Scavenger Life Episode 369: New, Exciting Projects

07/08/18 – 07/14/18

Total Items In Store: 2,407
Items Sold: 18
Cost of Items Sold: $55 (around)
Total Sales: $ 596
Highest Price Sold: $ 60 (Vintage Briefcase)
Average Price Sold: $ 33.11
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 22.5
Number of Items listed this week: 13

Decent week for this time of the year.

Trying to get back into the swing of things after coming back from a long vacation.

I was able to get some great items at some garage sales yesterday. I had to go to a city about 20 min. away I don’t normal go to for personal errands.
I hit a bunch of garage sales on the way back. I bought 8 items for an average buying price of $2.81 and average selling price of $61.

I wrote my query for WL to get all of my sales with COGS(COGS part is To do). I just have to load all my spreadsheets of cogs into WL to finish that task. That will save me a ton of time at tax time.

I started reclaiming container space yesterday. I was able to free up 3, 18 gallon containers and 2, 30 gallon containers.

I have realized that once your store gets this big, there are so many tasks to do other than listing. Sometimes it is hard to know which to do first on a limited part time basis. I feel like I need to work full time just to get caught up on everything I need to do.

Mark

Main Street!
This is amazing truly exciting news!
Cannot wait to dump my dumpy numbers and head on over to the Podcast!
CONGRATS!!!!

7/8 – 7/14

EBay store totommyto

Total store items: 587
Number of items sold: 4
eBay sales (no counting s/h): $135
Cost of items sold: $5
Consignment payouts: $16
Highest price sold: $50 – vintage ‘naked’ Barbie doll
Average price sold: $33.75
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $15
Number of items listed this week: 10

Etsy store Oldfleatoymarket

Total store items: 537
Number of items sold: 5
Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $57
Cost of items sold: $5
Consignment payouts: 0
Highest price sold: vintage (1980’s) bible – $15
Average price sold: $11.40
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $15
Number of items listed this week: 14

Interestingly, although perhaps this has happened year to year and I just never knew it, my fancy Diecast model car sales have fallen hard flat.
Also, shocking to see how low sales were this week, although I do recall sloooow times during deep summer other years back. I just did not do the weekly numbers during those ignorant days to really see it.
The big news is what’s happening down on Main Street…

Week of 7/8-7/14
Total Items in Store: 2,457 (Up 62% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 68
Number of Items Sold: 62 (Up 38% YOY)
(Includes 2 Etsy, 1 Bonanza, 1 TrueGether)
Weekly STR: 11% (Down 2% YOY)

Total Product Sales: $2,732 (Up 141% YOY)
Cost of Items Sold: $318
Highest Item Sold: $1,100 – Monarch of the Glen Steel Engraving Framed Print
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Troy wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 16-12.

eBay Clothing
# Listed: 1,575
# Sold: 42
STR: 12%
ASP: $22.99

eBay Shoes
# Listed: 306
# Sold: 5
STR: 7%
ASP: $34.94

eBay Hard Goods
# Listed: 576
# Sold: 13
STR: 10%
ASP: $106.07

Etsy Hard Goods
# Listed: 148
# Sold: 2
STR: 5%
ASP: $37.36

So…love long tail hard goods! 🙂

We purchased the steel engraving over 3 years ago, and I spent a lot of time trying to validate the provenance of it. We were pretty much setting the price on this, so we were happy to get $1,100 for it. Thanks to Jay and Ryanne for the thoughts on the shipping. FYI – Next time we will ask if they want the frame before we package. After packaging, it was 50” x 33” x 8” and 23lbs. Shipping to China was over $1,200. He messaged us and said he doesn’t care about the frame, just roll it up and send in a tube. Information we should have had before we spent 2 hours custom making a double box!

Also had a nice sale on an M&M guitar. Message we received was beautiful…

”Hello and Thank You soooo much! This guitar is going to a little boy (8 yrs. old) that was told he has 3-6 months to live. Your guitar will make his day! He’s asked for one for a year. Can you please ship it out asap so he can still come in the Studio and record with us?? God Bless, Jack”

Congrats on the new building and new business venture. I want to hear a lot about it!

Just finished up the Podcast. Funny about Ryanne doing the grilling now. Veronica LOVES when we grill, and she has started to learn how to do it herself now too.

Yep Jay, it is an orchestra on the grill!

OK, I haven’t had a chance to listen to the podcast yet, but can you at least give us a HINT….that photo shure looks like a storefront, not another house rental in the works….antique mall? Your own B&M shop? Or something else entirely? I probably won’t get to listen till late tonight….

