When I saw this plane at a garage sale I knew it was special. The age, the completeness in parts, the rust, and the weight. All spoke of a good find that will be appreciated by the paying public. I wasn’t wrong. I paid $5 and cleaned it with care. I researched the name embossed on it; bailey No. 5. A patent of 1910 is also found in front of the rear handles. To list it on ebay I took 20 photos and put a $74 price on it. There was instant activity but no sales.

Since this $5 purchase I ran into trouble with Ebay. It happened when I tried to cross list to other markets. When cross listing you have to be aware that your one product is listed twice in two separate markets. If it sells in one, it’s not available for the other. If someone buys it at the other market; the market it’s not in, you have to cancel the order. Ebay hates that and if you do it too many times they take action. After a few cancellations I went from Top Rated seller to below average. That put me in the doghouse. In order to get back in a competitive position I need to sell, sell, sell. Even if I don’t make a profit, I need to sell until I get back to average seller. a below average seller pays more in fees and what’s worse is that they loose their visibility. On search results they are dropped to the bottom. They also can’t promote products which is half the reason I get sales. My sales went from daily to a complete stop. From daily to not a sale the first week. I made major changes, learned a lot, and enacted a plan to get back up there. I reduced a good portion of my products by 50% than another portion by 60%. The plane was reduced by 60%.

The plane that I was selling for got reduced to $30. Today I got an offer for $21. My beautiful plane went from $74 to $30 to $21. I accepted the bid at $21 and got the sale. I under estimated the shopping by $3.80 further reducing my profit. My net on the item was $9.64. but I paid $5 (Cost of Goods). That reduced me down to $4.64 profit. Some may say, “hey, at least you made a profit. It could be worse, right?” I may have made a profit, but I feel like I’m “paying the price.”

My compulter repair bill came to $82. It turned out to be bad rAM. I was running 32 GB. Now I’m just at 16 GB but running great.