I'm not sure where I get the idea that I can generate money through selling things that I've bought at retail prices and still make money. Who thinks that that sounds possible? Ah, but what if you factor in some sort of value-add? Like buying two things, assembling them into a single thing, testing it, and selling it as a complete item? Surely that would be worthy of some consumer paying more than the component price for? No?

I don't want to make a living from selling stuff on eBay. However, I do have a theory, which is this. I can somehow subsidise my expensive toys and DVD habits by selling items. For instance, when I bought my Bill Bailey Box set for £10, I went ahead and sold two of my Bill Bailey DVDs for about £8. So, the "extra disk" in the box set essentially cost me £2. That's a fair way of doing it. Likewise, when I bought another box-set of musicals, it enabled me to sell the two I already had in order to pay for the third, which I didn't (at least it will once I reclaim those particular disks from Newcastle).

So, yesterday, full of the confidence of my convictions, I bought three large capacity hard drives and some USB external mounting units for them. I want one of these drives for myself. My plan was to assemble three and try to diminish the cost of my one by selling the other two. As with my clever trick of buying a rail ticket in sections, this was better in theory than in practice.

I think I'll break even...

...and have the fun of making three external hard drives...

...and the fun of posting them...