Brian Denley wrote:
wrote:
David Heinsohn wrote:
Buys the Drake DSR-2 for $725 on Ebay and sells it two weeks later
for over $1100. Not bad.
Not too good either. A lot of high-end retail has dealer margins
significantly higher with much less risk (although a higher cost of
doing business) than buying "high" on E-bay and selling "higher" on
E-bay.
Some rather business-savvy folks advocate that the optimal E-bay
sell:buy margin is 30:1, with good arguments. Anything else is just a
hobby.
So to sell, say, an NRD-545 for $1500, I would have to buy it for $50 ??
Good luck with those margins!
Overall, doing the "buy as highest bidder on E-bay and then hope to
resell for more money on E-bay with no real value added" and making
money at it is not the easiest way to make money.
While Marty's attempts at it are often cited in this and other
newsgroups, it is not at all obvious that he's making any money at it
overall. Sure, everyone likes to point out his, er, um, successes and
get inflamed about them, but please try to think how you could make
money overall (ethically and honestly) doing the same thing.
Now as a hobby, if you had a lot of spare time and storage space and
some spare cash it might be fun to be a radio trader. You'd have a lot
of different stuff passing through your hands and you might enjoy
tweaking/painting/cleaning as they go through, and you might actually
enjoy writing exaggerated claims for each and everything in your
inventory.
For most of us (at least folks like me, who lack the, um, creative
marketing skills that Marty applies) it'd probably be economically
wiser to push carts at Wal-Mart part time if the goal was to make money
and not stretch the bounds of ethics/honesty.
Tim.