For Sale: One White Shark Eating a Baby Seal

Update: It sold the first day, for the "Buy Now" price of $24.95. Whippee!

I'm pretty good at buying anything off Ebay. I feel I can say that in good conscience after purchasing a mounted deer head (with a slight bald spot on the top of his noggin') for $26, a 'Mrs. Beazley doll', and a replacement to my Barbie with the vintage patterns to dress her in.

I've never sold anything.

Actually, I did sell stuff once; I went to one of those shops that does it for you, and their cut of the profits was well worth it, to hear the store owner tell me he tried out the dog shocker collar on his upper thigh, not trusting me that it worked.

I don't know if it's the listing or figuring out the postage, or having someone actually buy something from me, then I have to hope Paypal works and the money somehow magically appears in my checking account, which is much more accustomed to seeing it flying out, or if it's the idea that someone will buy something, then when it arrives they'll gnash their teeth and send me hateful emails requesting their money back. I've always cried uncle before I got good started.

I've literally written "learn to sell on Ebay" on my to New Year's Resolution list - kiss of death!

Til I bought my DH's Christmas gift. We'd seen Planet Earth on television whenever it came out. It was just gorgeous, even if they did think we should save baby whales over baby humans. I decided to buy it used, for DH's stocking for right around $30. We'd set our stocking budget at $50. That left enough to buy him a few pounds of chocolate, and one stick of summer sausage, which is all it takes to keep my DH happy.

When we popped the DVD in the player, we got a nasty, vile comment that it would not play because the disc was HD. What the heck? Our TV is HD. After a fun investigating trip to Best Buy (why do so many trials in life involve a trip to Best Buy?) we found out HD DVD's were only made for a short time before they went belly up, and if we wanted to play the single HD DVD we owned, we'd have to buy a player for it, even though they don't make new HD DVD's anymore. We decided to pass.

It happens we'd read an article in the paper that very morning telling us specifically which brand and model of Blu-Ray DVD player to buy, if they had them, because of course they're discontinued, what it should cost, and why we should snap it up if we lucked out and found one on the shelf. After walking up and down the aisles of BB several times, we found the only one they had, off in a corner, marked 10% off because it was 'open box', and we brought it home with cables that cost half as much as the DVD player.

We've now forked out about $300 for a new player, new cables, and of course the right version of Planet Earth, which was on sale for $59.99.

Still stuck with an HD-DVD, I went online, after considering that there are literally thousands and thousands of people out there, all over the world, listing their stuff on Ebay, and most of them are not rocket scientists. Reading the spelling of some listed items told me I was up to the challenge. Sure enough, within ten minutes our HD DVD was listed. If it sells I'll only lose a few dollars over what I paid for it.

If it doesn't - it will still have been worth having gone through the whole experience, because now we're not only watching Planet Earth in Blu-Ray, I'm walking around the house wondering what I can get rid of on Ebay.

I'm proud to say I'm right there with the rocket scientists and all the other non-spelling people of this planet - reinforcing "one's man trash is another man's treasure". Listing #160309510785 in case you're one of the few humans on the planet who has an HD DVD player, and would like to see, up close and personal, a great white shark eat a baby seal in one bite. Hopefully there's one person who bites. The deal, not the seal.