You just knew it would happen.
Custom heads for Action Man!
This auctioned beauty I saw is Kryten from Red Dwarf complete with eagle eyes!
Who's head would you want?
Showing posts with label Ebay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ebay. Show all posts
Monday, 20 October 2025
Saturday, 11 October 2025
My Ups and Downs of Selling on Ebay
Well I've been selling on eBay steadily since the start of September now. Old stuff, mainly vintage toys and collectables I don't need anymore or things I bought in.
The experience, as it used to be, has been largely pleasant and exciting, with lots of winning bids - mostly small potatoes - and the occasional decent sale. It's a good way to sell off excess from the big collection, together with new finds from boot sales and charities to sell on. I adore the finding the most!
I stick to UK selling, purely for simplicity's sake, but I have posted one expensive item to Canada. It hasn't arrived yet, so I'm on pins. The international tracking ended at the UK border! Huh? There's still hope though.
A few curveballs have, as always, come my way as a seller on eBay.
Unwittingly I'd sent items which were incomplete ( such as a page missing from an old toy catalogue) and a damaged item ( a car door had been glued shut). I just hadn't seen these faults. These were small sales so I simply refunded the buyers and gave them the goods gratis to prevent a drawn-out and stressful claims process on eBay in which I'd no doubt lose anyway.
Less easy are the postage issues.
A tracked item I sent via Royal Mail was successfully delivered but to the wrong house! The postie's photograph was of a doorway unknown to the buyer! Both the buyer and myself attempted to contact Royal Mail and eBay - seeking a fellow human - to no avail. Royal Mail's telephone waiting time is 40 minutes and eBay's simplistic virtual assistant is all you get. Both quite useless. The buyer had no choice but to file a missing item claim with eBay, one of their many automatic processes. I'm unsure how this would have ended, as amazingly, the item did indeed turn up a few days later at the buyer's home with a neighbour from several streets away! Phew!
Another postal glitch happened this week with Evri. Somehow an item I hadn't sent yet was registered with Evri and eBay as dispatched and given a reference! I still had it at home! I can only assume that it had gone near the shop's scanner when I'd had it in my bag. I didn't send it because the scanner was offline and an engineer had been called! It must have scanned it anyway! Anyhow, the scanner fixed the next day, I returned to the shop and fortunately eBay provide a 'Print Another Label' option on the sale site for just such a circumstance! Yay! I guess though my item now has two Evri reference numbers and two tracking histories! Yikes! Schrodinger's Tracking! Welcome to the multiverse!
Still, despite the odd gremlin like these showing up, I do enjoy still selling old toys and stuff on eBay. Do you?
Wednesday, 26 March 2025
Old Man eBay Blues
Being a mad keen toy collector I naturally joined eBay when it first appeared in Blighty in 2000, five Years after it's US birth.
I've been enjoying buying and selling for 25 years. In that time there's been a few changes as eBay kept up with things: dropping Western Union, having PayPal, not having PayPal, Seller dashboard etc etc.
But recently eBay has gone full on with change. So much change it's making my head spin and I'm getting annoyed, as it's all clearly an attempt to pander to the younger vote and their dire need for simplicity.
It began with a new rule of only getting paid on delivery.
Not only that, there's a grace period of a couple of days added on, so you only get paid, including postage, once you've posted your items. You're out of pocket from the off.
Then there's delivery. How do you confirm delivery in order to get paid?
Tracking. Yes, but tracking costs the buyer more. Still, it's the only way for eBay to see there's been a delivery.
Unless, the tracking fails! More on that later!
So, with staggered payments in arrears, you never actually have all the money you're owed, as every delivery is inevitably on different days. This makes using your hard-earned eBay moolah difficult, as you have to save up in effect to get that dear item you so want for yourself, in which time it may well have gone!
And so back to tracking, when it fails. This happened to me last week, a Torchy the Battery Boy annual that should have been tracked was left untracked by Royal Mail. As such it could never be confirmed as delivered. The Nightmare scenario! Just think of it had been a hugely expensive item!
Even more galling was the fact that the buyer told me the annual had arrived and she was enjoying reading about her old TV favourite!
I contacted eBay via chat and after a lengthy but amicable conversation it turns out that eBay pay up after 14 days from the sale anyway, regardless of delivery or not! Doh!
Now we come to the biggest change of all. Shipping/ postage.
eBay have created a new Simple Post process that involves Evri amongst other couriers.
