It’s that time again; time to break out the hearts, the chocolates and the flowers. Lovers will soon be buying gifts for their sweeties.

According to researcher IBISWorld, Valentine’s Day sales should be a little sweeter for sellers this year, as sales for the holiday are expected to increase by 5 percent.

Valentine shoppers last year spent an average of $116.21 on flowers, cards, jewelry and other gifts to romance the special people in their lives. Candy and clothing were among the top gifts, and they’ll likely be top gifts this year as well, notes Auctiva Product Analyst and eBay seller Rebecca Miller.

If you have these or other romantic items to offer, now is the time to get them prepped to make sure you get a little love, too, this Valentine’s Day. To best position items to make the most sales, we’ve come up with a few strategies you can enlist to entice lovers to buy from you.

Suggest gifts. We all know how hard it can be to find the right gift for others—especially when it’s that special someone—so make shopping easier on your buyers by helping them find the right gifts. You can do this by suggesting gifts, that is, by compiling a list of the top gifts for Valentine’s Day. You can keep it simple by coming up with two gift lists: top gifts for him and top gifts for her. Or you can expand your suggestions to include top gifts for mom, dad, wives, husbands, daughters, etc.

Dust off those holiday leftovers. If you’re unsure of what to offer, look back through the leftovers you have from the holidays. Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to clear out any romantic items that might not have sold for Christmas. Good V-Day gifts include perfumes, slippers, candy, relaxing robes, cookbooks and other items that will make a person feel warm on the inside. If you don’t have these in stock, you can often find these and other inexpensive gifts at local discount stores.

Add a little romance to your store or listings. It’s also good practice to remind shoppers that Valentine’s Day is just around the corner by adding an appropriate template to your listings, or even posting a countdown to the holiday on your Web store. This will remind them, while they’re looking at your listings, that they need to get their shopping done!

Offer free gift wrapping. If you’ve been selling online for some time, you know that several of the people who will stop by your store or listings will be last-minute buyers, who may not have time to wrap their gifts for their special somebody. So why not be a lifesaver by letting buyers know that they need not worry, you’ll take care of the wrapping for them?

Offer V-Day deals. Lastly, a holiday is always a great opportunity to have a promotion. This could be a Valentine’s Day sale, or a 10-percent-off coupon you’ll give buyers on Valentine’s Day if they buy from you. The latter won’t cost you much, and if you let buyers know about the promotion via mailing lists, social media, your listing and/or store, you could draw in tons of buyers.

These are just a few strategies that may prove helpful this February. What strategies are you going to use this Valentine’s Day to entice buyers to visit your store or listings? Let us know in the comments below.

At the beginning of every year, I try to come up with a few selling resolutions. Trying to be more organized, keeping better records and finding better merchandise to sell always seem to make it onto my list of resolutions. But this year, I think I may explore something else, too.

One thing I have wanted to do for some time, but haven’t had the time to explore, is building my own online store. Yes, it can be challenging, but it can also be very rewarding if you take the time to do it right. It can mean another source of income and added freedom.

If I ventured into that, I would, of course, use our own Auctiva Commerce software to get started. But then I think about everything involved in starting an online store and get a little nervous. For instance, I would have to consider my product line. The potpourri of random merchandise I currently sell on eBay won’t do on an online store.

I would need to find other inventory. I’d have to research my interests, see what niches are out there, see what items are in demand and what needs aren’t being met by other online sellers.

Then, once I had settled on a type of product or products, the real work would begin. I’d need to research and decide what shipping methods to use, how and what payment methods I’d accept, what my store and branding would look like, and how to drive traffic to my shop.

The last one would be the biggest challenge. Though the idea of having my own store is appealing, I know how difficult it can be for a “little guy” to stand out from the competition online. Sure, I have more than 12 years of online-selling experience, but I’ve never had to worry about driving traffic to a site.

Right now, I simply create a listing, use the appropriate keywords, give my items a competitive price and wait for the traffic to come to me on eBay.

I’m not saying I’m afraid of the work I would need to do to drive traffic to my store. I know I can submit product feeds to multiple services like Google Product Search and TheFind to make my items easier to find online, but venturing into the unknown is always scary.

It is intimidating if all you’ve ever really done, in the way of online selling, is offer your items on eBay or Amazon—two very trafficked sites.

