How I Sold a $5 Magazine for $27...

I've mentioned ebay as a spot to find some nice deals, but it can also be a nice spot for selling things too -- handy for getting rid of items you've accumulated over the years. There are ways to improve your ebay odds, and on one particular auction I found out just how nicely it can pay off.

I owned a collection of magazines dating back into the mid-1950s, and had some extra issues. Thinking they would make good birthday presents (for milestone-type birthdays like 40 or 50), I decided to list a bunch on ebay. Before I did, I checked to see if others were on sale and what they were fetching. To my dismay there were several of many issues and they were getting about five bucks apiece. Not as much as I'd hoped but these were still excess issues so I still wanted to move them.

One of the things I've found about ebay is the importance of using the 55-letter title as well as possible to get the most views. Many sellers just seem to list a bare-bones title with rudimentary information, and miss the chance to list a few other details. Those extra details could be the make-or-break in whether a potential buyer even finds your auction. They may be searching for something slightly different and with those other words may get to yours. The more buyers who see your listing the better the chance that several will bid.

So before listing any of the magazines, I skimmed through the issues to find items of interest, which I then added to the title block for my listing. For many of them, the item of interest was easy to find, whether a famous person's interview or pictorial or some other special feature. I reached an issue where there just didn't seem to be anything. November 1957, I believe. No big names, nothing that jumped out. The best I could find was a small 4-page item with pictures of private planes...

Since that was the only thing I could find, I used it. The title had the name of the magazine and the issue date, the idea of a birthday gift, and a couple of the planes' names... Cessna, Pilot etc.

Funny thing was that this issue then became the target of a small tug-of-war between two bidders! Based on their ebay names it looked like both of them were interested in airplanes and/or were private pilots. Back and forth it went for a few days, and by the end the higher of the two had bid the price up to $27!

All this while several other issues (same month and year) were still up on ebay in the five-dollar range. Once the two bidders had latched onto my auction they never went back to search whether the same issue was offered elsewhere by just checking the basic name/date of the magazine. They had gotten interested because of the private plane pictorial and were intent on winning that auction.

This reinforced the importance of cross-promoting -- trying to find ways to interest people from two or more areas to get interested in your offer... if you can expand it beyond the "typical" market, the results might be a pleasant surprise.