Doing the Math(ish) - Week Nine

In less than twelve hours the auctions for the toys will start to conclude. Hrrmmpph. At present, there is only ONE bid for any of the auctions. Only ONE, and it is the last one to conclude, about 30 hours from the time I write this. Am I complaining? You bet. Do I feel bad for complaining? A little. Can I break my complaint down into mathematical elements? Uhmmmmm, that might be a challenge.

Actually, my complaint is mired in a small amount of jealousy. You see, this past week there has been frequent mention of a certain eBay™ item. A certain item that, as of my writing this, now has a bid of $15,700. Nice. Even nicer is that it still has over six days left until it concludes, at which point 100% of the proceeds are going to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. On one level I celebrate this, yet on another level it brings up feelings I don't really want to deal with at the moment. On one level I applaud The Today Show and Meredith Vieira's efforts (as well as Meredith's husband, Richard) on increasing the awareness of MS. On another level it really bites that I am not celebrity enough to garner the attention of enough people to get ten things under ten bucks a piece sold, in order to raise a measly $40 to $50 for my local chapter of NMSS. Let's see, that'd be in the neighborhood of .3% of what The Today Show can give the home office if their auction concluded within the same time frame at its current bid. Gosh, that makes my efforts seem a pittance.

I know what it is. They are giving 100% of proceeds, while I am being a selfish little person and only giving 75% of proceeds, mostly because I don't have a multi-million dollar budget behind me to promote my stuff, and would appreciate being able to keep some costs down in order to do nice things. So that 25% difference is what makes only 10% of my items sell? No. It's more like they have one item and I have ten, but it made for interesting math, which is the purpose of these posts, mostly. If I can raise that percentage of items sold to at least 25%, then I might not feel the bad feelings.

As bad.