I just finished listening to Jenni Hunt’s interview about toys and it was pretty interesting but not earthshaking because it seems we all still have the same problems and questions.

Where do find toys cheap and how do we spot a trend?

I wish I had the answers but I don’t and I hear as I read the comments that naturally everyone wants to see the trend coming almost like like the train engine light in a dark tunnel. We want someone to slap us on the back of the head and say “here is what’s gonna sell next”.

I wish it was that easy. If enough of us got together, we could probably create our own hysteria over a must have toy just by buying out enough of any one toy to create a shortage and then just put out a comment here and there about not being able to find such and such a toy even as your closets overflow with it.

When the mass “must have” hysteria starts looking then we start listing.
I say this with tongue in cheek but it basically the same principle used to talk up a movie or an actor for an award.

I guess I will keep watching and reading until I see a better idea.

Thanks,
Joe

Thanks,

Andrea

Q #2: Toys produced in other countries sometimes have unacceptable levels of lead in the materials. It there a way to research companies/products known to have this problem?

Thank you.

I really dove into selling toys last Christmas. It was extremely lucrative and I did pretty well right through February. After that and until the X-mas selling season starts again you really need to tap into what’s hot and hard to find. This can change at a moments notice so you really have to stay on top of the research!

I would like to know if there are any reputable wholesale companies for toys.

Thanks!
Trish

Personally I find books to be the easiest products to both find and sell for big profits on ebay. My source was thrift shops where I would regularly pick up books for $2-$25 selling them for 300-600% profits every time.

I often sold my books for 3x what the competition got by simply doing a little historical research, pointing out an interesting historical fact or passage or two.

This was back when I was first getting started online.

I also sold high end resale rights products. Products that were well advertised in the IM niche but that had limited numbers of resellers. I liked that especially well because I could duplicate them and whenever I had an auction with more than one bidder I would send out second chance offers to all the other bidders and make 1 or 2 extra sales from just one listing. In this way I was able to triple my profits from my auctions and not have to pay listing fees on the extra sales.

It had been a while since I was on ebay selling because I am so busy with a very successful and thriving online business that I have built up over the years but I decided to try my hand on ebay a couple days ago.

I had checked out the market for a used item I had and found it selling in a few week long auctions for between $400 and $500.

I did not feel like waiting a week for my auction to close to I listed the item at $450, wrote a personal experience about the item, placed a buy it now with required instant payment and paypal only and wrote in the copy that if they did not snap it up someone would grab the deal and it would be gone in an instant.

2 hours later I had $450 in my paypal account.

I guess those other sellers either had more time on their hands or did not know how to close a deal fast.

Toys may sell best on ebay but competing in the ebay toy market and selling enough volume to make serious money looks like it would take an eye for what is hot, a good wholesale source, a personal collection to sell, or some knowledge about collectable toys and an eye to spot the hot sellers in thrift shops and yard sales.

Instead of looking for ‘Toys’ to purchase or drop ship,
I start thinking of what type of toy I could make or
have made that might be a good seller.

I’ve seen great homemade wooden toys sell in
many places besides auction sites.

Art