The X Files Strike Again

When Trish and I were first selling things on eBay, I felt really encouraged when we had a pretty fast turnaround on an X Files t-shirt. So in the fall of last year, when we found a set of X Files-themed Barbie dolls, we bought them, even though they cost more than most items we pick up at the thrift store.

Well, it took quite a while to sell these. We listed them on craigslist a couple times, too, and never a peep of interest. Then today they sold for $50. We were pretty excited!

Really if I were a collector, I would like these dolls. They even come with little badges, and their clothing is pretty cool, too.

It just reinforces the lesson of patience. I think that a lot of people who are successful eBayers have a separate space for storing all their finds as they wait for the right customers to come along. We are kind of in the middle of the road as we have a spot where we tuck away our stuff, but it's not a huge space.

Honestly, one of the things I like about online selling is that there are as many ways to sell online as there are online sellers! I don't think there is one "right" way.

Step Right Up!

I have to admit that while my heart is still with the Fisher Price Little People that I remember from my childhood in the 1970s and 1980s, I'm warming up to some of the newer FP figures, like this little carnival barker. Fisher Price stuff from all eras is fun to buy although its selling potential on eBay (and elsewhere) varies widely. We bought a few newer (post-2000) playsets at yard sales last summer and found that the only stuff that bought us a really solid return was a big lot of Christmas-themed toys.

We sometimes sell individual pieces (like the little guy above) as "replacement parts" for other sets. People do sometimes want to buy a certain figure or part from an otherwise complete set. These aren't big ticket items, of course, but they are fun to buy and sell, and it feels like we're helping people to recycle and keep using their playsets rather than buying brand new stuff.

The Pleasures of Vintage Toys

If you want to find some neat vintage toys to sell on eBay, you might want to look at toys that were popular in the 1990s. It's my recent experience that women who are in their 20s and early 30s are eager to buy some of the toys they enjoyed as kids, such as vintage Polly Pockets and the original Littlest Pet Shop toys.

It's interesting to consider these two lines of toys in particular because both are still available--but the current toys are a lot different than the originals! The new Polly Pockets are much bigger than their old-school counterparts; I'm sure there must have been some kind of choking issue with the teeny tiny dolls from the early sets. There really is a charm to the older toys as the cases are like little compacts.

Meanwhile, the new Littlest Pet Shop dolls look a lot different than the 1990s ones. The new ones seem to have been influenced by Japanese animation and have large head and large eyes in proportion to their bodies. On the other hand, the old-school LPS are more realistic looking in their depiction of animals, mostly household pets like dogs, cats, bunnies, turtles, and so on.

What prompted this post is that we just sold a vintage Lewis Galoob Pretty Castle set of toys which also date from the 1990s. The dolls are very similar to the Polly Pocket dolls--little tiny figures that you can place into little pieces in the floors of the different rooms of the castle. It really is a cool playset. Below are a couple of pics.

What are your favorite vintage toys (I use "vintage" a bit loosely!)?

Starbucks Bearista Bears

The Starbucks coffee line of plush teddy bears includes some very cute bears dressed in nice outfits. I found a golf-themed one for a friend's birthday--the little bear was wearing a golf outfit complete with a cap, and was carrying a set of clubs. I also found a winter-themed bear wearing a puffy jacket layered over a sweater. The level of detail in the bears is very nice, and you can generally find them for just a dollar or two each at thrift stores.

As with anything else, the price varies a lot on the bears. As of the other day, I hadn't listed any on eBay yet although I'd bought a couple that I've been meaning to list. Then Trish visited a few thrift stores while I was running some errands, and she had found a bearista bear dressed in a puppy costume and carrying a Chinese lantern--it's a bear made in 2006 to celebrate the year of the dog. Turns out that there's a series of international bears themed for different years in the Chinese lunar calendar, and they are very collectible! So rather than "meaning to list" this new bear, we photographed it right away!

Here's the listing for our Chinese New Year Bearista Bear. I listed this with a pretty high fixed price because there are very few of these bears available. We'll see what happens!

Finding and Selling Toys for Collectors of All Ages

It's interesting to learn about some of the many different collectibles which sell on eBay. Trish has been researching the Littlest Pet Shop toys because a few of these are in high demand, and it's a bit of a mystery as to which ones are the hot sellers. LPS is a series of little animal figures for kids, and you can buy different playsets for your little pets (houses, treehouses, vet centers, etc). Most of the little animal figures go for just a buck or two each, but there are a few that will sell for a lot more.

Turns out we had a little collie dog that was a high-demand pet, and when Trish listed it, we could see right away that lots of people were viewing it and adding it to their watch lists. It ended up selling today for just over $30. If only all of our LPS toys were like the collie, but alas...!

I think of the LPS toys as being collected by kids, and I've got to wonder if people buy the pricey individual pets to help their kids complete their collections, or if the adults are collectors, too.

Another collectible we recently learned about is a teddy bear named Muffy Vanderbear. There's a whole subcategory on eBay for Muffy-related items under the larger dolls and bears category. We picked up a bunch of odds and ends at a $1/bag sale at the end of a Daughters of the American Revolution fundraiser sale a couple weeks ago, and it turns out we'd bought a little plush cat named Purrlie. Purrlie is Muffy Vanderbear's cat. I didn't know there was a teddy bear out there who had her own cat, but you learn things every day!

I'm pretty sure that Muffy and her friends are collected more by adults than kids. I was telling my mom about Purrlie, and she said she has a friend who has a Muffy doll on display and dresses the bear up in different outfits for different seasons.

We lucked into getting a whole set of Purrlie-related items at the DAR sale, including Purrlie's cushion and basket, and three little costumes. We just listed these as a lot, so we'll see what happens. Here's our Purrlie getting ready for a nap in her basket.

Open to Possibilities

One of the biggest things that helps in being an eBay seller is, I think, being open to new possibilities. Recently, my partner (Trish) and I started finding a lot of Littlest Pet Shop toys at thrift stores and garage sales. So we figured we might want to be open to the possibility of selling these toys on eBay. It turns out that they are pretty popular. And look how cute they are--here's a peacock from the series.

There are many different LPS figures and playsets. We started piecing together different figures with different playsets to make groupings to sell on eBay. Well, we just listed our first few lots of LPS items last week, and we sold our first one for just under $40. This was the first sale Trish posted on her own account as our previous listings had been on my account, so it was extra nice that this was her first sale!

Not that I turn my nose up at teeny tiny sales, of course! I was happy to sell a couple of Batman Happy Meal toys as a $5 lot this weekend, in fact.