ended up with (50 – 15 -5 -5 = 25) $25. That’s better than nothing. But definitely not as glamorous as 50!
You could argue that I could put all of these costs over on the buyer. Maybe that is true. But when something only gets one or two bids I have to wonder if it would sell at all when the fees are piled up. The buyer in this case spent ~ $100 and that would have been upped to $125 if he paid for everything.
The guys really cleaning up are Ebay and UPS and, in this case, Office Depot.