PRICE IT ON EBAY®
A previous article talked about the power of knowing how
much things are going for. How, then, does one go about
finding out what a good price is for the object of one's
desire?
My first tool is www.ebay.com. Why? Because you can find
almost anything up for auction on eBay, and this stuff
usually goes for fair market value.
But I've seen things for tons of money at auctions!
Sometimes bidders will fight for something on eBay,
especially if there is lots of interest in a rare item.
But most of the time, items go for fair market value. That
is, both buyer and seller enter the transaction willingly,
both are aware of all pertinent information about the item,
and there are enough buyers and sellers around to balance
supply and demand.
Bidders on eBay are largely a smart, informed bunch. They've
already done their homework on the item, because every bid is
a contract to purchase the item should they win the auction.
Also, since the sale is often final, they usually don't
overpay for the item. So, the sale price is usually a decent
buy.
The key to using eBay as a pricing tool, then, is to get a
feeling for the winning bid amounts on auctions for the item
you want.
An example to chew on
Say I'm in the market for a used double-headed gumball
machine. I want to place a few of them, but don't really
want to invest a ton of money up-front. Here's how I'd
go about finding a good price for the machine:
- Log onto www.ebay.com. Actually you don't even need
an eBay userid, but chances are you have one or will
want to have one.
- Enter "vending machine" in the search bar. 1086 items
come up, which is a bit too many.
- Try "gumball vending machine" instead. This gives only
144 items. Three pages. Much better.
- Now I go to "Completed Items" under the "Display"
section in the left sidebar. This will take me to
the auctions that finished recently.
- Here I have 411 completed items. Still a little large,
but it'll do for now. Now I sort by price.
- The first page has a combination of specialty
machines that made it through my search, but really
didn't apply.
- Page 2 has a few machines of the kind I want in the
$119 range that didn't sell. The price was too high.
- The next page works down to about $100. Here the
machines get a lot of bids. One new item went for
$97.00 plus shipping with 38 bids.
- The next page has a bunch of other auctions with lots
of bidding for similar machines, down to $80.00 plus
shipping.
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