eBay alchemy

For giggles I listed one of my USGWaste.com rounds on eBay this past week and despite silver collapsing like Perry's poll numbers, I actually made $7 on the thing.  That's not a heck of a lot of money, but it's something.  With an appreciation of incremental progress in mind then, I've decided to spend the next year trying to parlay that initial $40 investment (my basis for the coins, since I bought them when silver was far cheaper than it was a week ago) into an ounce of gold.  That's ambitious, yes?

I figure if I can flip that initial investment 25 times on eBay, I can get pretty close to an ounce of gold.  A couple of caveats.  First, my goal is today's gold price, not the astronomical level I expect the yellow metal will attain next year.  Secondly, I'm too lazy to add up all the transactional costs.  So just assume they're all equal.

I'm going to try and diversify from precious metals trading, simply because it'll be more fun.  So I need to get on eBay and find what I can buy for $47- what's selling, what's moving, what's in demand.  My theory now is to buy something Thanksgiving related this week and then sell it next week, and then do the same thing with something Christmas related.  I'll keep you informed.

Isn't the free market wonderful?

UPDATE:

I've decided to abandon this idea.  I have the store (below) streamlined nicely.  But eBay sales include far too many transactional costs to make the effort worth it.  In order to grow my initial sale of silver into an ounce of gold, I'd need to conduct about two dozen sales.  That itself is a tall order, but when you throw in the two or three emails per sale I'd need to write, add up the time it takes to deal with PayPal and other forms of payment, toss in the time I need to spend receiving and resending stuff, it adds up to a significant amount of time.  While I'd find the effort amusing, even if I made $2,000 or so on it, it's just not worth the hours.  I'd rather finish the biography of Evel Knievel I'm reading, and move onto the other pile of books I need to plow through before I order anymore.

This has been an instructive, albeit brief, exercise though.  It reminds me of a lesson so many in government forget: it's good sometimes to give up.  We in America are so intent in not surrendering that often we ignore the reality that not every plan is a success.  This problem is especially acute in government, where programs are seemingly eternally, regardless of their utility.

In fact, rereading my reasoning up above, I realize how much I sound like a naive progressive.  "If I can just flip these coins.... if I can just find the right stuff to buy and sell.... if I just ignore transactional costs.... if the price of gold just goes up a lot...."  Those are the fundamentals of business!  Assuming such obstacles will simply fall is idiotic.  It was foolish for me to believe regarding eBay and it's stupid for bureaucrats to believe their grandiose projects.  The phenomenon does give an indication of how USG and other government thinkers can just assume taxes can be raised with minimal impact- it's a fundamental misunderstanding of how difficult it is to earn capital.

I can't pretend to be a successful business person.  I do have some history of business failures though.  And while those efforts haven't made me super wealthy, I have gained a great deal of understanding and appreciation for the private sector.  And that's worth something.

And yes: I listed another round on eBay.