eBay For Seniors For Dummies
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You need to research similar sales for the items you gathered and now plan to sell on eBay. Look at completed sales by conducting a Completed Items search on the Search page to determine the following information:

  • Exactly how many of any collectible item has been sold in the past few weeks.

  • The high selling prices and how many bids the items received by the time the auctions were over.

When you repeat a completed search in a week or two, you can get at least a month’s worth of data to use when pricing your item.

The best deals for buyers (and for sellers to resell) often happen when the seller misspells a name or brand in the title. Conduct other searches that look for the same item, but with spelling errors.

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Here’s a trick to search for these misspellings. The eBay search engine accommodates for one correction (as in hazard and hazzard), but when you want to check for two variations, you must input both. In the case of a Dukes of Hazzard lunchbox, type your search this way: dukes (hazzard,hazard) (“lunch box”,lunchbox). (Be sure that you drop the noise word of.) This way, you find all instances of dukes hazzard lunchbox and dukes hazard lunch box.

When you have similar sales pulled up, pay attention to these details:

  • Study the pictures you see in your search results! Look at the pictures on individual item pages for each item that your Completed Items search turns up. That way, you can confirm that the items (lunchboxes, for example) are identical to the one you want to sell. And when you do your research, factor in your item’s condition.

  • Read the individual item description. If your item is in better condition, expect more money for it; if your item is in worse condition, expect less. Also, note the categories in which the items are listed; they may give you a clue about where eBay members are looking for items just like yours.

Conduct the same search on Google.com or Bing.com. If you want to be extremely thorough in your comparison selling, go to a search engine to see whether the results of your eBay search mesh with the results you find elsewhere. If you find that no items like yours are for sale anywhere else online — and are pretty sure people are looking for what you have — you may just find yourself in the money.

About This Article

This article is from the book:

About the book author:

Marsha Collier is a renowned social media strategist and bestselling author. She authored all editions of eBay For Dummies and co-hosts Computer and Technology Radio. Marsha even made headlines in 2014 when her husband proposed to her over Twitter—the first social media engagement on record!

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