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[Student Name Deleted] PAC 442B Dr. Burks Oakley II March 11, 2004
“How the Internet and Ebay has Affected My Life”
Before the Internet, my Breyer model collecting was very limited and I knew very little about the hobby. My collection was restricted to just the newer release models that were available at the local stores. In fact, I did not know anything about Breyer's history or the actual collecting end of the hobby. I was clueless! Needless to say, my Breyer collection was much more of a time consuming challenge before the Internet. I first started exploring the Internet in 1997. I had never logged on before, and had no idea what the Internet could do for me or what it had to offer. Partly out of curiosity and partly out of boredom, one evening I decided to try doing a search on Breyer model horses. It brought back thousands of matches and I was in total awe! I learned much of Breyer's history and discovered all of the older models that were discontinues from Breyer and only for sale by different sellers from around the world. The Internet had everything I could think of related to Breyers and I found hours of entertainment for myself. My searches brought up numerous dealer pages selling the current run Breyers, but what intrigued me the most were the discussion boards and for sale pages. I would spend hours looking through pages and pages of Breyers for sale, and discovering all of the models from the past that I never knew existed. From these searches I quickly learned about the importance of model condition and got a feel for the general price each mold and model would bring in. I learned that there were people who
customized models, made miniature tack, and some who even show their models. This was a totally new world for me. After finding customizing information online, it pushed me to try my hand at making my own custom model tack. I was very pleased that my items turned out very well. From here, I went on to start my online “entrepreneurship” selling custom tack when I was in junior high school. Even though I only sold a few, it was still fun and a great learning experience for me. A few years later, after viewing many custom model horses online, I tried customizing Breyers myself. I was allowed to do it during art class in high school, so I got the best of both worlds – doing a project I was actually interested in during school time and getting a good grade for it! Since high school, I have not had the time to try doing any other custom projects, but I enjoyed it while it lasted. Not long after I started researching Breyers online, I discovered the wonderful world of eBay, and my shopping has not been the same since! It probably would have taken me much longer to find eBay, if not for the advertisements that were constantly on the radio about it. At first, I was not sure exactly what the best way to search on eBay was, so I would just search on “Breyer” or “model horse” and then wade through the hundreds of matches. As time went on, I learned that eBay’s search option looked through all of the subject lines to bring back matches. From this, I learned how to specify my searches so that the results were more refined to exactly what I was looking for. So, now I search on “Arabian Breyer” if I’m looking for Breyer Arabian models, or whatever the model’s given name may be. It made searching much easier and much quicker. I soon found that eBay was a better, faster way to search for models online. Besides the convenience of it, many times you could purchase the model for a lower price on eBay
am a college student working part time! Besides the money making, it is fun to sell stuff on eBay. I guess you could say it is exciting to watch how high people will bid on your item. More times than not, I am still surprised at how high the bidding goes on my models. Besides buying and selling model horses, eBay has been a huge help for my dad’s hobby as well. He restores, collects, and shows old muscle cars from the 1960s and 1970s. Currently, he is into American Motors (AMC) cars, which are fairly rare. As of right now, he has five old cars. Two of them are of show quality, but the remaining three are in the process of restoration. Therefore, he is always looking for more parts and special items for his cars. Over the years he has been in this hobby, he has found numerous specialized parts dealers that usually have what he is looking for. But there are still times when he has me look online because no one else has them. Seems to be, if you watch eBay long enough, you usually can find the needed part. These parts are not as plentiful as the Breyer market though, so you really can not rely solely on eBay to fulfill your needs. On the up side, eBay always has a plentiful amount of old original magazine articles and memorabilia that go along with these American Motors cars. My dad thinks this type of stuff is really neat and has collected and decorated his shop with items from the past. He has always been a hard person to buy gifts for, so these are the items he has been receiving as gifts for the last couple years. My dad was always one of those people that could look at a wrapped present, tell you what was in and take all the fun out of it. That has not been the case since eBay has been around! Now with all of my buying through eBay said, you may wonder how I assure the quality of my purchases and minimize the chances of buying imposter items. In
