Fun With eBay
Categories: Staff Picks , Nonfiction
My goal was to make $50 a week selling useless junk on eBay, and for about a month I did just that. Then, unfortunately, I began running out of useless junk that anyone else would want, and I'm at $52 for the entire last 30 days.
Kenneth Walton, author of Fake: Forgery, Lies, & eBay, did much better. In about 1998 he was able to quit his job as a lawyer and sell the art he bought at garage sales and thrift shops for thousands of dollars a week. He spent $200 on Davenport's Art Reference & Price Guide and began to recognize the work of minor but collectible American artists. At one point he and his Army-buddy partner found a painting by Oscar Berninghaus at Goodwill, which they sold for $18,700.
Unfortunately, Walton has some qualms about his Army buddy. There are books about artists' signatures, and Walton is afraid his buddy is forging artists' signatures to jack up prices.
The next step in Walton's moral downfall comes when he begins bidding on his own and his eBay friends' artworks in an attempt to create some buzz about the art he's selling.
Finally, he crosses a further line and imitates a signature of the very well-known painter Richard Diebenkorn. In his eBay blurb, he plays dumb but makes sure the Diebenkorn signature is displayed in the eBay photo. The painting sells for more than $135,000.
Well, that's where the trouble starts--about a third of the way into the book--and the rest of the story is how he digs his way out of this mess. I'll stop the plot summary there.
The library has a variety of eBay-tip books. These are all from 2006-2007:
As for me, I bought a pretty Chinese-looking print for $4 at Goodwill. It looks very much like the supposedly valuable one my ex-husband's mother stole from a dead neighbor (by ransacking his apartment before his relatives arrived, also a good way of finding things to sell).
A question on Kenneth Walton's Web site's FAQ section asks if it's still possible to get rich by selling art on eBay; his response is probably, but it's a lot harder than it used to be.
It's a lot like betting on horses, which was my previous get-rich scheme, and the one I will write about next.
1 Comment
Great post Laurie! I used to use E-bay all the time to sell and buy stuff, but it just wasn’t worth it for me after awhile (a girl’s gotta choose between rent or a really nice first edition book). And I’ll have to remember to ransack my dead neighbor’s apartment next time. :)