EBay Arbitrage Idea

[MrSmurf]

Pretty much exactly what you described was my means of making $$ before poker came along. I didn't use a program b/c I was 14 and had no money or sufficient contacts to explore programming, but the idea of exploiting inefficient eBay market did work in some sector. From my experience, the best was event tickets.

Tons of people would post some unwanted set of tickets for a sold-out event just hoping to get rid of them in 1-3 days, at times even making a Buy-it-now at face value. They had no idea about the real value of the tickets, nor did they care b.c they had to sell. On the opposite side, you have people with tons of $$ who need tickets for an event, especially field championship box for example. So these tix that I bought for face value $100 to Yankees vs. Mets (this was HUGE back in the day) went for $500. Basically, the bigger the event was, the more meat in the arbitrage opportunity b.c the while the face value stayed fairly constant, high end, speculative values soared incredibly as the date approached.

Tickets were the best, but there were many others with specific little strategies to go along with each one. So essentially, the idea of a program finding all of this for you has a lot of potential IMO, though I'm not sure how the market has evolved over the past 2 years. However, I doubt it has, as there will always be inexperienced people (fish?) who jump at deals/offers without considering pricing statistics - in any business.

[octop]

[ QUOTE ]
Pretty much exactly what you described was my means of making $$ before poker came along. I didn't use a program b/c I was 14 and had no money or sufficient contacts to explore programming, but the idea of exploiting inefficient eBay market did work in some sector. From my experience, the best was event tickets.

Tons of people would post some unwanted set of tickets for a sold-out event just hoping to get rid of them in 1-3 days, at times even making a Buy-it-now at face value. They had no idea about the real value of the tickets, nor did they care b.c they had to sell. On the opposite side, you have people with tons of $$ who need tickets for an event, especially field championship box for example. So these tix that I bought for face value $100 to Yankees vs. Mets (this was HUGE back in the day) went for $500. Basically, the bigger the event was, the more meat in the arbitrage opportunity b.c the while the face value stayed fairly constant, high end, speculative values soared incredibly as the date approached.

Tickets were the best, but there were many others with specific little strategies to go along with each one. So essentially, the idea of a program finding all of this for you has a lot of potential IMO, though I'm not sure how the market has evolved over the past 2 years. However, I doubt it has, as there will always be inexperienced people (fish?) who jump at deals/offers without considering pricing statistics - in any business.

[/ QUOTE ]


I did the same exact things with baseball tickets especiallyt he playoffs. Then I sold some concert tickets. I remebered one time I bought some Simon and Garfunkele tickets on ticketmaster for 200 and ebayed them for b/w 300-350 ( I bought 8 pairs) Then I listed 4 in an auction instead of 2 and they still went for 350 ( I pulled the auction with about 8 seconds left when you were still allowed to do this and relisted them) For some reason with the concert tickets people didnt liek buying in groups of 4, but with baseball 4 tickets together usually sold for double of what 2 tickets did.

[ItalianFX]

I'm just curious:

Anyone actually doing this right now? If so, what items?

[Nicholasp27]

i'm not sure anyone can mention specific items

arbitrage opps dry up very quickly, so if u find one, u jump on it and then u keep looking to find more; it's not like there are 100 of one item going for 100 and the same item will sell for 300 each if u change one word

but that software i linked to will prolly give u a good start

[ItalianFX]

I bid on some digital cameras, very cheap, imo. I'm just testing the water here and seeing what happens. I actually expect to get outbid.

[Nicholasp27]

those aren't bad items in terms of easy/cheap to ship and not likely to break in shipping

depending on size/in box or not then u can do priority mail for 5ish or flat-rate priority mail for 8.10...wrap bubble wrap around the camera/box and shove inside and print out label and u are done

[Nicholasp27]

i actually haven't done much arbitrage recently, as i've stopped being on ebay, but i'm gonna start up again hopefully tomorrow

i'll let ya know how it goes in a few weeks

[ItalianFX]

I am looking into the Research Tools from the link above. I'm still trying to get used to what I am looking at and how I can use it to benefit me.

BTW, got outbid on 1 camera.

[26-Card Stud]

A few weeks ago I sold a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate for $102.50, explain that one.