Good deals on eBay wholesale lots

Once in a while I like to peruse the wholesale auctions on eBay.

(OK, I like to do it pretty often.)

If you're looking to buy something, it's usually cheaper per unit to buy a few (or a lot) all at once. You don't even need to search in the “Wholesale Lots” categories — just put in your favorite search term, and then “Sort By Price, Highest First.” The wholesale lots will be near the top.

Whatever you're interested in, there's a good chance that someone is interested in selling their collection to you, for one reason or another. Like CDs? How about over 10,000 CDs of just about any kind of music you could think of, for a little over a dollar apiece, plus shipping? Or a personal collection of DVDs for $3 apiece?

Now, of course, overall the price will be higher than if you bought just what you need. And if you don't need 1,000 pens, it isn't going to be a good deal. But if you can store the extra, you'll need more down the road, and it won't spoil, why not? Same thing goes if you think you can sell off the extra for more than you paid for them through other venues, like yard sales, flea markets, etc.

We bought 36 rolls of painter's tape for a little over $1.50 a roll, shipped. This stuff costs $4-5.00 in the store. We've also bought $200 worth (easily) of scrapbooking supplies for $60.

If you collect small things — salt and pepper shakers, Smurfs, Heroclix, Pez dispensers, gold coins, and the like — deals are all over the place, and the prices are usually quite good because there are usually more sellers than buyers for small collectibles. Our local discount grocery store was selling Star Wars Pez dispensers for 50 cents apiece, still wrapped. People were doing even better on eBay — you could buy three for a dollar. Four for a dollar if they're not in the package.

These wholesale lots often go for good deals because the price acts as a barrier to entry. Not everyone can afford, or want, to buy 500 Heroclix figurines at the same time, or 25 sets of guitar strings, or 36 rolls of painter's tape. Sometimes the seller will offer financing, but sometimes not — you either put it all on your credit card or pay cash.

6 thoughts on “Good deals on eBay wholesale lots”

If you've got kids, eBay is a good source for bulk legos. You can often find odd lots of X pounds of Legos up for auction. The marketing on these often isn't great — it's usually a picture of a huge pile of Legos on someone's kitchen table. But if you're just in the market for lots of Legos and don't care about having specific (and complete) sets, this is a great way to go. About two years ago I took advantage of a couple of these deals and got an instant (and large) collection for our kids for about $60 (including shipping, which isn't always cheap when you buy multiple pounds of something). When you consider that the little individual kits start around $10 apiece in stores, I'd guesstimate that I got well over $400 worth of Legos. If you were really into this, you could sort your purchase by color, type of block, etc. and sell off subsets for a profit (e.g., 50 white bricks, 20 grey flat pieces, etc.) as these sorts of auctions go for far more per piece than do the bulk auctions.

By the way, this post reminds of something that I'd like to try… As a grand experiment on human nature (and human intelligence), I'd love to trying selling stuff at a garage sale for $0.25/each or 3 for $1. I'm curious how many people would jump on the 3/$1 'deal' just because it sounds like a good deal, despite costing more per unit than individual purchases. Perhaps I'm underestimating the intelligence of the average American, but somehow I don't think so.

Yes nickel Legos are great to get on eBay. One idea I had one time was to buy a bulk lot, organize them and sell them off by color. One of my wife's classmates collects Legos for stuff and he bought some of the smaller lots when I pointed them out on eBay, so there is a market for the little lots.

I have utilized Ebay to sell bulk lots of books. I tend to find an author I like, then purchase as many of their books as I can. I have found that selling lots of books by the same author gets the best return on Ebay (versus just a lot of books by genre).