Dark side of the (PowerSelling) Moon
by acdickson
I hope you've all had a great Thanksgiving weekend. AC feasted on turkey, but eBay sales were stagnant. I'm in a Sunday 7 rotation these days –– that's PowerSeller for a sustained period of multiple 7 day auction listings posted and hence ending on Sundays. November was great until today. I'm not sure if it was spill over from one of the worst Black Friday ever or a symptom of holiday travel. Bodies in motion tends to mean bodies not in front of my auctions during their closing minutes. But I feel good about this week. I've got almost 60 auctions up this week. I can feel the pop offs in my bones. What am I selling?
Lots of exaggerated postcards from the turn of the century that will bring $5-$10 each, but also a few really unique pieces, most of which will either not go at all or fetch a fair penny in holiday gift giving frenzy. If you ever need to find something for the person who has everything, get in touch with AC. I think this antique 1931 frat party invitation could bring big money. Think about how many folks across the US were in or have a family member who was in the frat. Can you imagine a more interesting gift? I didn't think so. Keep your peepers peeled as the week progresses, and if you're looking for something special for the folks gift wise, I suggest you puruse what I've got.
It's been awhile since my last post, so what else do I have for you?
Well, since I finally figured out the link feature on this here blog, let me point you to a few more spots. NBA fans (or playa haters) might be interested in this already ended auction of the cup thrown by a fan at Ron Artest. Much like the Virgin Mary toast (bought by an online casino for 28 grand as part of a promotional effort that is clearly working since I now know of thier existence((full story here.))), this auction quickly shot up to 99 million dollars (the eBay max) before it was pulled. This is the classic case of how-do-we-know-this-is-the-actual-cup-thown-at-Ron-Arest-and-not-just-some-cup-that-looks-the-same-as-the-real-one-someone-clever-is-trying-to-make-lots-of-money-off-of. We've all been down THAT road, haven't we. No wonder it got yanked.
This week I did get a little press courtesy of the Portland Tribune, our twice a weekly. A couple of my Blog brethren had some follow-ups. 1) Yes, you can get health insurance as a PowerSeller, but I don't actually have it, I'm a Pacific Source man. 2) Do all we PowerSellers hang out? Here is where the full weight of this day's post comes to bear. No, I have actually only met about 5 fellow PowerSellers. There is no secret handshake I have been taught. As sexy as PowerSelling sounds, there are days when it feels more like data entry with a minor in going to the post office. I'm not complaining. Far from it. But there is an isolation that comes from prolonged periods of time at the computer, filling out address forms, and waiting in line at the post office. Do I ever notice a fellow PowerSeller in line with me? Yes. Do I try and strike up a conversation? No. Truth be told, all to often the mark, the obviously doing the same I as do person, is not someone I want to talk to. They often seem they just realized eBay is easier than Amway or Mary Kae scary.
There I said it, not only do I not invite them to my PowerSelling Tuesday brunch of one, but I don't even talk to them or for that matter make eye contact. Shocking? Perhaps. Sacrilegious? If eBay is your God too, yes. But hopeless? No. I'm on a mission. Look, I'm not here to promote my own auctions or to try and get you to read the Tribune cover story about me that you may have missed, or even to entice you to come to my retrospective show at the Guild Theater this Friday at 7pm... I'm here becuase I want you to share in the PowerSelling. There are dark days, but they are far outnumbered by the days when the afternoon is yours save for the need to cash the myriad of checks that clog your mailbox. When your most pressing responsibilty all week is to hit a thrift store and find some cool t-shirts to post. When logging onto the Internet feels more like checking in with your bullish stock porfolio than a way to stave off boredom.
I'm here, folks, because the next time I'm waiting in line at the downtown post office, eyes darting bow and stern for a friendly PowerSelling face, I hope that it's your face I see. And yea, I will make eye contact. And I will talk to you. And you will be invited to brunch with me where we will feast on turkey no matter the day and concoct secret handshakes we will deny ever existed.
Posted on November 29, 2004 | Comments (4)
Answers
by acdickson
Call it Q&A, a check in, keeping it real, being real, connecting with my constituents, or the Doctor is in... the fact of the matter is, I've been posed some questions, and answers are needed.
pdx papi asked "don't you have an essay due soon?" Yes I did and it's done. I was hired to offer some pearls of wisdom on the subject of confidence for a UK arts publication. Since I've got the big C in spades, I took 'em up on the offer. Look forward to reading it here eventually.
neal had a lot to say. Let me address his points one by one. As for missing the easy access to my current sales, I'm all to happy to make that facile. From this point forward every time I post some thoughts while I have some auctions up, I'll include the following link to what I've got for sale (big ups to Mikey for the html primer) .
