Trading on Trade Me

America has eBay and Craig's List; New Zealand has Trade Me. We sold a few things on Craig's List before moving, but always found the experience to be a little less than satisfactory. It seemed everyone who was interested in buying our stuff was really flaky. Maybe our stuff just attracted flaky people.

We're having much better success with Trade Me. Trade Me is huge here - it seems everyone is a member and everyone is using it. You can find anything, even things that you might have thought were garbage. We actually bought an old rubbish bin (garbage can) on Trade Me for $1 shortly after we arrived to use as a compost barrel. That means someone took the time to take a photo of their old rubbish bin, go online, post a description of it along with the photo, let an auction take place, and then arrange for the winner of the auction (me) to come to the house and pick up the rubbish bin. All that for $1. Well, less than a dollar actually, since Trade Me takes a small cut of the proceeds.

I'm not sure why people bother, but they do. It might have something to do with the reduce/reuse/recycle mentality that seems to prevail here. Nothing is trash - everything can be re-purposed.

If we were in America, we probably would have just thrown away the horrible curtains that were hanging in our bedroom when we moved in. But we're in New Zealand now, and so we know that someone, somewhere can make good use of them. So we listed them on Trade Me with this photo:

We had 2 sets of them - the one shown in the photo and a matching set hanging over the sliding glass door that connects our bedroom to the patio. We listed the whole lot together for a reserve price of $1. We sat back and waited for the bids to pour in, wondering who would want these curtains.

We received 7 questions from interested parties. In the end, only 2 people bid on them, but there was a mini-bidding war between them that went back and forth 20 times. We ended up getting $35 for them. The winner will be coming round today to retrieve her new curtains. Coming all the way from Timaru even. We get 35 bucks, the lady from Timaru gets a great deal on hideous curtains. Everyone's happy!

We've also been able to sell a bread box ($8.50), a set of vertical blinds ($47), and some net curtains ($2 - we left the curtains outside, he left a $2 coin on our door step).

You really can find anything on Trade Me. Right now there's a guy selling a giant inflatable cow.

In case you're interested, here's a link. But be quick, auction closes in less than 6 hours. The current bid is $1,503. !! Payment by bank deposit only, says the seller. That means if you win the auction, he'll give you his bank account number and you can have your bank directly transfer money into his bank. Often you can do it online. A lot of people here transfer money this way - another thing that's new to us but that we've taken to pretty quickly.

Yesterday I drove to the other side of town to retrieve our new dining room light from a Trade Me seller ($26). Gareth installed it yesterday and it looks great. The old light is listed on Trade Me right now, waiting for its new home.