Recovering from the Binge
March 10th, 2005
My HP iPAQ 4700 Pocket PC sold on eBay yesterday. I shipped it to the winning bidder today.
The buyer paid me a total of $477.30. The winning bid for the unit itself was $451. I’d set the reserve at $400 and a "Buy it Now" price of $550 (which probably should have been $499).
She paid an additional $26.30 for shipping (UPS 2nd day air). That included a tiny amount–I think $5–that I added for handling charges.
I actually spent $61.48 to ship the thing to her. However, this included some other items, as I’ll describe below.
PayPal’s cut on the $477 was $14.14 , and eBay’s take (listing and transaction fees) was $18.23.
I bought it for $658.95 in October 2004. I spent a great deal on accessories and software for it (and, God, my time!), but my net dollar cost for the unit alone comes to $243 (659+64-477).
And I actually got another $130 out of today’s transaction by what I suppose is called "cross promoting" merchandise.
When I sent the buyer an email to congratulate her on winning the auction, I offered her a couple of related items.
I offered the iPAQ’s extended battery for $65 (I originally paid $129) and a Sprint PCS cf2301 card for $65 (I originally paid $194 for that–sheesh!).
Of course I would have liked to salvage more, but recent eBay transactions for identical items have been near these figures. Plus, I didn’t have to pay any eBay fees for this follow-on transaction (PayPal took a cut of $4.07 on the $130).
In sum, I recovered $498.56 today.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that this $500 was salvaged by selling stuff for which I paid $981 (actually much more, were I to add in what I spent on software and Sprint’s service–and, God, my time!).
But, to spin it in a positive way, that’s $500 more than I would have recovered if I’d not gotten busy on eBay.
There’s more to sell, too. I still have the ThinkOutide BlueTooth keyboard and the, gasp, that second PPC (which has to be fixed before I can sell it).
If I can get $500 for those things, it will push my total recovery to about $2,300.That’s a good return for the time I’ve put into eBay (though not on my technology "investment" generally, to say nothing of the value of the time I’ve spent on technology since October).
Besides those remaining iPAQ items, I still have a Nextel Blackberry and, sigh, my Sony U.
The U is a big-ticket item. I believe I could sell the U, its extended battery and external CD for $2,500 to $3,000.
That would push my salvage total to $5,000. But if I sell the U, I’d like to buy one of those small Sony Vaio T computers!