I've got about 50 auctions slated to end bright and early Sunday morning. Apologies if they've already ended by the time you read this, but like college football rankings I've got an East Coast bias. It's a numbers game, more bidders live on the right coast, got to time your auctions to end accordingly. Not to worry, westcoasters, there will be another 50 auctions posted by the time you get back from your have-to-wait-in-a-long-line-overpriced brunch. Don't get me started on the Portland $9 breakfast. I prefer to eat some cereal and indulge in a $5 Thai lunch special. But I always was smart.
If you do happen to find yourself online Sunday morning, you might check in with a ten second refresh as the last four auctions end. I feel a lot of last minute bidding coming on across the board, but pop-offs for sure on the poster stamps.
neal also asked how to search for a particular PowerSeller. Go to the eBay homepage. In the upper left hand corner is the search engine. Just below it in small type is the "advanced search option." Click it. Over on the left hand scroll bar of options the first link is "search by seller." You know what to do. Once you get there, type in the user name of the seller you're looking for. You got a few options to select, then you'll get to the promise land.
Finally, neal offered some insight into a lot of 4 postcards I have listed for sale of US soldiers along the Mexican border. Apparently these were forces under General Pershing keeping an eye out for American interests during the Mexican Revolution of 1916. Am I grateful and fascinated? Yes. Did I change my auction to reflect this information. No. I should have, but as PowerSelling is my part-time job (but a full-time living) I often put more energy into the front end of the operaton. A quantity over quality mentality means that sometimes I get sloppy, I won't deny it. After you've been doing it as long as I have you start making certain calculations. Does updating the auction with information that will both add to the historical knowledge base of the eBay community and likely bring me a higher ending price always rule the day? Sadly neal, it does not.
Finally, Josh Berezin, my man with the eye for freaky auctions, wondered which NBA star I spent a little QT with as a result of my eBay shenanigans. His name is Derek Anderson, starting shooting guard for the Portland Trailblazers, and we were very briefly in business together. But that's a story for another blog altogether.
Posted on November 21, 2004 | Comments (2)
The Virgin Mary Burn
by acdickson
By now we've all heard about it. The eBay auction everyone is talking about. The Virgin Mary's image in the burn of a ten year old grilled cheese sandwich — only a few bits missing. I would have weighed in sooner, but realize that this is prime time for eBay sellers, I've been busy. If ever there was a time to take your eBay selling to the next level, it's now. The holidays, yes, but let's not forget January, when people buy themselves what they really wanted for Christmas. I'm up to my ears in posting would be could be gifts. But back to the sandwich.
The Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese Auction
Here's what I've deduced. A few weeks ago Diana Duyser, eBay user name dltdesigns2002 (must be logged in to see info), posted for sale on eBay a divine grilled cheese sandwich that she's been keeping in a Tupperware container on her night stand for 10 years. Very quickly, eBay pulled the auction citing a policy of not allowing 'joke' auctions. Diana shot back that this was no joke sale, it was dead serious. She was of course not concerned with the thousands of dollars the auction had climbed to, but with "sharing this with the world." eBay, knowing America is no longer a place where religious wingnuts can be ignored (after all, our leader is one), quickly reinstated the auction.
Diana, instant karma got you. I can only imagine how excited you were when your burnt toast reached the eBay price ceiling of 99 million dollars*. I hope you didn't mentally spend that money, because the eBay community was having a joke on you. There is a feature by which you can bid, then retract your bid. So, as Mikey keenly observed, the bidding for the burn mark has steadily decreased over the last few days. It is, at the time of this writing, back down to 7 grand. 4 more than the minimum bid of 3 grand, but close to 99 million shy of the once high bid. If you want to see the play by play, click on bid history. Also notice that now bidders must be pre-approved, the days of wanton bidding is over.
