Looping the Hen

Does one have a high enough feedback rating to have people pay premium prices? Can one cover the spread of fees between Ebay and Paypal, which can easily be 5-10% of the selling price? (at least on the small items I normally sell; the % decreases the higher the price of the item) Can one live with the vagaries of the market and the fact that at any time, an item might sell at less than what it was bought for? And for me, most importantly, can one make enough to make it worth the time to do it?

How about those folks who sell sets of cards or miniatures? They actually open all the packages, put together sets, sell the ultra-rares singly. Selling sets has to be profitible (considering the number of people who do it for a living), but I have yet to actually put together the numbers about how much investment one would have to put in to count on having sets. When I was playing Magic, we were talking about 10 or more boxes of boosters to guarantee a set, an investment that could be in the $600-700 range. If I bought miniatures cases, there are 12 rares per case; there are 20-30 rares in a set, so counting the vagaries of sorting, I am guessing 3-4 cases to guarantee a set, somewhere in the $300 range. The nice thing about miniatures sets is even the new ones are selling for $160-$180, so even if I had to purchase a couple of figures to make a 2nd set, I've covered the input cost fairly easily. All the figures left over are the 'profits' and just like in Magic, the good rares will run $5-$10. 4 cases of figures is 384 total figures; 2 sets leaves 250. Even at an average of 50 cents each, that looks like $120 profit per run, more if there are some good chase uncommons.

The question then becomes, how much time is it to sort, sell and ship 2 sets and 250 figures? Say several folks buy a few each, so I am shipping out to 150 people. At 3 minutes each (assuming a good labelling system), I've just invested nearly 8 hours to make $120. I could almost do better delivering pizza. Of course, if my numbers are off low and I average $1.00 per spare figure, it becomes a much more lucrative operation. If I am low due to packaging (though if one ships standard USPS at $3.85 the packaging is free), then one might be working for minimum wage.

The third option and one I am looking at is purchasing a case of 12 boxes of miniatures like I did, then selling them off singly at $20-$25 each. On one side, I get a discount for purchasing in bulk, and then a premium for selling singly.

Saint was always better at trading/selling Magic cards than I was, so maybe he has some input or data that would help see if my numbers are off!

Anyhow, my goal for this year is to make more off of Ebay than I did this year (around $6,000). Its going to be a challenge, as my 'easy money' is going away, so I am going to have to put some research into figuring out how to invent opportunities. Anyone who has any expertise in collectibles could probably do very well in their field never venturing outside Ebay, even with their ridiculous fees.

Update:

Looking at the set checklist for the newest set, there are now 24 rares and 9 ultra-rares in a set; that probably means 5-6 cases, or a $600 investment, and probably a $200-$300 return. Not bad, I may go ahead and try it and see what happens. More later!