MoreHi!
Another crazy week. I had a Griff & Lee interview on Tuesday so if you missed it, please check out the link below. They crack me up!
- Lynn Recommends: eBay Live Boot Camp–Payment plan ends in four days
- Special Announcement: Lee’s offer of the week
- Feature Article: Consumer Electronics–Think 1980s Vintage!
- The Queen’s Update: Link to Griff & Lee Interview
This ezine is published once a week.
March 27, 2008 Volume IV, Issue 13
Dear eBayers,
I hope your Easter was as nice as ours. We went to church and then to brunch in La Quinta. Oh my goodness! La Quinta is where Live Boot Camp is going to be held this September (and we have sold 11 seats!) Please read the Lynn Recommends section to learn more about the payment plan that ends in just four days. I don’t want YOU to miss out!
After brunch we heated the pool and spent the day swimming. It was really fun.
So to update you on my Christmas dish set from last week, it didn’t sell but I am confident it will sell out of my eBay store. We talked about it on the Griff and Lee eBay radio show. If you missed it, please read the last section–The Queen’s Update to get more details and a link to listen in.
What did sell last week that really surprised me were some plates from that same estate sale where I ran into our good luck charm Mr. Carroll (Houston’s 2nd grade teacher). I bought six Royal Doulton plates that said “Catalina” on them and you won’t believe what the six sold for!
Click here to see what the highest one went for. I only paid $1 each. You just never know. And two of them got shipped back to Catalina Island!!
Also, room reservations are open for eBay Live in Chicago. For the first time ever, eBay has reserved a block of rooms. To get those rooms that are on hold for eBay Live attendees, go to this link on eBay and then click on the “Book Now!” link.
Don’t delay, rooms in Chicago will sell out. Dates again for eBay Live are June 19, 20 and 21 in Chicago, Illinois. I am hoping that the band “Chicago” will perform at the closing gala. How cool would that be? Griff did start singing a Chicago song during my interview this week. Could it be a hint?
Oh yeah, this past week was really fun because my best friend from college, Juliette, was out in the desert with her kids. We met on a plane to Madrid more than 20 years ago. Check out this picture of us in Ka-Ching story #43.
We had some wild 80’s hair going on! Another reason to write about 1980’s vintage electronics in my feature article this week…
Anyway, we got to hang out and it is always good to spend time with your long time friends. In fact, in my living room I have a needlepoint pillow (if I could just find it under all the eBay items!) that says, “The most valuable antiques are old friends.” Amazing! I did find that pillow.
Julie and I went out to dinner with our kids. She has a boy and a girl and so do I. Here they are in front of a fountain at the restaurant. How weird to hang out with a friend that makes you feel like you are 18 again and yet you look around and see the four kids! It is surreal.
By the way, Juliette is starting an eBay business and this Saturday she will accompany my mom and me to yard sales. I am sure you will want to read about that in next week’s newsletter. I personally can’t wait to see how it plays out. She has an incredible eye and I know that she will do great on eBay. She just bought my eBay Boot Camp in a Box Lite and is raring to go.
Don’t miss my feature article to see a photo of this item
Finally, I got an email from Diva Dawn this past week about an unusual item. Here is her email and what prompted me to include the consumer electronics portion of my “Six Steps to eBay Success” Course as this week’s feature article.
Hi Lynn,
I think I’m having one of those Ka-Ching auctions! I paid $1.50 for this. Once listed I had my first bid 15 minutes later — and it was up to $31.88 within 3 hours. Its already at $86.00 and there are still almost 4 full days to go. I’ve had inquiries about it from as far away as Brazil!
-Dawn
While this doesn’t affect me (and hopefully) the majority of you very much, I can’t help but wonder about all the sellers who were making their full time living selling these types of products.
The world is moving in the digital direction and it seems very strange that we were given a week’s notice and that all digitally delivered product would have to be moved to the classified ad portion by Monday, March 31st. I just hope that none of you are hurt by this.