Alaina Acosta’s February 2004 posting to a PAC 442 discussion forum, she asked the following questions: “What about the imitation issue? Do you ever worry that you will get stuck with something sub-par? How have their rules changed to help or hinder your purchases or even your trust of making those purchases?” (1) It really is quite simple. No matter what the item is, I always thoroughly read all of the item’s description. Many times, I read it more than once. If I have any questions about the item, I do not hesitate to e-mail the seller asking them my question and requesting more pictures of the item. In this e-mail, I also often ask if the item is returnable if I am not satisfied with it, and what the conditions of a return are. Normally, sellers are very nice and try to answer everything very thoroughly. More times than not, they offer some sort of return policy. Through my eBay experiences, I have noticed a common trend with sellers. Model horse sellers tend to be very descriptive, easy to deal with, and prompt with their e-mail replies. Sellers that tend to sell large amounts of items, sometimes in bulk, are the ones that are less helpful, slower to return e-mails, and not very personable. Now I am not trying to say anything bad about these sellers by any means, but I do want to make the point that if a seller cannot answer my question fully and in a timely manner, I sometimes am leery about bidding on their item. I feel that if they can not handle a simple e-mail, who says they can accurately conduct an eBay transaction? Another item I always check on a seller before bidding on their item, is their feedback. Feedback on eBay is left by previous people who have dealt with that particular person. A user can leave positive, negative, or neutral feedback about a seller and buyer. By reviewing their feedback information, you can get a feel for how that person is to deal with and see if past buyers
in Internet users, it is no wonder eBay users have increased. In 2003, eBay reported having 86 million users! (6) EBay’s number of users is not the only thing growing. Reported in July of 2003, eBay Inc. saw their sales jump up 91 percent in the second fiscal quarter. Besides this amazing amount, the article also went on to say that the U.S. net transaction sales had increased 45 percent. ( 2 ) I personally find myself at least once a week somehow referring to eBay in every day conversation. For example, someone could be talking about buying or looking for a particular item, and before I even know it, I ask them “Have you looked on eBay yet?”. It is funny how one website can have such an impact on someone’s life. I think eBay is much more than just a website to many people. For some people, it is purely addicting! Today, there are so many books and programs out on eBay that it is unbelievable. In her February 2004 posting to a PAC 442 discussion forum, Dee Coffey made the following statement: “DeepAnalysis provides you with a wealth of information about any eBay market sector.” (3) DeepAnalysis is one program in particular that looks very interesting to me. You can run numerous different reports on virtually anything on eBay. You can view up to 30 days worth of different eBay categories, see all items with bids, detailed statistics, do keyword searches, and much more. (3, 10) I think this program would be great to have, but for what I would use it for, I do not think it is worth the $179 they are asking for it! (10) DeepAnalysis would definitely be useful to someone who uses eBay as their main source of income though. In his March 2004 posting to a PAC 442 discussion forum, Justin Morgan gave the following advice: “You could also mention sniping software, you know, the stuff that watches auctions and bids for you at the last minute to make sure you win.” (7) As Justin
Morgan mentioned, another neat program to use is PowerSniper. It is available for download online. What this software basically does is watch your auction and place a bid on your behalf at the very last moment of the auction. By “sniping”, it eliminates the bidding wars that often happen in online auctions. Another neat aspect of PowerSniper is that you do not have to be online at the time of the bidding. (7, 8) I was not aware of such software before I wrote this paper, but I think I will definitely try it out in the near future! Now that I have experienced eBay and buying and selling online, I cannot imagine my life without it! It has made my life and family’s hobbies so much easier. Maybe it has taken some of the challenge out of it, but that is all right! Ebay has taught me about simple business through selling model horses, and I think it is a valuable item to know. The Internet is so vast, you just never know what you might find and how it might be beneficial to you and your loved ones!
