How To Bag A Booty Bargain!
So, you want a great pair of fishing boots but don’t want to pay a hefty price tag? Well, who wouldn’t!? With hundreds of online retailers all selling similar products, it can often be quite difficult working out who is the cheapest for new boots, but a quick and easy way to get a great bargain is to buy some second hand.
Second hand footwear is often overlooked as a great way to source nearly new products at a fraction of the recommended retail price. By letting the original purchaser fork out full shop price, you can then pick them up at a knock down rate.
A great place to pick up bargain boots is eBay. There are loads of nearly new boots up for sale all the time; either purchased as unused gifts, wrongly sized, rarely used or whatever. For the buyer, there is a fantastic choice for all kinds of boots, be they low cut, medium cut, high cut or full on fishing waders!
If you’ve not used eBay before it can all look a bit daunting, but by following a few basic tips you’re just a few clicks away from purchasing a bargain pair of fishing boots.
So, where do we start? Well, boots are sold on eBay in one of two ways; by auction, where bidders place a bid for the highest amount they wish to pay, with the highest bidder at the end of the auction winning the item, of buy paying a fixed price, known as a ‘Buy it Now’ offer, where you pay the full amount the item is listed for.
Using either of the above methods, you can pick yourself up a real bargain, but just check the postage price listed with the item, which has to be paid on top of the bid or buy it now amount.
The first thing to do is find some boots, so click into eBay and enter your search term. Remember, it can help to alter the search term to get better results. Supposing you are a size 9, you might enter ‘fishing boots 9’ or ‘hiking boots 9’. eBay does have a facility that enables you to search by ‘Item Specifics’, but I’ve found that many sellers don’t fill this in and prefer to rely on my trusted search technique to winkle out the bargains.
Once you get a return of results, you can then filter them in various ways to pick out the real bargains. At Just above the first item featured you will see three options to display all the results; ‘All Items’, ‘Auctions only’ and ‘Buy it Now’. The first thing to do is click ‘Auction only’ and then just to the right you will see another box called ‘Sort by’. Click the drop-down menu and select ‘items ending soonest’. You will now see auction items in the order that they end, with the minutes, hours or days ’til the end listed on each item. By looking for those with no bids nearing the end of the auction, you can often pick up a real bargain.
If you want to pick up a Buy It Now bargain, select the ‘Buy it Now’ column to display all listings, and then sort by ‘Price + P&P: lowest first’ to see what the cheapest boots are in your size. You can tailor searches in all manner of ways once you start getting into it, and like us, you’ll never look back.
As a good example, check out these nearly new Karrimor low cut boots I picked up the other week. I paid £7.49 on a Buy it now with £2.99 for postage – giving me a cracking nearly new set of boots worth £40.00 new for just £10.48! Bargain!
Trust is obviously a big thing when buying an item just from a listing and a photo, but that’s where feedback comes in. Check the seller’s feedback, see who other buyers rate them and base your buying decision accordingly. Also, make sure you read the description carefully. If in doubt, leave it. The good thing about eBay is that the next bargain is only a click away.
It pays to have an eBay account already set up. If you haven’t, CLICK HERE to register for free. You never know when it might come in handy.
If you’re already a registered member, CLICK HERE to see just some of the bargains available today.
Happy Bidding…
Julian