Selling Cars on eBay = PROPS!!!

When it comes to celebrity gossip, people tend to enjoy the bad a teeny bit more than the good. I mean do we really want to hear how good Britney and K-Fed are doing? Or that Nick & Jessica are reconciling? Or that Pam Anderson has found everlasting bliss with yet another trashy boyfriend? Hell no!

We want to hear that K-Fed is getting the boot with no divorce settlement or that Britney was spotted eating chicken-fried steak on a stick with a chaser of deep-fried Snickers bars. We want to hear that Nick has found a girl 10,000 times smarter than dimwitted Jessica Simspon. We want to hear that one of Pam Anderson’s fake boobs deflated on live TV.

We love the dirt. And so do you. Admit it.

And though we love the dirt and the snarky pans here on Props and Pans, as well, we also love receiving props in our inbox, too. We love that something made someone so happy they took the time to type it up and send it in so others could share the joy when something doesn’t competely suck!

So without further ado, I give you authoress Wendy Boucher’s prop:

I’m sending out props for eBay. Specifically, the eBay mechanism for selling your car. Cars on eBay? I never would have thought of it but it’s quite an industry unto itself.

We recently purchased a new car and were offered $2,500 trade-in for our 1999 Toyota Sienna minivan. We knew that quote was well under Blue Book value for our van which has very low miles and so we took a chance on selling it ourselves instead. Last night, we sold the van for $7,400 on eBay.

It’s easy to list and you can hire an outside company to do a 150-point inspection of the car that potential buyers can look at so they know all the pros and cons of your vehicle. The inspection company also took a lot of pictures of the van, including all its little boo-boos, for potential buyers. So buyers knew exactly what they were bidding on and we didn’t have to field a bunch of phone calls and have strangers coming over for test-drives.

In the end, the van sold for what it was worth and we made almost $5,000 more than the offered trade-in value. The inspection report cost $150 and was well worth it. Two notes of caution: we did not put in a “buy it now” price and we still got a few phone calls from people offering us cash deals to end the auction early. Not only is that against eBay policy, we are super glad we weren’t tempted because none of those offers were as high as the selling price we got in the end.

Secondly, be patient. The auction went crazy right in the last hour and the bids went up from $5,700 to $7,400 in the closing seconds of the auction. Apparently that happens a lot. We’ve received our $500 deposit in Paypal and have already spoken to the buyer who will pick it up on Sunday. Woot woot!

In case you don’t know, Wendy replaced her minivan with a Toyota Prius hybrid car. How cool is that?