Jay: Yes, Craigslist Hunter will share his numbers on Instagram or on Youtube. He isn’t consignment, he runs a pawn shop, and that is how he gets such great items.

On your comments about listing only the Best of the Best, I think that is a really good comment. For people that do this part time, THAT is what I would have them focus on, provided that they are a veteran seller.

New sellers, I would keep the cost low (sell what is in the house), and list high STR items just to get used to the process (listing, photoing, storing inventory, shipping). Plus, with high STR items, you get the rush of making a sale, and makes it feel like you are getting a reward.

After that, since part timers can only list so much, I would have them list the Best of the Best items if they can wait for the cash and are willing to sit on items. This way they are getting the best for their time.

I only see his gross, which is really high. From what I have seen though, I think he is around a 3x-5x on his ROI. He will do 2X on some high dollar items, but no, he doesn’t have the whole numbers shown.

His most recent 60 Day total was $117,213.82

Absolutely true. I think his employees are him, his wife, and his brother that works for him. Maybe another person, but not sure.

I also know that his shop would have non-eBay sales as well. I would love to know his revenue split between eBay and Storefront. You know me, I’m a business and numbers person, so I would LOVE to see it all…

Ryanne, I read the post. As my post says, the building you bought looks like a storefront, not a house you’d convert as another rental….so I was wondering what your plans are for the building? But hey, I’ll wait and listen when I get a chance, probably tonight…..just excited for you guys, that’s all.

My Store Week July 8-14, 2018

Total Items in Store: 1067
Items Sold: 21
Total Sales: $488.13
Cost of Items Sold: $41.28
Promoted Listing Sales: 6
Ad Fees for Promoted Listings: $14.21
Highest Price Sold: $70 (Vintage Windbreaker from Goodwill Outlet to Russia)
ASP: $22.19
STR: 8.4%
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $75
Number of items listed this week: 29

Congratulations on your store front – I cannot wait to follow this journey and wish you much success!

Items in Store 1015
Items Sold 14
Total Sales $557.50
COGS $47.35
Total Profit $510.15
Average profit $36.44
Average sales price $39.82

I sold a set of Wizard of Oz dolls for $140. I was really worried when I got the sale message because I had dropped the box these were in a few times and I was sure I had lost a few accessories (shoes, hats, etc). To my surprise it was all there! Woot!

Took a break from listing this weekend to build the first new inventory shelf in my ebay garage office. 5’x2′, 5 shelves including the floor. This will hold 15 totes plus some loose bulky items. Total cost: $20. I got a huge pile of plywood for free from work to make a bunch of storage racks. I plan on making about 220 linear feet of storage shelving with it. My only cost will be for 2×3 lumber to make the frames.

Fairly quiet week, but I finally sold some stuff from an auction that I had been waiting for for a long time. Basically no scavenging this week due to a nasty flu.

Sales: CAD$564, COGS: $154, item profit: $321
Expenditures: $24 –> After-tax cashflow: $368
Listed: $730, 3 items
Notable sales: circuit breaker lockouts, 2 sales for $232 and $150.

Curious to hear about your new property! Going to listen now.

Hi R&J — Thanks for the podcast!
Congratulations on your big scavenge of the week – a new building! That’s hard to beat.

Here are my numbers for the week…
Total Items in Store: 2419
Items Sold: 33
Total Sales: $910
Cost of Items Sold: $69
Average Price Sold: $27.57
Average Cost of Item: $2.11
Highest Price Item Sold: $165 Toshiba DVR-620 Combination DVD / VHS (paid about $5 at an estate sale)
Number of items listed this week: 61
YTD Sales: $23984
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +19%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 321
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 119
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 49
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.36%
# of Hats Sold: 20 (60% of sales)

It was a another solid week for me. My summer garage sale finds seem to be doing pretty well and keeping my numbers good. My biggest sale was a DVD/VHS combo. All the YouTube Ebay people have been talking about them so I think the price is probably falling but this unit was pretty recent unit which got me a good price.

Regarding the caller (Mark) that wanted to sell postcards without tracking, I set up a separate account to do that so that I wouldn’t lose my top-rated seller status. (You get lower shipping costs for being a top-rate seller so it’s probably worth keeping).

Regarding the missing-photo bug, I sent a message to the eBay For Business Facebook group and exchanged a couple messages with an eBay person (Customer Support?). They said they would refund my store fees and the insertion fees for the impacted items. It doesn’t get anywhere near compensating me for the amount of hassle but it’s better than nothing.

