So who's done eBay?

I have discovered eBay. I know; I’m a little late to the party. Most people have been buying and selling things on eBay and being PayPal gurus for years. Not me. Bombarded long ago by all those fake emails, I’ve stayed away.

I’ve started to slowly come back as eBay has some stuff I just can’t find in stores. I bought a set of Fruits Basket videos for my daughter. I just bought a Harvest Moon game for her Nintendo DS. For both I sat there in the last hour and refreshed my screen a dozen times in dread that I might get outbid and not get the emails in time. (I’m thinking that in the beginning the sellers are the ones bidding against me to get the price up, but that’s another blog.) I did get both items for a fair price. So that’s my entire eBay experience. I still don’t have a PayPal account. I pay as I go.

I’m guess I’m also leery of eBay because I am not a used-item shopper. Perhaps it comes from all those used cars I had in my teens. The timing belt of my Mercury Lynx broke, twice. After the second time, the car was dead. My mom paid $50 to have it hauled away. My next car was a Ford Maverick that would die at every intersection during the winter. I could get out, pop the hood, stick a screwdriver in the carburetor, shoot starter fluid and crank the engine all in less than two minutes (or while the light was still red). When I finally got my first brand-new car, the dealer gave me $50 to take my Maverick away.

Used things freak me out. I have this prejudiced paranoia. I like selling at garage sales, but I rarely buy anything unless it’s something I can wash with extremely hot water, bleach or Windex.

Being curious about books on eBay, I plugged in my name into the search field. On July 5, four items were up for auction, starting at 99 cents. In the “buy it now” store, I found 43 items. One was a brand new Michele Dunaway Legally Tender book for $6.01, plus $3.99 for priority shipping. That doesn’t include the $1.30 for insurance.

That got me thinking. Sure, that book is off the shelves. However, Legally Tender never cost $6.01. It was, at most, $4.99. Perhaps the upcharge is for some kind of shrink-wrap, for the seller says the book comes sealed. I don’t get my author copies sealed, as Harlequin doesn’t ship my books that way and the ones I’ve gotten off eharlequin haven’t been sealed. I’m not curious enough click the “ask the seller” icon and find out what she means.

I also found, for $1 buy-it-now, A Little Office Romance, my very first book. I only have two copies in my possession. This seller says the cost to ship will be $3.23 media. However, one book first class in a plain 6×9 envelope costs under $2. Perhaps the extra money is being spent on delivery confirmation. But I don’t think you can get DC for media mail, but I might be wrong.
That brings me to another reason I am eBaying slowly. I’ve discovered that it’s very easy to overpay, and in this economy every nickel and dime counts. My daughter wanted a Wii. She earned most of the money selling all our used junk at a garage sale. However, we couldn’t find a Wii console in the store anywhere. Toys-R-Us said we could come get in line early Sunday morning for a chance, but church services took precedent. So we tried eBay. The price mark up was close to $100, before shipping. I told my daughter no way to eBay and that, if we were supposed to have a Wii, we would walk into Target (where we had a $10 off coupon and $65 in gift cards) and the game console would be there waiting for us.

Amazingly, that’s exactly what happened. Less than three weeks later, my daughter and I went to Target for something else, checked the electronics section, and there were two Wiis on the shelf. We now have our Wii, for the regular retail price of $249, and we used our gift cards and coupon.

So those are my eBay experiences. As a newbie, help me out. Enlighten me! I want to hear your eBay stories: the good, the bad, the ugly, the happy and the horrible. I’ll be responding to your comments this afternoon and tomorrow, so share with me, the eBay novice. I really want to know.