Adventures in Aeron Chair Arbitrage

I still dont get what priceonomics provides that craigslist or ebay doesnt.

Craigslist:

* Listings have "ASKING" prices and can easily negotiated down 5-20%. So even if you provide a historical information of "Asking Prices", its still not a 1-1 relationship to how much you expect to sell your item for or its "BUYING" price

* I do question the value of historical information on CL: Its never been available, therefore neither buyer nor seller expect it and their view of the marketplace is limited to the time they hit search. And it is this view that they will use to determine a good price for an item. When I need to buy something that I need NOW, I try to choose the nearest, cheapest item, satisfying my requirements that is CURRENTLY available. Historical information doesnt come into play.

Ebay:

* Since I already have access to historical information(completed items) and I can use it to figure out how much to sell my stuff for, I dont see what Priceonomics bring to the table here.

Again Im trying to figure out where you guys are going with this. From technology standpoint, all this content scraping, indexing and searching is interesting, but what problem are you solving and how do you plan to make money with it(short of arbitrage of aerons)

My roommate in grad school did this. He'd buy toys on clearance from local toystores, and then sell them on EBay for twice the price. He wasn't selective at all w/ respect to the actual toy. Just looked for large markdowns.

He made decent money, but said that putting stuff in boxes and going to the post office was a hassle. He eventually stopped -- he was finishing med school at the time.

Why is your conclusion that it can't scale? You are making 20% profit on these chairs. There are many people you can pay 30% of your margin and they'd be happy. You can automate the buying and selling, sourcing people who can do the "heavy lifting." Actually, you can use your site to facilitate it.

The $1 chair is very unlikely to still be a chair in a couple of years if it is sat upon for ~4160 hours. Perhaps you could still sell it for $1 as firewood, though.

If you're happy with a "doordesk" and a metal or wooden folding chair, more power to you. I bought my own personal Aeron years ago, I've used it at multiple different companies and at home when I was freelancing. In the approximately 10 years I've been sitting very comfortably on that ~$800 chair I've gone through dozens of thousands of dollars of now obsolete computer equipment (desktops and laptops). From that perspective combined with the fact that the chair is still in very much like-new condition, even paying $800 for it was well worth it, IMO.

I'm also quite fond of the Ikea Galant height adjustable desk I also bought ~6 years ago, and that one doesn't have the premium price of the Aeron. I do like a good value... IME, the Aeron actually is a good value despite the high price.

there have been stories of people who scavenge for used/old/rare books and resell them for an exhorbitant mark up (http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2010/10/confes...)

some arbitrage of used goods can be a business; but it ultimately depends on the effort required and sustainable the income generated.