Aiming for Failure

There are a handful of active local auctioneers, but for some reason one has crossed my mind who is now inactive. We'll call him Mel.

Auction houses are a good source for resellers, more reliable than garage sales, for example, and in a climate like Chicago's quite important during the colder months.

Very early in my eBay selling I tripped over Mel's auction house and paid it a visit. Such places range from low end up through medium and still further up to houses such as Sotheby's. Some specialize in certain fields - art, militaria, etc. - but most do not.

Mel's was at the lower end of the spectrum. He had many individual consignors who would present him with a lot or two for future auctions, but I think he got most of his goods from home owners (or their survivors) when houses needed to be emptied.

Mel was not a very good auctioneer, and my own opinion is that it was all due to his ego. He wasn't actually hostile, but many times it seemed as if "resentment" would describe his attitude. At least once an auction he would gripe about the fact that no one bid at whatever starting price he had set, but at some point would bid more than that. "You know the bidding is going to go higher than that, so why are you wasting time?"

But the fact is that some items didn't go as high as his proposed starting bid, and people saved money, getting the items for less. Then he'd whine about people saving fifty cents or whatever. But they weren't trying any harder to save that fifty cents than he was to get it, and if you can get an item for $4.50 instead of $5.00, then you've saved ten percent.

I noted that he consistently got less for items than other auction houses got. In fact, at least one of his regular customers was a woman who worked for another auction house. She would bid on items at Mel's, and when successful she would consign them to the auction house at which she worked. It wasn't unusual for her to pay three or four dollars, say, for a painting or other object, then sell it a week later for twenty-five or thirty dollars.

Although we were cordial, occasionally even friendly, we were not each other's favorite people. Beginning with a couple of conversations, he developed an attitude about me. Can you imagine? Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha.

The first was a conversation we had about unsold items. I offered to reach an arrangement with him. I would go through his unsold items after each auction, select some, then try to sell them on eBay. We would agree on some percentage split of the sales.

"What makes you think you can sell them if I can't?"

"Well, you have forty or fifty people in a room for an hour or two, and perhaps someone who would buy it isn't there. I'll have twenty million potential buyers for a week."

But I think that the thought that I might sell something he failed to sell rankled, and instead he threw the unsold items into a dumpster each week. Is that insane or what? For *no* work he would have received *some* money, but he trashed the goods instead.

The second conversation was over a cup of coffee during the preview period before an auction. He was boasting of having acquired several decades of art work by a now deceased Chicago newspaper staff member, and saying that he was trying to decide whether to sell it all at once or break it up into smaller lots.

"I think you should consider taking it to a place like Sotheby's or Christie's."

"Oh, I guess I can't play with the BIG boys, huh?"

"No, of course not. Those houses are generations old, and they can fill rooms with people who wouldn't blink at bidding millions of dollars. They might get you something in five figures for that material."

He got up and left the table. In the end he broke the stuff up into smaller lots. At a guess he got between eight hundred and a thousand dollars for all of it. Aim low. It always works.

Well, eventually his business folded. I miss it, as it was a good source of stuff for resale.

Selling on eBay

After I retired I began selling on eBay. It's been a lot of work and a lot of fun. I've met roughly 40 eBayers from the US and a couple of other countries, first by hanging around an eBay forum, then by attending book fairs and get-togethers, then by visiting individuals and having them visit me.

I find items to sell by attending garage sales, estate sales, and auctions. I'm a generalist - this means I know a little about a lot of things but I don't know much about anything. I'll buy nearly anything I think I can sell for a few dollars more than I pay for it. Nearly anything. I stay away from clothing, jewelry, and a few other things because I know even less than "not much" about them.

You learn as you go. Initially you find yourself being surprised that the treasures you bought are common as dirt on eBay. While that never quite stops, over time it happens much less frequently.

Once in a while I have fun writing a listing. Perhaps there just isn't much to say about it or perhaps I just get silly. Here's an example from a couple of years ago - listing title, picture, and the body of the listing:

Stoopid 12 Inch White Clay Pipe

MAMAS DON'T LET YOUR BABIES GROW UP TO BE SELLERS
I was at an estate sale and saw a foot long, white clay pipe. Secretly waiting for someone to get away from some things I wanted to examine, I had looked around for something that would justify my lingering presence in that particular area.

The price tag attached to the pipe was blank. "Aha! I can pretend to be interested in this pipe." I turned the tag over and the other side was blank too.

Oh frabjous day!. The perfect cover! I carried the pipe several feet to one of the estate sale people and asked what the price was. "This didn't get priced? I'll just mark it two dollars."

And then, and then . . . in a complete disconnect from my original purpose, in a moment of insanity unjustified by anything that has ever happened to me, I said, "I'll take it."

So now I own it, and now you know what I paid for it. The trouble is that I'm not sure it's worth that much because of the following issues:



• Is it unfinished? Is that why it's white?
  
  
• The hole at the drawing end is very small. Intrigued, I tried inhaling through it. Hernia time. Then I tried blowing through it. Less painful, but equally ineffective.
  
  
• Tests show that you can inhale through the bowl end successfully. However, it occurs to me that if there were burning tobacco coals in the bowl then the process might inflict agonies unimaginable, the lips being very sensitive.
  
  
• Even if you could smoke it, what would you do with it when not actually inhaling? It's too long to set into an ashtray. You know perfectly well that someone would walk by and knock it out of the ashtray. And it won't stand up. See that little knob under the bowl? That's to make sure it won't stand up. You could make it stand up if you turn the bowl upside down, but you see the problem there, right?
  
  
• It has been suggested that white might be good for a leprechaun's pipe, going well with green and all (thanks, Babe). But what are the risks associated with giving a leprechaun a hernia? I've heard that leprechauns can be vengeful. And do leprechauns even surf eBay? Is there a www.ebay.le?

Well, here it is, and what you do about it is up to you. There are no cracks or chips, no repairs and none needed. The stem contains no teeth marks, not even mine. The white of the stem is less than perfect due to abrasions or to imperfections in the creating process or something. I don't wanna hear about this if you buy the pipe.

Okay, that's the end of it. I got $5.06 for it and was grateful. And along the way I learned that such pipes were (are?) made for taverns, which provided them for pipe smoking patrons. The patron broke off a piece of the stem, filled the bowl, and smoked.

Interesting, no?