Scavenger Life

Our numbers are very much higher this week thanks to a big sale: a coffee grinder from our cafe. We bought it used when we first opened. After a year plus, we decided to upgrade to a fancier grinder. Bought for $1000, used for 18 months, and sold for $1500. Nice.

Even without that big sale, we had a good week. Sold a bunch of potter/china + shoes. Plus we sold a creep old doll for $65. Lots of packing which was annoying. Annoying = $ 🙂

Our coffee shop has had a gangbusters summer and now we’re getting ready for an equally busy Fall when tourists come to see the leaves. I don’t look forward to the drop off in sales for January and February, but it’ll be nice to catch a breath. We have some big plans in the pipeline for 2023.

Hope you had a good week.

Check out our coffee! ► broadporch.coffee
Join the conversation in the forum>> HERE

Our Store Week July 31-August 6, 2022

Total Items in Store: 9050
Items Sold: 25
Gross Sales: $3,134.81 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $2,444.47 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $1071
Cost of helpers: $40
Highest Price Sold: $1500 (coffee grinder)
Average Price Sold: $97.99
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 30
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(Your numbers can be found here: https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance/sales)

Hi! Here we are again. Another week. Another set of numbers. This is the life of an eBay store.

We did nothing different but made more than twice as much as the week before. Sold a good number of items over $50. A set of dinner plates, a skirt, a shirt, a sealed puzzle, an empty whisky bottle, glass bowls, shoes. Some of these items we’ve had for a long time.

Read this article about big stores liquidating shelves of merchandise they can’t sell because people are focusing on buying food/gas.

Retailers have begun to slash prices on inventory in their stores and online. Last Monday, Walmart issued the industry’s latest warning when it said that its operating profits would drop sharply this year as it cut prices on an oversupply of general merchandise.

Many companies cannot afford to let discounted items ‌linger on their shelves because they have to make room for new seasonal goods and the necessities that consumers now prefer. While some retailers are discounting the surplus within their stores, many would rather avoid holding big sales themselves for fear of hurting their brands by conditioning buyers to expect big price cuts as the norm. So retailers look to liquidators to do that dirty work.

So I think we’re just in a weird time with how little people are buying. The advantage for scavengers like us is we pay little to nothing for our inventory so do not need to liquidate for cashflow + we have storage to hold items until people buy them. It’s all chill.

Check out our coffee! ► broadporch.coffee
Join the conversation in the forum>> HERE

Our Store Week July 24-30, 2022

Total Items in Store: 9044
Items Sold: 25
Gross Sales: $1,642.10 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $1,260.37 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $133
Cost of helpers: $0
Highest Price Sold: $325 (set of dinner plates)
Average Price Sold: $50.51
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 30
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(Your numbers can be found here: https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance/sales)

We put our store on “Time Away” while we’ve been in NYC and had half the sales as last week. We’re grateful we had any sales at all while on vacation 🙂 We sold a lot of fun stuff just not enough of it.

Good news is we did a lot of good scavenging in NYC. Every time we’d leave the apartment, we’d bring a big canvas bag and fill it up on our walks. Never once did we return without a bag of stuff: books, shoes, lots of small home decorations…

A scavenger emailed us this article about someone finding a designer lamp on one NYC corner:

It’s unknown who was able to get to the lamp first, but whoever it was, they’re in for big profits if they decide to sell. As mentioned, the item costs $4,300 on furniture resale site Chairish. Similar models, such as the daffodil and red tulip versions, are going for $1,535 and $5,195, respectively.

The story also inspired others to share their unique finds. As it turns out, stumbling upon luxury goods is not uncommon in Manhattan, with some even lucky enough to find a $2,000 Caprani lamp and a pair of Prada sneakers.

It’s not common for us to find items that sell for thousands, but it is nice to find solid $30-50 items while getting some exercise and people watching 🙂 Our kind of vacation.

Check out our coffee! ► broadporch.coffee
Join the conversation in the forum>> HERE

Our Store Week July 17-23, 2022

Total Items in Store: 9024
Items Sold: 14
Gross Sales: $668.60 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $540.05 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $32
Cost of helpers: $0
Highest Price Sold: $80 (pair of women’s shoes)
Average Price Sold: $38.57
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 100
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(Your numbers can be found here: https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance/sales)

We had a good week of sales including selling the original coffee roaster that our partner, Phil, started Broad Porch with. It was just a little toaster oven that he used to learn to roast coffee at home. Now we have a team of people roasting coffee on a machine the size of small car. Our partners in Broad Porch still cant get over that people buy almost anything we list.

Our helper got COVID last week so hasn’t taken photos in a couple weeks. It’s insane that this illness just continues after three years with no sign of leveling off.

We decided to close the coffee shop for part of the week so staff/owners can take a summer vacation. We’re heading to NYC where we get to enjoy walking around while still doing our online work. Looking forward to street scavenging.

Check out our coffee! ► broadporch.coffee
Join the conversation in the forum>> HERE

Our Store Week July 10-16, 2022

Total Items in Store: 8904
Items Sold: 20
Gross Sales: $1,199.64 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $906.79 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $88
Cost of helpers: $0
Highest Price Sold: $160 (small coffee roaster)
Average Price Sold: $45.33
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 30
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(Your numbers can be found here: https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance/sales)

We’ve been selling items everyday and always fun to see what people are buying. Our inventory is getting so large that I’m forgetting where we found some items. I just know that at some moment in time we believed someone would buy this particular item…and they did! It’s the scavenger higher that we’re always chasing.

Thanks to everyone who’s been buying coffee from us. We’ve purchased new equipment for our Roastery as we grow into a larger business. We now have three employees roasting for us. Help us keep them working!

Check out our coffee! ► broadporch.coffee
Join the conversation in the forum>> HERE

Our Store Week July 3-9, 2022

Total Items in Store: 8881
Items Sold: 21
Gross Sales: $958.79 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $724.45 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $47
Cost of helpers: $0
Highest Price Sold: $200 (two movie posters)
Average Price Sold: $34.49
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 30
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(Your numbers can be found here: https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance/sales)