Mike

Ball

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April 7, 2008

CraigsList Beckons, So I’m Selling My Crap

I’ve come to a decision – I’m going to sell all my crap.

This has not been an easy thing for me. All my life I have been a compulsive “crap saver,” meaning that I’m the kind of guy who can’t bear to throw away those little plastic hanger dealies that you get when you buy new socks, or the small Ziploc bags that the screws from the stereo cabinet came in, or really nice shoe boxes. So I have a really nice shoe box full of small Ziploc bags with some of those little sock hanger dealies in them.

I have years worth of empty pill bottles. I have slide rules from high school. I have at least three drawers full of “mystery keys.” I even think I have a pair of two-tone purple patent leather and suede platform shoes that I’ve been saving since I got beat up and thrown out of a disco in 1975 – probably for wearing two-tone purple patent leather and suede platform shoes.

So this Purging of Possessions is really a pretty new thing for me. And what, you may ask, is behind my sudden anti-accumulationist reformation? I can give you the answer in a single word:

CraigsList.

OK, back in the days before the WorldWideWeb made word spacing unfashionable, that would have been two words, but you get the idea. CraigsList is an online classified advertising web site that posts more than 30 million new ads and receives more than nine billion page views every month.

Here’s how it works: If you have some crap and a computer, you can take pictures of your crap and use your computer to upload them to CraigsList. Then anybody who wants to acquire some crap can look on CraigsList, find yours, and buy it from you. And the best thing about it is, it’s all free!

CraigsList has categories for pretty much any kind of crap you might want to buy or sell: furniture, musical instruments, motorcycles, jewelry . . . You can even use your computer to sell your computer on CraigsList, which is pretty cool when you think about it – kind of like running out of pork chops and eating your own leg.

Of course there is another incredibly popular Internet buy/sell service, called eBay, where you post pictures of your crap and people all over the world bid on it in an exciting virtual auction. This is different from a live auction in that with eBay you wind up with a lot less shouting and a lot more Doritos crumbs in your keyboard.

CraigsList is more straightforward. Your ad just sort of sits there quietly waiting for someone to discover your crap, then sends you an email to ask if you’re willing to take 93 percent less than your asking price.

Since CraigsList basically operates locally, you end up having a good old-fashioned conversation with your potential buyer in which he tells you that he can’t afford to pay what you were asking for your crap because he needs to hang onto enough cash to pay for his grandmother’s surgery. You then explain that selling the crap for 93 percent less than your asking price will just not give you enough money to pay for that reconditioned crutch you’re had your eye on.

Finally you come to a consensus. Money changes hands, the buyer goes away happy, and you look around for more crap to take pictures of.

That reconditioned crutch isn’t going to buy itself, you know.

Copyright © 2008, Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.