Hawking the hoard, or how do you sell off your spare parts?

Standing on the street corner yelling "buy my pigs, figs, watermelons and spare XJ parts!" may get a few spare parts back into general circulation, and a few dimes to jingle in your pocket but there has to be a better way.

There once was a time when just about anything sold on ebay, now it's a challenge. I'm not sure what happened there.

As a Canadian, our postal service has gone "postal" on us and it's incredibly expensive to ship anywhere. E-commerce in Canada involves a weekly trip to the states to mail things back into Canada using the United States Postal Service as it's cheaper! This is only worthwhile if you have several items to ship each week.

Amazon.com is where the new action is, but Canadians are restricted to Amazon.ca which is a lame duck. Either way, Amazon comes with it's own special issues. A painful workaround for Canucks is to establish an American Bank account and Credit card so we can open an Amazon.com account.

Our friends in the US of A are (in turn) struggling against Asian shipping rates which are cheaper again and ebay has notorious bargain hunter buyers (Guilty as I'm one), if it's a few dollars cheaper to order from Singapore as opposed to Seattle...never mind Saskatoon...then the buyers go there.

Local classifieds such as Craig's list and Kijiji are good, but limited geographically. Unfortunately, scammers have made it so that transactions have to be done in person.

Other classifieds, such as putting an ad in the local paper is not an economically sound way to sell your spare tail light off an 82 Maxim. Ten dollars for the ad, ten dollars for the part....not a good business plan.

I'm sure that there are some pretty savvy XJ'ers on this forum that can offer some insight into how is the best method to turn our hobby (or passion in some cases) into cash, so we can put that cash back into our hobby. A self perpetuating, self supporting hobby would make all of us happy riders.

Alternatives? Advice on selling our spare parts into the large classified sites mentioned above? This is just a query to see what thoughts our XJ community has on this subject. I eagerly await your responses.

- Gord - ("Taku")

 

I am on a ford forum that has a thread for free parts. the idea is, that we have bought upgrade parts and removed stock parts. these parts are just sitting around and collecting dust. all you have to do is pay shipping and they can be yours. I know it doesn't put money in your pocket, but it does get unused parts out of your way and into the hands of someone who can make use of it.

FU

 

Hold on to them. 80's bikes are just starting to be something people are interested in for collecting purposes. Give it ten more years and you'll be selling parts at a profit.

 

An excellent suggestion CN. I'd have a few spares to throw on that list.

 

Thanks k-moe, makes me think of all the honda mini trail and CT70 parts I had 10 years ago...

 

Forums like this one and, as much as I hate to say it, but Facebook gets a lot of eyes on something. I also wonder about Etsy, I see lots of memorabilia, new merchandise, alongside all the "handcrafted" artsy crap for sale on there, wonder if opening an Etsy store would be useful? Not certain, just ideas, and none of thinks addresses your shipping problems.

 

Thanks Hank, I've never heard of Etsy, that is the benefit of this topic and introduction to new things. I'll look it up presently.

 

And you are right, facebook is in the top 5 sites Many eyes as you say.

 

Okay

Just looked at the Etsy Guidelines, we cannot sell motorcycles or parts on that site.

 

Ok, Here is what I've come up with this week. If you are fortunate enough to live within a few hours of the US border there is hope. For me it's a two hour drive, not bad in the grand scheme of things.

This irrelevant for our fellow American enthusiasts as it's just a work around for Canadians to list on Amazon.com.

As a puck slapping, maple sucker as we all are, we are constrained to Amazon.ca this site is a lame duck as I mentioned above, very hard to sell exclusively to other Canadians. for one, we have one 10th the population of the states, and two our riding season is much shorter, so there are fewer motorcycle enthusiasts as a percentage of the population.

There is a third...most of the international community will be shopping on Amazon.com and there is no crossover listings as there are on Ebay.com and eBay.ca

You'll need the following to start an Amazon account:

A US bank account
A US Credit card
A US address

It is in theory fairly easy, and this coming week I'll see if it works in practice.

The UPS store will provide you with a proper street address
I've spoken with Wells Fargo Bank and the Community Bank and they welcome Canadians to open accounts with them. You have to open them in person though (there may be other banks that do not require your physical presence)

RBC in Canada can provide you with a US bank account as well, but I've heard whispers that Amazon does not recognize these accounts as proper US accounts.

For a US based Credit card, you can get a VISA (not the visa debit card, a true VISA card), but you'll have to secure it (in other words, if you want a $500 dollar limit, you'll have to secure it with a $500 deposit). As Canadians, we don't have credit histories in the States (well, most of us don't), so this works to have a US based Credit card (you can take a secured card out for as little as $300, ties up a bit of cash, but it's not lost as you can get it back when you decide to).

I'm headed down to NY state next week, taking the ferry across to Wolfe Island from Kingston, Ontario then another ferry over to Cape Vincent, New York. There are a couple of banks there, and a UPS store over by Watertown. It should take me 2 hours and 9 minutes according to my GPS, including the ferry crossings (Free in Canada, $15 for a car and passenger on the US side).

I'll report back how it goes. I don't think you need to physically show up at a UPS store, but since I'm over there, I might as well.

Stay tuned...

 

Ok, made my trek into the states.

The Ferry on the American side is closed for the season (from wolfe island). It wasn't too much further to go over via the 1000 island bridge.

Was able to pick up my US address with the UPS Store in Evans Mills, NY near Watertown and a US bank account was easy as well, I opened one with Key Bank in Clayton, NY.

I wasn't able to get a true (not debit based) credit card with the smaller banks along the border. I'll be heading down again to Syracuse to visit with Bank of America, I hear that they will issue a secured card.

One more trip to visit uncle sam, then I'll be ready to open an account on Amazon.com.