How to Sell Your eBay Goods Way Above What Any Sane Person is Willing to Pay

I’m going to tell you now about people who will pay way over the odds for something you are selling, just to make sure they get their hands on that item and stop someone else buying it instead

As an eBay seller that sort of thing happens to me every day, and once you’ve finished reading this article, you’ll be no stranger to receiving top whack prices for items you purchase for pennies or low pounds at boot sales and flea markets.

Before I reveal how to make this idea work for you, let me tell you about something that happened to me more than forty years ago and which I have regretted every day since.

It happened at the Ramside Hall Hotel in Durham City, at a flea market where a dealer had a massive selection of vintage topographical postcards from my own collecting area, namely towns and villages close to Peterlee where I lived at the time.

I had twenty or thirty pounds in my purse, enough then to buy a fistful of average price postcards.  I bought what I wanted and was about to leave for home with enough money left to pay the rent for the week ahead.

And that is when I spotted two identical real photographic postcards depicting the interior of a long gone railway station in a nearby village.  I had been looking for this view for years!

I had enough money to buy one of the cards, but if I bought the card I would not be able to pay the rent.  What should I do?

Well, I’m not one for avoiding my debts, and there was a second card available, so I asked the stallholder where he would be the following week.  Then I set off for home, confidently expecting to see at least one of the cards at next week’s flea market.

But, I never saw those cards again, not at the following week’s flea market, not on eBay, not anywhere else!

And that is why, faced with potentially losing an item I really want to own, I will jump at the chance to buy it in future.  And I will hand over my money right away.  On eBay, that means hitting the ‘Buy It Now’ button faster than you can say “Give the rent a miss this week!”

And my experience is mirrored by other collectors desperate to own a particular item and willing to pay ten or more times what the item is really worth. 

For obvious reasons, this idea works with unusual or unique items, like antiques, art and collectibles, but not for mass market products available aplenty on eBay.

You can locate suitable high profit items by researching eBay daily to find recently completed auction listings for art, antiques and collectibles.  Auctions represent the very highest finishing prices and sometimes dozens of bidders. 

All you have to do is jot down the highest prices paid for items with the highest bidder numbers.  Then you go looking for similar items at boot sales and flea markets and priced less than half the amount paid for those items recently on eBay. 

You get the item home, recheck its potential on eBay, then list it in your eBay shop with a price at least twenty-five per cent higher than the recent highest finishing price for a similar item on eBay.  Use a fixed price listing and add ‘Buy It Now’ and ‘Best Offer’ to the mix, then wait.

Within days you’ll begin receiving ‘Best Offers’, some derisory, some pretty close to what you will eventually get.  Be courageous and refuse all early offers less than ten per cent below your own fixed price.  Do so for two or three weeks because there’s always someone willing to pay a silly price for something they can’t live without.  If your item remains unsold after three weeks, accept the first offer exceeding the highest recent finishing price for a similar item.