I've been selling stuff on Ebay for years....probably had my account since it's early days...always had a fascination with the idea of being able to offset a hobby cost or simply buy lunch tomorrow by selling off some would-be cast-off item laying around the house. Sometimes my wife jokes that nothing in the house should stay still for too long 'cause I may snap a picture & put it on Ebay. I've sold all sorts of things, never items bought to sell, but sometimes parts of items sold to offset cost. Mostly I sell car parts & recently I've sold some bicycle parts (and an ecclectic variety of a little bit of everything from old magazines, watches, tools, etc.. ). In the case of a good quality used part you can offer, I think it almost always boils down to the fact that most mechanical items (cars, like bikes) are worth less than the sum of their parts. So, you buy a bike for, perhaps $200, but you could conceivably have a $100 single item you could remove from the bike. Buy in large numbers and you have more. I'm sure that you could find arrangements with shop owners or run ads to increase your purchasing. In my case, it's always been hobby...in other words, as my own building projects progress, I find parts or pieces that would be of interest to some people, but I know *i* will never use (usually, good, functional, clean, 'vintage' stuff)...and it's sold off to fund the bits and pieces I need for the project of the day.

Another thing to keep in mind is for doing it to not drive you crazy, you need to have a good supply of packing materials, boxes, tape, etc. & a fairly simple way to ship. I usually drop off packages at USPS once a week and I have probably a room full of boxes of all sizes, use all appropriate household recyclables for packing material & always volunteer to take people's leftover styrofoam, peanuts, or bubblerap.

I did do the same thing semi-professionally for several years as a side business with a friend selling car parts online for Italian cars...so I learned a lot of the pitfalls there.

The feeback system + some of the random kooks you run into can be a drag...others can be a pleasure to deal with. For me, it's kind of a cool feeling to know that some of my old hobby cars have ended up literally spread out all over the world in pieces keeping others going.