Easy eBay Mistake to Avoid – When Free Isn’t Cheap Enough

Here’s another great article from a previous eZine, but for those of you who are new subscribers, this is more great *new* information!

‘When Fre e is NOT Cheap Enough’

by Lynn Dralle, The Queen of Auctions

O.K. This article is going to be more about a mistake that I made than anything else. Oh well! I figure that you can all learn from this story and you know that I don’t mind sharing. In fact, I think making mistakes means that you are learning, and learning new things is one reason that I love selling on eBay!

Anyway, my mom was in town last August for Live Boot Camp and we went out to some garage sales. (Of course!) At one of the garage sales they had a really cute dresser. Mo (Maureen) was looking for a dresser for her son Kelly’s room, so I made my first mistake by calling her!

It was 8 am and I woke her up. She was not happy and barely listened to me as I rambled on about this perfect $20 pine Thomasville dresser. I hung up the phone and walked over to a pile of Jim Beam & other assorted decanters on the ground.

I asked the lady, “How much?” She said, “If you buy a bunch I will sell them for $1 each.” They were filthy and I was starting to rethink my question (but apparently I didn’t rethink it enough!)

I said, “OK, how much if I buy them all?” She said, “$10.00.” There were 30 of them. 33 cents each. I said, “I’ll take them.” Mistake #2!

Here is a photo of some of them with my I Sell sheets.

As my mom and I hauled them to my car we both looked at each other and thought, “What was I thinking?”

Then I got them home and they were so filthy that no one wanted to even touch them to do the write-ups. In addition, some had chips and we couldn’t tell which lid went with which bottle.

I should have stopped at that point and thrown them all away. But NO! I continued in my crazy quest to make sense out of this mistake.

I actually paid someone to write up the 30 bottles. Now I was in $10.00 for the purchase, plus an additional $20.00 for the write-ups.

Then when I went to photograph them, I realized that about half of the bottles still had Whiskey in them. Disgusting! We are talking Whiskey from the 1960s. So I had to pour out the black liquid that looked more like “Texas Tea” (Oil) than whiskey. Then I had to pay Indiana and Houston to help clean the bottles. Another $10. Total spent now $40.00.

I poured out the Whiskey on the grass and I think I ended up killing part of the yard. The whole experience got so awful that we decided to quit and call it an evening. The next day when I went out to continue photographing the bottles, I asked Indy to help stage them on my photography table.

She started screaming when she put her hand into the box and there was a 2-inch cockroach lying belly up (drunk) on one of the Jim Beam bottles. Could this get any worse? I think NOT. Well, I was wrong again.

The cockroach was not dead; he was still alive. I then had to hire my little exterminator (Houston) to come in for the kill. Four sprays from a bottle of bug spray later, the cockroach did a flip flop dance all over my I Sell sheets leaving a trail of whiskey and guts.

The box of decanters in the “aftermath” of the destruction.

I owed $10 to Houston for the extermination and extraction; total now spent: $50.00. The bottles have STILL NOT all been photographed but the experience has been PRICELESS.

I will have to sell 5 of these bottles at $9.99 just to break even! AND that does not even take into account my wasted hours on this project when I could have been actually listing more salable items. Oh well!

I did manage to get ten of the bottles listed. Most were Jim Beam, but there were some Ezra Brooks, Garnier, and other assorted ones. Here is a link to a few of them.

Check this bottle out here.

Deborah (who helps Carmen and I out a lot here at The Queen of Auctions) said to me “You will probably sell one for a fortune.” Wouldn’t that be just my (good) luck!!!!

Anyway, I will now attempt to explain why I do buy Jim Beam and other figural bottles when in good condition.

And some of you may remember story #48 from Ka-Ching. That story is about a Bull Dog Whiskey bottle that I paid $3.50 for that ended up selling for $80.00.

One of our Queen’s Court members (I can’t remember who, darn it) bought this exact Jim Beam bottle when we went out on our shopping spree in Las Vegas. I wonder how much she sold hers for?

The Jim Beam company was established in 1795 and is still in business. They not only produce fine whiskey but also design artistic containers for whiskey. I am not a whiskey drinker (we will leave the whiskey to the cockroaches in my neck of the woods), but I found it really interesting that there have been seven generations of Beam family members dating back to 1795 who have distilled for the company. It is a real family business–Just like The Queen of Auctions is and Cheryl Leaf Antiques was!

In 1952, Beam introduced their first specialty bottle, making a distinct change from their conventional whiskey bottles.

The first specialty bottle introduced in 1952 was a glass cocktail shaker. In 1957, the first of the famous trophy bottles were issued. During the following years, in answer to the growing demand for these bottles, Beam issued china and glass decanters of unique designs.

There were sports (horse racing, football), wheels, trophies, ducks and many other series produced. Most collectors focus on specific series.

The Jim Beam bottles that sell for the most are the ones that were originally given as awards to their salespeople. There are several other whiskey companies (such as Ezra Brooks) that have entered the decanter market, but the Jim Beam decanters are the best and will most likely bring the most money–if you are lucky enough to find a rare one.

I just did a completed auction search on eBay for the last two weeks and there were 3,021 Jim Beam decanters listed and only 230 Ezra Brooks listed. In the past two weeks on eBay, the Jim Beam that sold for the most was a Canadian Loon Decanter that went for $299.95. The Ezra Brooks that sold for the most was a Stan Laurel (as in Laurel and Hardy) that went for $36.00. Big difference.

I have learned my lesson. I will not buy anything just because it is cheap. This was a serious case of when “Fre e” was not EVEN cheap enough!

Happy eBaying!