Why? Because I just sold a piece of electronic equipment for $61.00 dollars that I got for free because my school was throwing it away!
I was walking down a hallway and spoted a box with a sign on it sayng, “Custodian, please throw away.” So I rummaged through it, and found a network adapter for something or other (it’s for a Local Talk device, whatever that is.) So I listed it, with starting bid at $1.00, and a week later, I’m sixty bucks richer!
God bless eBay.
Oh, hey, bouv, I do stuff like that alla time. One man’s trash IS another man’s treasure… in my best month, I made about $5000 on eBay selling stuff I normally would have thrown away. I average a couple hundred bucks a month. Makes for a nice little nest egg!
Plus it’s fun. I sit and watch the bids go up and say things to my monitor like, “Omigawd, I only paid $5 for that new, and you’re going to give me $10 for it??? Don’t they have a KMart out by you??”
Heh. I hear you both.
I bought a record player at Value-Village for $20 CDN and turned around and sold it for $220 US 2 weeks later. Tidy little profit. The guys at work couldn’t believe it. I had to show them the money order paying for it to prove it! 
For about eight months, I sold off a good part of my comic and game collection on ebay, and made a couple thousand dollars. I would never have gotten close to that at yard sales and the like.
At my last newspaper job, I took (legally, mind) the promo package for “The Tenth Kingdom” (fantasy mini-series). Big box, video tapes, paperback book and a paperweight.
Sold that sucker for over $120. My wife heard my jaw drop when I saw the page. She wanted to spend the money right away, and all I could do was keep saying, “Let’s wait for the check, let’s wait for the check.”
The woman had the money order in my hand in 3 days. What a wonderful woman!
Best of all, I had relatively few problems. All the checks passed, no packages were lost (a few were late, but I was willing to refund the money), and only a few people didn’t pay, but as I didn’t need to make the rent on this, it didn’t bug me. (It also helped that I wasn’t trying to sell things like Beanie Babies or NASCAR memorabilia.)
I love eBay.
Okay, I’m dying to join this site. I’ve been ogling it for a while, along with the auctions page on amazon.co.uk.
But I’m gonna hafta ask you guys for a little help first: I’ve tried all the FAQs on this and similar sites, but I need some normal-person feedback.
How exactly does it all work?
Do I need a credit card? Will a Switch (British-only debit card) card do?
Am I going to get ripped off or will I end up paying the price plus postage or what?
Can I have an old Voodoo3?
And so forth…
Any help would be appreciated. I am an e-Bay virgin.
Around my office we have the same euphoria for e-bay happenin’ only in reverse. We are a Token-Ring (as opposed to Ethernet) shop and Dell, HP and a few other vendors no longer support that environment. We used to pay upwards of $210 for a PC network adapter card for each new PC but my boss got a boatload of them for $20 each. She also bought this funky IDE to laptop hard drive adapter for $20.
E-bay rules!
Ross,
ebay is just an auction site, not a store.
It’s up to the sellers what form of payment they take and where they ship. Unfortunately, many will not ship overseas, but take a look as some do.
Generally, the preferred payment method is money order. Other than that, make sure your Seller has a good rating and you should be ready to go.
Oh yeah, I think you do need a credit card # to sign up now… but I’m not sure. The ebay home page should be able to answer the rest of your questions.
Actually, the prefered payment method is rapidly becoming paypal. I love it, I have a paypal debit card. I sell something, and 30 min. after auction end I can go to the ATM and withdraw the cash.
I want to have eBay’s love child.
I’ve found the opposite. IMHO it used to be, but their fees seemed to be getting the goat of some people. I will concur though, it is widely accepted.
Avid eBayer checking in. My selling cross-subsidizes my buying.
How have the last couple of weeks affected buyers and sellers?
Paypal charges you fees? I use it absolutely free. Unless you’re referring to eBay’s fees, which in fact do annoy the Hell out of me.
Ross - you might be better off using ebay.co.uk rather than .com. It’s the same people, just UK-focused.