Slow sales because of summer?

Yes AND, after 3 weeks of ZERO sales, received a message from a potential buyer, and I quote:
“Where are the other photos”

Last week I said it was under 10% of my 700-item store. I worked during the weekend to re-upload around 150 items. Always opportunities. so I made important adjustments on old items (my old items are selling like crazy), but it also messed up my policies, which is good, gave me another opportunity to add missing policies and trim out those I do not want.

After last week’s podcast, created my first 3 sales with immediate sales. Plus I am picking a handful of things I have or I buy and putting into auction. These items are more or less like those I sold in under 3 min, full price and found out I could have made a lot more.

Kinda excited again. Possibly Ryanne’s smile in front of the new property and Jay’s continuous declaration of his love for her are inspiring me 🙂

Diversification

Folks, another great example about diversification. Jay and Ryanne are strong on real estate, wow!!!

I am big fan of a diversified portfolio. I learned to play with Wall Street decades ago and that gave me good returns and comfort. That is the problem: comfort.

Today I am going after many “new things” like The Lending Club or Acorns, two things I always wanted to invest and these companies brought in digital format.

Interesting inside Acorns, there is a page “how to make clean money while you sleep”. Their first recommendation is do what Jay and Ryanne are doing with Real Estate

ebay Sales: July 9-16
Total: 9 items Sales: $455.76
Store: 518 (broke the 500 mark!)
COGS: $45

I tried a 20% off sale and then as soon as the sale ended, I had 2 karge sales on items at full price. WTF ebay, you are so obvious sometimes.
Largest Sale: Copper Pan Mauviel: $120

My Poshmark world is growing nicely, June 10-16
$230 after fees as of today on dead eBay inventory this week on 6 items.
It’s back to school shopping for many of the users, so if you have not started Posh yet, give it a whirl and cross list your stuff!

Very interesting direction by buying a commercial property. You’ve mentioned quite a few times about being active in local government, so buying something in town makes sense. I can see you leasing out the downstairs rather than opening up something yourselves. I understand that having a store pretty much takes up all your time. You would have to reconsider eBay, AirBnB, your occasional contract jobs, etc. But, I’m not you, so I’ll be interested in how this all plays out.

Week of July 8 – 14
* Total Items in Store: 1186
* Items Sold: 16
* Cost of Items Sold: $33.50 + $22 Commission
* Total Sales: $321.26
* Highest Price Sold: $50 new Beige Naturalizer sandals (on commission); $45 1988 Pantone book process color simulator
* Average Price Sold: $20.07
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $55.78
* Number of items listed this week: 16

On Friday, I went to a different auction that what I usually to go to. The one I normally use is located in an urban area and held in a conference center. This new-to-me auction was held in a suburb to rural area in a few barns next to someone’s house. The parking area was gravel, and the barns were not air conditioned, but the deals were incredible. I originally wanted to go to just see what it was like and maybe spend $20 or so. But, I brought back a trunk full for about $55! I had never seen my usual place sell a full table, so now I know what you guys are talking about. I still want to go to my usual haunt this Thursday, but their August auction is on a weekend, and I’ll just go to this new place.

Congrats on the new digs! Can’t wait to follow this project! Do you plan on using the apartment above as an AirBnb or a more long term rental? (I didn’t catch that on the show if you mentioned it)

Week July 9-15, 2018

Total Items in Store: 918
Items Sold: 12
Cost of Items Sold: $104 (17.7% of sales)
Total Sales: $587.45
Highest Price Sold: $239.99 (lot of 8 vintage 1970s slot cars)
Average Price Sold: $48.95
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $146
Number of items listed this week: 32
Promoted listings test: 7 sales, $387.48 (66% of total sales), $22.68 fees (5.9% of sales)

Ho-hum week really saved by that big sale. Was super excited to see that come in overnight on Thursday. Another notable sale, although not super high dollar, was this Walkman (https://www.ebay.com/itm/192599319534) that sold within hours of listing. I always pick up old Walkmans & Discmans because there’s such a rabid collector market out there (although some are not worth anything). Even not functioning still has some value for parts – this particular one probably only needs a new belt and some expertise to bring back to life. I love my position in the food chain – I bought for $1, sold as is for $35, the next guy will put a $5 part and an hour into it and it will be worth $100. 🙂

Only went to one sale this weekend, and it produced a big bag full of stuff – mostly bread & butter. c1950s/60s Stardust Las Vegas Do Not Disturb sign (https://www.ebay.com/itm/202370357119), c1970s/80s Plaza NYC Do Not Disturb (https://www.ebay.com/itm/192599326620), 1950s United Airlines silverware (https://www.ebay.com/itm/192599345886), and a whole boatload of quality LPs.