It means the buyer can choose to have Evri pre-paid labels, which, in my case, have to be printed at the post office on the Evri machine. I don't get to see the address until that point and I don't really know how much they've paid.
It's all a royal pain in the backside and clearly trying to win back the pre-paid one- click young punters who are flocking to Vinted in droves.
But what about us long-standing and loyal ebayers who still possess some semblance of patience and don't need one-click solutions to all and everything?
What. About. Us?
Anyways, rant over. I need to wrap my latest sales and go to see the Evri machine in town!
The eBay dinosaur.
PS. What's your current eBay experience?
Sunday, 5 January 2025
NEWSFLASH! EBAY WILL ONLY PAY WHEN DELIVERY IS CONFIRMED!
Well, after Evri's announcement come's Ebay's. And tarnation, its awkward!
Ebay will from February only pay out to sellers after delivery is confirmed!
As a seller I'm trying to get my head around this. For me it will mean everything I sell from now on has to be tracked and therefore delivery can be confirmed to Ebay [in theory!]
For more IT-savvy sellers they may use Ebay's own printable stamps but I still go to the Post Office.
What will this mean for you if you sell readers?
Saturday, 4 January 2025
FYI UK READERS! You Cant Pay for Evri in a Post Office Anymore!
If, like me, you sell on Ebay, this is yet another change that makes it harder to send collectables through the Post Office!
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Sunday, 8 December 2024
ROYAL SNAIL
Its been a terrible month as an Ebay seller and a cautionary tale maybe not to post items during the run-up to Christmas, which is paradoxically the best time to sell!
I've had to refund four tracked items so far - Ebay and buyers were on my case - and there are still some items yet to arrive at their destinations. One item I can put down to my unusually poor large letter packaging - a damaged cast soldier's head came off - but the other three, all part of the same combined parcel, I have to lay at Royal Mail's door.
Thankfully it's only a tenner's value all in, which I've refunded, as the buyer was getting increasingly frustrated with his purchases simply not arriving. I don't blame him.
It still hasn't arrived and it may never do! You won't believe where this parcel has been - literally everywhere in northern England - in the last two weeks!
It should have gone down the road to Donny but have a look at the tracking journey! Its now in Birmingham as of yesterday!
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Looking at this again, I only hope that I put the right postcode on this parcel! Or indeed any postcode!
*
POSTSCRIPT!
It turns out I didn't put the wrong postcode on this parcel and they did arrive two weeks later at their destination.... damaged with an apology from Royal Mail. The buyer sent me the pictures.
Unbelievable that the company entrusted to deliver a parcel delivered it damaged like this! Luckily, it wasn't worth much.
Needless to say I won't be claiming from a monolith. Its Christmas and I've better things to do!
Wednesday, 13 November 2024
Lost in Space?
This year I've been selling on eBay a lot again. As in times before, one thing always baffled me. What happens to lost mail?
Where do all the thousands of mislaid parcels go? They must go somewhere? To neighbours or dare I say couriers themselves? Where?
I imagine a vast hill of packages somewhere between continents, the address labels slowly greening over and desperate gulls ripping them open. Occasionally a tin robot or wind-up spaceship will spill out and attempt an ascent, the gulls pecking at their bent antennae and flashing lights as they stagger towards the sun.
My reverie over, a more serious sub-genre of lost property is the relatively new and quite baffling phenomenon of tracked but mislaid.
Tracked but mislaid? Surely this is an oxymoron, like wet fire or bright dark: things that can't exist. Or so we thought. Tracked but mislaid is the latest insult to eBay sellers totally reliant on couriers of one kind or another, whether national or private.
I have refunded five buyers this year already for lost mail. None were tracked, which I aim now to change, but it appears that that also offers no guarantee of delivery.
The biggest implication for the seller of lost eBay goods is the refund, sometimes substantial, leaving them out of pocket and without the goods.
For the buyer, well, they've got absolutely nothing either.
Have you experience of this readers?
Friday, 1 November 2024
T48 Parcels: A Note of Caution
As an Ebay seller I rely on the Post Office and Royal Mail [unsure of the difference these days!]. Its my choice I know so I have to accept the consequences.
One recent foible is the new T48 service. Its a two-day tracked post for parcels. The tracking kicks in when the parcel is delivered.
Normally it costs around £3.70' ish I think for a second class parcel.
Alas, I got stung with its other add-on this week, the signature! I didn't know about the signature!
