Good Morning Everyone!

As I'd posted here in the past few weeks, I've been posting some goodies on eBay once again. For your amusement I report herewith the results of this effort. Regular eBay sellers will think I got off easy (or that I'm an idiot), those who don't sell on eBay may never do so after reading further. None of this is to any reasonable accounting standard, It's just a hobby, but I wanted to get a handle on my penchant for buying a "lot" of chips to get a couple I need and selling the rest.

Posted: About 276 chips, not counting the second posting of some of the chips.
Sold: 148 (maybe 2 or 3 less, explained later)
Total $ received: 446.57
eBay fees: - 53.38
PayPal fees: - 33.73
Postage: - 66.18
Subtotal: 293.28
COGS -149.88 ( this number for Cost of Goods Sold has a lot of guesswork in it)
Subtotal 143.40
Gas to P.O. -21.00
Office, shipping
supplies -5.00
Gross "profit" 117.40

COGS: Some of the chips I didn't have my cost written down anywhere, so total guess. And then on most of the rest you assign a cost to them based on what was in the lot they came in. Give a little higher portion of the price to the keepers to make the sellers a little less costly, so I'll feel OK about what price they bring and delude myself that I'm doing OK on the sales. There were several of the chips I still lost money on. Office and shipping supplies artificially low as I re-use 000 mailers that I've received chips in. Used to be that I was cheap. Now I'm "green' for recycling :-) Gas is 7 trips @ $3.00 each trip.

Shipping charges were $1.75 for the first chip, 25c each additional. A lot of chips posted for $1.00. Not trying to undercut sellers charging $2 or $3 for a $1 chip, most of them are selling New or SU chips, most of mine were used with a few SU. Thus, have to be cheaper.

Anyway, my $117 "profit" is likely 50% fantasy. Not to mention probably 30 hours scanning, posting, and shipping the chips. Gee Wiz $4.00 per hour. I'll be wealthy in no time at all! Not to mention that I spent $200+ on more chips for the collection :-)

If my math is even anywhere near close to "accurate", average $ received per chip was $3.02 with the shipping included. And to make my huge profit the average cost for each chip was ~ 33% of the $ received per chip. Attention folks selling large collections: when "we" offer 25% - 30% of face (book?) value on common chips, we're not low balling you...

Adventures in Selling:

5 buyers made more than one payment for the chips they bought. I'm not counting separate weeks. Payments on the same day. Makes it a pain in the * to get their orders put together, as they are not grouped together on your sellers page. And then you have to manually add the tracking #'s, mark as shipped etc. Makes it twice the work. I'm such a pushover that I refunded some of their shipping payments, as eBay's system charged them the primary shipping charge twice, not the combined shipping rate. I kept enough to cover the base 30c PayPal fee per payment (and the 25c per chip combined charge).

One guy had problems with the concept of shipping ONLY to the registered PayPal address. As soon as his payment was made, he requested I ship to another address, his new one, as he hadn't bought anything in a year. I refunded his entire payment and told him to re-pay when he had his new address in PayPal's database. Explained that shipping to another address is the biggest red flag of fraud possible.

One INR claim so far. Did a quick check and found 3 other sellers that he's in the process of scamming right now. Still haven't decided if I'll roll over any play dead, or take the hit to my seller status and not voluntarily let him have my money.

3 offers to buy chips not sold. Two from gentlemen I've transacted with before and I'm looking forward to doing a trade when I come up for air. Another offering a really Low Ball price for a chip. I'll see if they are savvy enough to figure out my how to contact me from the hints I gave as to my email address for an outside eBay transaction.

One guy twice buying 1 chip with two different 0 feedback ID's. Same Buyer's name and same shipping address. Problem is that sending the chips in one envelope, eBay only allows the tracking # to attach to one of the buyer ID's / transactions, leaving me open for an INR claim on the other. I'm not real good on helping the guy build feedback on his multiple new ID's...

And one other 0 feedback buyer, so far no issues yet, other than I just am uncomfortable with new buyers these days, as dang near everyone in the country has bought from eBay already so newbie ID's are likely up to something, or are clueless 18 year olds... (Can you tell what 15 years of selling on eBay has done to my normally cheery disposition!)

Best,

Steve