Hired help eases angst over eBay
Posted on Wednesday, December 29, 2004
With his son starting college this fall, Rod Miller knew it was finally time to cash in his baseball-card collection.
Hoping to get top dollar for prizes like his autographed Sandy Koufax card, the Fort Smith factory worker turned to eBay, the online marketplace that devotees know as the world's largest garage sale. Unsure how to go about selling his cards on the virtual market, Miller hired an unheralded breed of Internet entrepreneur, an eBay trading assistant. These small-scale businessmen sell castoffs on eBay for customers who don't have the time or the savvy to do it themselves.
Trading assistants, who operate independently but are registered by eBay and must have a strong sales record to qualify, photograph each item, write a description, monitor the bidding and arrange shipping for a fee.
Should Arkansans resolve to purge clutter after the Christmas buying blitz, the dawn of the new year promises a windfall for the 79 eBay trading assistants registered in the state. But the Internet boom that briefly ignited ventures like eToys or Egghead flared out long before it ever filtered down to trading assistants like Medalsguy in Cabot. "No action,"admitted Dave Grissom, a retired State Hospital worker who chose Medalsguy as his screen name because he specializes in selling military and police paraphernalia.
With no customers bringing in items to sell since he hung out his online shingle four months ago, Grissom continues to make all his eBay profits on merchandise he has procured himself. His inventory includes 5,000 baseball caps emblazoned with Navy ships that he bought from Bancroft Cap Co. in Cabot, and a cache of military artifacts that a partner has stashed in a West Virginia barn.
The allure of eBay has tempted dealers like Grissom since the online auction threw open its virtual doors in 1995. For the past 2 1 / 2 years, eBay has added a new dimension as 30,000 top sellers around the world have registered as trading assistants to sell merchandise on consignment for customers, according to a spokesman in eBay's San Jose, Calif., headquarters.
One can find a trading assistant through an eBay search engine accessible at pages. ebay. com/services/index. html? sspagename = h: h: serv: us under "advanced seller services."
EBay sanctions the trading assistants as a way to broaden its online market, which the company says has been growing every year. Its sales were up 78 percent in 2003, according to Securities and Exchange Commission reports.
Arkansas trading assistants reported few consignment customers, however - just a few tantalizing scores to keep them trying.
In Fort Smith, Ken Mullinax, who started his "Bay-Doctor"business as a sideline, brought in more than $3,000 for the baseball cards he sold for Miller, a co-worker at the Trane heating and cooling plant.
Miller, 46, who had been building the card collection since he was 8, said he went to Mullinax because he thought he could get more for the cards online than from a dealer. He said he needed the money because his son, Ian, was starting classes at University of Arkansas at Fort Smith. But Miller said he had never sold anything on eBay and was wary about trying.
Mullinax, however, first got his eBay identification in 1996. He was successful enough to earn a "power seller"designation, reserved for those who meet a monthly sales quota and have few customer complaints. Mullinax listed the baseball cards for Miller, getting $250 for the Koufax card, and close to $400 for a Roberto Clemente card that included a snipped piece of a game jersey worn by the late Hall of Famer.
For his work, Mullinax took a commission of 10 percent. Usually, it's more. While trading assistants charge varying amounts, a typical share is about 30 percent of the sales price.
Sharon Henry built a room onto her house in Lonsdale to store her eBay merchandise.
Henry, who operates as "e _ auction _ assistant,"said she started selling on eBay after contracting lung cancer. "When I was in remission, I was so bored I said, 'OK, I need to do something, '"she said.
She has made a niche selling used vacuum cleaners, starting with a model she sold online for a local dealer. Now she wants to branch out, perhaps into digital cameras and other electronics. "I would like to do smaller items,"she said," because these are huge boxes to send out."
Cindi Cobb of Heber Springs, a self-described mystic who sells on eBay to supplement the disability checks she collects for a short-term memory problem, has managed to sell a few items for friends and people in town, including a laptop computer that brought about $700. But Cobb faces crosstown competition from Andrea Mello, a single mother raising three children. Mello hustles eBay business through newspaper ads and a magnet sign on her car. She said she has five to 10 clients, off and on.
She scored big with an album of 75 old Army insignia patches that brought $550 for a client. At the moment, Mello said, she has a vintage Playboy magazine on the auction block for a client, and at last check, it was up to about $3,000 - if the bids prove valid. "I sold it in the past,"Mello said. "But the guy was a deadbeat bidder. So I relisted it."
Stay-at-home mothers and other small-time trading assistants face competition not only from one another but also from businesses that have started chains of storefront locations where customers can drop off items for sale on eBay. The biggest by far is AuctionDrop, a California company that signed a deal last summer with UPS to collect items through UPS Stores, including the ones in Arkansas. UPS ships the dropped-off items to AuctionDrop's processing plant in California, said Andrea Roesch, a spokesman for the company. She declined to release sales figures for the private company but said it started only last year and has yet to make a profit. But she said the business does surge this time of year as people make New Year's resolutions to get rid of junk and get rid of unwanted items from the holidays. "It's that whole'de-gifting' thing,"she said.
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