Timing is of the essence

As we prepare to leave New Zealand we have spent a lot of time listing things for sale on Trade Me (it’s a NZ based auction site, Ebay has very little penetration in this market). It’s been interesting watching the different sales, how much they go for or whether they sell at all. Of particular interest to me is how we can list an item for a week and have it go through unsold without even a sniff of interest and then relist it the following week and have two bidders go to war against each other for the privilege of being the next owner of our stuff.

It just goes to show that it’s a matter of timing. Waiting for the right person to come along who recognises the value of what you have on offer and clicks on the button. One of the great things about online auctions is you significantly increase the pool of people browsing through your stuff and there by increase your chances of catching that willing buyer. For us though time isn’t something we have a lot of at the moment so everything is being listed for $1 reserve. This means that some items are going for rock bottom bargain prices. From our perspective though it’s one more “thing” that’s been disposed of to a good home and turned into cash (albeit less than what we hoped but still more than what we had with it sitting unsold)