Garage Sale-Like Shopping on a Smartphone

Yikes, your company holiday party is in four hours and you must bring a white elephant gift, but the thought of heading to a store at this time of year makes your stomach churn. Well, Cassie K has a two-foot tall “lifelike stuffed penguin” for sale for just $5 that will fit the bill. You can find the penguin and the seller on EggDrop, a new neighborhood marketplace app designed for smartphone shoppers.

EggDrop is like a garage sale on a smartphone, akin to Craigslist or eBay, but focuses on your location with the buying and selling done on your phone, or through the web.

“It’s a place where physical goods can flow as easily as information,” says Dan Zheng, founder and CEO of EggDrop.

It’s not just for silly gifts, there’s everything imaginable for sale from Star Wars collectible coins to scarves to toilets.

Sellers take a picture with a smartphone of the item they want to sell, price it and post it. Buyers contact sellers through the EggDrop app and when a price is agreed upon the buyer and seller make arrangements for the payment and goods exchange. Sellers’ addresses are not posted for privacy and security purposes.

The free service allows for searching through location, category such as art, clothes, electronics, sporting goods, furniture, media/books, and more.

Like other ecommerce sites EggDrop has a feedback system it calls Karma Score where buyers and sellers can rate one another with terms such as Good Neighbor or On the Ball Karma for those positive experiences, or Flaked if someone did just that.

There’s not a lot of users in the South Bay right now Zheng said, but the app’s most active city is London.

For more information go to www.eggdropapp.com or www.eggcartel.com.