restoring vintage video games, consoles
Yup, four months ago, I did a bit of money by restoring a few NeoGeo cabinets (Motorola m68k driven), those used in video games' rooms
Enough money to repay the costs, the petrol to bring parts home, to pay for the paint and glue used to restore the wood, and the purchase of an original CRT plus my time to repair the video circuit board, to clean up and refurbish the motherboard by replacing capacitors and this stuff; I even restored the coins box, and It ended with a decent gain to pay for the rent and for food shopping for half the month.
Shipped to a gentleman in Piccadilly Circus, London, UK. I have never seen again a customer like him: he paid in advance a third of the money for services, he didn't complain about the wooden crates used to safely ship the NeoGeo-cabinets, not even if wooden crates add more shipping costs than a common parcel with a lower probability of damages during shipping. It was ok for him, and he promptly paid the rest the next day he received the goods via bank money transfer. This saved me to pay Paypal's commision (6% of the value).
WOW! It was the best deal ever
Whereas ... with vintage computers on eBay... I usually receive requests for low-cost shipping methods, whose carriers must be cheaper than UPS and FedEx, and with PayPal I am responsible for everything, including a damages that only happen due to a poor shipping service, and thanks to the new Paypal's policy, in these case you have to refund the payment + all the S/H cost, thus, in order to avoid to end with a strong negative gain, I have already subscribed a commercial insurance with a credit company, whose commision is the 10% of the insured value.
Reasons why I can't accept 50 euro for a workstation. But probably I will retire the whole business of refurbished UNIX Workstations from eBay, and I will only offer vintage consoles.
Anyway, I have recently opened
this website, and I am working in my free time on a new enhanced version, that will look like a mini version of eBay, except we don't charge costs or commission on trades, neither we take money from advertising services