I have been using eBay for the past 14 years. I was 26 years old when I started and I can still remember how nervous I was to start this. First I was a buyer and an auctioneer for the first 11 of those 14 years. I was dead broke in those days and still in school. Yes you heard it right. I was a student even at the age of 26. I had just gotten back into busting boxes of cards. I can still remember only having a few bucks to spare and buying whatever packs I could find that worked within my budget.

Whatever I could not trade away, I put on eBay. It was great because I got to meet so many collectors all over the world who wanted the stuff that the locals didn’t need. I was happy but still broke. Funny how happy I was when I had no money compared to making a bit of money now. I am not complaining but the stress of life is still very much prevalent but in a different form and thoroughly enjoyable to boot.

eBay has changed a lot over time and so have I. I happen to notice a few months back that my listings that I only listed a few years back seem to violate a lot of unwritten rules of the cyberworld. All caps, underlining, font size was +14, too much text and horribly scanned images including those God-awful gang-scans. I was embarrassed. Perception and optics are a reality in our online world.

When you pay upwards of $300 a month to keep a store going (which really eats into any money I can use to buy cards for my own collection), it gets expensive real quick! I noticed a lot of traffic but not much sales. I wasn’t losing money but I would be breaking even more often than not. That was fine with me as long as I could generate some Paypal funds to buy stuff.

It was time I grew up and updated my listings to be clearer, concise and beautiful scans. It takes time but the process has started. Only 2300 listings to go…sadly it is taking me a very long time to finish this up. But at least my listing will soon have a Mona Lisa smile.

Slowly but surely!My 2nd online home – eBay store.. and loving it.