The Buy Low/Sell High Game- Some Advice

If you buy at 5-10% under spot & sell at 5-10% over spot you have a 10-20% spread. That's not much of a margin. It's even less when you consider spot prices can change 5-10% overnight....add in ebay fees & you might squeak out 1-2%. Not worth it unless you are dealing mega volume.

IMO your best bet would be to cherry pick rarieties. With numismatic items that means buying an unrecognized/unattributed VAM or variety & reselling for profit. I don't follow bullion much but it seems like there are some pieces that sell for more than spot. If you can pick those up cheaply & resell at market you could probably do ok.

Good luck with that. Volume is the key to making any amount of worthwhile money doing this. I am thinking a minimum of 1000oz at a time.

Been on ebay selling for almost 2 years now and making decent profit. My advice is to think long and hard about using ebay as your primary method for off-loading coins, especially bullion. Here's a summary of what I've learned:

On Listing on ebay:
1. listings ending on Sunday evening end higher than others
2. auctions almost always end lower than you'd expect
3. use the "completed" filter to gauge what you would end up with
4. auctions listed starting $0.99 end higher than ones with reserve or higher start price.
5. auctions with "free shipping" end higher, but not high enough to cover actual shipping fees
6. buy it now with "make offer" option seems to be the best bet
7. lots of detailed pictures help A LOT

On Fees:
1. account for 3% for PayPal, 12% for ebay, + shipping
2. buyers are never happy about shipping prices so consider absorbing some of the shipping cost (but factor shipping fees in too)
3. packaging costs money too ($3 in packaging is 10% of a 1oz silver coin!)
4. expect lost shipments if you don't ship with tracking. And expect to absorb those losses.
5. "top rated seller" program helps out with discount on fees but it's tough to qualify, especially since ebay's about the change the requirements for May and make it tougher still.
5. conservatively, selling a coin at 30% over your purchase price will only net you ~10% (that's only $3 for a 1oz silver coin)

On Profit
1. to make a profit, you'd have to be able to purchase at at least 20% less than what you intend to sell at. That's paying $24 and selling at $30.
2. selling straight up bullion (ASE, SML, 90%) is too risky and not really worth the time and effort unless you sell in bulk, 10+oz at a time. I make 5% at best selling bullion, that's $2 when silver was $40 for an 1oz coin. So, $2 for the time it took me to take, edit, and upload photos, write the description and set the auction/listing, answer questions, package and ship, and take care of follow up. My wife tells me i'd make more spending that time begging at a street corner.
3. numismatic or semi-numismatic is where we take most profit. If we get lucky predicting a trend, or spot undersold items at local dealers and auctions, we can make 20-50%. But, these are hardly stable sources for inventory, so it's more luck than a reliable strategy.
4. Averaged out, we struggle to make 10% in profit

On Pricing:
1. ebay prices tend to rise and fall with spot though with a bit of a lag. That delay, though, is not enough to help you time out a 7-day-long auction.
2. This again is why numismatic coins do better. They may not sell as well during a dip but will at least retain most of its value.

We are treating our ebay venture as a way to thin out our collection as oppose to a serious supplement to our income. To treat it as anything more than another side to our coin collecting hobby would be too optimistic at our level of sales.

Thanks, poboxw. I think you just talked me out of it