I can’t tell you for sure that I’ll take the leap, but I’ll definitely look more into opening my own shop. Yes, eBay’s been very good to me for more than a decade, but maybe—if I do my homework—I can find another venue to offer my products and also find success there. What do you think? Should I venture onto my own store?

What are your resolutions for this year? Tell us below and happy 2012.

The holidays are a time to spend time with family, spread that holiday cheer and make a few sales, aka bucks. I recently decided it would be a great time to post a few items we acquired at a local storage unit auction to start 2012 fresh and free of clutter.

I posted listings for several vintage Whittall and Javits hats. The high-end caps were in great condition, many of them still had their original tags, and I thought they would make the perfect present for a few dapper ladies.

One of my listings sold right away. It was a lot of five vintage hats. Two others took a little time to sell, but sold eventually. A few didn’t sell. But instead of giving up hope, I decided to relist some of the hats. Among them was a lovely pink cap with a short white veil. I, personally loved it, and was hopeful someone else would love it, too.

This time that hat sold—and it sold quickly. However, the buyer won the item on a Saturday. By Monday I had yet to receive a payment. By the end of the week, still no payment.

I was losing hope that my buyer would pay and, being an occasional seller, I wasn’t sure what to do. In the past, I’ve received payment in less than two days. I asked our in-house selling expert Rebecca Miller for her advice. She suggested waiting a few more days to see if the buyer would pay then sending the shopper an invoice. She also asked me if I had explicitly stated in my listing how quickly I expected payment. I had not.

“OK,” I thought, “I know for next time.”

A few more days went by and it had been a week since the buyer hit the Buy It Now button on my listing. Still, no payment.

To start off the year on a good note, and with a clean desk, I decide to visit a local consignment shop to unload some of the other goods we had scored in our storage unit: two clocks, a retro lamp and a few hats. Among the hats was that lovely pink number I had yet to receive payment for.

Rebecca made the trip with me and, when she noticed the hat in the “consignment shop” pile, she said, “Now, hold on, missy. I thought you had sold that hat?”

I told her I had but that it had been a week and a half since the buyer purchased the hat and still no payment. I had even sent my buyer a payment reminder. She suggested I wait a few more days then take the hat down to shop.

I agreed, thinking I would surely need to make another trip to the shop in a few days. However, the next morning came and, when I opened my email, sure enough, the first message I saw was one from eBay letting me know that my buyer had paid for the item.

“Phew!” I thought. “That was close.”

Rebecca was right, as she often is. If it weren’t for her, I might have a very unhappy buyer on my hands. Luckily I don’t, and my package is now on its way to San Francisco to make a buyer very happy, and I’ve learned a couple things about listing that I can use next time I sell on eBay. Have you ever had a similar experience? What’s a good tip another seller has shared with you that saved you big time? Tell us below.

Before leaving the second storage locker we bought, Communications Manager Robert Green and I went through the items we had acquired at that day’s storage unit auction and divided them into three piles: trash, donations and resale items.

We had found a lot of great products at our first auction. Among our finds were 10 high-end vintage hats—many still with their original Macy’s price tags—eight antique Coca-Cola trays, tons of records from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, a wall clock and a watch. We decided we’d sell these on eBay.

In our second locker, we found a few more gems we thought might do well on eBay, but because they were big and fairly commonplace, we decided they would do better on Craigslist. We figured we’d just break even on this locker, which contained three inexpensive fishing poles, two computers, a couple of inexpensive tool boxes that contained an assortment of items and tools, a few algebra textbooks, a desk chair, a workout bench in decent condition, a few pots and pans, a lidless crock pot, a sleeping bag and more.

Expert advice

Right away, we sold a few items from locker No. 1 to a local collector for $300. That covered all but $50 of what we paid for both lockers. Then we really got into the sorting.

Our co-worker, Interactive Media Coordinator Steve Swim, is a novice record collector, so we knew he could tell us a thing or two about the albums we had acquired.

Steve found records like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” several Beatles albums, The Eagles’ “Hotel California,” AC/DC records and lots more. Altogether, he pulled more than 50 records he thought were valuable.

Our next stop, we decided, would be a local record store a few blocks from our campus to see if Steve was right.

