Batmobile for a Ventriloquist

     Due to the Holiday Season the auction business slows down quite a bit, both live auctions and eBay auctions. The Harris Brothers did have a special Thursday night auction on December 20th that Andrea and I attended. I can guarantee you that you WILL read all about it in an upcoming post, however, that will be when I feel eBay is back to normal and it will be a more traditional article where you can track the featured item's progress. This post is a story from the past and one of my favorites actually. The time I sold a Batmobile to a ventriloquist.

     It was the Monday about two weeks before the premiere of the final chapter in the Christopher Nolan Batman series, The Dark Knight Rises. Honestly, I have no idea if events, such as the release of a movie, have a direct effect on items that share a common theme, but I could argue with this instance that it does. I walk into the auction house and in booth one both Andrea and I see something that is pretty sweet looking. Are you thinking that it is something like a Batmobile? Good, because it was this:

     This is a 1989 Tiger Electronics Batmobile "Handheld" LCD Game. Remember the Tiger handheld video games? The ones with the three inch simple lcd screen. Well, this is one of those on steroids. Here is a better shot where you can see the screen and controls.

     It still has the very simple three inch screen, the difference is the elaborate controls. This game is actually quite rare and even more so in working condition. Kids playing the game, jerking the steering wheel and the gearshift knob makes a lot of these not working properly. This one worked just fine.

     Andrea expressed interest in this game and told me I should buy it. I had already thought that myself but she said not to bid too much because it was untested. That was a good point and I believe that that fact alone scared off many of the bidders. I let Don(the auctioneer) go all they way to $5 before I opened the bid. I gave him a simple nod and was ready for the excitement to begin. The problem(or complete lack of a problem) was, there was no excitement to be had. Where the bid started and stopped was one in the same, $5. It was hard to hold back a smile.

     The eBay auction was pretty fun to watch. After the first day, the Batmobile already had over one-hundred views, which is very rare. By the third day, the game had about thirty watchers and the top bid was up to around $30. When the auction closed, the top bid was $184.50! I let out a cheer. This was my second biggest score(when you figure the ratio of money spent to money earned) to date. As if this wasn't pretty awesome, the story gets more interesting.

     Like the best buyers on eBay, this guy payed instantly. So I package up the Batmobile and look up the address in my Buyer Details page. I write out the entire address before I realize what I wrote down. This package was addressed to Jeff Dunham. I am sure there are a few thousand Jeff Dunhams in the United States but this package was headed to an upper scale neighborhood in California. Okay, so there are probably more than one well to do men named Jeff Dunham. So, then I checked his user name. I am not going to disclose his entire user name but it starts with "jjalapeno." Jeff Dunham has a puppet in his act with the name Jose Jalapeno. Now I know that all of this is quite circumstantial because someone with the name Jeff Dunham might have thought it funny or cool to name his eBay account after a puppet in the famous Jeff Dunham's comedy act. Then I looked at when the account was created. This user account was made in 1997, more than five years before his first Comedy Central solo appearance, and WAY before he was a household name. With all this information put together, I am sure THE Jeff Dunham bought my Batmobile.

     Thanks for reading and please look for my next posts, especially when I start the $10 Auction Experiment in 2013. Keep Your Eyes Open!

Update - Andrea's Night Out & Three Dollar Surprises

     It's that time again. Time to find out if 'The Auction Picker' and his 'Secret Weapon' raked in a profit, or settled for a loss. So let's just jump right into it.

Andrea's Night Out:

      I will go right in the order in which they were featured, so, how did we do on the dollhouse furniture? Not bad, and whenever your answer is 'not bad,' it is a good thing. The Winged Chair sold for $45 and the Green Tufted Sofa sold for $24.99. If you recall, we paid a total of $50 for both boxes of dollhouse furniture. So, with just these two pieces we made $19.99 and the rest of the contents have not even sold yet.

     Now for the Nut Dispenser/Candy Machine. All I can say for this one is, Andrea definitely has a good eye. We bought the Nut Dispenser for $12.50, the final bid ended at $43.51. That is almost a three-hundred percent profit margin of $31.01. You have to love that!

     Lastly is the Cocktail Mixers. I was actually pretty shocked and dissapointed with this one. I was estimating that these would sell for around $35. Well, they only sold for the opening bid price of $9.99. Andrea and I paid $13 for the whole stack of items that had the drink stirrers on top of it. There was a chess board on the bottom of that stack that ended up selling for $9.99 and there was also a 1920's piano music book that I have for sale in my eBay store for $19.99. So when all is said and done, we will make some money off of this purchase, just not as much as I had initially hoped.

