Hey everyone I'am sure this has been asked a million times but would it be worth buying rolls of coins and re-selling them for example. Ainslie bullion sell rolls of 1oz x 20 for $677.14, and if you put them up on eBay for $40 a coin not including postage you will end up with $800 so in the end you will make a profit of $122.86, just wondering if it would be worth it everyone's opinion will be appreciated Thanks everyone
Hi, You will need to factor in ebay fees, FA factor and what value you place on your time wandering down the post office for a "profit" of $6.143 per coin every few days or whatever. Blake.
Before you even think about ,get your head around what is collectible ,and what is not . Start with bullion first ,than get your head around the numi's stuff . Yes it's possible But You have to know what your doing
chances are if you are asking these questions i would say no. many of the experienced collectors know prices and value of coins so when they buy and sell they know what to expect. Personally unless you are a dealer or have a bunch of disposable income you can end up getting stuck with a bunch of coins that you cannot unload...especially if you buy a roll and in the next couple weeks spot drops a couple dollars and you are still trying to unload them. although their are many forum members who do this on a regular basis and make money...but not nearly enough to live the lavish lifestyle.
As a general rule allow about 10% of gross final value in fees for eBay and Paypal. If you follow the rules (PP guidelines) you will reduce the chance of being ripped-off by buyers. Most sellers on eBay do not make a profit, but they don't know it. Most sellers will inflate thier postage and handling costs to recover part of what eBay and PP take. Most sellers say that eBay and PP rip them off with fees! I do not believe that to be true because eBay and PP charge, imho, a fair and reasonable price for the services they provide: 1. An established marketplace. 2. An established secure payment method. Plus there is an efficient delivery system through Australia Post who are even bigger vultures than eBay and PP. With $122 gross profit you need to factor in all of the above plus your time. Will you make a profit? Depends on how many you can sell per day. Will you make a living? Probably not!
The trick for low profit items is to automate the process as much as possible ie automatic relist when item is sold/ended (assuming one has multiple of the same product available) automatic email sent to winning bidder at completion of auction automatic end of auction notification, incl payment and buyer address paypal is a given email response from seller to buyer using a template pre-formed letter saves a lot of time labels printed out when doing once/twice weekly mail saves time templated letter to go with mailing of item saves time Also save costs ie I buy boxes of the smallest (OO) size padded post bags. That way I get them for half price. I have form letters printed by the hundred sitting next to my padded post bags with tape, pens, stamps etc all on the same bench. Time spent looking for things is time wasted. etc the more things become automated or systematic, the less real time needs to be invested by the seller into the whole process Suck eggs stuff for some on this site but perhaps useful for the aspiring sellers.
LOL making money of silver coins - off of? can you take images... can you describe the item you are selling.. considering your eg was 1 oz silver coins id say youll need to learn to be FAR MORE descriptive.. Might help if you said the 2011 Kookaburra (answer: NO kooks are very unpopular atm, what would you sell? Also diminishing retuns if you sell to much.. finite demand). Also... ABC -- pick up or post.. post costs extra.. RISK: spot going down.. Market analysis and identifying demand and competition. People can make money trading silver on ebay but if you value your time you will be working for like $2 an hour.. You need to be a marketing master and numismatic master with a good level of english, marketing, photography - also communication, access to mail services, lots of spare time, internet access. The odds are STACKED against you. You need to already be a master an about 8 fields to have a decent chance. RE: success fees, did you forget GALLERY FEES, LISTING FEES, PAYPAL FEES? As a general rule.. dont quit your day job.. sell only to upskill and for enjoyment, also to sell items you know longer want. 1for1
And don't do it too well either or you will have to pay tax on it. You can sell here for no fees but lower final price, or you can sell to people on eBay and get higher prices for ordinary items but then you have to pay the fees. If you have spare time then it might be a good learning experience, fancy a $677.14 experiment? Have a blog? Buy some and time the whole process from start to finish, then work out what it cost in fees and you can then work out an hourly rate. I don't think it will be much but if you are only watching TV in the evenings then you aren't going to lose out on much. Remember, online shopping is killing off the bricks and mortar stores, so someone must be making money at it.
Ebay is a little different from most auctions, from what I understand, if you consign something to an auction house their fees are something like 17%. However, it is the buyer who gets slugged with the additional fees. In eBay it is the seller who gets slugged with the fees. I am not sure if you have to pay to have your items included in an auction but I don't think you do. Much as people seem to hate Paypal most seem to get over that when it comes time to pay, I prefer Bank Deposit but there is really no incentive for me to use it other than to do the seller a favour. And for overseas' transactions it is PayPal all the way.
And then Aus post looses it or it gets damaged in the post etc. You have to replace at your own cost so there goes $40 for another coin plus the extra postage at your cost. Then work out your hourly rate - I'd be amazed if you were earning more than $1 per hour and that doesn't include the extra stress. Trust me - when a couple of coins goes missing in the post - you will stress. malachii
And of course, there is no guarantee they went missing, could just be a scammer. Or it turns up and they claim it is defective and return it complete with a defect it didn't have went you sent it out.
Why? Auspost protects conpensates up to $50 providing sender has proof of postage. Plus there is the option of Registered Post.
Ever tried to make a claim against Aus post? It's would be easier to turn Auspm into a property spruiker!! PMs aren't covered by Aus Post - but metal samples are - work that one out. Lets assume you actually manage to get Aus Post to payout as a "metal sample" (I have yet to find anyone that has succeeded but lets say you can) by that time your purchaser has made a paypal claim who have deducted the whole amount including postage from your bank account, you have been left bad feedback on your ebay account so now no one trusts you and the price you can get for your auctions decreases, the item is still missing and but you now have $40 in your bank account for several weeks stress and mucking around. Still can't see it being worth your while. malachii
I do exactly this (and am doing it with 2011 Kooks right now). Bought a roll, and am selling (some of) them separately at a markup on Ebay. However it's not to make a profit (because frankly, the profit you make is tiny and it is extremely slow if you're selling single lots at a time). Rather, it's because I didn't want a roll-full of them, but the price for a roll was much better per coin than buying individual coins. To be exact, I'm generally trying to keep 10 kooks from each year - so I buy a roll of 20, and sell half of them off on Ebay. I do make a profit, though it's only slight. But I'm in no rush to be rid of them ... they'll sell when they sell. Case in point, sold a 2011 Kook yesterday for $41, which originally cost me ~$36 as part of a roll. I over-charged slightly on shipping to offset Ebay's 7% commission. So yeah, 5 bucks profit, nothing to write home about considering I have to go to the trouble of marching down to the Post Office to send it etc. Interestingly (and perhaps predictably) I'm noticing a lot of buyers in the last few months are from Greece...whereas I used to get no buyers from there at all. BTW there are no Listing fees or Gallery fees on Ebay anymore for your first 30 trades per month, so it's really not that expensive. If something doesn't sell, you pay zero, and can just relist with a single click until someone does buy it.
Oh I should also point out that the market is quite depressed right now. There isn't much interest out there and I only get a couple of bids per coin. Whereas last year I was getting 10-15 bids on everything and there was much more interest. I managed selling some Lunars (Series II Tiger 1 oz) at over a 100% markup, which was pretty sweet.
