Don't you love gadgets, especially the new ones that do something clever? If you're like me and always want the newest and best gadgets, this article is for you. I'll save you a lot of money, which you can then use to buy... even more gadgets. There are always new things coming out, from satellite receivers to universal remotes. Now, any gadget lover worth his or her salt will know that the gizmos of yesterday will be thrown away as soon as release 3.0 comes out.
The smart shopper will know that release 2.0 offers new ways to buy things. Buying the generation before often gives you even more fun and excitement. Since the bugs have been fixed, geeky hacks have been added, and you can generally have more fun and be a bit more cruel with the small device.
There is now a market for both "state of the generation" and "one, two, or even three back" versions. I am talking about eBay, of course. Since a lot of most types of electronics are traded every day, this is the best market that is almost as good as it gets. One can look at how this small market works to figure out some good buying rules. If you know a little more than everyone else in the market, you can almost certainly make some smart buying decisions. This article explains how to find these gaps and buy many electronic gadgets for 20–100% less than their retail price.
This article should be read along with a longer piece I wrote and a website that has the information you need to find buying nuggets. At the end of this article, you'll find links and URLs to these two sites. There is a small website that checks eBay data several times a day. Now, you might ask, what makes this different? Well, first of all, it only sells well-known, popular electronics. On the left side, there are categories for things like Wide screen notebooks, digital cameras, simple surround sound, XBOX 360, Apple iPOod Tunes Video, HDTV, ESPN Phone, etc.
One more thing about this site makes it useful. That is, it has information that is usually harder for a buyer to get. With this information, buyers can often make better and more informed choices, avoid bidding wars, and often outsmart other bidders.
Most of the information on eBay is about how to sell, such as how to sell your clubs. I have mostly focused on buying and trying to find market opportunities and price inefficiencies to get really good deals. In order to do this, we need to know how the eBay market place works. Like any other market, it is based on supply and demand. Like a large flea market, if a buyer knows how many items are for sale at what prices and how many other buyers are there, that buyer has the upper hand. Let's pay more attention to the supply side.
On eBay, the supply of an item must be seen at a certain point in time, which is a little different from most other places. Because auctions end at different times, it's important to know how many auctions are ending soon for the same item. This gives you an idea of the number of items, or cameras in our case. This is interesting because there could be a lot of auctions ending today for a certain model, but there could be very few next week. This is one of the things that affects the price.
The demand side is a little more complicated and most eBay buyers don't see it. Here is where the website I'll talk about below has some useful information. Demand on eBay is measured by a number of things, including how many people look at my auction, how many ask questions, how many put me on their "watch" page, and how many bid. As we move down this list, it's clear that the data become more reliable as a sign of demand. It's not easy to get page views, but some sellers put a counter on their auction pages that anyone can see. Sellers can get questions and watchers, and the special website listed below will show this information. Everyone can see how many bids there are.
Now, if we made a graph of how the number of questions, watchers, and bids changes as the auction goes on, it would be easy to see how the demand changes as time goes on. Most of the time, if there are a lot of questions and a lot of people watching, but there aren't many bids, this could be a sign of confusion (like a misspelt model number) and a chance to buy. If the number of watchers is high and going up, but the bids are low, this could be a sign of a last-minute bidding war and a sign to stay away.
With this information and a quick summary of other similar auctions that are ending soon, as well as a sense of the seller's skills and the current highest bidder, one can see a very different picture than the average eBay buyer. Soon, people who know what to look for will see some good chances to buy.
People like me who are crazy about electronics gadgets love getting a leg up on other buyers. If you look carefully at the information you're given, chances will jump out at you after a little practise. The basic idea is that someone who knows more about the market will always pay less than everyone else. Insider trading is what it's called in the stock market, and it's against the law. In our case, it's fine and just helps you understand the supply and demand curve for that flat-panel TV you've been wanting since last Christmas.