Here’s to Successful eBaying!
Lynn Dralle, ‘The Queen of Auctions,’ Creator of the best-selling eBay Boot Camp in a Box and Boot Camp in a Box Lite.
Special Six Part Payment Plan ends in 4 Days!
Check out this email that I got from Diva Dawn–she is to my left in the photo below! (AND she is also featured prominently in my infomercial set to air March 14th in major cities!!!)
Lynn,
I just wanted to write to tell you what a wonderful day I had yesterday. I sold $350.00 with 40 auctions that were ending. And, I can specifically attribute over $330.00 of those sales to attending Boot Camp! Although I have never doubted your advice and theories, yesterday they were proven tried and true, over and over again. Bill (my husband) was amazed and astounded.
I just wanted to write and express my gratitude to you once again for empowering and inspiring me. I’m slowly growing my eBay business. From not having EVER sold anything on eBay before Boot Camp, and then only sparingly in October, I am approaching receiving my turquoise star for 100 feedbacks and am having a great time. I can work at three in the morning — or during the day — or at eight at night — whatever suits my schedule that day. The freedom is intoxicating.
Again, Lynn, — THANK YOU! You have helped change our lives — and we are so grateful. I can’t say enough about what you have done for me. Fear used to motivate me — but not anymore!
Dawn Ralston
Don’t let FEAR motivate you, either. Take a chance!
The invitations have gone out for the ONE and ONLY Live eBay Boot Camp of 2008. It will be held (once again) at the amazing La Quinta Resort here in the Palm Springs area. Our six-part payment plans expire on March 31st so don’t MISS OUT.
If you are a Six Steps to eBay Success, Boot Camp in a Box Lite or Full Boot Camp owner–you are eligible for a special price as promised. Let us know if you didn’t receive your invitation last week.
To get the best room rates for my students (and myself!), it will be held the weekend after Labor Day: Friday through Sunday, September 5th-7th, 2008.
Click here to learn more.
This Boot Camp will sell out, so I encourage you to reserve your seat as soon as you can.
We have already sold eleven seats so I encourage you to reserve your seat as soon as you can!!! And this is months before the event–you know that this will sell out completely by September. I don’t want YOU to miss out.
I am so excited to have another fun bunch of students meet us here this Fall. I hope that you will be one of those students.
Click here to reserve your spot now. Or check for the email sent to you 3/19.
A Special Announcement from Lee,
Lynn’s Brother
Hi everyone,
Lynn and I (and Mo and Carmen) really appreciate all of you. Thanks for being a part of The Queen of Auctions family!
Lynn left me the keys to the store so I get to have a sale on anything I want. For the next week, I decided to put Boot Camp in a Box Lite on sale!
This is a really great product and a great way to learn The Dralle Method at a lower price. With Boot Camp Lite you get a front-row seat at Lynn’s Bellingham Boot Camp. This was an intimate event and you will be right in the middle of it.
And for one week only you will be able to buy Boot Camp Lite for $100 off! Don’t put it off one more day. It’s time to get your eBay business running at full speed.
You can read more about Boot Camp Lite here. If you are ready to order now, click here.
Happy Shopping!
Lee
(Brother of The Queen of Auctions)
P.S. Don’t forget, Queen’s Court members get an additional 15% off.
‘Consumer Electronics‘
by Lynn A. Dralle, ‘The Queen of Auctions’
So let’s revisit that email from DivaDawnLV and show you just what Ka-Ching item she was talking about.
Hi Lynn,
I think I’m having one of those Ka-Ching auctions! I paid $1.50 for this. Once listed I had my first bid 15 minutes later — and it was up to $31.88 within 3 hours. Its already at $86.00 and there are still almost 4 full days to go. I’ve had inquiries about it from as far away as Brazil!
-Dawn
Click here to see what it is up to.
