by Nicole Caminiti

Created on: April 06, 2007   Last Updated: May 06, 2007

These Items Will Sell on Ebay!

Clean out those closets, sift through your garage, frequent your local rummage sales and you could have yourself a lucrative new career. For years I have heard people boasting about how much money they have earned on Ebay. For some reason, I just couldn't grasp the concept. Maybe it was because I wasn't computer savvy or creative enough to know what sells.

Well, I dabbled a little and found out that on Ebay, basically everything sells! And as far as being computer literate, that really doesn't matter as long as you are literate. If you can read, you can easily navigate your way through Ebay's user friendly pages.

There are step by step instructions that are very easy to understand. You have options, lots of options. You will need an attention grabbing title for your item. You will have to pick a price at which to start your bidding. Look at similar items on Ebay to find a proper price range. You will have to decide what to charge for shipping your item and how long you want your auction to last. For mailing, you can hit the USPS website for a pretty accurate rate and experts say that the longer the better for auction length. Also, it's always a good idea to include a digital photo of your product.

I have made hundreds of dollars over last year or so selling things that I would normally throw away or store in a dusty closet.

I sold a typewriter for $30, sheet music for $15 and a Waterford Crystal music box for $70. I recently sold a collection of Vatican City stamps that I had appraised at a local shop. The appraiser browsed through my large stamp collection and quoted me $25 for the entire 50 paged book. I declined his offer and sold them page by page on Ebay and I received no less that $10 per page!

People will even buy clothes on Ebay, especially brand names. I have had luck selling used pairs of Victoria Secret jeans for around $15 each. Costume jewelry is also a winner. I gathered up about 30 pieces of my old, unwanted jewelry and sold it in lots of 10 for around $8 per lot. Not bad for stuff I was going to throw in the trash.

Selling items in lots proves to be a good idea as well. If you can gather several similar items and sell them together, you can profit more with less leg work. For example, I had some record albums appraised for 25 cents each at a local store. Instead, I grouped 10 of them of similar genres together and sold them for about $10 per lot.

Last spring at a Chicago White Sox game, they were handing out free Sox calendars to every fan that passed through the turn styles. By the end of the game, the aisles were scattered with these nice color calendars. I scooped up about 20 of them and sold them on Ebay in lots of two for $8 per lot. From trash to treasure!

For a small investment, you may stumble upon great finds at a garage sale. Look for these items to sell on Ebay: costume or vintage jewelry, old cameras and other small electronics, classic children's games and toys, vases, crystal and any interesting colorful knick knacks especially from the 50's, 60's and 70's. Last summer I visited a yard sale across the street from my house and purchased a darling porcelain figurine of a pin-up girl on a lounge chair. I paid $2 for it and sold her on Ebay for $20.

Selling on Ebay is fun, easy money and you can profit ten times as much as you would at a standard garage sale. With a little creativity and a small investment, Ebay offers the perfect part time job.

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