Of presents & ebay

to a certain degree, i feel sorry that i am unable to provide her some 'luxuries' in life (i.e. 1st hand toys, nice expensive clothings etc etc) as often as i'd love to. i do not mean that i'd want to spoil my kid but i think it's rather innate for any parent to want the best for their child. with our existing circumstances, i decided to trawl ebay weeks leading to her birthday intead of hitting the stores with their x'mas catalogue sales. my goal was still to get her decent presents that are developmentally appropraite, what she'd like and hopefully not burn a hole in the pocket.

i'd set aside a 100 bux as the budget and plunged into the world of bargain hunting and adrenaline-rushing auctions. i searched its listing for big ticket items like 'fisher price's, developmental essentials like activity tables/cubes/puzzles/toys etc and all time favourites like sesame street plushes (avery's a young sesame street fan! maybe an muppet fan to be more precised since she'd freeze when she sees one yakking away on screen). my trawl became a cross-referencing search for items listed on ebay and their respective makers' official sites for functionality and recall/discontinued status.

i'd also found myself looking forward to the auction processes for the items i was bidding for. i guess the whole experience can be summed up as 'you win some, you lose some' and 'there's always something better if you wait another day'. i figured the excitement watching the countdown to winning the item with a potentially highest bid did provide some good cardiac exercise. but nothing is more satisfying than picking up items from sellers' homes and shipped by sellers at the local post office, knowing that the lil one will have hours of fun after a bit of cleaning up.

in the end of 2 weeks, i did blow my budget at twice the amount but i'd gotten some great deals on the following:

• an activity cube
• 8 battery-operated educational toys
• 4 wooden puzzles
• 1 safety gate
  
• a fisher price kitchen
• 2 sesame street plushes
• a safety toddler harness cum monkey backpack for toddler
• an elmo workbench
• a megablok pull cart + 50 bloks
  
• a deuter child carrier backpack (this's the one that really doubled the budget but i simply cldn't refuse such a bargain...got it at 1/3 its present retail price n its almost brand new...besides i do need a 'bigger mobile device'....*The Wife shakes her head and sighs*)
  

i was pleasantly surprised to see so many pre-loved items being put up for auctions are of excellent condition and the items bought were true to the sellers' descriptions. sellers with whom i'd communicated with were nice and accommodating. a certain Aunty Macy, whom we got elmo and big bird from, had even thrown in extras after knowing that i'm shopping for avery's birthday (see above pix). at the end of the day, other than the inconvenience of having to pick up the items, the entire ebaying experience was a very positive one.

i'm not ashamed to admit that i've gotten my daughter second hand toys as presents for her 1st birthday. i think there'd been a lot of care on our end to pick out what's relevant and as Aunty Macy said in her SMS, she's 'happy that they'll be touched by little hands again'.