Jettison some weight, or I'll never make it to Cybertron!

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I have another kid coming.  That's kid number 4.  He's due in a month, and no, I don't have a name for him yet.  Due to the newest addition coming, coupled with the general malaise over Transformers that I experienced over the last 6 months, I've been trying to clear out some of the clutter in my collection.  Most of it was junk that I was holding on to for various reasons: childhood attachment, the need to have multiples, even in horrible condition, and just plain collection padding. 

I sold stuff like this on eBay.

And this.  As you can see, it's all broken stuff.  Amazingly enough, it all sold at good prices, well, good prices for me.  Simple auctions starting off at $0.99 resulted in some nice pocket change.  More than that, it cleared some space.  Selling all of this on eBay taught me a couple of things that I hadn't realized before.  First, lots like this:

Seem to inspire a ton of bidding.  I sold a couple of lots of just parts and weapons and made a veritable killing.  I was going to just put lots containing weapons up for a Buy It Now of like $15.  I have really underestimated to market for parts.  Now I know, and am much wiser for it.  Still, I have to confess to not understanding the notion of paying so much for parts that aren't in great condition, but whatever.

I also learned that I have no clue on what to charge for shipping.  Afraid of overcharging, I wound up shelling out more for shipping.  After the first few auctions, I kind of over-corrected and just went with USPS flat rate shipping.  It cost a lot more, but it did get the items to the customers faster, had built in insurance, and tracking.  I'm certain that it affected some of the final auction prices and I could've gotten more for what I sold, but I never once got a negative feedback on shipping prices, so there's that. 

 I'm also going to confess to getting a little sell-happy.  At first, I was sure that it would be hard to part with any part of my collection, but that hasn't been the case.  Now I'm looking at other things to sell to clear clutter: boxes, paperwork, my entire G.I. Joe collection.  My wife thinks I've been bitten by a bug., which she is way too happy about.  Happy wife, happy life.