     Andrea did a pretty good job and I am always glad to have her by my side.

Three Dollar Surprises:

     Following the same format, I will start off with the Ghostbusters Firehouse. I paid $3 for this item and I was very happy to see the final price of $72. Yes, you read that right, $69 dollars of profit off of a $3 purchase. That is a GREAT score! Believe me, it is a great feeling when that happens.

     Not to be outdone or overshadowed by the Ghostbusters Firehouse, Mighty Max wanted to prove his worth too. I also bought the Mighty Max lot for $3 and it ended with a final bid price of $22.85. I realize that there is a huge difference between making $69 and $19.85, but what you have to look at is the fact that I only paid $3 for each item. Most people operate with the thinking that if they can double thier money than it is worth it to purchase the item. I think this way too. However, imagine how awesome it would be if everything you bought was going to sell for seven times the money invested.

     The last item for this update is the Marx Campus Cuties. This is another instance where I was dissapointed with the outcome. They only sold for $38 when I had $25 invested in them. $13 is a decent profit, but I was expecting about a $35 profit. I made this estimate based on what other lots of Cuties have sold for on eBay. So remember when I wrote 'I may have jumped the gun?' I did. However, at least it wasn't a loss.

     Well, Andrea and I had fun, and most importantly we made some money. This is why I started this blog. I want everyone who is reading this to see that if you want to make some extra money, it is out there to be made. For anyone that thinks 'well, I just added it up and in two weeks you didn't really make that much money.' These items that I write about are only the items I want to feature and that I think are interesting. You should see my basement!

      Look for my next featured post coming up soon and there is a special auction this Thursday at the Harris Brothers so hopefully I'll be buying a ton! Keep Your Eyes Open!

Three Dollar Surprises

     Monday, December 10th, Andrea and I were at it again. Our operation is very reliant on two people that have absolutely nothing to do with the auction. My parents. They always watch our two oldest children while we are out on the prowl. So, thank-you very much Debra and Scott Williams. Now, lets get to the reason why you all are here!

     What happens when no one is bidding on an item and the auctioneer reaches the minimum bid price of $3? One of two things actually, either the item passes and is given back to the consigner, OR you bid and win:

     This is the Ghostbusters Firehouse Play set with the Highway Haunter Car made by Kenner in 1987. The Ghostbusters toy line was created in 1986 to mirror the animated series, not the movies. While this line of toys had a five year run, it really wasn't that popular. That is until about a year or so ago.
     I remember about a year and a half ago, I passed on a box full of Ghostbusters Action Figures from this line when the bid hit $10. At the time, that same box would have sold for $15 on eBay. Now, there is no way it would sell for less than $60.
     In no way will I exaggerate the truth, I knew that Ghostbusters toys were up in popularity, even more so that they were featured on 'The Toyhunter,' but I didn't know exactly how high. How about you find out with me, here is the link to my $3 purchase:
Ghostbusters Firehouse Lot

     What is better than one $3 purchase? Well, two of course. I won this next item via choice out of the remaining items in the booth. I wanted one item and one item only. When the auctioneer started the first round of bidding, I ran the bid to $8, and passed to the other bidder. At that moment, I looked around and realized something, no one standing around me would want the item I wanted. So I waited out a few rounds of bidding, took a chance, and won this for the $3 minimum:

     You are now looking at a lot of Mighty Max playsets. Bluebird toys in the early 1990's made a very popular line of toys that is actually still going strong today. You know them as Polly Pocket. Well, they tried to market the same idea to boys, in the form of Mighty Max. Mighty Max was a little boy who fought against mad scientists and monsters. He was never as popular as his counterpart Polly and the powers that be changed his entire storyline and marketed him to an older audience.
     Let's hope this lot has legs and runs me into a good profit:
Mighty Max

     The last thing I would like to feature is a group of lovely ladies, also known as Marx Campus Cuties:

     Made by the Louis Marx Toy Company in 1964, this line of toys was one of a very few attempts to market toys directly to girls. Whether it was intended or not, Marx making these unpainted was quite the way to spark the imagination of little girls. How so? Armed with a paint brush and some paint you could customize your favorite Cutie just the way you like.
     I ended up winning these thirteen gals for a price of $25 total. There is not much to this story. I saw who was standing around me, which was all of the toy buyers in the room, and started the bid at a price that I thought would just scare them off, $25. That's right, no one bid. Hopefully I didn't jump the gun. You can find out with me:
Campus Cuties

     That is all for this time. Please, follow along with me as you can see anything I list on eBay right here. Also, look for the update post for Andrea's Night Out coming soon after those items end. The update post for this entry will be coming soon because these items end on Monday night. Keep your eyes open!

