After spending an hour working to get Mom to move a huge distance of four feet from the bed to the toilet, I am more than ready to do something else. What better thing to do than focus on a math task. Well, a math task more enjoyable than realizing that four feet in one hour equals one foot every fifteen minutes, which is about one inch every minute, which is very, very slow. Unbelievably slow. Unbearably slow. Grrrrrrrrrrr. Let's see, a math task. An enjoyable math task. I know! What is more enjoyable than toys? I think I will revisit a previous post, and once again do the math. This time, however, I have some more finite numbers, and a new twist.
You might remember the lot of fast food toys I bought on eBay™ some time back. It was ultimately shipped to me in three boxes, the first arriving Tuesday of last week. That was box 2 of 3. Box 1 of 3 arrived the next day. Box 3 of 3 did not arrive until two days ago. The anticipation of its arrival was offset by the stress of the recent life situation that took front and center and drained a good share of my energy, but the arrival of the last box brought a joy that was greatly needed at that time. I have to admit it was an OCD dream to sort the toys, count the toys, re-sort the toys, re-count the toys, so on and so forth. In the process, I found a whole bunch of numbers with which to play. So, without further ado, we play.
First, raw numbers. The lot ended up consisting of 222 items. I paid $29 for the lot, $18.05 for the initial installment of shipping cost, and $21 to complete the shipping cost, (which BTW, the Mrs. doesn't know so don't tell her) bringing a total of $39.05 to ship the three boxes, making my investment a grand total of $68.05 for those 222 items, or $0.3065315 each. I determined that 76 of those could be grouped into complete sets of toys, resulting in 15 complete sets. Now, lazy math holds this to mean that each set is worth $4.54 [rounded]. Lazy math is OK, but not as much fun. You see, some of those sets involved "collect all 4!" while others involved "collect all 5!" In truth, I found I now have complete sets of 4, 5, 6, and 8. Sadly, the sets of 12 are not complete, and the sets of 57 are nearly non-existent. No worries, though, because I still have those 15 full sets, and I can carry on with the math. Rounding the per item cost to 31¢ gives me a nice array of numbers, as I share now:
Complete 8 = $2.48 investment
Complete 6 = $1.86
Complete 5 = $1.55
Complete 4 = $1.24
If I were to sell each complete set for the above prices, I would recover my investment, thus feeling even greater joy when I place the bulk of the remaining 146 toys in the yard sale Free Stuff basket. At the moment, it is too cold to hold a yard sale, so the best means to sell these complete sets is via eBay™. Of course, that changes some numbers, due to the fact that selling anything on eBay carries additional costs. Insertion costs, final value costs, and if people use PayPal, seller costs. I'll use a complete set of 8 to illustrate:
Current cost = $2.48
Insertion cost = 0.35 (based upon listing at $2.48 opening bid)
Final value = 0.13 (based upon selling at $2.48)
Total w/ fees = 2.96
Granted, this number would change if the opening bid is adjusted to help recover the costs, but for now I will ignore that fact. Should the buyer use PayPal to pay for the auction, there are more charges, which I can not ignore. Since these charges are based upon the total amount of money received, I have to adjust the total to account for the S/H cost the buyer pays. A box of 8 items would take about $7 to mail via USPS domestic Priority Mail depending upon destination, thus making $9.48 the amount for PayPal to use to charge its 2.9% fee, which equals a charge of 27¢, plus a flat transaction fee of 30¢, bringing a total of 57¢ in PayPal costs. This means that the complete set of 8 items would end up costing me $3.53. Using this model, the various complete sets would have the following costs:
Complete 8 = $3.53 investment
Complete 6 = $2.87
Complete 5 = $2.53
Complete 4 = $2.20
Remember the lazy math from above? It brought a per set cost/value that was more than any of these, making the fun math a more realistic expectation for what needs to be obtained for each set of toys, should I manage to get someone to buy each complete set at the minimum price. Naturally, I would love nothing more than to sell these complete sets and recover my investment in each of them, but there sits a minor issue that has been cropping up in the background since I made the project a public, even GLOBAL, one. It seems that some souls out frequenting cyberspace think this project is about the money, hence the "opportunities" that are sent my way to make more. Let me restate something I stated in the past, in case anyone missed it. While obtaining some financial improvements in the process of seeing this project out to its conclusion is a nice thing, the TRUE improvement will be in me, and in the Mrs.'s house. It's not about the money, although the money has helped pay some bills. It's about making a positive change. As this reminder is bouncing about in your neuron capsule, I now offer up the "new twist" of which I spoke earlier.
As I was searching for one bit of information on eBay™, I happened upon another. One eyebrow rose, then the other. A thought formulated. A decision was made. You see, the world's biggest auction site has a program they call eBay Giving Works. One of the non-profit organizations that benefits from this program is the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Given my opportunity to live with this disease for the last 7 years, one might understand my affinity for this organization. One might even further understand why I would be willing to do something like, oh, I don't know, maybe donate proceeds from the sale of the complete toy sets to the local chapter of this organization. How's that for a twist?
Therefore, in the next 24 hours I will be listing 10 of the 15 complete sets on eBay™, donating a percentage of the proceeds to the National MS Society. I challenge everyone who reads this to spread the word of this event to everyone they know, and let us all see what can be accomplished beyond just making money for me.
