In focus Internet golf auctions: There are plenty of bargains to be found on websites such as eBay, writes Richard Gillis, just be patient - and strike quickly
The idea to become an eBay trader came from an interview I did with an old pro, someone who's doing it for real: buying and selling equipment online and making over a €1,000 a month, all in his spare time.
I'd dipped my toe in the water a few months before. Having moved to Ireland, I grew sick of paying Ryanair €20 a pop to take my clubs back and forward to Britain, so I bought a second set: some used Titleist 990s, an Odyssey putter and a new Callaway Steelhead three-wood. All came wrapped up and in good nick, and all for under €200.
It was clear there were bargains to be had, but could you build a business from it?
I began to monitor the bids in the golf section of eBay on a regular basis. Tap "golf" into ebay.ie's search engine and you get around 20,000 replies. It is up there with hi-fi and computers in terms of the amount of stuff out there.
Golf has some characteristics in its favour as a trading speciality. There's a high turnover of product from the major manufacturers, and so the internet is a haven for last year's models; for example, drivers that were hot in 2004 but have been upgraded by the manufacturer. But they still work, right?
There is also a pile of unwanted Christmas presents and well-intentioned but ultimately failed self-help experiments. Good products, ill-informed sellers - the perfect match.
I put my Titleists up with no reserve, figuring I just needed some cash flow to get going. Likewise, a nearly new TopFlite carry bag, another recent online buy.
Gary from Rhyll in north Wales wins the first bid, paying €85 for my Titleist irons. Probably less than I hoped for, but it's a start. The bag goes for €35. I'm up and running and ready to trade.
My first proper outing is a bid for a set of Cleveland TA3 irons, which I lose in the final few seconds. They go for €95, which is probably good value depending on their quality.
It's difficult to describe the feeling you get in the last few minutes of an eBay auction. It is as close to genuine excitement as a computer nerd will get.
My first buy was a Mizuno Raw Haze 58-degree wedge, a steal at €36. It gets delivered within four days and is pristine. I put it back up the same day, it finally goes for €59 - my first profit-making deal.
After that, I quickly get a sense of how much to pay, when to stop bidding and when to pursue to the bitter end.
I make my first mistake on a Momentus Short Game Wizard, the wedge with a bright yellow shaft you see advertised on Sky and the Golf Channel. I pay €35, thinking there must be people out there who have seen the same ads. This goes against one of the rules of the game (see below): don't buy stuff you wouldn't want yourself. Trust that your instincts are good, and don't try to second guess other people's taste.
I get rid of it for a tenner. Many more howlers like that and any thoughts of earning €1,000 a month are just a pipe-dream.
After a few weeks, my life is not my own. The volume of trading is higher than I anticipated, and its harder work and more time-consuming. Old friends call round to check on my mental health, having heard I was caught by a Polish shop assistant in Supervalu trying to tear out the equipment section of Golf World.
Then comes the big one, the deal every trader dreams about. There they were, lurking among the David Leadbetter swing mats and the water-damaged five-irons: a brand new, still-in-their-wrappers set of Mizuno MP33 blades, being sold with a set of new TaylorMade R7 big-headed metal woods.
They have just been put up on ebay.co.uk, the British site, within the last few hours and with no bids yet received. And here is the kicker, they have no reserve and a Buy It Now price of €120. This means the seller is prepared to avoid taking their clubs to the final auction, which takes a week of bidding, for a quick sale. This is too good to be true. I've stumbled across that mythical figure in eBay lore: the rich idiot.
Doesn't he know how much these are worth? I almost feel sorry for him. He could get €120 for each one of these irons. Mizuno are acknowledged masters of the club-making art. Professional players who are paid to endorse other brands sometimes sneak MP33s into their tournament bags. Nick Faldo, no mug punter he, recently split from Nike leaving him without an endorsement deal for the first time in his career. This left him free to play any brand he chose, solely on the quality of the clubs. He went straight back to Mizuno, the irons he played during his streak of winning six Major championships.
Okay, they are almost unplayable for anyone with a handicap higher than three. But that's the point. These are clubs for the serious golfer. And that is where the money is. I email Roger from The Wirral to close the deal, sending over my €120 via PayPal, the money transfer system used by eBayers.
The clubs come within four days. Without unwrapping them, I put the irons and woods up separately. After a week of bidding the MP33s go for €1,365. The three TaylorMade woods follow suit for €580. A profit of €1,825.
That was a while back, and since then I've taken a back seat. I never got close to matching that deal again, and in truth it was time to move on, to focus on other things. Like talking to my wife and child.
But to help any aspiring traders out there, I've put together a manifesto for making money from golf on the web. It's a list of dos and don'ts that might help you on the way to a fortune. Good luck.
