Pages: 1 2 3 4 5

Tim Wooley says eBay “ruined” a buyer’s market.

« BACKEventually, eBay buyers became wise in the ways of junking. Regionally produced promotional items were no longer a guaranteed easy sale. In 1996, collectors might have searched eBay and found only two or three sellers offering Dallas Cowboys Coke bottles. By 1999, there were reams.
A collector could type “Babe Ruth” on eBay’s search page in 1997 and pull up about 200 auction items. Today, the same search will bring up more than 1,500. Supply outstripped demand. Commonplace items lost their appeal, and people went back to looking for the unusual, unique, or rare.
Meanwhile, garage sales dwindled in number and quality, a trend that many junkers blame on eBay’s rise. Shelves at thrift stores became increasingly void of good junk. A whole day of junking might fail to yield a single treasure. “It’s gotten a little harder with more competition,” Boyles said. “There are a bunch of people doing this that didn’t used to, and they’re hitting all the thrift stores and garage sales and flea markets to find stuff to put on eBay.”
People began saving their good junk for eBay, something that peeves Wooley, the collectibles dealer turned car salesman. He still shops for junk and was browsing at an antique mall the other day and came across several metal lunchboxes in a booth. The dealer was standing there, and Wooley asked her how much she wanted for the lunch boxes.
“She said she wanted to wait and sell them on the internet,” Wooley said. “All the cool stuff is disappearing. It’s there, but it’s not for you. It’s for the internet. Everyone wants top dollar, and they think if they’re selling it to you, they’re not getting top dollar. Before, you dealt one-on-one instead of competing with millions of people on the internet.”
Like any good junker, Wooley hits home runs, just not as often as in the past. A couple of months ago, he paid $3 for a circa-1940s toy clock at a garage sale in south Hood County. He took it to a Fort Worth antique toy dealer, who paid him $1,100. The toy dealer, in turn, sold it for $2,000.
Wooley might have earned the $2,000 himself if he had used eBay. He owns a computer and occasionally lists items on eBay, but he prefers dealing with people. Like Arnett, he uses eBay for research but sells his goods to local dealers and collectors.
Wooley isn’t the only junker who frowns on eBay. Fort Worth resident Linda Solomon, 39, has supported herself for the past 10 years selling junk at flea markets. Not long ago, she and her husband could no longer resist the lure of online auctions, and they rented a computer for a month. “People were talking about eBay and how they made good money off stuff rather than by peddling it,” she said. “I put some books on there and I didn’t do well, and my husband didn’t like it. It takes up all your time.”
Solomon is content to peddle her wares at flea markets. She knows eBay is a market force, and she has met many fellow dealers who use it to their advantage, but she is willing to let the trend pass her by for now.
Even Boyles, one of eBay’s earliest users, has lost his enthusiasm. He tired of taking photos and writing item descriptions. He grew frustrated with eBay, which he said became so large that the company neglected its users and turned a blind eye to people who abused the system, such as by bidding on their own items. The auction site also recently raised its listing fees despite making millions of dollars at the expense of users who do most of the work. Mostly, though, Boyles grew weary of packaging and mailing the items, especially the fragile ones that sometimes arrived broken and required refunds.
Postal rate increases in recent years made it financially unsound to sell some products online. People are less apt to bid on a $5 item if they have to pay $4 for shipping. Boyles returned to a daytime job and sells junk on weekends at the Cattle Barn. He hasn’t listed items on eBay in months.
For the most part, though, junkers are firmly aboard the eBay train. Chris “The Yardsale Queen” Heiska, a housewife from Lusby, Md., is the creative force behind the web site www.yardsalequeen.com. After a lifetime of junking, she claims online auctions have raised the stakes and provided immense opportunity. “Now you have a global market and can get much better prices,” she said. “The downside is, when you go to a yard sale now, some people mark up their stuff.”

Junk dealer Jesse Johnson feels “behind the times” because he doesn’t use eBay.

Suckers are getting harder to find, but they’re out there, somewhere, selling a Martin guitar for $100 or a vintage Barbie doll for a quarter. “There are still a lot of clueless sellers who don’t know the value of their items,” Heiska said. “I bought a Nirvana t-shirt for a quarter and sold it to a guy in Switzerland for $30.”
Boyles surfed the internet recently and saw that Texas musician Robert Earl Keen was selling autographed c.d.s on his website for $16. A few days later, Boyles was researching the price of some items and saw that a seller had listed the Keen c.d. on eBay with a $75 starting bid. “Somebody was trying to hook a sucker,” he said. “They’ll probably find one too.”
Those who adapt to the ever-changing influence of online auctions will continue to earn profits. Few people, for instance, have realized that eBay has created a demand for oversized women’s shoes. “Ten years ago, I would never go out and buy size-12 ladies’ shoes, but now I know that some men — cross-dressers — like to wear them and like the anonymity of buying ladies’ shoes over the internet,” Heiska said. “I buy a lot of things I wouldn’t have bought 10 years ago.”

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5