Internet Entrepreneurs Blog

I’ve been going through all our junk in storage (shed, basement, attic) and I’ve come across some bulky collections I want to get rid of. There’s an unopened/unused George Foreman grill, a 21″ Sony Trinitron Computer Monitor, a remote “training” collar for a dog (read: shock collar), and countless other gems that should be a cinch to sell on eBay or Craig’s list.

In addition to these one off items I also have two rather large collections: CDs and Nintendos. The Nintendos span 3 generations: 2 8-bit NES systems, 1 Super NES, and the Nintendo 64 plus games for each system (50 games for the 8-bit system alone). My question: should I sell the games (and systems) as a lot or individually? Which will make the most money after accounting for listing fees?

The question is not as simple as it sounds. Listing as lots of say 5 or 10 games should give me lower selling fees on eBay but will I maximize the final selling price? Let’s start with an example. Mike Tyson’s Punch Out has been selling on eBay for between $10 and $15 on its own and the Legend of Zelda (gold cartridge) sells in approximately the same range (coincidentally I have 2 of each). If I put Zelda and Mike together in a lot of 5 games (let’s say the other games have marginal value) what should I expect the final price to be? Will the two popular games (plus the other 3) draw more potential buyers to the lot than each individual game would draw on its own? Will this send the price higher as Punch Out and Zelda fans duke it out to win the auction? Sadly I haven’t found any conclusive discussion on the subject.

I had hoped I would have duplicates of 5 games so I could set up a perfect test but alas, I do not. Looking at the values of completed auctions it doesn’t look good for lots of 5 (most sold for under $10). My approach will be to list the games individually with minimal promotion (no bold listings, no subtitle, etc.) and no reserve. For those games that don’t sell I’ll put them in a bundle to sell as a group. My plan for the CDs is similar, though I’ll use Amazon to list those instead. The only factor that may derail my plan is the time required, I’ll keep you posted on how that goes…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 2:33 pm and is filed under Business, The Internets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.