Where's the moral to this story? A good story wins out. Maybe you've got the next auction of the moment on your nightstand or in a playful part of your brain. Diana Duyser is having her 15 minutes, perhaps you're next. Beyond the fame, I would be shocked if Diana's jewelry designing business doesn't move some product because of this whole affair. Maybe she'll get to host a talk show or something on a channel between 25 and 35. Am I condoning Diana? No. Props to her, if anything AC is a little jealous. Has AC garnered wealth, fame, and a hang with an NBA star from his eBay exploits? Yes times 3. But has he made every paper of record the world over? Not yet. Diana, whatever your intentions, kudos. The whole point of eBay is to allow individuals to compete with multi-national corporations, be it through high quality, well described auctions or brilliant coups of the imagination. Mission accomplished, but let's dig deeper. Who else might profit from the exposure of this auction? What if you can't figure out the next headline grabbing auction. How else to cash in?
If the auction is theater, and Diana the star, who is the supporting cast? The bidders of course. While the names of all bidders are now private, during the first million hits of the auction, they were public. So, the person who held the high bid of 99 million for two days probably had their user name viewed by 300,000 people. When you hear about an auction like this you check it out, then you look for the high bid, then your eyes dart over to see who bid it up that high. The user name in question was boring, I can't even remember it. But considering you don't even need to enter a credit card to get a user name, it was a pretty easy stunt to pull with little consequence. Can you imagine the advertising value of being that high bidder for two days? What if your user name was interesting? georgebushisevil perhaps. Or maybe you're apolitical. Imagine if you bid it up with a user name that was your website? A conservative estimate would put 100,000 people checking out your site out of mere curiosity. Just a what if to ponder for next time, urbanhonking.com.
*The record for an eBay auction to date is 4 million for a jet fighter plane.
Posted on November 18, 2004 | Comments (15)
Communication
by acdickson
Communication is the lynchpin of eBay. You take it away and the entire structure falls apart. I want to applaud the vocal readers who took seriously last weeks directive to find unusual eBay auctions and took the time to post their findings. Kudos. As for the lookey loos*, I feel only disappoitnment. The gauntlet was thrown down, a challenge issued, but you neglected to rise to the occasion.
The good news is that AC is a benign taskmaster. I will continue to encourage comments about absurd or otherwise noteworthy auctions on the greatest website ever conceived off. Find then, send me to them. But you missed out on being in the running for the AC Dickson prize pack. The deadline has passed and we have a winner. Props to Mikey and Holly, but Josh Berezin brought not only quantity and quality, but also a question — a line of inquiry the raises the bar above mere observation and issues of profit margins into a philosophical place.
Josh, please be in touch about where you grew up, where you live now and places that have had a profound influence on your life. While my antique postcard collection is not comprehensive, it is vast, and drink of it you may. I will put a prize package together on your behalf.
But let's examine the auction that captured my imagination and won the prize. Only it's not up on eBay anymore. If memory serves me, Josh found a million dollar auction that was essentially an advertisement for a superhero cable access show in upstate New York. Josh wondered if this was a legal eBay auction, and offered to "smack 'em down." Well, Josh, smacked down they have been, for that auction is no longer up.
Initially I thought all was kosher with the auction. Actually, I thought it inspired. eBay has 140 million users worldwide, what better way to let the world know about your new show. For about $4 (due to the million dollar starting price), the producers of the show got loads of publicity. As far as I can figure, the only reason they got smacked down is that they technically weren't selling anything. They just wanted you to watch the show. If, on the other hand, they were auctioning off the opportunity to be a guest star on the program, my guess is that the auction would still be up. You know the old adage about the fine line between genius and stupidity? Watch our show, you get the smack down, winning the chance to be the villain in a future episode — brilliant. The aforementioned auction got an A in my book, but flunked on a technicality. Don't think that eBay is a marketplace for only things. It's a place to sell ideas, concepts and constructs. Think outside the box.
Speaking of outside the box thinkers, here is a link to Josh's runner up auction. Perhaps I'll hire him, as long as he doesn't mind combing the thrift stores for me and packing up auctions.
* A "lookey loo" is a person who surfs eBay auctions but never bids or sells.
Posted on November 15, 2004 | Comments (11)
I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine -- eBay style
by acdickson
One of the first things clever would be sellers wonder aloud after I've taught them the basics of eBay selling is why you can't bid up your own auctions artificially. The wheels start turning along these lines. Say you list a rare Lighting Bolt CD-R (as I have) and a bidder with the user name punkassnoisefreak puts in a bid for the starting price of $5. You do a little research and discover that this person wins EVERYTHING having anything to do with the band Lighting Bolt and pays top dollar to boot. The last day of the auction comes and no one else had bid. So this super fan is going to walk away with your rare disc for only $5 when you know for damn sure they'll pay at least ten times that.
