e-Bay Forex Arbritage

I noticed something recently when trying to figure out a way to make money on e-bay. It's another idea that requires some capital, but it looks to have fairly consistent gains.

When I was coming home from Austria/Italy last year on a choir trip, I looked on e-bay to see if maybe people on e-bay would pay more than the exchange rate I could get anywhere else (and with astronomically lower fees). I discovered that they did purchase euros for about $0.05 more per euro than at the services. This number varied based on the denomination. Unfortunately, I used all my Euros to buy chocolate and other duty free items.

I have thought about this for some time, and have looked again, only to find that e-Bay buyers are willing to pay about $1.43 per euro, whereas the accepted change rate was only $1.37 at the time I checked it. So...if you found some low commmission currency converters, you could theoretically make a pretty penny selling euros on e-Bay.

One tip I would have is to charge a handling charge; you will have to go to the post office to buy insurance, you need to go to your currency conversion agency to get the currency, and you have to put up some currency to start. I would suggest getting the Euros in fives, and then charge around $1-$2 more than shipping for a handling charge. This way, you will likely make up your money you pay in commission fees.


I want to try this, but I can't do that until I have all my fees paid for fall semester. I'm looking at about $2000 in fees/books after all my scholarships are used. I should be able to do this, with about forty-seven cents left over for other things.