Wonderous Wonderous Ebay!!

[d.a.walker]

I am having fits of utter joy right now!!!

I have just managed to get off Ebay...

01. 808 State - Don Solaris
02. Spooky - Found Sound
03. Breaker - Dislocated (Japanese Import)
04. Ingrid Schroeder - Not A Day Goes By

I have spent the best part of a decade looking for these items!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is the internet fabulous!!!! hehe

[RobB]

Is the internet fabulous!!!! hehe

It certainly is although its taken (for me anyway) the fun and the thrill out of seraching and collecting.

Before I owned a computer I use to regularly drive to near-by record fairs and at least twice a year travel to London to attend the large international fairs.

Many an hour i'd be crawling on my hands and knees under tables sorting through cupboard boxes full of cds and records,searching for that elusive item.

Now of course I can find them from home with just a few presses and a few clicks....and just wait for them to pop through my letter box.

Its a lot easier now and more cost effective, but its not as fun anymore.

[sound world]

Agree-with both of you.
eBay has produced upwards of 100 records/CDs etc that I've been looking for,(for far longer than a decade in some cases) ,not to mention rare books,videos etc etc.The chances of me ever finding some of those things (extraordinarily obscure imports,old specialist 78s etc) were almost nil,except by staking vast sums of money (which I've never had)-usually in postal auctions where the highest bid won at that price rather than being rounded down to just above the previous best,like eBay does.
Better than that is the decluttering you can manage by selling.I've sold loads of stuff,again,most of which I would (pre-eBay) have put into a jumble sale.For instance I sold-individually-about 200 issues of The Wire magazine,which it would have been impossible to get rid of before except by effectively chucking them out.
But like RobB,I used to love jostling with the crowds and flicking through record boxes.(I used to lose friends in record shops )
But on balance I'm happier having those elusive things than forever hunting for them.

[d.a.walker]

oh my you should try an Australian record fair, dear God, it's all Jimmy Barnes and Midnight Oil. The last one I went to the best thing I got was a copy of Alison Moyet's Hometime (marvellous record btw), however it was rather short on rare stuff.

I also discovered the other day that I still have all my mother's old Led Zep albums, hahahahahahahaha I bet she's furiously looking for them still too.....

[RobB]

I wish I could pluck up the courage and sell on Ebay ...........I buy easlier enough though.

[sound world]

It's pretty straightforward,Rob,the hardest thing is having enough packaging and working out postal rates.If you get a Paypal a/c,it's dead simple.And the best thing is watching the a/c grow as you get rid of stuff you haven't used for donkey's years.
I can help you out,if you like. (My fee is... )

[RobB]

I think my main worry is dealing with rogues who for example buy a rare record off of me and then return a scratched copy that they already have in their collection and then demanding a refund.
They would end up with my decent copy,I would end up with their crap copy.....and be a few quid out of pocket for having paid postage on it.

Maybe I should deal in Wire magazines,although knowing my luck,I'd just get torn ones returned to me with a refund request.

I do have a paypal account so maybe I should risk auctioning something from my collection which isn't worth anything..........hmmm,how about one of your 78rpm lps, Dave?

[sound world]

I've sold about 200 LPs on eBay,never once had a problem...In fact in about 600 total transactions,I've only had one problem and that was an LP I bought that got lost in the post.
As far as it goes,you need to describe the condition of your (eg) LP accurately and then you can't get cheated.

[RobB]

Well,i'm really tempted.

I'm beginning to wish i hadn't given so many books,mags and cds away to the charity shops now.

[aermancer]

I used to use eBay for all my music buying but i switched to Amazon as soon as I got a credit card and haven't looked back.

[blue]

I sold my entire classical cd collection on ebay, never had any problems. Bought quite a lot from there too. Eventually though I got fed up with the whole business of waiting for payments to go through and stuff to arrive (I'd never sign up with paypal - heard some horror stories about people's accounts being hacked), and with the whole bidding system, so these days I tend to use Amazon marketplace for the odd cd, book, dvd I want to buy or sell secondhand. You set a fixed price and payments go straight through because it's done via your debit card/bank account, and sellers are obliged to post items out within two days of the sale. There's a feedback system just like ebay, too. The only drawback is that there has to already be an official Amazon listing for the thing you want to sell, so it wouldn't be much use for really rare things.

[wirbel]

you can also set a fixed price for your items on ebay i think.. but i always use the auction for the fun of it; and i don't often sell anything anyway...
But I haven't had any real problems with it, also not with paypal; I mostly use that to pay stuff i buy from American sellers, since I don't have a creditcard. I also never had to pay any customs duty fortunately