Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler What would you do with a PS3?

Well, the second PS3 is now sold.

Here is the lesson I learned.

Unless you are selling an expensive, hard to find item like this the first week that it is out, it isn't worth your time.

Here is a short (yeah right) glimpse of what happened.

I bought the two PS3 systems from Best Buy. Picked up the top PS3 game (Resistance:Fall of Man) to go with them. These units came with the Blu-Ray version of Talladega Nights.

I list both units on eBay, but seperated the start times by about 15 hours. I set them both for 3 day auctions.
I got no activity until the last hour of each listing (too many of them for sale on eBay).
The bidders we using bogus eBay accounts and driving the price up. New users with zero feedback were bidding on a bunch of the PS3's to drive prices up, so that the bogus bidder's real account could sell a PS3 with less competition.

Needless to say, my first attempt with each PS3 failed to complete. eBay won't refund my listing fees.
I will get a "credit" for part of the listing fees if I relist and it sells the second time around.

So I relist, lower the reserve price, lower the Buy It Now price (to something well under what legitimate sales are going for) and offered free shipping.
I set them for 1 day auctions seperated by 1 day each.
Still no action until the last hour.

Sold them both for just barely above the lowered reserve price.

I am glad that they are gone, but eBay and PayPal "raked me over the coals" on the fees.

It cost me about $15 per listing, another approx $24 for the "final value fee" when they sold, and then PayPal wanted $23 in transaction fees.

So if I do the math, per PS3 sold, it cost me $15 (first listing) + $15 (second listing) - $5 (relisting "refund") + $24 (final value fee) + $23 (PayPal fee) + $15 (shipping) = $87 each.
It cost me $698 per PS3, and they sold for $782 and $830.

So I actually LOST $3 on one, and I made a whole $45 on the other for a toal profit of $42 after a week of headaches...

The other amazing thing is that PayPal is owned by eBay, so their high fees startling.

At least they are sold. But if I take my $42 "profit" and split it up amongst the amount of time to set up the auctions, to drive to get the PS3's, games, and to ship them out, plus the time spent just talking about it here, fighting eBay to get full refunds on the original listing fees, etc, I don't think that $42 covers my hours of effort.

Like I said, lesson learned...

Next time, try craigslist.

Hey i told you i was interested and would hav egladly paid you $42 over cost.
Jake

Should have donated them to Child's Play. Speaking of which... it is a great charity, I donate books each year to the IWK Children's Health Centre in Nova Scotia (at the time, the only Canadian hospital NOT in Toronto - I figure The Big Smoke gets enough press, there is now also a hospital in BC).

Anyway, it's pretty easy, the hospitals create wishlists for the kids on Amazon, you buy, Amazon ships to the hospital... you don't get a tax receipt, but that keeps costs down. So far this year I think they're up over $500,000 in donations.

Bren R.

If I could fork out the $1400 to donate them, I would have. That sounds like a cool charity. Kids need to laugh, smile, and have fun, even when it seems that everything is stacked against them.

Its not quite the same console/charity, but I just donated a new Gamecube to one of the toy donation(United Way) places here at a mall. Hope it gets put to good use, wish I had read this first.

United Way is a great cause as well... no sweat for it not being to Tycho and Gabe's "cool" charity.

Good on ya for that! *applauds*

Bren R.

I donated to my kids' 529 plan, so that I'll have some money left to donate to charity later when they're in college.

More like after they get out of college, the way tuitions keep rising.