Many auctions for like items, all at once, and what I've learned so far.

About two years ago I needed an old Macintosh to play an old copy of a video game that I loved growing up; TIE Fighter.

So I found a guy on CL who was selling his whole office from the early to mid nineties and wanted all gone at once.  I made him a little lower of an offer of 175 and came away with the almost exact computer I wanted as well as 5 other old early nineties 68K macs, printers scanners monitors and other ****.  I think it hurt him a little when I told him I was going to flip most of it to Feebay but he helped me fill my truck and I think was happy to get rid of it.

SO I listed it all, all at once, on ebay, started every single thing at .99 cents.  I think I made about 500 in sales off it. 

Fast Forward to a month of so ago.  I saw another CL ad about a storage unit full of 30+ computers and all sorts of other ****, all classic, vintage, and somewhat collectible macs.  So I went down and bought at the asking price of 500 and I got a little ****ed.  It was a pile of ****.  Non climate controlled in the Pacific North West is not a good thing for eliectronics.

I tried to sell it one at a time cause I have two jobs and starting them at .99 cents was not a good idea this time around.  After losing my ass on a few, and losing my ass on overseas shipping coupled with ****ty packaging(totally my fault), I changed my game plan.  With the help of a friend who used to list items for a guy who ran an Ebay consignment store.

Where I had been trying to rehab every machine as much as I could to the point of almost ordering some new parts off of Ebay, I instead pulled my head out of my ass.  I plugged it in, wrote down what happened, and listed it.  Barebones listing, what it is, what works, what it looks like, and what didn't work.  Then I listed it instead just a little lower than what all the Feebay dealers were trying to sell like items for, instead of .99.

This has worked far better so far.  I listed everything that I pulled out of that unit pertaining to the old Apple II computer lines and listed it all at once, sold about 380 dollars in the last week.  I am no longer worried about losing my ass on this deal.

The other thing I did is I went on some old macintosh enthusiast websites that had forums and let the forum members know what was going on.

So I listed tons of different things that were of similar category and interest, and then I drove extra traffic to my sales.  That's worked much better than cherry picking the very desired machines out of the stack to sell one at a time.

I got all 4 wisdom teeth pulled today then I'm headed to VT next week to see family.  When I get back in early October I'll be listing all the rest of the early and mid nineties stuff all at once.  I'll throw a link at the bottom of this for you to click to see what I've got listed and how I've listed it.

I felt the need to write this screed because you guys have taught me a TON of things that I would have had to learn the hard way. I'll be a 'lookie loo' at at least one PS caravan next week if the swelling goes down enough.  If you Seattle guys want to say hi I'm the young guy with puffy face that looks like he just got his wisdom teeth pulled.  Oh yeah, I'll try to stay out of the way.

Hope this helps somebody.
~LJS

http://www.ebay.com/sch/500lucas/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=

Congrats and good luck!