Actually, yesterday The Wife got a late start and didn't have time to get Daughter #2 in to daycare (said little darling is a MONSTER in the mornings, so it's always a fight anyway), I was faced with the prospect of making two trips up there (four cycles of on-the-bus off-the-bus stairs plus stairs at her daycare) and I opted to just keep her home. The Girls pretty much "played well together" all day, and we went out to lunch at this new middle-eastern place in the neighborhood that they like (#2 is addicted to their hummos, and #1 loves their grilled chicken). I also managed to drag myself down to a neighborhood meeting last night, and really didn't need my cane (which is good, since I'd left it at home!).
I spent most of the past couple of days being an "eBay idiot", spending a TON of money that I shouldn't have ... but got very good deals (heck, I won 36 auctions from one gal for a total of $4.68 for cards that individually retail for 2-6 bucks or more!). As those of you who have been paying attention know, I've been thinking about starting to SELL stuff on eBay ... primarily the huge backlog of excess Pokemon Cards that we've developed while building up #1's collection, but also some "art" I've been developing specifically to sell there ... and would have been up and running with this if I wasn't so damned "form phobic" (I swear that setting up and managing accounts is worse to me than having dental surgery!). Every time I've gone into the various screens to try to set up for selling on eBay (with all the crap about checking accounts and getting whatever lined up for taking credit card payments via PayPal, etc., etc., etc.) I go absolutely catatonic. I figure that on SOME level it must be a fairly easy processes, as there are loads of obvious idiots out there blissfully selling stuff and taking creditcard payments, but, for me this is a horrible torture (that thing in HP3 that showed up as your worst fear would have appeared to me as a stack of application forms!).
Anyway, one thing that I "won" yesterday was 34 "Ex Boxes", which are cute little tin boxes with the "Ex" Pokemon on them, and 5 packs (plus two promos) of cards inside, along with assorted other stuff. That's two cases of 15 plus 4 extra boxes. These "retail" for $19.99 although most places sell them for $14.99 ... we got one from some guy on eBay a while back for about $10 (incl. shipping), and thought we were getting a good deal as the individual packs retail for 3-4 bucks a piece (so the $20 "suggested retail" is about on target for five packs of cards) ... well, I got these 34 boxes for just about $2.70 each (incl. shipping), which means we could start these with a $5.00 minimum and be making an O.K. profit if it just went for that (which, from my experience of watching the bids on these, it typically won't). Of course, I'm just looking at making back the $92 I spent, so if we sell 10 at $10 a piece, that means that either The Girls can play with 24 of them (120 packs!), or I can make up some of the $$$ that I spent over the past month or so of neurotic eBaying!
Needless to say (and to tie together various disconnected thoughts here), I'm counting on getting this "wholesale shipment" of Pokemon boxes to force me into "facing the forms" and getting signed up to sell. I don't want to be one of these "no credit card" eBay sellers (as it always pisses ME off when I can't use my credit-card-only PayPal to pay for stuff!), so I'm going to have to jump through pretty much all their hoops to get that up and running. Bleh.
If anybody has done this "setting up to sell" thing with eBay and wants to do some cyber hand-holding while I force myself to walk through that sea of knives, please let me know!