So part of my idea for the decorations required obtaining around 75-85 Milk Glass Bud Vases. Originally I had thought I'd just look for them here and there for the next year at rummage sales, goodwills, etc. And then I remembered Ebay. But the shipping charges generally almost doubled the costs of the vases.
I spent one day with Catie trying to look for vases in the area. And after a day of hitting rummage sales and finding no milk glass, and a couple of trips to Goodwill that were somewhat successful, but at that rate I'd probably have to go to 2 or 3 goodwills every week for 4 months to find enough vases, I decided to go back to Ebay.
On average I'd say that purchasing the vases via Ebay probably added about $1.50 per vase extra. Multiplied by 80 vases I was looking at an extra cost of $120.
However. After one week and 2 days of bidding. I now have 75 vases purchased.
I probably spent roughly 20 hours bidding and searching on Ebay vs. approximately 50 hours or more I probably would have spent searching for them in the area. So there was a significant time savings.
Additionally, if I figure out how much gas would have been spent driving around to get them I figure the gas cost would have been about $60.
So at this juncture I would have saved about $60 dollars by looking for them in the area and would have sacrificed about 30 hours of my time.
Now I shall factor in how much Catie and I spent buying other things we didn't really need at the rummage sales we went to. In that one day we spent about $35. Now, I'm sure we wouldn't have spent $35 every time we went rummage saling, but even if we only spent a quarter of that, we would have spent an addtional $100 at least.
So if we recalculate looking for vases in the area would have cost us about $60 in gas and probably $100 in unnecessary purchases, as well as an extra 30 hours of time. Versus the extra $120 per vase by purchasing them on Ebay.
And lets not forget the assumption that I would be able to keep finding what I was looking for in the area at the same rate.
The moral of the story: Using Ebay might have ultimately saved a bit of money ($40) and definitely saved time when it came to purchasing a big portion of our decorations even if it didn't appear so initially when looking at the per item cost. And it definitely insured I got exactly the ones I was looking for versus settling for what was available in the area.