Andrea's Night Out

     I have mentioned that this next post was going to be about my partner in crime, my wife, Andrea. So, everything you read will be her story and her experience from the 12-3 Monday night auction. You won't be getting the history lessons that I normally tell you because frankly, I don't know about the items she bought.
     You know by now that I deal mainly with toys. This very fact alone makes Andrea worth her weight in gold. Having another pair of eyeballs with unique thoughts is almost neccassary. I see husbands and wives EVERYWHERE at the auction house, but they always seem to like the same thing and they reassure eachother about the same purchase. Andrea and I are a different story as you will be able to tell because all of these items I am about to feature do not fall underneath the toy umbrella.

      First, the doll house furniture. I know what some of you are thinking, "doll house furniture are toys." No, they are not. Barbie doll house pieces of plastic are toys. This, is not a toy:

     This is a House of Miniatures Coronation Series Scale Reproduction of a Green Tufted Sofa. Then there is this:

     This is a Winged Chair from the same series. I am adding this next photo because Andrea thought it was funny the way I set it up:

                             I believe this to be a handpainted German made Table and Chairs.

     The story how Andrea got these was quite funny. There were nine boxlots of doll house furniture on the table. The Sofa being in one box and the chair in another. Those were the only two boxes Andrea wanted because those were the most valuable pieces on the table. Well, she went head to head with a collector/hoarder, the worst kind of competition. The auctioneer tells the crowd that the boxlots of furniture will be choiced out. Andrea and the other lady go back and forth until the bid hits $27.50, Andrea decides not to go to $30 and the lady wins the choice. She takes two boxes, not the two we want. Bidding starts again, guess what happens.... the SAME THING! Andrea bids her up to $27.50 again and she takes two more boxes, neither of which are the boxes we want. Bidding once again starts for the furniture lots, Andrea hits $25 again and starts shooting mind bullets at the back of this lady's head, she looks like she is going to bid again and then shakes her head no. Don(the auctioneer) yells sold, Andrea takes her two boxes. Exhausted emotionally, we walk away from the booth for a minute to gather our wits. Yes, it is a strain on you mentally sometimes.
     Doll house links:
     Sofa
     Chair
     Once again, there was more in the boxlots and you can see some of it if you look up teen_titan_fan on eBay.

     Andrea won this pretty cool piece for $12.50:

     This is a counter top candy or nut dispenser. It is most likely from the 1960's. It is about eleven inches tall and made of cast metal. You pull out the metal handle on the front and there is a teaspoon resting inside. You lift up the spoon and have a perfect teaspoon of whatever you have stored. Perfect for baking! You can see what this sells for here:
     Nut Dispenser

     Now, probably the wierdest thing that has ever come home with us from the Auction House:

     Made in the 1950's, these are Ubangi Drink Stirrers. They show the effect of age on an African American Woman's Breasts. Pretty offensive in my opinion, they fall in the same category as the Sambo themed toys and the Jolly N----r Cast Iron Banks from the previous decades. There are collectors out there that love this kind of stuff. I don't think they are buying it to continue and breed hate but to show just how far we have come as a Nation.
      I was debating whether or not to showcase this item and I decided that I needed to because there are people out there that don't know that this kind of stuff was even made. This stuff is part of our history. Offensive or not.
     Drink Mixers

     The drink mixers were thrown onto a stack of items that included an old wooden chess board and a book of sheet music. The total price Andrea paid was $13.

     All in all, Andrea had a busy night. I did not bid on a single item that Monday and I can't wait to see the totals. I bet you can't either. I will post an update as soon as these items sell. "Keep your eyes open!"

Update #1 - Monster Monday or Micro Monday?

     Here I go with the first update to a previous post. If you read "Monster Monday or Micro Monday?" I am sure you are just dying to know the results. Well, if you guessed Micro Monday, you win!

Micro Machines #1
Micro Machines #2

     I paid $11 for the boxlot containg the Micro Machines. Just the Micro Machines sold for $29.25, if you add in the other items that were in the box you get a grand total of $52.74. That is a great overall buy!

     The Monster High dolls did not sell for the $9.99 starting bid that I placed on them. I looked over the listing to see what went wrong and found out that I put them in the wrong category when compared to other Monster High dolls. I am going to change the listing and try again. I also did not list any of the other contents of this particular boxlot. So far this box is a complete loss of $15.

      I will not do another update on this post, but I will, however, mention in another update post if I ended up making any mone on the Monster High boxlot.

