The trick to E-Baying is to sell a bunch of stuff all at once. That way you won’t get discouraged when stuff doesn’t get a single bid, because you’ll be racking in so much money from officer club ashtrays.

The exception to this, of course, is selling identical items. If two people want the same thing, they’ll both drive up the price, whereas if there are two items, they can each get one for themselves cheap. As a guy at the fur auction said, “All’s you need for an auction is feller with money and another with guts.”

Michele’s been cleaning out the basement. A quarter of the basement is now lined with new shelves from Home Depot with a wide avenue between them. Until recently, it was tricky to walk in there at all. A lot of what was in there has ended up in the trash. A lot more has ended up in the downstairs hall. She threw out all the empty boxes I was collecting to ship the things she has me E-Bay. Then she told me to E-Bay three things.

One was a waterproof sock that you put over your leg cast and then pump it to make it watertight to you can swim in it. It didn’t work for her. It didn’t sell on the first try but then went for 99 cents on the second. Fortunately, I had a box the right size for it stuffed under my desk.

Have I mentioned that I compulsively save empty boxes? I have four on my desk at the moment, plus another one with an unknown number nested inside it, plus peanuts. I have a large box full of small boxes out in the outside storage room, but Berck has blocked it in, so I can’t very well get to it. I’m in charge of selling things on Amazon (which is even easier to use than E-Bay), and it’s very frustrating to be furiously searching for a box the size of one that your husband just threw out when you have to SOLD, SHIP NOW.

The two identical items Michele had me sell were two Iceman cold therapy units. They’re not cheap, so she was hopeful they’d bring in some cash. Only one of them had a power adapter, but I managed to find one that worked out of the power adapter drawer. I spread out a sheet, took pictures of both ensembles, and put one of them up to end on a Sunday night. The next Monday morning, it had sold for $29. I sent out an invoice, got paid, and shipped it out. Michele had been kind enough to save two boxes the right size for them. Got good feedback too!

Then I listed the second one. A week later it had sold for $73! Identical item. If I had sold it a week earlier, they probably would have both gone for $15. Or maybe $28.

Auctions are weird.

I have to say that E-Bay has made it a lot easier to ship things these days. Used to be you had to figure it all out for yourself and hope you weren’t losing money. Now you can just put it into the embedded shipping calculator. And when it’s time to ship, you just head over to PayPal, and it gives you a postage paid label to put tape on your package. Then you just drop it off at UPS or USPS.

I hope the last package gets there. I sent it to Canada, and the guy at the UPS store wasn’t sure how to handle the customs situation. We ended up taping a photocopied piece of paper on the side of the box listing the contents and value, which is all you should have to do.