Records are a hit

At the music shop, the store owner separated our collection into four piles: a $1 pile, a $2 pile, a $3 pile and a “no thanks” pile. Only four of our records made it into that pile.

“Looks like I chose some good ones,” Steve told us. He had.

After adding up our records, the owner made us an offer of more than $170. We talked it over and decided to sell him most of our records and keep a few that we thought would do well on eBay. Having done little work besides look at records, we left the shop with $150 in cash, and the potential to make even more with the few albums we took back with us.

With the few items we’d sold, we had already paid for our two lockers—and made a $100 profit—and we were just getting started.

Yard sale takes shape

Next, we decided to have a yard sale to get rid of a good chunk of the inventory that was left. We set a date, found a prime location—our co-worker’s lawn, which happens to be just a block from where our local farmers’ market takes place—and started prepping goods. We cleaned everything and asked Auctiva Product analyst Rebecca Miller, an eBay seller of more than 12 years, to help us price our items.

Since we were using our yard sale as a way to liquidate goods, we priced everything to sell and reserved our big-ticket items for eBay. Among those we set aside were the 10 vintage hats, the tin trays we found, the vinyl records we’d kept, a wall clock and a new car stereo. That’s not to say we didn’t offer any big-ticket items at our yard sale, though. We chose to sell the two computers, the workout bench, several Wii controllers and accessories, our fishing poles and several other valuable items at our yard sale.

We posted the sale on Craigslist, along with photos of those high-value items, to get some exposure and entice buyers. We also let bargain hunters know we’d be pricing everything to sell. And to ensure we’d have enough inventory, we let other members of the Communications team add some of their stuff to the yard sale. This would give them chance to clean out any of the clutter lying around in their homes and earn a few bucks, while giving us a little more eye candy for buyers.

On the morning of the yard sale, we had a steady stream of foot traffic, thanks to the farmer’s market down the street. The colorful signs we had placed at two busy intersections also helped, we were told.

Sale proves profitable

We sold a lot of the items from our storage units as well as things our co-workers brought. The interesting thing was what we expected to go quickly—namely, the two computers that were in great condition, according to our IT department—weren’t getting the interest we expected. But items we worried might not garner any attention—for instance that lidless crock pot and a used pan that had definitely seen better days—went very quickly. The prices likely helped, Rebecca told us later: $1 for the crock pot and $3 for the heavy-duty pan.

Pricing items low would attract buyers and might be the incentive they needed to buy something they might end up not using, like a lidless crock pot, she explained.

“It only costs a $1, so they won’t be spending much,” she told us.

Even an old photograph of a concert, a small children’s diary and a fabric patch featuring the United States flag sold. In all, we made about $250 from our yard sale. That brought our total resale to $700.

We decided to donate most of the leftovers to a local charity, but kept a few things, like the fishing poles sell on Craigslist. Those sold for $15.

Then we started listing items on eBay, and that’s where we are today.

Looking to the future

Of the hats we listed on eBay, we sold one lot of five, and one that was listed individually, for a total of $85, plus the cost of shipping. At this point we’re ahead about $450, a modest profit, but we still have plenty to sell.

We’re still working on listing our records. It’s time consuming. The good news is we’ve already found one Beatles collection like ours that sold on eBay for $200.

In all, we expect to make a profit of a several hundred dollars. But I will say this: We’ve worked hard for that.

Between finding the lockers, buying them, clearing them out, cleaning the item in the units, dividing goods, making multiple trips to a donation center, and listing our products, we worked a lot of hours. But we found that storage unit lockers can be profitable—if you find the right gem. We did with the first locker we bought. With Locker No. 2, we about broke even but, luckily, our first unit more than made up for it.

After our first-day scores, we (myself, Auctiva Product Analyst Rebecca Miller, Communications Director Robert Green and our cameraman Sam Johnson) were raring to go at the second storage facility auction we attended.

We decided that a second auction would help us better understand this sourcing venture so we could share tips with Auctiva Blog and Auctiva EDU readers. We had already purchased the contents of one storage unit for a mere $50, and had found plenty of gems: vinyl records, a men’s road bike, collectible metal Coca-Cola trays, high-end hats and more. We expected to make at least a few hundred in profits. We hoped to find more at auction No. 2. But like we learned at auction 1, you really never know what you’re in for at locker auctions.

We still had $700 in cash to play with. The storage facility where the second auction was being sold had a reputation of housing higher-end items, and we were dying to see what we could find.

But we had competition. The previous day, about 20 treasure-hunters attended the storage facility auction we went to. During the second auction, more resellers, including many familiar faces, were ready to bid and buy a locker.

The bidding begins

The day started off promising. An early unit was filled with well cared-for sports equipment like snowboards that were still in their original plastic wrapping, a black wet suit, scuba gear, a golf bag, golf clubs, tools and a very enticing plastic bin.

“Who knows what could be in there?” I thought.

We could definitely make a buck flipping that locker. The items were in great condition and had a lot of value to them. We were seeing why this storage facility had a reputation of high-end goods.

We set our bidding cap at $250. The opening bid was $100. Soon it was up to $150 then $200 then $300. It sold for $375. We didn’t go past our bidding limit.

We had already scored with the locker we bought at our first auction, so we were careful to not get caught up in the bidding frenzy and end up with more inventory than we knew what to do with. After all, we still had to unload the previous locker we had purchased.

Next, we saw a locker filled with heavy-duty tools like a hole digger, a dolly, several drills and painting tools. This was definitely valuable. Several of our competitors felt the same way. Bidding started at $300. Before we knew it, it was up to $425, then $550. That was too much for us. The unit was enticing, but researching the tools—something none of us had sold before—and the time needed to ship and prep goods for sale kept us from bidding.

A perfect find

Finally, we found a unit that seemed just right. It had fewer items than the other units and contained several Wii games sprinkled throughout various boxes of the unit, two computer towers, a box marked “parts,” an unopened car stereo, text books, three fishing poles and household items like pots and pans.

Off to the side was a workout bench that, in our eyes, had “Craigslist” written all over it. “Someone will definitely buy that on Craigslist,” Robert noted.

The fit seemed right: the unit’s size and the size of the items would make clearing out the locker easy in comparison to the mammoth unit we had purchased the day before. The unit’s contents were in disarray, which made us think few people would be interested in it, so we were certain we could get a good price. And a pile of blankets that sat in the back corner sparked our imaginations.

We started the bidding at $50. A few other bids made the asking price go up to $100. Then a last-second bidder bumped it up to $275. We were stunned, but didn’t back down. We came back with $300 and won. Robert quickly slammed the unit shut and put a shiny gold-colored lock on our unit. He seemed like a pro now.

Once the bidding was over, we returned to our unit to peek inside, excited about the computers and the fishing poles. We figured we could get at least $50 for each computer if they worked and, being in a city like Chico that’s so close to great fishing, the poles would be a hot commodity, we thought.

The Wii games were also a score. There were tons of them, and as we dug deeper, we found a box of Wii gaming accessories, including controllers.

“Someone will definitely buy these,” Robert said.

‘Gold mine’ not so golden

The controllers were in good condition and should fetch a decent profit, we reasoned. However, when we opened the Wii games we realized that only a handful had games inside. Most were empty. There went that potential profit. Strike one.

Next we inspected the pile of blankets that had been so intriguing. We found more blankets and a few school binders. Strike two.

As we dug deeper, we found a few cooking pans that needed a good cleaning. An inexpensive organizer sat to the side. Strike three. Nothing valuable.

But we weren’t out just yet. The box marked “parts” contained computer monitors keyboards and mice. “Those will earn us some money,” I thought. But such flippable finds were few and far in between.

Most of the items in the locker proved to be everyday wares like a dented crockpot and inexpensive blender with a missing lid. We did find a tackle box and toolbox mixed with odds and ends, but these likely wouldn’t fetch more than a few dollars, Rebecca told us.

When we were done looking through everything, we decided about half of the items should be donated to a local thrift store. They were in working condition, but weren’t worth the cost of reselling. However, a few items would bring us some money.

“We’ll probably break even,” Rebecca, an eBay seller of more than 11 years, told us. “It’s not the gold mine we found at the other unit.”

We decided that it was more cost efficient to sell the few items of value that we found in that unit locally via Craigslist and a yard sale. Few things were valuable enough to justify the expense of shipping and listing them online, so we put our heads together and came up with a game plan to flip our lockers. Check back to see what we did, and if we came out ahead.

Armed with $750 in cash and two flashlights, we drove up to a local storage locker auction.

The popularity of shows like “Storage Wars” and “Auction Hunters” intrigued us, and we wanted to know if storage unit auctions were as profitable as they appear on these shows, and if we could learn something from the experience to pass along to our Auctiva Blog and Auctiva EDU readers should they decide to try this sourcing avenue.

“We,” in this case, includes me, Product Analyst Rebecca Miller, Director of Communications Robert Green, and our cameraman Sam Johnson.

While each of us has bought and sold our share of items on eBay, this was the first storage unit auction for all of us. However, it was obvious that several of the 25 or so other attendees had been to one or two of these before. They came armed with at least one lock a piece. One man wore two locks on his belt. “Wow, now that’s hardcore,” I thought.

Auctions unveil a mix of gems and duds

The auctioneer explained the terms of the auctions: First, the storage facility would only accept payment in cash; second, vehicles and firearms found in lockers were not part of the sale and would have to be returned—and so would “Grandma’s ashes.”

“Good to know,” I thought.

One of the first lockers auctioned off contained several boxes and bags, a few vinyl records, a pair of baseball cleats, a colorful pile of clothing hangers and a box labeled “free.” We didn’t bid. We were looking for units that contained items we could resell for a profit and nothing in this unit struck us as high value. Others seemed to agree, and the unit sold for just $45.

The third locker was more intriguing. It was filled with big items like a stroller, a baby walker, a wrought iron baker’s rack, a water cooler, several remote control race cars and loads of items we couldn’t see. The goods were in need of a little bit of cleaning, but they were in great condition.

The big items would be hard to ship, but we decided we could unload these on Craigslist or at a yard sale and still come out ahead. We gave ourselves a limit of $250 to bid on this unit. (Before the auction started, we decided to set a cap on what we’d spend on each unit depending on its contents to make sure we wouldn’t get caught up the bidding excitement).

Unfortunately, the auction veterans also saw resale value in this locker. The opening bid for the previous unit had been $10. For this locker it was more than $100. Bidding quickly got up into the $200s, then $300. We lost.

The next unit looked like another dud. It contained several bags of clothing and boxes of worn shoes. Two broken glass vases sat in one corner of the unit and marbles were scattered throughout. A safe was in plain sight, but the look of the unit led us to believe that there wasn’t anything of value there. Items appeared to have been thrown in with little care. We expected this unit to sell for $40, tops. The opening bid was $75.

Bidding was up to $140 before we knew it, and the unit sold for $160. Robert and I were shocked. Rebecca wasn’t.

“There was a safe in there,” she explained, her 11 years of eBay-selling experience showing now. Chances were the safe wouldn’t contain anything valuable, she added, but the possibility was sure to intrigue bidders enough to pay top dollar.

A diamond in the rough

By this time, the auction was nearly over. Only two units remained. We started to think we might leave without buying anything, and we were OK with that.

Though we had come to the auction in hopes of finding a unit full of items to resell, we only wanted to buy if we thought we could make a profit. We had seen some prospects, but the profit potential stopped us from going above the cap we set for each locker. Then we got a look at one very dusty, very full unit that contained mounds of papers, a few metal filing cabinets and a road bike.

When the door opened to reveal this unit, a lot of people quickly looked and walked away. The unit was a mess. It was obvious the contents had sat there for years. Clearing out the unit would require several truckloads to the dumpster—but Rebecca saw dollar signs. She noticed the bike leaning against the wall and quickly had Robert research its value using his cell phone.

The men’s Raleigh road bike turned out to be worth at least a couple hundred. We decided we’d try for this unit. The work it would take to clear out the unit didn’t outweigh the profit we could make. The bike, alone, would make us some money and the filing cabinets also seemed like they would fetch a pretty penny. Rebecca estimated they’d earn us at least $50 a piece. With the three in the unit that was $150.

Robert opened the bidding at $50. “Too much,” I thought. Everyone else seemed to agree. No one else bid, and just like that we had scored a unit.

After the auction, we returned to the locker to look at the bike, which was in great condition. Our cameraman Sam made his way over the piles of paper to get a better view of the unit and Rebecca started digging through items. Soon we uncovered vintage hats with their original tags still on, a collection of Coca-Cola metal trays, several typewriters, a new projector screen still in the box, lots of vintage magazines, a used Casio keyboard in great condition, a vintage personal computer, a vintage alarm radio and much more.

“Thank you dust bunnies for covering all of these,” I thought.

We’d unknowingly hit the jackpot, for a mere $50 investment.

The experience swayed us to try one more auction to see if we could hit the jackpot twice. Want to know if we did? Check back here to find out.

Sometimes, eBay sellers need some extra cash to advance their business. The reasons can vary: inventory, education, supplies, employees, etc.

Getting ahead of the game can be challenging at times, and today I am here to tell you about a “new kid on the block” called Kabbage.

Kabbage is a certified provider, approved by eBay, and gives “cash,” “advances” or “working capital advances” to eBay sellers, which they can use to take their business to new selling levels. Kabbage also does this for Amazon and Yahoo store sellers.

I’ve had the opportunity to meet with the staff of Kabbage at several eBay: On Location events, and I must say, they are quite impressive. Kabbage has a one-of-a-kind style, very different from most other lenders. There’s no comparison. It gives advances based on your Internet history of selling.

Kabbage looks at your PayPal history as well as eBay feedback. You can use your years, or months, of selling experience to show you’re a good seller and a good person to lend money to. Good or bad credit, the cash you get will be based on an online selling history report that only Kabbage can compile, with permission, after sellers submit their applications for a Kabbage advance.

I had the pleasure to have Kathryn Petralia on my radio show, PowerSellingMomRadio.com. She is the co-founder and chief operating officer of Kabbage. Tune in to this archived show to learn more.

She told us that the fast-growing company recently received a patent, protecting its trademark name and got $17 million from investors to help even more sellers.

“Receiving this patent is a huge win for Kabbage, as we believe this patent and many of our pending applications will be required for the delivery of financial services to merchants selling products and services online,” notes Rob Frohwein, Kabbage’s CEO and one of the world’s top intellectual property strategists.

“Thousands of online merchants have obtained working capital and grown their businesses since our push into the market in April 2011,” he continues, adding that, though small businesses fuel the majority of growth in the U.S., it is difficult and time consuming for them to apply for small-business loans.

“Kabbage fills this need by providing money to these businesses in a quick, easy and painless way,” he says.

If you’ve been looking for a way to add more money to your PayPal account and grow your online business, you may want to check out Kabbage.com.

It’s been 25 days since I began my selling challenge: a challenge to myself to see if I could sell at least 50 of the many, many items I have on my desk. So far my personal challenge isn’t doing so hot.

I really, really wanted to get myself motivated to clear some of this clutter that is taking over my desk. (OK, technically, it’s already taken over my desk —and the floor space underneath my desk and a storage closet I have here at work). What happened? In a nutshell, work and life happened.

We’ve been super busy around here, updating various features and pages to keep up with eBay’s latest policy changes, and trying to prepare for the next round of changes that take effect in the fall. I’ve been updating FAQs, testing out new page flows, testing new features, etc. This left me with little time to take photos and get some of my hoard listed on eBay.

I did have a glimmer of hope this weekend, when nine of my bead packs sold. That brought my sales for the month to 16. It’s not terrific, but hey, considering that I hardly spent any time this month listing anything, it could be worse.

I still have faith in my beads, aka my secret weapons, and there are still a few days left in the month of July. I’m going to try to make one last selling push and list a few more products this week. That’s the plan, anyway, but we’ll see what happens. It’s looking like another busy week here at Auctiva, and that might mean my sales will have to wait. Keep your fingers crossed for me and check in next month to see how it all turned out.

Like many people, I get an urge to start some serious cleaning in the spring. Last weekend was no exception. My garage was full of boxes (some filled with random items, others totally empty). I had tossed them in there because there was nowhere to put them in the house. After doing this all winter, I thought it was time to clean out all the empty boxes and go through miscellaneous items from around the house.

Where to begin? Many boxes and plastic totes hadn’t been opened in years! We’ve moved several times over the last decade, and some boxes would repeatedly get shelved or stuffed into a closet and forgotten. But during my spring cleaning frenzy, I decided to go through some of these and sort the contents into categories: toss it, donate it, keep it and eBay it. At the very least, I would clear up some much-needed storage space by getting rid of this stuff that we obviously weren’t missing.