So, the argument goes, why not get a friend to bid this CD up. Have them put in a bid of $50. If noisefreak bids it up to $51, you've just made an extra $46. Maybe you'll press your luck up to $75, or $100. Why not see how much they're willing to pay. Because if noisefreak gets outbid by your buddy, you can have your friend retract their bid minutes before the auction is over and get the most money possible from your mark. Even if noisefreak doesn't end up winning the auction, you can wait a few days then email them with your sob story, "the high bidder never sent me the money, I'll sell it to you for $35"
I've seen the realization of this simple ploy light up the face of many an eBay disciple. It's like discovering the wheel all on your own. It's the "I'm going to be rich and have fun doing it" grin. Folks, the answer is, you can. The eBay gods will not strike you down. But I'm strongly suggest you don't.
First off it's bad form. It's cheating. Are you interested in selling on eBay because the used car lot wasn't hiring or because you want to be part of a world wide community of good people interested in sharing and communication? Secondly, it's time consuming. If you've read my first post, you've already internalized my maxim that time is money. So, rather then emailing friends with how much money you want to them to artificially bid up your auctions, you should be using your precious eBay time (never more than 20 hours a week, but that's another subject all together) for preparing more auctions.
But the most important reason not to do it is that the feds might hunt you down. Last week eight eBay sellers were ordered to pay $90,000 in restitution and fines after admitting they bid up each others eBay auctions. Two were in the sports memorabilia biz, three were in the car racket, and three hocked pricey art. In all three cases it was a "you bid up my auctions I'll bid up yours" scenario. I can't imagine they'll be the only ones to be taken down in this surprisingly common scheme. Folks, you probably won't get nailed for milking $40 off some hipster who loves obscure discordant punk music, but you'll certainly get bad karma. And as this occasional indiscretion becomes an addiction, you'll likely be under the watchful eye of the law long before you know it.
Slow and steady pays the rent, race fans. Your job is to put good stuff up on eBay and post auctions so that these auctions find the most eyeballs possible. After that it's in the hands of the free market. Manipulation will eventually bite you in the ass, one way or another.
Homework: Find something crazy for sale on eBay and email me the link. Best item found wins a vintage postcard from your hometown. Yes this will give me something interesting to post about on my next entry, but in the search for weird stuff you will be forced (if you have any hopes of winning) to utilize the eBay search engine in new ways. As with all things in the eBay universe, it's a two way street. Class dismissed.
Posted on November 10, 2004 | Comments (8)
Welcome to my world
by acdickson
Let's get the formalities out of the way. My name is AC Dickson and I'm an eBay PowerSeller. And I'm damn good at it. That's probably why I've been asked to come aboard team Urban Honking to share my thoughts on the greatest website every built and my wisdom on how to use it for personal profit and global betterment. In the coming months I'm going to be giving sound advice for would be eBay cyber-preneurs, I'll weigh in on eBay related new items, and I'll post links to some of the more interesting items for sale.
Since I've never run a blog before and I've never been one to read them I'm going to be playing by own rules. I run a tight ship, so let's set out the ground rules. I recently watched a great documentary by the name of Hell House. One of the men organizing this haunted house for Jesus started a meeting by stating rule number one as ask questions. Rule number two was don't ask stupid questions. I believe there is some wisdom in that seemingly contradictory two-pronged dictum, so I'll echo that sentiment for this blog. Please participate, engage, and interact with me. But don't waste my time. If there is one thing you learn quickly as an eBay PowerSeller, it's time equals money.
Let that be your first lesson. The trick isn't finding stuff to sell on eBay, it's finding the time to photograph, describe, and post your auctions. People ask where I get my stuff. Got. Got my stuff. I got it years ago, the trouble is finding the time to get it online. That's the hard part. If you don't touch type, I suggest you learn how. And buy a good thesaurus. If you're already up to speed with both those things, I suggest you go to the link below and take a look at my current auctions. Study them like a textbook. Learn from them. Perhaps venture a bid. It will take time, but with diligent work you will soon be able to conduct auctions as masterful as these.
Posted on November 8, 2004 | Comments (6)