Seller: geewhizz
Name: Pamela Quinton

The pleasure of dealing in rare treasures and the financial reward make the bidorbuy online trading platform a perfect selling venue for Pamela Quinton

I have had a fascination for old, rare and beautiful objects since a very young age.  I was in my thirties and a stay-at-home mom with three boys when I started to deal in collectors’ items. I never had the desire to open a shop. Being a stay at home mom was important to me. So, on weekends, while dad attended to kids and sports, I went marketing.

Marketers are always regarded as suppliers or “runners” who do all the searching and then sell the items at a price at which dealers can make a profit. Also, customers expect markets to be cheaper than a shop. As a result, the rewards for all the running around and sourcing the items are as a rule rather small.

Still, marketing was fun and I met and made many friends over twenty-three years of marketing. Several years ago, I met one of my fellow-marketers whom I had not seen for a while. I thought he had given up the business, but he explained that he only swapped the real-life markets with selling online. He then told me about bidorbuy.

I looked up the site on the internet and decided to join. That was in November 2007. After a period of studying this new venue, I listed my first items for sale on bidorbuy in January 2008 and was extremely happy with the prices I realised.

I continued selling on real-life markets, but very soon I started asking myself: What am I still doing here? Besides, I was getting so busy with bidorbuy that I found doing both was just too much. After six months of selling online, I gave up marketing.

Collectors’ items are difficult to find and one has to work at it all the time. It is the pleasure of finding those rare treasures, coupled with the financial gain, that keep me going. The mark-ups that I am able to make on bidorbuy are often two or three times what they used to be when I was selling through the markets. This is because overheads involved with selling on bidorbuy are much lower and because I am able to reach more collectors. Some of them have been searching for months for the very item I listed and are ready to pay a price that I am happy with.

Having said that, one also should bear in mind that bidorbuy is a very competitive marketplace. Sellers have to be realistic about their pricing and their expectations. Still, since it costs very little to have a virtual outlet on the site, I am able to make a profit on items that my customers may consider as a bargain-buy.

In fact, bidorbuy is such a well-organised online selling outlet that I think all South Africans with a computer and an internet connection should give it a try. Recently, two of my neighbours were retrenched. My advice to them was to find a product and join bidorbuy. It’s early days yet, but one of them is very keen. People are sometimes apprehensive because selling online is foreign to them. However, once you try – the bug bites you. Plus it is really very easy.