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How to buy brand name gadgets for bargains on the dollar
Don't you love gadgets, especially the new finagled ones. If you are like me
and you strive to take ownership of the latest and greatest, then this article
is for you - because I will save you a bunch of money which can then be safely
applied to ... even more gadgets. From satellite receivers to universal
remotes, there is a constant barrage of new releases. Now any self respecting
gadget addict will understand that yesterdays gizmo's is destined for the trash
heap as soon as release 3.0 hits the streets.
Of course for the savvy shopper release 2.0 offers unique buying opportunities.
Purchasing the one generation before often yields even more fun and
stimulation. Since bugs have been removed, geeky hacks have been introduced and
generally you can have more fun and be rather more ruthless with the little
device.
Now a market exists for both state of the generation and one, two and even
three back versions. Its eBay of course that I am referring too. With a large
volume of most electronics being traded everyday, this is the ideal near
efficient market. One can study the dynamics of this micro-market and determine
some useful buying rules. With a little more information than the rest of the
marketplace, one can almost certainly make some intelligent buying
opportunities. This article focuses on how to identify these gaps and often
purchase many electronic gadgets for 20-100% below retail.
This article should be read together with my longer piece and a web site, which
produces the information required to identify buying nuggets. Find the links
and URLs to these two sites at the bottom of this article. There exists a
little web site that polls data from eBay throughout the day. Now what makes
this different you may ask? Well firstly it only focuses on well know in demand
electronic gadgets. On the left panel you will find categories for things like
Wide screen Notebooks, Digital Cameras, Simple Surround Sound, XBOX 360, Apple
iPOod Tunes Video, HDTV, ESPN Phone, etc. etc.
There is one more aspect that makes this site useful. That is it holds
information that is often more difficult for the buyer to obtain. With this
information in hand buyers can often make more informed and better decisions
and therefore avoid bidding wars and outsmart other bidders to a high degree.
Most information on eBay focuses on the selling element, i.e. how to sell your
clubs. I have tended to specialize on the buying end and trying to identify
market opportunities and price in-efficiencies to really capture excellent
deals. To do this we need to understand the dynamics of the eBay market place.
Like any other market it is supply demand driven, and like a large flee-market
if a buyer has knowledge of how many items are for sale at what prices and how
many other buyers are in the market, then that buyer can capture the upper
hand. Lets focus a little more on supply.
The eBay supply dynamic is a little different in that supply of an item must be
seen at a point in time. In other words, because auctions end at different
times, one needs to grasp the number of auctions ending in close proximity for
the same item. This gives you a feel for the supply of items or in our case
cameras. What makes this interesting is that today there could be a large
amount of auctions ending for a particular model, but next week there could be
very few. This is one element driving the price.
The demand side is slightly more complex and hidden from the average eBay
buyer. This is where that the web site I refer to at below has some useful
data. Demand in eBay terms is measured (by sellers) as a number of factors -
how many people view my auction, how many people ask questions, how many people
place me on their watch page, and how many people actually bid. Obviously as we
progress down this list the data become more reliable as an indication of
demand. Page views are not easy to obtain, although some sellers place a
publicly viewable counter on their auction pages. Questions and watchers are
available to sellers, and the special web site mentioned below will expose this
information. Number of bids is available for all to see.
Now if we happened to produce a graph as the auction progresses of the changes
in the number of questions, watchers and bids one can easily see how the demand
is changing as time progresses. Typically if questions are high and watchers
are high, but bids are low, this may indicate some confusion (for example a
spelling mistake in a model number) and a possible buy opportunity. If watchers
are very high and climbing, but bids are low, this can point to a last minute
bidding war, and a stay out indicator.
Armed with this information and also a quick summary of other similar auctions
ending soon, plus a quick feel for the skill set of the seller and the current
highest bidder, one can see a picture very different from the average eBay
buyer. Soon the trained eye will observe some nice buying opportunities.
Electronics gadget nut cases like me, relish the opportunity to get a one up on
our fellow buyers. Look carefully at the data presented, after a little
practice opportunities will leap out at you. The premise is simple, a buyer
with more market information will always pay lower prices than the rest of the
market. In stock market terms it caller insider trading, and its illegal. In
our case its quite above board and simply assists you in better understanding
the supply demand curve for that yummy flat panel TV you had you eye on last
Christmas.
Resources;
How to buy electronics
gadgets at a discount
Brand name gadget bargains
listings
About the Author: Article by Malcolm Silberman and Education Specialist trained by eBay, for a
more lengthily discussion of this topic visit http://HOW-TO-
BUY.BRANDNAMEGADGETBARGAINS.COM and to see elecctronics auctions with this
value added data visit http://brandnamegadgetbargains.com/
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