     Here is a teaser for the next post. What in the world?

Monster Monday or Micro Monday?

     As I had stated earlier, there is an auction every Monday night at Harris Brothers Auctions, and that is where most of my material will come from. I want to post something about every Monday night experience. That being said, life happens and I haven't been able to write about Monday, November 26th, until now.
     When you walk into the auction house on a Monday night it can sometimes be a little overwhelming. Why? Because you walk around the corner and see this:

     Fifteen booths of stuff from fifteen different consigners. Every Monday night there are well over a thousand items to look over and search through. Toys are MY specialty so the first thing I do is look for toys, whether they are from the 1920's or today. This particular Monday there were quite a few to choose from. My secret weapon(Andrea, my wife) and I ended up winning the bid on two boxlots in particular. We won a boxlot containing two sealed packages of Micro-Machines, and a boxlot containing two loose Monster High Dolls.


     Micro-Machines were made by the company Galoob in the late 1980's. They are miniature diecast vehicles that were normally packaged five in a package. They made just about every vehicle you can imagine. The biggest claim to fame Micro-Machines have is the fact they were featured in one of the highest grossing movies of all time, Home Alone. Kevin uses Micro-Machines in a trap he made for the two burglers. Needless to say this boosted their sales bigtime!
     Andrea and I won the boxlot containing the Micro-Machines for $11. There were other sealed diecast cars in the box with them and you can see those on my eBay account teen_titan_fan. This is the first post where you can view the eBay auctions while they are going on and find out with me if I made a good purchase or not. The links:
Micro Machines Lot #1
Micro Machines Lot #2


     The first wave of Monster High dolls came out in 2008 and were made by Mattel. The cartoon has become very popular with little girls most recently and their merchandise is flying off of the store shelves. Well, in 2008 that was not the case. They were produced in a more limited run and most of the dolls actually went to the clearance shelves. If you could have predicted the future you could have bought first wave Monster High dolls for $7 each in the box and sell them anywhere from $60 to $120 a piece!
     We won the box with the Monster High dolls, along with other goodies, for $15. When I give an update to the post telling what everything sold for that I have links to, I will also give totals on the other items if they too have sold. Monster High links:
Monster High Cleo
Monster High Frankie

     So will it be a Monster Monday or a Micro Monday? I will give an update to this post to see how we did. I will also be writing the December 3rd post shortly so look for that: SPOILER ALERT... Andrea did most of the bidding so she'll get her first featured post! As always, "Keep Your Eyes Open."



          

The Lucky Centurions

     Today I would like to start off with an old saying that we've all heard at some point in our lives: 'sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.' Although I would like to take all the credit when I hit a homerun, I would be be doing myself a huge disservice if I didn't recognize that luck plays role in the auction game. Through being lucky, we gain knowledge that will help in future buys. Now would be a good time to introduce my next topic. This is one of those times where luck shined down on me and I bought these guys:

     What you see are The Centurions. They were made by Kenner in 1986 and were adapted from a cartoon series that aired in 1986-87 and only lasted 60 episodes. The cartoon featured three 'good guys' named Ace McCloud, Jake Rockwell, and Max Ray. They fought against the evil cyborgs Dr. Terror and The Hacker. The Centurions had special battle suits, that were teleported to them from their space station, for any situation they faced. Although their cartoon series was short lived, the action figures are wildly popular.

    As you can see from the picture, The Centurions action figures came with a massive amount of accessories. You attached these accessories to the action figures to create their battle suits. One rule of thumb when dealing with action figures is this: accessories are almost always more important than the figure itself.

     That last sentence is the perfect lead in to how I aquired this lot. It was a typical Monday night at the auction house. I had my eye on only one section of the room. There was a table with about fifteen 1-gallon plastic Zip-Loc bags stuffed full of toys from the 1980's. There was everything from GI Joes, to Transformers, to MASK, to Thundercats, to Masters of the Universe. There were also bags full of just the accessories from the aforementioned. I figured that I would win these bags for around five to six dollars a piece. Then, right before they were about to be auctioned off, in walked Jason, my arch nemisis. Jason and I go head-to-head on all things action figure. Needless to say, we butted heads yet once again. The bags were choiced out and Jason won first choice at forty dollars(yes, I ran him up that high).  He took one bag and they started again. Jason then won second choice, for thirty dollars(me again!), and he took one bag. I ended up winning third choice for twenty-two dollars and fifty cents, and I took the best bag just loaded full of GI Joe and Transformer parts. Right then, everyone around Jason and I started bidding on these bags like they were full of gold. Bags that were somewhat worthless were selling for fifteen and seventeen fifty a piece. I think everyone just got caught up in the excitement because they were literally taking bags that weren't worth what they were paying.
     When there were seven bags left I had top bid of eight dollars and won the next choice. I scooped up the remaining bags and ended the frenzy. In those seven bags were included the topic of this post, The Centurians.
     Now I had no idea the value of that bag until I got home. It turns out that very picture above was worth a top bid of $65. That is just over eight times the money, which is always a homerun in my book.

