Welcome to my slimey blog

My First Entry

Greetings to all!
I hope ya'll find something worth reading here...if not today, some other day in the future.

I've been 'online' since Jan. '98 and in that time I've spent alot of hours on eBay, both as a buyer and seller. I've interacted with 'all kinds' as the old foks say.
The thing that brought me to eBay was Beanie Babies. Yes, I was one of those crazed Beanie Collectors-and later Sellers-who stood in lines at Hellmark Stores, Zany Brainys, etc. in 3 states for the priviledge of giving them $5 or $6 for a cheap little kid's toy. You are thinking, "This slug has/had waaay too much time on her hands." Between having 3 kids under the age of 8(one of which was 2 and still home all day), no job out in the workplace, an incredibly small house to clean & no adult to talk to, yes, I did have alot of time on my hands to drive around and shop.

I didn't get into Beanies early enough to have had any of the real old 'valuable' ones and I didn't spend outrageously inflated amounts for the hard to find ones or the retired ones. I knew and still know waaaay too many people who spent $100 or more for a Princess Beanie back in the day. By waiting a few months after it was released, I was able to get one for $5 reg. retail instead of having to pay through the nose to a secondary source like a flea market or eBay. I did turn to reselling some beanies on eBay in order to pay for my habit......sold things like Valentina bear beanie on eBay for $40 when it first came out and I happened to find one in a store for $5. Now that beanies sell for pennies on the dollar, even the old ones, do I feel bad for conning someone out of $40 for a toy? Nah.....it's a Free Market Economy baby! Something is only as valuable as what someone else will pay for it.

My main TY Addiction wasn't beanies, it was Attic Treasures. I switched over to Attics soon after finding those. Having alot of disposable income b/c of a tiny mortgage then on my tiny house, gave me quite the blank check for spending too much on these toys. I saw I could resell these Attics as more people discovered them, so I ended up acquiring many many Attics to resell on eBay.

When the Beanie/Attic market started it's fast slide into the basement in early '00, I got stuck holding lots of inventory that I couldn't sell. *sigh* Where was that damned crystal ball when I needed it?! I donated tons of them to various charities(Sallie's, Goodwill, various fundraisers that needed prizes, etc.) over the last few years. I still have boxes tucked away around here but I am hopeing that by the end of this year, I can completely 'divest' and put this long, ugly chapter of my addictive personality to bed.

So that, in a nutshell, is how I ended up selling stuff on eBay. It was a way to get rid of things(if only recouping small portions of what I spent)and then to sell off other things taking up space in my life. Every year, as eBay raises their fees and gets more impersonal and changes up the way to do things just for the sake of changing things and not for making the process any better, I tell myself I'm going to quit eBay at the end of this year......at the end of this season.......at the end of next month....... eBay is a hard habit to kick and I never seem to reach that deadline and actually stop even though little tiny sellers like me on eBay can't really make any money.

I predict that the next big money making scheme for eBay will be psychologists who set up eBay interventions for concerned families and offer therapy for eBay addicts. Besides the Sellers who sell Shipping Supplies to other Sellers on eBay & eBay executives, eBay Therapists will be the only other people actually turning a profit from eBay.

Ok....enough for now. Time to slime back under my shell.
sluggy