August 2007 Club meeting

Normal meeting and all went well; Steve took over and presented a very good meeting on the use of E-bay buying and selling.  If you missed this meeting you missed a lot.  I thought that I was familiar with Ebay but learned a lot and it now has my interest up on something that I might sell. 

Steve listed his Ebay item

He listed it at and Monday I noticed that the first bid was for $9.00.  Today (8/31/07) I noticed that it was listed as

Steve uses Ebay to sell and buy items that he has interest in.  Steve said the most important things to do in selling your item is take the picture of what you are selling.  You want to make sure what you are selling is clean and attractive in appearance before you take the picture.  Steve does not like to list the item as is; he prefers to test the item to make sure that it works.  Steve feel that if the item is not working that is what you should list it as such vs not tried, not sure, don’t know, untested  or estate sale.  Your word is as good as your product.  He also said you need to write your description off line and reword your contents when needed to match the for sell item before pasting it into your Ebay message.  He said the other thing is shipping if the item weight 40 pounds then the shipping cost will of course be high.  Steve gets an estimate of shipping before listing the item.  Beware of statement of estate sale and the word untried and/or untested.  Beware of item like for sale buy now for $20.00 with a shipping cost of $25.00, sometime the seller intents to make money of his extra cash of the shipping charge.

I know that I have looked at equipment at Hamfest and ask if it worked and several times heard the word estate sale or a ham friend “I just been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to test it out”.  Asking what was the callsign of the person that owed the equipment “boy howdy I know that it started with a K or W something”.  A couple of years ago at Shelby I have a packrat 232 and there was one for sell for two dollars.  I thought for two dollars I could make use of the LED’s.  As I was walking away I turned and ask the guy if it worked he replied oh yes, I ask why he was selling it and he said that his wife said that he needed to get rid of ham stuff that he was not using.  I believed him as I have heard that before from by wife.  Monday I took the TNC to breakfast and gave it to the Packet man Carl (W4EAT) to test out for me.  I told Carl what I paid for it.  In a few days Carl called and said that he had good news and good news  for me.  The TNC worked fine and said that he would double my money if I wanted to sell it.

Sorry I’m off track back to Steve and fruit of the crime, Steve and his wife Ginger are big in gardening.  Once again they were extremely nice by providing not only drinks, peanuts, chips but also watermelon, Banana Cantaloupe as well as honeydew melons.  True to form plates, napkins, utensils as well as clean up was provide by them (Steve and Ginger).  Once again, if you missed a meeting with free food and free information you really, really missed it this time.

A special thanks to Steve and Ginger for hosting our club meeting, our hats are off to both of you for your efforts this year in our club meetings.

 By the way the hard file sold for $22.00. 

Paul - KD4OZI