 

Hot Wheels

     I wanted to start out with something very simple. A piece that when I describe it and how I won it, I describe some basic auction terms and slang that you will hopefully get to know through reading this blog. The item is this:

     What you see is an original 1967 Hot Wheels Redline Era Starting Gate. When Mattel came out with Hot Wheels they were marketed to young boys to actually race their cars against each other. The starting block was a very simple way to facilitate that. You connected it to pieces of official Hot Wheels track, each kid put their cars in position, and then depressed that middle button to start the race. Rinse and repeat and see what kid had the fastest car. But wait, how do we know what car won the race? Kids are kids and they love winning. What is a fair way to tell which car won? Well....

     That is the Hot Wheels Redline Finish Line. You connected that to the end of the track. Whichever car hit that little stick first, the flag would fall in that direction giving us an undisputable winner.
   
     So how did I get a hold of these two pieces(piece is what everyone uses to describe any item)? I won them in a box lot of Hot Wheels Track. What is a box lot? A box lot is literally a cardboard box filled with items. You are bidding on the entire box and not the individual pieces inside. I was eyeing the box all night long and thinking to myself that it had to be good. Well the auctioneer decided to sell the box choice out with a table full of other items. What is a choice out? A choice out is when the auctioneer sells a group of separate items together, highest bid wins first choice and you can take as many items as you want at the high bid. The reason for the auctioneer to do this is to create competition for an item where there is none. Two people may want two different items but they do not want to risk losing the item they want, therefore they bid against each other.                

     Anyway, it seemed to me that no one wanted this box but me. The first few bidders that won choices looked at the box with disdain. So I patiently waited them out and ended up winning the box for five dollars.        

     The contents of the box were quite amazing, especially at the price I paid. Included was three starting gates, two finish lines, a redline sizzlers juice machine, an airbrake, parts and pieces of the tune-up tower, and tons of track pieces. I like to sell everything separately and I have actually already sold these items on my eBay account, my primary selling outlet. My username is teen_titan_fan. Here are the links to both items sold by me:

Starting Gate
Finish Line

     As you can see, the starting gate sold for $15.51 and the finish line for $10.50. That is $21.01 profit from ONLY TWO items out of the box. I would have to say I have made well over $50 from one $5 purchase. That is a ratio I would take any day.

Introduction

    First and foremost, let me introduce myself. My name is Ben Guith, I am married, and I have three children. Like a lot of people in the United States I was looking for an alternate source of income to supplement my wages as a bartender at a local chain restaurant.
     I was, at the time, looking for Legos for my kids. My plan was to buy collections of Legos, give the building blocks to my children, then sell the Minifigures that came with the collections on eBay. My kids get toys they like and I turn a small profit. It seemed like a win win scenario for me.
     At my job, I worked with quite a few servers with children that were older than mine. I began asking them if their kids had Legos they no longer played with. One server in particular said "No, but I know where you can buy some for cheap." Well, I got pretty excited. She then proceeded to tell me all about Harris Brothers Auction House in Flint, Michigan. She told me about how on Monday Nights, they hold what is called a Shipsee North Auction. This is styled after the Shipshewana auctions in Indiana where there are three auctioneers auctioning items at the same time in different areas.
     Needless to say, I was hooked from the start(Interesting fact, I have only bid on and won Legos once in the two and a half years I have been attending auctions).  I mostly deal in toys, my specialty being toys that were made in the 1980's, but on occasion I have branched out into items such as figurines, sportscards, magazines, and art glass.
     The point of this blog is to show and educate people on what I have learned in my experiences. I will basically be blogging about how my process works; attending the auction, bidding on and winning specific items, and selling them for profit.   I plan to show the item's eBay link so you can see how much money I made, or didn't make.
     Also, I am planning a project that I thought would be awesome for the reader to experience with me. Starting January 1st, I will take ten dollars and see what I can turn that into by the end of the year.
     Some of the blog entries will include my super talented wife that has better eyes than me most of the time. All in all, hopefully we will learn more about what sells great and what doesn't, and make some money along the way.