"In This Economy..."

[mik3cap]

Recent successes in selling books and video games on Half.com have nearly inspired me to start a little side business. I bought Phoenix Wright for DS from Gamestop for 15 bucks, but the going price for it on Half is about $24 (it actually averages higher, but that is the lowest price I can charge that is near the "last sold" price for the game). So not to knock Gamestop for being morons but... it is eminently possible for me to start hunting around used game stores with a list of top selling games on Half.com, see if they're cheaper, and then up-sell them online.

I mean, yes, it would involve putting up some money up front, spending some time doing research and shopping, and then holding on to inventory until it sells - depending on what's out there, I could probably pocket $50-$100 a week just with video games. But of course the thing stopping me from doing this is that I make way more money doing my job and programming. But anybody could do this kind of reselling really, it makes a lot of sense to do this kind of thing; it especially made a lot of sense when I found a bag of books marked as "free" just sitting on the sidewalk, and then after looking on Half found that about a third of them were together worth about $50. Who wouldn't want to pick up $50 from the sidewalk??

People are looking for deals, so they must be using Half.com more. I think also that using Half is less of a pain than using eBay, because people aren't there to "compete" over prices or haggle with you or generally try to cheat you somehow. I like that the implicit assumption is that you're already getting a deal, there's a set price, just pay it and go on your way. Much less hassle than eBay and its baloney.

As it is, I think all I'll end up doing is just using the money to finance other purchases of used games and books that I want from Half. But other folks, especially unemployed ones, could be doing this sort of thing in their non-job-hunting time; I'm always finding giant bags full of CDs and books everywhere just lying on the sidewalk... and even if they're not salable on Half, you can take them to Goodwill and get them deducted from taxes!!

Reduce, reuse, recycle!

Comments

[agthorr.livejournal.com]

Do used games still have barcodes on them? If so, something like ShopSavvy (http://www.biggu.com/apps/shopsavvy-android/) might save you a lot of time and effort by letting you look up the online prices very quickly. I'm not sure ShopSavvy will do exactly what you need. You might need a more specialized app, but it at least demonstrates that phone-camera -> online prices is feasible technology.

[mikecap.livejournal.com]

It occurred to me that there are enough retail sites out there with enough data that it might be possible to do a lot more interesting things with prices these days... the trick is in the scanning. And I'm not sure it really helps to have a database of prices either, I think real-time price fetching is a lot more powerful. Definitely bears more consideration.

[rotting-orange.livejournal.com]

That's a good idea. I tend to just try to get rid of shit in bulk because I want it out of my way.

Do they only pay you in paypal $$?

[mikecap.livejournal.com]

Half.com just puts money in my bank account. I don't even have to deal with PayPal.

[antryg-windrose.livejournal.com]

Of course you could just wait till you have a sale and then buy from some other guy and have him ship to your customer. Just remember always ask that your middle man not include the packing slip. That way the customer doesn't know they overpaid.

[mikecap.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, but that's called "deceit". :)

I'd rather actually sell inventory that exists! Don't want to get into a whole credit default swap kind of thing where I'm deceitfully selling value that doesn't exist...