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Thursday, November 6, 2008

Buying & Selling Sterling Flatware on Craigslist

Craigslist offers another channel for the buying and selling of sterling silver items. For readers who don't know what Craigslist is, here is the Wikipedia definition:

Craigslist is a central network of online communities, featuring free online classified advertisements– with jobs, internships, housing, personals, erotic services, for sale/barter/wanted, services, community, gigs, resume, and pets categories – and forums on various topics.

In other words, it's similar to newspaper classifieds except it is online. We have purchased sterling flatware through "for sale" ads we found on Craigslist and sellers have come to us through "wanted to buy" ads we placed ourselves. Here some nice features of Craigslist:

  • It's free
  • It's simple
  • It provides a level of security; e.g., you can place a "blind" ad
  • Photographs can be included with your ad
  • It provides a search capability so you can locate what you are looking for fairly easily
  • If you know how to use HTML, you can dress up your ad a bit

From our point of view, it does have some limitations:

  • An ad is linked to a single city, thereby limiting coverage
  • Scammers roam Craigslist looking for opportunities to defraud
  • There is no feedback or history mechanism such as eBay provides - you have no way to gauge the trustworthiness of the other party

We think Craigslist provides a worthy opportunity to buy or sell. You just have to be careful.

By clicking on "Comments" below, you can see posted comments and add your own questions/comments.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

FEEDBACK usually pertains to whether an item is received and in what condition . Craigslist wipes out both of those problems. I have had absolutely NO NEED for FB on craigslist. I call ,I go ,I see the item in person ,what do I need FB for ? I don't need nor do I care to know who they've sold to in the past or what that person thought of them. I've got what I want , all I need to know. I still have an Ebay account but Craigslist is so much EASIER CHEAPER, MORE PROFITABLE that I just dont use it anymore. Everytime I go to sell or buy and think of ebay ,it goes right on craigs instead , its just EASIER. AND craigs doesnt steal half your money when you sell something.

Silver Jim said...

This is a respnse to the previous comment.

I agree that Craigslist is great in many situations. However, I have had little success buying or selling on Craigslist compared with the volume I do on eBay.

I think both are useful tools, at least for me.