I hadn't realised I'd been charged over £5 for T48 because the sub-postie automatically bolted-on the Signature option!
This meant I lost money on the sale.
I only discovered it when I got home and checked the Proof of Postage.
Just one to to watch out for if you use T48 here in the UK!
Grrrr!
Monday, 10 June 2024
A New Trend?
I'm noticing a new negative trend on eBay UK, winning bidders simply not paying and waiting for eBay to cancel their sale after about five days.
Not sure what's going on here. Non payment used to be a total no no on eBay, when I first started up. Seems it's accepted behaviour now!
For a seller it's a a real nuisance and a waste of valuable sales time.
Grrrr. Rant over.
Is this something you've come across readers?
Saturday, 30 September 2023
MY FIRST PARCEL
I wrapped up my first sale in the re-opened attic this morning.
A 1980's Barbie Gym no less!
It'll go to the Post Office later today.
Wrapping it was a first small step in the latest chapter as an Ebay seller, which began all those years ago in the year 2000, when Ebay started up in the UK [five years after the USA I think?]
Back in 2000 we lived in a different house, where I had an even bigger room to play with, an entire cellar, which I'd turned into an 'old toy shop' in the early 1990's. It was definately a fun hobby.
All before Ebay existed, back then I supplied toy fans with stuff via mail order and also personal customers who visited on the weekend by appointment. All great fun after a boring week at work! I was called Moon Zero Toys. I even took it on the road and had a stall at toy fairs!
Maybe I sold to you!
Have you done much selling readers?
Monday, 8 May 2023
THERE'S A TOY CELLAR IN US ALL!
I had another blast from the past at my Daughter's house over the weekend. She returned a plastic box I hadn't seen in years.
This green box was one of many I had on shelves in my big old sunlit 'toy cellar' back in the 90's, when I used to trade stuff from there and do mail order as well. It was called Moon Zero Toys and I actually had regulars!
Having a full-time job as well, buying and selling old second hand toys was my hobby back then - it still is! - and these plastic boxes were how I divided up my stock into manageable parts. The one in the picture - TV Action - would have held all manner of oddments from the TV shows listed - James Bond, The Saint, the A Team, Bionic Man and Zorro - ranging from key rings, novels, action figures, jigsaws right up to small boxed toys.
Larger boxed toys and board games were stacked as they came, on a separate shelf and the biggest thrill was to see several of the same boxed item stacked up. I remember having three second hand and excellent boxed Batman Animated Batmobiles on top of each other and it used to make me so chuffed. Like a proper toy shop! ha ha
There were some inspirational toy sellers in the 90's, who took the hobby - for them a business - to a whole new level and it was always a buzz reading their mail order catalogues and sales lists on Model Mart magazine.
Notable among the many was the late great Jim Star Wars Stevenson and the inspirational Andy Foley and his TV Toy Zone, the catalogues of which are still a treasure of mine as they were really the catalyst, along with Tim Burton's 1989 Batman movie, to start looking for old toys and collect the toys I owned as a kid.
My 'cellar' closed in 2003 when we moved and the new house didn't have one. Also with the advent of Ebay in the UK in 2000 my mail order side had already stopped. It was the end of an era and I was sad to leave that cellar behind. It had been a lot of fun.
I don't have any photographs of the old cellar so when I saw this box again this weekend it brought back happy memories of a time before Ebay changed our lives forever. Thanks for listening to an old man reminiscing!
Did you have an old store room, cellar or attic full of your stuff? Did you buy and sell or swap old toys? Do you still readers?
Tuesday, 7 February 2023
JOBS A GOOD 'UN!
This job lot caught my eye on the Bay. Lots of cool cars and some plastic. What would you have liked?
Monday, 30 January 2023
JUST THE JOB
Here's a job lot that was on the Bay. Mixed lots like this are always fun to look at. What can you see in this bundle readers?
Sunday, 8 January 2023
Thursday, 22 July 2021
MY OLD EBAY STOCK 2006: AN ARCHIVE
Back in the mid-noughties I was a full time Ebayer. Time was divided between finding stock at car boot sales and charity shops and auctions and also with the actual listing and selling online. Ebay was only just 6 years old in the UK back then and it was a lot of fun. I even enjoyed all the wrapping!
This was my stock back in October 2006. I must have sold it all as I don't have any of it now.
Have you sold a lot on Ebay?
See anything you like?
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