Going Coupon Happy

I spent the last two days listing coupons and sales on my little ecommerce site.

This year, I've been thinking of hitting the thrift stores for Christmas. The cool thing about thrift stores is that pretty much all of the money spent on an item in a local thrift store stays in the local community. In bad economic times, I think it is wise to bulster to local economcy.

The other cool thing is that gifts purchased used tend to hold more of their value than new gifts. Most new things lose 70% to 90% of their value with the first purchase.

I had been thinking of doing some shopping on ebay. Ebay is great because it gives a good feel of the resale value of a product. The problem with eBay shopping is the hefty shipping expense.

On the selling used things puzzle. I decided to trying selling a few used books on Amazon.com. Last time I played this game, I was able to sell books for about a quarter to half the list price of the book. The books I wanted to sell had several people listing the same title for a penny. Amazon.com charges $3.99 for shipping. I am taking the large number of penny books as a sign that the bottom fell out of the used book market.