Dawn’s email really sparked my interest in vintage consumer electronics–and reminded me to not miss that section of thrift stores. So, when I hit my thrift stores this week, I remembered to walk through the appliance and electronics section. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything but it is a good reminder for us all–look for vintage consumer electronics.
It is funny, but when I say vintage consumer electronics like calculators, etc. I am not necessarily talking about items from that many years ago. We are really looking for items from the 1970s to 1980s time frame. Just like Juliette and my hair styles pictured above!!
I remember using a Texas instruments calculator to balance the checkbook at my Grandmother’s store back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Remember this calculator from story #33 in Ka-Ching?
I paid 50 cents and it sold for $12.49 without a power cord, or booklet, or box. Now you can see why Diva Dawn’s is going to sell for sooo much more! Congrats Dawn!
This week I decided to include an excerpt from my newly remodeled ecourse–now called “Six Steps to eBay Success.” Remember, you can still buy it along with all the infomercial goodies until midnight tonight at super special pricing. Just click here.
Here is one of 19 sections from Step #2 of “Six Steps to eBay Success.” This is just a very small portion of all the incredible information that comes with the course.
Consumer Electronics
Consumer electronics sold $4.4 billion on eBay in 2005. This jumped up to $5.8 billion in 2006. This is another huge category with a lot of potential. The really big-ticket items in this category are plasma televisions that sell for up to $10,000. Consumer electronics encompasses seventeen sub-headings that are listed below. Some you may have immediately thought of and others you would have never considered. I took the number of listings from a two-week period and looked at them as a percentage of the total.
| Sub-Category |
|
# of Listings |
% |
|
| MP3 Accessories |
328,473 |
26.31% |
||
| A/V Accessories & Cables |
151,097 |
12.10% |
||
| Apple iPod, MP3 Players |
143,510 |
11.50% |
||
| Car Electronics |
107,675 |
8.63% |
||
| Gadgets & Other Electronics |
91,085 |
7.30% |
||
| Telephones & Pagers |
89,428 |
7.16% |
||
| Home Audio |
52,886 |
4.24% |
||
| GPS Devices |
52,025 |
4.17% |
||
| Radios: CB, Ham & Shortwave |
49,121 |
3.93% |
||
| DVD & Home Theater |
34,303 |
2.75% |
||
| Vintage Electronics |
33,065 |
2.65% |
||
| Satellite, Cable TV |
29,133 |
2.33% |
||
| Televisions |
25,172 |
2.02% |
||
| Portable Audio / Video |
22,677 |
1.82% |
||
| Batteries & Chargers |
19,638 |
1.57% |
||
| Satellite Radio |
14,397 |
1.15% |
||
| Wholesale Lots |
4,674 |
0.37% |
||
| TOTAL |
1,248,359 |
|||
Most of the consumer electronics being sold on eBay are new or refurbished. Many eBay sellers have worked out deals with large manufacturers to buy their returns and restocks. Another place to buy these new or refurbished items is in one of the categories above, Wholesale Lots. These lots are sold on eBay by many manufacturers and jobbers. When a store like Circuit City gets a pallet of returns they may sell them to a jobber who in turn puts the palette up for sale on eBay. I just checked completed auctions on eBay for wholesale lots in the consumer electronics category. You could have bought five Apple iPod 1 GB shuffles for $275.50 plus $10 s/h (or about $57 per iPod). Â The buyers of these lots will typically then break these items out and sell them individually on eBay.
By buying on eBay in wholesale lots you can get great merchandise to sell at a decent price. You will save time by buying in quantity. As an example, the lot of five Apple iPods that sold for $57.10 each were probably broken out and sold individually. There were three blue and two silver brand new 1-GBs in that lot. The selling price on eBay for those colors averages about $83.55. Â The seller made about $26.45 per unit without ever leaving his or her house! Â But that is before eBay’s listing and selling fees, or any fees paid to PayPal.
