"Hi. My name is Stella
Abendroth, and I am an Ebay-oholic."
Abendroth, from Lancaster, Pa, has been
selling items for nearly two years on Ebay and loves it.
"I started selling some things from
my personal collection of "junque" but soon got hooked on Ebay and started
buying to sell, mostly from yard sales and flea markets," said Abendroth.
"I used to have an antiques shop, so I had a good idea of what to look
for."
Abendroth mostly deals with antiques
and collectibles, rangeing from old sheet music to pottery to figurines
to vintage clothing.
"I try to keep at least 30 auctions
going at any one time, although I've gotten as high as 58," said Abendroth.
Because she doesn't depend on auctions
to live her life, she has the luxary to use it as extra cash for fun things.
"When I'm not doing it seriously,
I just make "play money" to pay for trips or vacations or other non-essential
stuff," said Abendroth. "If I were to do it seriously, I could make enough
to live on."
She said that she has had a few transactions
go bad, but only once out of every hundred.
Abendroth has always loved auctions.
When she was a younger, she attended auctions with friends.
"The town I grew up in was so boring
that my friends and I would go to auctions on Friday night for something
to do - we weren't part of the drinking clique," said Abendroth. "Once
you go for a while, you end up with this big pile of 'stuff.' So then you
start taking it to flea markets to get rid of some of it, then you make
some money, so you buy more stuff. It becomes a vicious circle"
Abendroth attributes her addiction
to auctions to her love of collecting stuff and getting great prices.
"I think there are a couple 'hooks'
about Ebay. One, the thrill of the hunt and the possibility of getting
a great bargain and two, the fact that there's just so much stuff in one
place, over 4 million auctions going on at any one time. It's like the
ultimate flea market and you don't have to get sunstroke."
