So I got my new camera, the rebate forms have been sent out, and I’ve put a bunch of crap on eBay, with hopes that all the extraneous things that came with in my new camera’s bundle can make a little money back for me.
In addition to all the things with my camera I didn’t need that I’m selling, I decided to go on a little bit of an eBay selling splurge, and attempt to sell off some things that I originally intended on selling, or things I simply don’t need anymore.
That being said, a few changes were made to the table I whipped together in order to show my work, updated to display all the things that I listed on eBay, with their recoup amounts, if they sold at all. (I can’t see myself bothering to update this after waiting 6-8 weeks for me rebate card, or if anything doesn’t sell, and I have to list it again)
In addition to my old Canon EOS T3 camera, I decided to throw in the towel with my old point-and-shoot Canon A3400 that I’ve tried to extract any value out of for my picture-taking needs, and list that too. If it makes anything at all, I’d consider it to be somewhat of a success.
Rummaging through things that I needed to get rid of, I listed some exclusive items from 2013’s San Diego Comic-Con, in the naked Brock Samson figurine and the Dexter bobblehead. Brock seemed to garner enough attention, but it’s apparent that Dexter burned a tremendous amount of bridges with its fanbase, because frankly nobody’s even looking for Dexter memorabilia anymore.
And despite the fact that I would prefer to trade baseball bobbleheads over selling them, I had enough extra Evan Gattis bobbleheads from Lynchburg to warrant attempting to sell one, to test the waters, and help bring down my camera cost.
The memory card in the table has changed too, because the retailer mistakenly send me an 8GB SD card instead of the 32GB that was supposed to come with the bundle. When I got in touch with them, they rectified the mistake, but at the same time, they didn’t care about the 8GB, and told me to keep it. So up it went onto eBay, instead of the 32GB, that didn’t show up until everything else had embarked.
| Cost | MSRP (new) | Aspiring | Recoup (after fees/shipping) | |
| Canon EOS T3i Bundle | $889 | – | – | – |
| Canon EOS T3 w/18-55 lens | – | $350 | $150 | $234.89 |
| Canon PIXMA Pro-100 Printer +50 sheet semi-gloss paper |
– | $379 | $150 | $71.36 |
| Lexar 8GB SD Memory Card | – | $20 | $17 | $12.02 |
| Bower Camera Bag | – | $19 | $17 | $0 |
| Canon A3400 PowerShot | – | $80 | $40 | $37.58 |
| SDCC Exclusive Brock Samson | – | $10 | $18 | $0 |
| SDCC Exclusive Dexter bobble | – | $12 | $16 | $0 |
| Evan Gattis Lynchburg bobble | – | $7 | $38 | $22.10 |
| TOTALS | $889 | – | $446 | $377.95 |
| American Express Rebate | – | – | – | $400 |
| Out-of-Pocket Cost | $111.05 | |||
The biggest surprise of the eBay spree was how well my old camera did. Going into the marketplace, I figured that I should be happy if I were able to derive about $150 out of my old camera, considering its age, and general inferiority compared to most other cameras out on the market.
Perhaps it was my persuasive tone in my item description, the fact that I started the auctioning at $19.99, allowing for there to be time for people to become competitive, and make it not so much about winning the auction as much as it is beating others, or maybe a combination of both. Needless to say, I grew very excited and ecstatic when I saw the price surpass the $150 mark, and even happier as it encroached $200 and into its final price at a hair under $260 before fees and shipping costs; I still pocketed a cool 60% more than what I had hoped to have made on it.
However, all the success of the camera was pretty much negated by the general failure of the Canon printer. As I kind of knew going into it, the market was pretty saturated with these printers, due to pretty much everyone out there doing what I was doing, and by taking a risk of starting the bidding at a paltry $99.99, I basically shot myself in the foot when that was the cost it ended up selling for. Mind you, this is a printer with an MSRP of $350~, but because there are so many floating out there on the secondhand market, their value is pretty much crap.
Either way, this is one of those situations where I have to convince myself that ultimately this is still pure profit, regardless of the fact that it’s not quite as much profit as I had hoped it would have been for. What makes it worse is that factoring in the shipping, I deliberately low-balled, because I didn’t think most people would bid on my shit if they saw a shipping cost of like anything higher than $75, in spite of the logic that something that weighed almost 60 lbs would be costly to ship.
Regardless, it chaps my ass that my total recoup on a $350 printer was but a mere $71 and change. 🙁
A pleasant surprise was my old Canon A3400 PowerShot. I figured I could hock it; not quite for a ton of cash, but I was confident it would move. I started the bidding at $19.99, and of all the things to have turned into a late-game bidding war, this was the only thing to have shot up from $22 to just under $40 in the final minute of the auction.
The best part is that hit the nail on the head with shipping, so I get to pocket almost all of that $40, after factoring in the taxes and fees.
A valuable lesson learned is that when it comes to listing items for Buy it Now, it’s not really Buy it Now anymore, because it’s Buy it Now or Best Offer, which has basically turned into Time to Haggle You Cheap Fuck (T2HYCF). My SDCC exclusive and my Evan Gattis bobblehead were all listed as T2HYCF, and naturally the Brock and Gattis got several low-ball offers from people who didn’t want to pay what I felt were pretty competitive Buy it Now costs, given the comparisons to other items out there (nobody gives a shit about Dexter anymore).
I declined them all, because I thought most were insulting frankly. But towards the end, I realized that I could make counteroffers, and it turned into like Pawn Stars, where in most cases, I simply had to drop the line “meet me in the middle” and most people seemed to accept it.
That being said, I need to list my T2HYCF items higher, so that I can make that middle point something vastly more appealing. So they feel like they’ve haggled me down to fleece me, yet I make something more ideal to my expectations.
Needless to say, I unloaded the Gattis bobblehead, which after the taxes/fees and shipping, if this guy ever actually pays me, will probably be around another bonus $25 to add into the recoup pot.
I missed the opportunity to unload my SDCC Brock Samson because I wasn’t quite astute to dealing with T2HYCFers, but I’ve relisted it, auction style, hoping that people will bid war it to something over $16. I won’t bother accounting this into the camera recoup, because I don’t want to revisit this after I post it. The only reason I relisted Brock, is because I know it can be moved, based on all the interest there was in it.
But in the eventual end, I will have gotten a brand new camera for just about $112. The MSRP of the Canon Rebel T3i kit is roughly three times that, so I think it’s safe to say that putting a little bit of work into this whole quest ends up being pretty much worth the work and effort put into it.
It goes to show all the rest of the pukes that there’s money to be made, if you’re willing to put in the work for it.
YUUUUP.
