How to Lose on eBay

360/365 - Focused a photo by Wayne-K on Flickr.

My brother has a saying...."the best way to save money is to not look at stuff." I believe his exact words replaced "stuff" with an American slang for "merde." Anyway, his point is, if one spends a lot of time checking out eBay, Amazon, the Dollar Store, the Sunday newspaper ads, etc. one will find absolutely great deals on hundreds of items one does not need.

For that reason, I don't have an eBay account. This prevents me from catching the highly contagious auction fever and saves me a lot of money. I have only purchased a few things from eBay and got some pretty decent deals. For example, a professional Wilson A2000 baseball glove, an aluminum baseball bat, and a Hawaiian turtle (honu) pendant. Actually, I think that may cover just about everything I've gotten on eBay. When buying these things, I've asked my brothers to place the orders for me. Typically, these have been "buy it now" deals that were significantly cheaper than the non-eBay competition. I could probably have saved a few bucks by actually bidding on these items, but for me, it's not worth the hassle (especially for things that are already priced well).

I've been shopping around for a Nikon FM2 camera. Today, I found a great deal on one in mint condition. The auction was ending in 1 hour and 45 minutes, so I asked my brother to bid on it. Unfortunately, he wasn't in a position to bid on it, so he gave me his login info so I could bid on it....and I logged in immediately and bid on it.

Lesson learned....that's not how to win on eBay. I was supposed to wait until the last ten seconds and then throw in my bid. But, I probably did myself a favor. The title for my blog today is "How to Lose on eBay," but I should probably have named it "How to Save Money on eBay."

Here's a picture of the little one with her new glasses. She was focused on the computer screen, doing her homework.

Below is a picture of our family crest. This photo is dedicated to the people of Japan, especially those who have been impacted by the enormous earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster.