Limitless possibilities

I have to thank my BF from Chas. for hooking me on eBay. Last year, she was in town when I was in the midst of pulling baby things out of the attic to see what of OBB's clothes and toys might work for Baby Girl. Amongst the piles of smocked what-nots, BF convinced me that I was missing out on a major money-making opportunity, that these clothes needed to go on eBay, and I could sit back and watch the dollars flow in. And as you can imagine, the idea of money rolling in from anywhere is music to a stay-at-home mom's ears. I had no idea how right she was.

eBay has provided a great outlet for my enterprising spirit. At the end of each season, I dutifully sort through the children's clothes to determine what is eBay-worthy and what should probably just head to Goodwill. Then I box them up and wait until the appropriate time of the year to sell those clothes. For example, right now, I'm listing fall and winter clothes.

However, summertime is a little slow on eBay. June and July are too late to list summer clothes (if you really want to make good money) and too early to list fall (at least until the beginning of August). I found myself in mid-July with no obvious items to sell...so I went foraging through the closets. There's nothing quite like purging with a payoff.

I came across some items from my pregnancy/post-pregnancy days. (Ok, for all you guys reading this post, this is the time for you to stop reading and find another blog to look at for the moment. I don't want to hear that this was too much information for you. :-) Consider yourself warned.) Among those items were three nursing bras I had used for a couple weeks with each child. I knew I had paid at least $40 each for them, and it occurred to me that given the economy, someone having a baby might want a nice nursing bra at a good price. So I checked out eBay and sure enough, used nursing bras were selling like hotcakes. I listed all three together for a starting price of $9.99. By the end of 6 days, I had 7 people watching them. In the last hour of the auction, a little bidding war erupted with the final price topping out at $18.51. That's right. I sold my used undergarments for almost $20.00 on the Internet.

I think used nursing bras are probably the oddest thing I've ever tried to sell on there (that, and my mom's used Lexus floor mats which also sold for $20.) But this has ignited a new wave of curiosity for me...what random item can I sell on there next? Maybe I should keep an eBay log to document those out-of-the-ordinary items that I manage to unload for cold, hard, internet cash. It's worth considering.