From trash to cash

I have a level of admiration for those people I see wandering the streets with all of their worldly possessions in a shopping cart. It must be nice to be able to hold everything that is important to you in a 3 by 5 foot container with little wheels, convenient for travel.

I have no such luxury. My worldly possessions are scattered. Some are still at my mother’s house, some in my subterranean condo storage area, some in my automobile and even more in my domicile, which is neither well suited for piles of stuff nor fitted with little wheels.

The thing that never occurred to me as I was accumulating all of these things was, “What am I ever going to do with all of this crap?” At one point – usually while I was amassing it – I figured that I would either continue to enjoy looking at it or listening to it or I would leave it to some close relation in a big estate transaction.

Now that I have determined that I will not have any close relations to burden them with, nor do I particularly enjoy listening to or looking at them, the collected possessions have become more of an encumbrance than an enchantment.

I’d like to have back all of the money I spent on these things – CDs, records, books, photographic equipment and [egad] boxes upon boxes of sports cards – but my Delorian is in the shop, so the time travel bit is up in the air right now. That’s where eBay comes in.

The online auction web site was founded in San Jose, California on September 3, 1995 by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb, part of a larger personal site that included, among other things, Omidyar's own tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Ebola virus.

So, that’s it. I’m going to call it Ebola from now on.

I have bought from eBay before, but for whatever reason, I’ve seldom sold anything there. I have a Staples store nearby and a regional USPS distribution center 5 miles away that is open 24/7 with one of those automated machines, so there really isn’t any practical excuse.
Over the past month or so, I’ve listed about 20 items a week. Most of them sell, some for more than I would have thought and others for less. Sales are quickly approaching four-digit territory and I still have closets full of stuff remaining.

So far, it’s been more profitable than a part-time job (which was "Plan B") and since I can do it from home, I get to hang with the cat, listen to the radio and drink beer while I’m “working.” It’s a bit time-consuming, but once I get into a rhythm, I can scan or photograph items and have a dozen things listed on the site in a couple of hours.

Setting the start price is the tough part. I don’t see tons of bidders, so I don’t want someone walking away with a ’65 Topps Brooks Robinson card for 99 cents. Somewhere, there falls a happy medium between what it’s worth and what people will pay. I think that’s the hardest part.

Eventually, I’ll be motivated enough to start one of those “one cent” auctions for the sheer pleasure of ridding myself of yet another box of 700 baseball cards. Better to sell cheap than to burn, which is a pity.

My goal is to get down to shopping cart size. Then, I’ll sell the cart.