I always think it is important to teach my children the value of a dollar and we had an interesting lesson this past weekend. It all started when my husband and my young son started looking at Star Wars items on the internet. That led to them going on Ebay and my son deciding that he simply HAD TO HAVE the custom painted Star Wars Lego mini-figure. There was a little over an hour left in the auction and the current bid was at $12.50 with free shipping. The next thing I know, my son was dumping the money out of his piggy bank and was ready to hand it over to somebody… Anybody so that he could get the Lego. Clearly he did not understand Ebay.

I had to explain the entire auctioning process, the payment through Paypal, and the shipping concepts to him. Within this I asked him how much the figure was worth to him and then I made clear that he might not win the auction. I did not agree with how much he wanted to spend but since he was using his allowance, I agreed to help him. I think one of the biggest mistakes people can make on Ebay is that they get caught up in the auctioning process so I wanted to teach him about not spending more than he thought the figure was worth. To do this, I waited until the last 30 seconds to enter in his maximum bid. As it turns out, he didn’t win it but he already had another one in his sights and using a similar process of bidding at the last minute, he won without paying more than he (or we) wanted to spend.

Although I still think my son spent more on the Lego than I personally thought it was worth, he is very happy and is looking forward to it showing up in the mail this week. Meanwhile, it did turn out to be a good opportunity for us to explain the process to him and to show him a good way to weigh the value of the item against the money in his piggy bank.

And for now, both he and his father are BANNED from Ebay!