It Sold!
March 2nd, 2005
It sold!
The NEC Versa LitePad–the Tablet PC that I bought back in October—sold on eBay. Better yet, it sold at the highest price that I imagined it could possibly bring–$1,100, plus $45 for shipping and handling.
That was the "Buy it Now" price I established when I set-up the auction. By paying a "Buy it Now" price, someone can pre-empt an auction and immediately acquire the item. I really didn’t think I’d get my "Buy it Now" price.
When I boght the computer, I paid only $1,100, as shown on this record from Amazon.com. When I set up the auction I did a quick online search and found one for sale for $1,200, brand new. I didn’t expect someone to pay me, a stranger, top dollar for a used computer when they could buy the same computer new, in an unopened box, from a merchant (against whom there might be some recourse and less chance of fraud).
Also, the computer is not the latest, greatest technology. It has a Pentium III chip, only a 20GB hard drive, and only 256 MB of RAM.
And for $1,100 there a many good choices for people in the market for laptops and even Tablet PCs.
In fact, I was worried that I’d set the reserve price–the least amount for which I would be willing to sell the computer–too high. I had set it at $850.
With my flat $45 fee for shipping and handling, a winning bidder would’ve had to pay at least $895. I thought maybe I should have set the reserve price somewhere in the $700 range. I would have been happy with that much, but things turned out better than I expected.
I was in class giving an exam when I saw that the item had sold for the "But it Now" price. I was stunned. I did a double-take. Yes, the screen said "Auction has ended with Buy it Now." Wow.
I was in class until 3:15 that day. I picked up Helen from pre-school about 4:30, after confirming that the sale price was in my PayPal account. I wen to the computer sciences building and bought a copy of MS Office (I had deleted the copy on the NEC during an effort to clean up the hard drive prior to selling it). I then dashed to my apartment where I got the computer, installed Office, glanced at some menus to be sure I’d removed my personal files, and then changed some settings so that certain Office font commands would stop being displayed in Chinese! (That would have probably confused the buyer!). Then I dashed to the business school where I grabbed the NEC CDs that originally came with the computer (I didn’t think I’d have to do any of this for a few more days!). Maggie joined us from the business school. We next drove the the UPS Store in College Park. We got there about 6:15. They told me the UPS drive usually comes between 6:30 and 7:00.
They packed everything for me, wrapping the items in plastic bubble padding. The shipping materials, insurance and surchage for delivery to a residential address came to $62, a bit more than the "shipping calculator" on eBay had predicted, but not too bad.
PayPal deducted $33.51 in fees–about 3%. eBay has assessed fees of $44.15. Thus, I incurred 139.66 in "transaction costs" (fees from eBay and PayPal plus shipping).
Oh–I also paid $90.58 for a new stylus set. I broke the top off the pen that fits in the unit itself and couldn’t find the other one. The set cost $69.95 from MobilePlanet, and I paid $20.63 for FedX shipping (good thing I did!). And the new copy of Office costs me $10 (a tiny amount based on the UMD site license, which I probably was not supposed to transfer to someone else, but, hey, they got $700 from me for a MSDN subscription back in December–just so I could get the Tablet PC version of Windows for my U).
In total, then, I spent $240.24 to sell the computer (eBay and PayPal fees, shipping costs, software and refurbishment costs). Thus, I netted 904.76 for the sale (the $1,145 price minus my costs). That means my cost for having the computer for 5 months was just 209.80!
My daughter drew some pictures on this computer and used the PowerToy puzzle software. It was neat to see her, at 4, using a pen-input computer. It seemed so natural to her, whereas I thought it was exhilerating and unusual.
I first used the Tablet OS with the NEC and generally enjoyed it. It was certainly worth $210 "rent" for 5 months.
What a great start for my eBay adventures.