Been hanging around ebay for a while, and of course got familiar with the two biggest TF dealer there: Wheeljackslab and Trendclick

Both sell large quantities of TFs, and pretty much all their items are overpriced. And, both are doing very well because people will buy them(probably because their rating is high so people feel safer?) Both know how to run business well and always response quickly to emails.

One thing I noticed is 90% of their items are BIN only(For trendclick, pretty much 100%), seems their auctions attracts alot of TF newbies.(Trendclick's price is usually negotiable)

Both don't buy TFs with their saler account, so where did they get the TFs? From another buyer account? Or collect them locally?

Recently another 3 ebay sellers have caught my attention:
GoodsalesgoneMad, 1Greatfind4U, Dbzgage

With those 3 around, your chance of snatching a BIN TF steal drops to almost 0%. If you check their feedback history, those guys bought TF cheaply(mostly BINs), and then sold them(using the same account) with much greater profit.

I wonder how much profit those guys can make in a month.(The dbz dude seems having a full time job on this) If they can pocket $3000 a month maybe I' should tell my wife to switch job  

 

Well, it's a free economy, so stuff like this happens all over the place with eBay.

It's the strange dynamic of attracting professional buyers and uninformed original sellers, then tossing them into the same atmosphere.

If you have a specialty (baseball cards, Star Wars, cars, homes, etc) you can make money doing something you like. There's no way in heck I'd try this for a living, but it sure does beat playing with stocks.




The biggest winner in all of this is eBay. Let's imagine this ...

Auction 1: TF's $100 BIN
Wheeljack's lab purchases.
Auction 1 has to pay eBay and Paypal fees. It'll be close to $10.


Wheeljack's Lab Re-Auction: parted out Auction 1

Wheeljack's Lab Re-Auction: parted out Auction 1

Wheeljack's Lab Re-Auction: parted out Auction 1

Wheeljack's Lab Re-Auction: parted out Auction 1

Wheeljack's Lab Re-Auction: parted out Auction 1


eBay is collecting more fees on an item that JUST went though their system. It's a never ending source of recycling funds.

The acquisition of PayPal was pure genius.

 

I just read an article in Forbes, in the doctors waiting room, that said since ebay went public, those original investors have seen their initial stock value multiply 40 times.

Also mentioned that they may have Amazon in their sights...

 

Wheeljackslab's(WJL) aren't overpriced, they're the average, sometime lower than average, he has a BIN only on items are for weapons, sticker sheets, and MISB/MOSC TFs so that's maybe half of his auctions. Trendclick is good on prices too but not the best. Also for the thing on how they acquire their TFs it's probably just a combo of flea markets/yard sales, eBay auctions, and for WJL he buys TFs directly from collectors.

 

Absolutely.

Lately I've been watching Google's new system--I doubt it'll replace PayPal, but some healthy competition will be good for the consumers.

 

I know a guy who is an eBay toy seller full time. He does well, any where from $2k a month to a record of $10k. So, I would guess any of the bigger sellers you've pointed out may be doing equally well or much better,

All those sellers and other big time ones probably have buying accounts. I've determined for example that the seller dit318 is also abandon.all.hope from purchases from one and sales to another. I'm guessing this dual account thing is to keep buying and selling feedback separate.

While eBay as a profession looks lucrative I couldn't find it fulfilling for very long. I'm out of school and jobless for the summer and have made eBay my "job", and I'm burned out on this stuff after 1.5 months.

 

My thoughts on this are that these sellers had to have the upstart capital to begin with. They buy toys in bulk, buy parts in bulk, then match them up to make a complete figure. You can make 100% profit on some of these.

It's just that initial money to buy the bulk toys and parts that would be my only setback. I could do it with the money I've made in Kuwait but, like any business, it's a big risk - more than most.

 

Wheeljack's lab has at least one buyer account on ebay. He once purchased a lot of transformers from me, I think it was one or two years ago. I can't remenber his ID.

 

Wheeljacks' lab has several accounts, I forget his other id's, but he buys mostly lots and parts lots and such. he also buys collections - same for DIT138 and Trendclick

A few years back, when I was on unemployment I used to buy incomplete but nice TF's and cheap BIN's - I'd get parts to coplete them here, wheeljacks' lab, wherever I could, and then I'd then sell the toy as 100% complete. No high BIN, just no-reserve auctions

I think I averaged only $700 profit a month, I don't have the buying power of the big ebay sellers. But I had a lot of fun doing it, and it held me over keeping up with my mortgage and all when I was out of work.

Now I only ebay stuff when I need cash - usually to by new stuff or whatnot.

 

Yeah I've wondered for those high volume sellers just where they get it all from and just how much they have to sell to make good money off it. Presumably they are ALWAYS looking and follow a buy-low/sell-high rule. I find that a lot of ebay noobs or just certain collectors, decide that they want 1 specific vintage item and then get impatient with it and move to pick one up within a few days (or the same day) of deciding. This leads to uncontrolled bidding (won't give it up when it gets too high) and also targetting which ever auction the person finds first with the item they have decided they MUST have. As these guys always have items out there that otherwise might only appear every few weeks on ebay, people end up leading themselves to these sellers. That's how I think it works.