Our daughter’s craft kits from grade school? Still new, but not valuable enough to sell. Donate box. Travel-sized bottles of toiletries from various hotels we stayed at more than a decade ago? Garbage. I guess I thought I might need them someday. Two packages of Polaroid instant film for a camera I don’t own anymore, with an expiration date of 2002? My first reaction was to toss ‘em, but something told me to wait. My “eBay-dar,” perhaps?

The next day, after recovering sufficiently from my cleaning, I popped onto eBay to check on that Polaroid film. Much to my surprise, even though the film was nearly 10 years past its expiration date, people were paying big bucks for it. Why? I don’t know. Maybe because it’s kitschy to take pictures that have that filmy look to them? Perhaps people just love their instant cameras, and refuse to switch to modern ones? But, to be honest, I wasn’t so much concerned about the “why” as I was about the “When can I put this up for sale!”

My seven-day auction ended at $60 for the two packages of instant film. I was hoping for $75, but, hey, $60 is pretty good for something I was about to toss in the trash. It just goes to show that if you have a hunch that something might be valuable on eBay, you should check it out before you throw it out or donate it. You may be tossing cold hard cash in the trash!

Have you nearly tossed something that turned out to be valuable? Or have you kicked yourself for getting rid of an item that you found out later was worth big bucks? Share your story below.

Last week I found several very nice pairs of high-heeled boots for $10. What a steal, I thought! But I wasn’t exactly daydreaming about how the pointy-toed shoes would make my feet look. I was thinking about the potential profit I could make if I sold the shoes on eBay.

Normally, the boots retail for more than $40, so getting them for $10 was definitely a bargain. However, I restrained myself from buying the shoes on the spot, knowing that research is always the first step to any successful selling venture. I knew I needed help from our product analyst and in-house Top-rated seller Rebecca Miller. She’s been selling on eBay for more than 11 years, and is filled with knowledge, so when I got in the following day, I asked Rebecca for her advice as to whether I should buy those boots. Rebecca’s questions helped me realize there’s a lot to consider when sourcing new items.

The first thing Rebecca asked me was, “Are the boots name brands?” Yes, their price was a steal, she told me, but that didn’t mean the boots would sell. And if they didn’t, she reminded me, I wouldn’t make any profits.

“You might be stuck with them,” she noted.

I needed to research the brands to see if they were popular. This meant looking at closed listings to see if the brands I saw at the local shoe store were being offered on eBay—and if they were, were they getting bids. If the demand wasn’t there, there was no point in buying them.

Next, Rebecca said, I needed to find out how much the boots were selling for on eBay. Now, I was looking to hold onto these boots until the fall and winter, so looking at closed listings might not be the best indication of the price I’d get on eBay then, but I used the closed listings as a guide.

I found that the boots were going for $12 or $14. That wasn’t much more than the $10 per pair investment I was looking to make. If I included the cost of shipping, I would make a modest $4, minus listing and transaction fees. That’s definitely not much.

But then I thought, I could buy a lot of boots and make a profit that way. After all, $4 times 30 is $120. Then Rebecca asked me another question, “Where are you going to store the boots?” That was a good question. I live with two roommates and a dog, and space is definitely limited. And if I was going to store the shoes until the fall or winter, I would need a place to put them where neither the boots nor the boxes would get damaged in any way. People want quality items; they don’t just want good prices.

Rebecca also reminded to look carefully at what sizes were available in each boot style. The boots were, after all, marked down because of the change of season and the limitations in sizes. So if the sizes were too small or too big, that might affect demand.

Lastly, she asked me, “How much is your time worth to you?” She reminded me that I would need to take time out of my busy day to write descriptions, photograph the boots, list them, ship them, etc. “Is the $4 per pair worth it to you?”

These were all good questions. I’m still mulling them over, and am not sure if I’ll make the purchase. There is a potential for a profit, but I’m still not exactly sure it’s enough to justify the investment—or the loss of space; maybe I’ll just buy a few pairs and see how it goes. At least if those few don’t sell, I can always give my sisters the gift of boots for Christmas, and I won’t be out too much money, plus, I’m sure they’d love the present.

What do you think I should do? Should I make the purchase? Any other questions I should ponder as I think this over?