More families part with precious wares on eBay

By ASHLEY LUTHERN

The demand for eBay-selling classes is growing.

YOUNGSTOWN — People are putting prices on those “priceless” family heirlooms or necessities they previously never thought that they would let go.

“I had a girl come in here the other day looking to sell her laptop,” said Bill Stiles, owner of E-Pro Auction in Youngstown. “She had lost her job and needed gas money to get herself to interviews.”

Stiles, 42, has used the Internet auction Web site eBay for seven years and now has his own computer and eBay store.

He’s recently noticed that not only are local people coming to him more frequently with sentimental valuables, but they are also trying to sell whatever they can.

“People are scraping the bottom of the barrel. They come in here with junk all the time, but I have to be realistic for them,” he said. “Sometimes they’re so convinced that something is worth a ton of money, but usually their taste is reversed. What they think is worth a lot isn’t really worth anything.”

Stiles charges a starting rate of $8 to list an item to guarantee himself a minimum wage compensation if an item doesn’t sell. It also protects against customers asking him to list items that will only fetch $5 to $10.

It’s the unusual or unique items that are garnering the most attention from buyers, not the common items that can be purchased at discount retailers, Stiles said.

Steve Serednesky, 27, also said it’s the unique quality of an item that will make it sell.

“You can sell anything on eBay, that’s true, but the catch is that it might not sell for a lot anymore. There’s a certain kind of anything that will sell,” said Serednesky, owner of E-Auction King in Canfield.

It’s weeding out the nonvaluables from the valuables that takes time.

“[EBay] is no longer the garage sale in your living room,” said Dora Zandarski, a training coordinator at Trumbull Career and Technical Center.

The center has offered eBay-selling classes twice a semester, but there’s been such a demand for the class that it will be offered once a month. People have to learn how to market auction items online, Zandarski said.

“A lot of time people want to sell things like car parts or mink coats. Basically, they’re one-time sellers, but they take the class and have a lot of fun,” she said.

As an individual seller, Zandarski said she used to get about $7 an item for professional clothes, but now she’s lucky to get 99 cents.

The fact that clothes and other everyday items are no longer selling at high prices is no surprise for Brian Orfin of Warren, who has been auctioning antiques and toys on eBay since 2000.

“People get the mentality that you can sell anything, but that’s not true,” Orfin said. “It’s a solo job and I have to grind it out to make ends meet. I go to garage sales and auctions seven days a week. It’s a full-time job.”

Orfin was a teacher when he began selling things online during his lunch hour. As he realized that he was making more money during that hour than his teaching salary, he quit his job and devoted his time to collecting and selling antiques and toys on eBay and at his shop, Nowhere Antiques.

It’s more difficult to find quality goods than it used to be 10 years ago, but that doesn’t necessarily mean eBay will no longer be one way to make a living, Orfin said.

“If you’re creative enough, there’s a market for a product, and people always want to get rid of stuff. You’ve got to stay on top of the market and what the going rate is,” he said.