One of the ways to make money on Ebay is to find something to sell that no one else has. Or, you could have something manufactured especially for you. Definitely easier said than done, though.

I used to have a pinball machine and I found out about the powerball that is used in all Twilight Zone pinball machines. The powerball is a ceramic ball that is slightly lighter than a regular steel pinball. Every TZ pinball machine came with one powerball that was released onto the play field when you hit a combination of things. The ball was non-magnetic, lightning fast, and harder to aim than a regular pinball. If you were able to load the powerball back into the gumball machine it would set off a special multi-ball session.

The TZ pinball machine was made by Williams and since they are no longer in business, the powerballs are hard to come by. Six years ago they sold for between $50 and $60 on Ebay and I bought one because I thought it would be cool to put one in my South Park pinball machine to see if it was more fun. It was!

Let me tell you, playing pinball with one of those ceramic powerballs absolutely rocks! It makes you feel like a pinball wizard. The ball goes so much faster than the regular steel pinball that it seems like you are playing the game on steroids. You get the feeling you have so much more power with the flippers because the ball is lighter and you can hit any target hard. I hate putting my money in a pinball machine only to find that the flippers are weak and need to be serviced and with the powerball you get that feeling of extra strength with your flippers.

I noticed that only one guy was selling these ceramic powerballs on Ebay so I made a few calls. I was looking for work from home jobs and I wanted to see how much I could get them made for as they seemed to be in constant demand on Ebay. I tried to find a company that could make them for me but the problem was that I didn’t even know what they were made of. I knew they were ceramic in nature, but any more than that I had no clue. The best situation would have been for me to take the ball to someone so they could handle it and see exactly what I wanted.

In the end I did get a quote from some company in Pennsylvania but it was for $30 a ball and I had to order 2000 to get that price. I quickly realized I was way out of my league as I certainly didn’t want to invest $60,000 and I wasn’t even sure that they understood what I wanted. I have no technical or manufacturing background so it seemed having the powerball specially made for me was not the right path.

Six years later, “tennisdoc” is still selling those same powerballs on Ebay and he is still the only one. He is now selling them for $36 per ball and he sells anywhere from 1 to 3 a week and he has been doing that for at least 6 years! This guy has an absolute monopoly and he must love it! (If you click on the link it will take you to the page that lists everything he has up for auction at the moment and if you don’t see a powerball, go into his completed listings and you will see them).

I wish I knew his secret of how he got them made but I am sure I will never know. I have been looking and brainstorming for years for another item like the powerball that I can get made and be the only one selling on Ebay. I don’t think there are too many like it where the barrier to entry is so tough that no one is willing to compete with you.

If you ever get a chance to try out the Twilight Zone pinball machine and the powerball in it I recommend you do. The Twilight Zone machine is one of the all time most popular pinball games and they are always in high demand with home collectors. The game is super fun and if you can get the powerball to come out, you will be rewarded with a pinball experience like no other!

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Take for example an iPod that costs $299.00. There are probably going to be many bids of .01, .02, .10 and so on so you have to be lucky and guess the lowest bid you think no one may have picked (unduplicated bid). If someone already has bid that amount it will tell you and you bid again. You have a set number of bids a day that you can use and when you use them all up you have to wait till the next day.

Some of the VIP auctions you can bid on at Silver Tag auctions (signup is free) are things like trips to Las Vegas, backstage with Bon Jovi and Gretchen Wilson, and other packages like that. The regular auctions are mostly the cool elctronics gadgets we all want like iPhones, Nintendo Wii’s, iPods, and digital camcorders. The video below explains more about this very different Silver Tag auction site.

In my original post I outlined how my friend was buying cheap NFL tickets from people on Craigslist and then turning around and selling them on Ebay for a profit. At one point this year he was up over $2000.00 doing well until….

He was scammed out of $600.00!

He met two guys last month via Craigslist who he said where in their 20’s. They were going to sell him their 4 season tickets to last week’s Seahawks – Bears game for $150.00 each. My friend said he didn’t really have a good feeling about these guys but the tickets looked legit and so he gave them the $600.00 cash. They were good seats and he hoped/thought he could get $250.00 for each of them on Ebay as that game was a rematch of last years playoff game and there was big demand.  

My friend rushed home to call his official “Seahawks guy” who worked in ticket sales and to his relief was told that the four tickets were indeed real and valid. Whew! He put the tickets up on Ebay right away and someone from Chicago who was flying out for the game bought them. I’m not sure how much he resold them for as I was never told that part of the story but I know he made a profit of some kind.

So everything was great until last Sunday when, after the game, he was contacted by the guy from Chicago who told him the tickets were no good and his group was denied entrance at the gate! His group had gotten lucky and somehow found 4 other tickets outside the stadium so they did get to see the game but of course they wanted their money back for the bad tickets.

How could they be bad tickets? My friend had verified that they were good! It turns out that season tickets in Seattle (I have no idea if this is the case with other NFL teams) are different than regular tickets. With a regular ticket, the ticket is the same as cash. If you lose it you are out. It’s over for you.

But with a season ticket holder ticket, the ticket office has a list of who each ticket belongs to. If you lose the hard copy of the ticket, season ticket holders can contact them and they will email a replacement ticket which can used to get into the game. So here is what happened: The two scammers contacted the Seahawks ticket office, said they lost the 4 tickets they had sold to my friend for $600.00 and had the replacement tickets emailed to them. I’m sure they then were sure to get in the stadium the minute it opened to beat the real ticket holders from Chicago.

My friend could have left the guy from Chicago hanging with the loss but he is honest and refunded the money. It was a darn good thing the people from Chicago somehow got in the game….can you imagine how upset they would have been if they would have flown all the way here and had been denied at the gate?

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