The margins are typically lower than average in this category and the risk of returns high. As an example, in the lot of five iPods mentioned above, the seller may have had to take back one unit as damaged. The seller would have been able to sell the damaged unit on eBay as defective, noting the condition as “As Is” and may have gotten $30 for it. This would lower his profit quite substantially, from $26.45 to $15.74 per unit. You must know what you are doing to sell profitably in this category.
You may also do well in this category by buying new right from the retail chains when a new electronic item comes out that is so hot that everyone wants it and will pay a premium. Do you remember how hot the Nintendo Wii Game Systems were for Christmas of 2006? Â They were so in demand that people were paying double the original retail price. My brother actually waited in line for four hours at Circuit City to get his! Â It may have been worth his while to just buy it on eBay at double the suggested price. Watch the news, read consumer electronics magazines, and be ready to hit your Circuit City, Best Buy and Target to purchase some of the newest trends before everyone knows about them. Education is money.
This category tends to attract a lot of new eBay buyers with big zeros by their names who just signed up yesterday and will bid your items up very high. You may want to say that you will only accept bids from eBay bidders with a feedback score of ten or more to protect yourself from non-paying bidders. We will discuss non-paying bidders in Step #5 on your way to eBay Success!
Don’t pass up used electronics at garage and estate sales. Just make sure you know what you are doing and have researched the marketplace. Old eight-track tape players, vintage amps, and 1950s to 1970s calculators are bringing in the big bucks! This is what is known as the millennium effect. Everything seems older now that we are in the 2000’s. Because technology progresses so rapidly, things invented or popular in the 1950s to even 1990 seem ancient.
I just did a completed auction search for vintage calculators and I found a vintage HP (Hewlett Packard) 34 C Calculator that sold for $355. Â This looks just like the one my grandma used to keep on her dining room table! Don’t you have one in an old desk drawer somewhere?
HP 34C sold for $355!
Keep yourself current on what is hot in the vintage consumer electronics marketplace by doing a completed auction search for vintage in the consumer electronics category and sort by highest price first. You can learn a lot. First, click on the blue “Advanced Search” link at the top right of any eBay page. On the next page, click the “Completed listings only” box, type in “vintage” for your keyword and pick the category “Consumer Electronics” from the drop-down category box. Pick the “Sort by Highest Price first” from the drop-down box at the bottom of the page and click on “Search.” We always want to see what sold for the most money!
I hope this small section of my “Six Steps to eBay Success” has sparked your interest in vintage electronics. Those high prices for calculators has certainly sparked mine!
Happy eBaying!
Lynn
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR ON YOUR WEBSITE? Yes, you may – just as long as you include all links as they are and append this complete blurb with it: The Queen of Auctions and eBay Power Seller, Lynn Dralle, publishes ‘eBay Tips & Tricks’ a weekly ezine with 10,000+ subscribers. If you’re ready to jump start your eBay business, make more money and have more time, get your FRE E tips now at www.thequeenofauctions.com
Once again I had a great time on the eBay radio PowerSeller Show with Griff and Lee. They crack me up! If you missed listening to it live you can check it out here.
eBay PowerSeller and third generation antiques dealer, Lynn Dralle, is the creator of Boot Camp in a Box, the home-study course where you can learn to implement the Dralle Method to maximize your eBay profits.
If you liked today’s issue, you’ll love this step-by-step course that is guaranteed to be the most complete and enjoyable guide to selling on eBay that MAKES YOU MONEY.
Read all about it here.
The Queen of Auctions also offers articles, teleseminars, how-to books, tracking guides, DVDs, eBay Boot Camp training and other resources to help entrepreneurs make their eBay business a six-figure sales machine. Click here to learn more.
The Queen of Auctions/All Aboard Inc.
PO Box 14103
Palm Desert, CA 92255
760-340-6622
Lynn@TheQueenofAuctions.com
Happy eBaying!!
Lynn
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