Ebay completed auction listings are great to look up the price of items you want to buy, or when reselling items on there you can see what the average prices are that the similar goods sell for.  You can use them once you are a member of Ebay and can look up as many product listings as you want.

Ebay Notebook

As a long time member of the community, I have learned the importance of this feature.  I use them when buying and selling baseball cards online.  This way of looking up prices can be used with any type of good or service, however.  What I do is pick an item that I am going to list, such as a 1988 Topps Football Bo Jackson card and I look up how much recent ones have sold for.  That gives me an indication as to what I can expect if I were to list the same card in the same condition.

It also can give you an idea as to how much competition there is.  For unique items, you would want to look at comprable items whereas with commodity type items such as the football card I mentioned here, you can directly see what the other sellers have been receiving for the item.

When buying items to resell, you also do not want to overpay on them and this tool also will let you know if you are paying too much for your items.  Say, for example, you want to buy 10 IPods to resell.  If you buy them for $1,500 from a wholesaler and you see that you can sell them on Ebay for $160 per the completed auctions, you are looking at a $10x10 or $100 profit on the merchandise.  Do not forget to take into account selling fees, shipping costs and ending price uncertainty when coming up with your estimates, among other things.  Taking good pictures and describing your items well is also paramount to success on ebay.  For more articles, click Ebay Notebook above for our home page.