Oh, and on a side note, I strongly don't recommend 'goodsalesgonemad' as he tried to rip me on shipping and insurance that I paid for and didn't receive and sold me a salvage job/repaired transformer. Here's the thread of the incident and his crudeness: http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/showthread.php?t=144021

 

Wow, 5k a month times 12 isn`t very bad at all. But it seems it would be a tiring ``hustle``. For some reason I picture these guys as smelly, 40 year olds living at their parents houses with radiation-tanned faces from being at their computers all day and pale-ass bodies from not seeing very much sun. Anyways, the dual account is also presumably so people can`t trace where what they are buying from and just how much cheaper the seller got it for, especially if they are repairing graveyard transformers.

 

Well selling fake stickers and parts seems like a good way of making money too. These two sellers are making big money: yc-collection and doufaceb. They sell large quantities and they're both powersellers. I wonder where these guys get their stuff.

 

YC-Collection is the worst for KO parts. It's obvious to me that all his stuff isn't authentic yet upon asking him about it he says it's all real from the 80's. Typically seeing a bagillion Prime fist pairs is a giveaway in his store, but when he puts them on live auction a lot of people don't realize they're KO and bid them up to vintage G1 prices. Of course it's even harder to report stuff like this b/c there's less evidence items are reproduced other than the unbelievable quantities.

Frankly they're making a lot of money off people's ignorance or failure to investigate the seller's selling habits. Being so picky, I can't stand the thought of picking up a "complete" Prime that has parts the seller honestly didn't realize were KOs.

 

Indeed.
Can only expect the average buyer to be in ignorance though when there's so much fakie and sneaky stuff going on with TFs that it would take a good 20 hours to read all about.

 

I don't see how they do it - 2-5K a month isn't much at all... hell, in today's economy, 10K isn't either. I'd almost be prone to think that they do it while they still live at home - or don't have other responsibilities like cars, kids, or wives.

 

Man... that $300,000 i make every year just isn't cutting it anymore...

For the record in case you couldn't tell that was sarcasm. I don't make anywhere even close to that in a year (although I wouldn't mind it).

Um....do you even live on your own? I don't mean to disrespect your own personal experiences, but I don't think that your assesment is too particularly accurate at all, especially in the very general sense.

According to some statistics, I just looked up only about 16% of American households make over $100,000 a year. So by your statements 84% of American households are struggling to stay afloat.

Many people in the US would love to make $120,00 a year. You could live quite comfortably (not exceedingly lavishly though) on that. In fact depending on the area you live and the way you prioritize your spending, you can live quite comfortably sub-$40,000 a year. In fact I know a couple who has actually raised 3 kids on less than $45,000 a year total household income and own (completely) a modestly nice home and have two cars in good working condition (one brand new). Its all about priorities, saving, and not overextending yourself. Anyone who can't live off of $120,000 obviously is spending way too much on luxury items that they don't really have.

Next time, you might want to do a little research before making such ridiculous general statements.

 

Cool down and relax a bit. If you felt this was an attack on you, it wasn't meant to be.

Yes, if it's really any of your concern, I do live on my own, and have for the past 18 years and change. And since I have some "expertise", if you will, in teaching social science and economics, so I am well aware of how much $10,000 a month is. The question is, are you?

Let's say that, for example, that someone is making (using the examples given above by macabremouse, and making a guess that the person in question lives in Washington State) that this particular seller might make $4000 a month. If he is doing this legit and paying all of this required taxes and it is his only source of revenue, he's making $48,000 before taxes and the expenses incurred by buying items to sell, various fees incurred as such.

Now, let's just say that after taxes and all other expenses in the business he has now pulls in $37,000 a year.

Now he's got to eat, pay rent or mortgage, have car insurance, health insurance, plus all applicable taxes on his property - and this is assuming he is not married or has any children. With the average household incomes of the area he may (going on a guess) be living in, he falls close to the lower average before any of the above factors weigh in. And let's say that they do... this now makes that $48,000 about $26,550.

A year.

Tell me who can live comfortably on that without relying on someone else?

 

I could live VERY comfortably on $5,000 a month, as it is I'm doing fine on less than that, and have been since I moved out on my own 15 years ago.

Still, I would never attempt selling TFs as my lone source of income.

 

Hey - just as a disclaimer here before you all go looking to put my nuts on a stick - I'm not trying to put anyone down here. I'm just a teacher, for chrissake. My wife and I both have to work full time to live what I feel is a comfortable lifestyle and take care of 4 kids, a farm, 3 horses, a mule, and a car...

I'm just saying that I don't think it's realistic to have to go to the expense of obtaining all of these figures in order to sell them and try and make ends meet on eBay. It seems to be a really unstable lifestyle.

 

I agree with that, but that's not what you said in the post that started this debate. Your original argument made it sound like people who make $5000 or less a month must be living with no responsibilities and with their parents, which is, in my experience, absolutely false.