eBay

I have an eBay account.  It's actually a lot easier to sell on eBay than it looks.  I signed up for the account in order to sell my collection of Precious Moments® figurines.  My grandmother bought my sisters and I each an item from a collection annually since we were little (Precious Moments® for me, Hummels® for Sarah and Annalees® for Chloë).

I'm not a big collector (unless we're talking clothes!), and the porcelain figures are kind of a pain to store, transport and display.  So a year after she died in 2008 I asked my mother and my grandfather for permission to sell the figurines to people who would love them and they agreed.  So that's how I started on eBay.

After successfully selling almost all of the Precious Moments®, I started sporadically selling other things...gifts we couldn't use, books, clothes, etc.  I don't always charge for shipping so sometimes I just break even.  Still, it's good to get stuff out of the house.  Plus, now I have a good reputation on the site and I can buy stuff with no difficulty. 

I just bought My Husband a Lonsdale Boxing sweatshirt (Lonsdale Boxing is an English brand of sports clothing and you can't get it in the United States)...I brought one home for him in 2006 when I came back from my semester abroad in Great Britain and it looks grody and needed to be replaced.

Still, I wonder sometimes where this stuff is going.  Ever watch that show Hoarders on A&E?  It would be weird if something I sold on eBay shows up on top of a pile of stuff at a hoarder's house.  I'll be watching placidly and the therapist will pick up a package of heart-shaped doilies from my overflowing box of holiday stuff and say, "Well, what would happen if we threw this away?"  Has that ever actually happened to anyone?

Once I was watching Addicted and the show's host took a young addict/prostitute to an old prostitute's rathole apartment and there on top of a dilapitated dresser was a pair of purple faux-snakeskin pumps.  I totally had those shoes in my closet.  Not the same pair, mind you, but the same type of shoe.  You should have heard My Husband laugh when I told him I wore my junkie hooker shoes to Easter service in 2007 with cream slacks, a violet top and a cardigan. 

I just sold them to Plato's Closet (a local thrift store) two weeks ago.  Got me $5, too.