OK folks. I've always wanted to do this, and there are people here who might be interested in this challenge, so here's a contest I'm proposing. You take $50.00 of your own money...but no more than $50.00. You have to buy and sell things on e-bay to turn your money into $100.00. You have to do it open book, and account for all e-bay and postage fees. The winner will be the first person to wind up with more than $100.00 after all fees are settled. Can it be done??? You can buy anything you want...it could be coins, comicbooks, Furbys, whatever. It can be any combination of items, whether you start with one $50 item, or 50 $1 items. And as you make money, you can invest your profits. You must actually receive funds before you can reinvest it, though you are allowed to reinvest funds even before you ship an item out as long as you actually have the funds in hand. As a rule though, you have to list the auctions (with a link) and account for all fees. I was thinking we could kick this off on Friday, March 26th or something to give new entrants a chance. We can accept latecomers, but those who start the game on-time will have an advantage. The prize rule: If you are going to enter the contest, you have to agree to donate a small token prize to the winner as part of your entrance fee. I'll donate ten (10) BU-1956 nickels, and one will have attractive end roll toning. Who's in? Steve
I guess no one was interested, I just read it now and think it is a neat contest idea. It would be way to easy to win though, all you need to do is buy a few non marked "copies" from china and throw them back up with bad pics and say grandpa left these in this dresser! P.S. I don't buy anything from china, not even their own coinage
Well people are going to have to give a lot of money for this. This is risky and is a good idea but people have to give too much to participate in it. Not to mention it would be easy to cheat. I like the idea though.
hmmm... that would be interesting. I would do a couple rolls of proof nickels... or get a few rolls and then re-arrange them into sets. Fees & shipping would make it a challenge. It would be funny to see the varied strategies. Sounds like too much work for me
The idea was good but in practice, I don't think it happens very often. I would say the majority of stuff on ebay is generally priced appropriately, or too high. When the seller has to lose 10-12% off the sale, plus their time, it's pretty hard for them to price something for less than what it's worth and then take a 12% hit off of that. Then when you sell it, YOU get to take the 12% hit. The only way to make a quick flip is for the original seller to get ripped off because they didn't know what they had or they missed a die variety or something that's worth multiples of what it should be. AND, all potential buyers missed it! Even that's not easy to do because IMO, (despite those who say coin sales are doing poorly because of the economy) it sure doesn't seem like much gets missed on ebay. Few and far between. Too many people watching. Most times not the wisest people either. I can't tell you how many times I've watched people bid up loose coins, beyond what they could have bought a verified slabbed version for. One was an 1882-CC Morgan in MS. Was it 63 or 64?? Couldn't tell you judging by the pics. It was 'probably' MS. But it was bid up as if it were a slabbed 64. Who knows what it really is or if it has any problems? People don't care. In other words, you have many forces working against you on ebay. I'd rather have a contest to see who can be the first to find $100 worth of stuff metal detecting than attempt this contest. To break even on ebay might be a challenge. I'd be very surprised, if not shocked, if you took $50 and after buying and selling 10 items with the funds, that you'd still have $50 left when you were done. Ebay simply takes too much (from both parties) from every transaction. I watched a show on ebay once. You probably won't believe it but they said, worldwide, that Ebay makes on average, around $80,000 per minute. Flipping is buying and selling which means you're contributing to that figure, coming and going.
i would TOTALLY enter a metal detecting contest if someone were to host it.... but it might be easier to do it if it was less in value
