One Hobby Bankrolls Another

I'm down to a dozen or so Xbox 360 games, a small handful for the PSP, two for the Nintendo DS, and my various PC games (many of which are not long for my house). This time last year I had a collection totalling nearly 400 videogames and a dozen various gaming consoles. Now I have almost nothing. I've sold everything.

And I couldn't be happier about it.

I was a very busy Ebayer this week, but my hard work (it's not really that hard) and reasonable pricing did manage to turn an entire bookcase worth of dust-collecting gaming paraphernalia into $1000 (in addition to the $1500 I got for selling much of this stuff last summer). These were games and consoles that I haven't played in years, that were of no value to me emotionally, and that I was sick of cluttering up my office with.

And thanks to online bike shops like Universalcycles.com that take Paypal, I was able to essentially trade some of these games straight up for bike parts. For example, I used the money from selling my PS2 games to buy a new pair of Time ATAC XS pedals and Ergon grips. I knew I was selling the games rather cheaply, but being able to use Paypal to shop online made it seem like I was essentially trading unplayed videogames for much-needed bike parts. Bartering is fun! I also decided that my upcoming adventures would benefit from having a GPS meter and after reading rave review after review on the Garmin Edge 305, I found an online shop on Ebay selling the model with the heart rate monitor and wireless cadence meter for about $150 below retail price. I actually paid less for it than my wife paid for the altimeter watch she got me for Christmas in 2005. And, despite these purchases, I was also able to put about $500 back into our checking account to help pay for the other stuff I've already ordered for the new bike. Speaking of which, it should only be one or two more weeks before I'm rockin the 29er!

1 comment:

Doug Walsh said...

Garmin's website lists the Edge 305 with Cadence + HRM at $430 and I got it for $266 with shipping on Ebay. Looked like the guy had tons of them. A lot of folks at the Harmonic Convergence ride on Saturday had them and they all just loved them.

Speaking of comparing data, Craig had a 4-year old Suunto altimeter and and over the 3 hours we were out riding/hiking Tiger on Saturday, our altimeters were only off by 80 feet. Considering we did 3500 feet of climbing and the weather was really bad, that's not too shabby.

Anytime you want to ride Tokul, let me know.