Total Items in Store: 2189
Items Sold: 26
Total Sales: $1376
Highest Price Sold: $600 (Vase) Paid $200 at an auction
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $190

Great episode. Very excited for your new adventure! Can’t wait to see what comes of it.

Had an okay week, soft sales mostly. I did have a vase that sold for $600, I paid $200 for it. That really helped my bottom line, I would have been in the dirt without it. 🙂 Didn’t get a ton of work done on ebay, we have been busy trying to get our house packed and also had our son visiting. Our son did get a job in Washington DC so my husband and I will be going to visit and hopefully going to stay in one of J and R’s rentals.
I also got a new phone, and iPhone 8S. Made me a bit nausea to get it but we really wanted it for the amazing camera. We are going on our 5 week walk soon and I wanted something that takes great videos and pictures.
We hate going to sales where the price is not set, it is frustrating. We have been to sales where when you ask the people how much the item is they will get their phone and look it up on ebay! I instantly was like nope! We do like estates sales for hard goods, we haven’t had a lot of luck finding stuff other than clothes at thrift stores.
I had one return, it was a pair of jeans that has been returned 2 times in one month!! I take the time to measure things and they still return it for fit. UG> I just sold them again and I will just have to burn them if I get them back again.

Speaking of the new payment platforms that eBay will be rolling out – I would be interested to hear from some of the foreign trash elves about what their preferred online payment method is in their countries. I know that Paypal isn’t the preferred platform in many countries, which I believe is a good reason for for eBay to diversify its payment options. I offer international shipping and think that the new payment options could maybe increase international sales. I hope I’m selected to be an early adopter for the program.

My “scavenge of the week” is an Hermes necktie. It’s only the 2nd one I’ve ever found. The first was NWT and I sold it for $199.99. This one is in great condition but used and not special. It will probably only net around $30 to $40 – but just the fact that its only the 2nd Hermes I’ve ever found after years of doing this, made it exciting.

My “Scavenge Heart Break” of the week was what could have been an amazing Alfred Shaheen 1950s/1960s dress. It too was only the 2nd Alfred Sheheen dress I ever found and it was a great example of a dress from its era. But the condition issues were just too great so I left it behind. Even with help from a seamstress and the cleaners I don’t think it could have been salvaged. It could have been a $300 to $500 dress in better condition. Ouch.

Ryanne mentioned issues with buying off casual eBay sellers. I also bought something off eBay last week. I purchased 6 bowls in our kitchen dish pattern. The seller messaged me saying that he also had dinner and salad plates in that pattern. I decided buy a couple of each, we agreed to a price, and then he said to send $60 to his Paypal account. Um, no, that is against policy.

I told him to set up a quick listing, and I would pay. He said he had limited listings, and he would just send me the bowls. So, he lost a $60 sale for an additional $0.25 and the extra work of making another listing. I guess he is just a part timer making a little additional pocket money.

I hope the bowls arrive safely.

July 8-14
Total Items in Store: 1571
Items Sold: 19
Total Sales : $970
* above yearly average of $726
* above 2017 total week sales of $543
Highest Price: $334 (Satellite Antenna Handheld Controller)
Average Price: $51
Returns: 1
Cost of Goods Sold: $13
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $3
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 15

So I had a much better week than the previous one. And I started listing and taking photos again. I feel like I’m getting back in the game. Hopefully it’s not just a fluke and these numbers can continue throughout the summer slowdown season. That antenna controller was something that I found in a trash bin last year. I had no idea what to price it for because there were no comps. But I think I did alright.

I think you’re absolutely right about having goals and having that big idea in order to keep from burning out. My goal is to pay off my new house in under 10 years. And my secondary goal is to start making enough on eBay sales to quit my day job (which requires a nice little safety net in my savings, maybe $60K or so). So with that all in mind, I can go down in my office 4 or 5 nights a week and continue to work after working my day job instead of getting lazy in front of the TV every night.

Your idea of improving your community using real estate is awesome. I’ve seen it happen right before my eyes over the last 5 years. Wheeling, WV had become stagnant. Buildings were sitting unoccupied. The culture scene was dismal. The people were leaving to other cities. But a revival started as a tiny ripple and turned into a huge wave. It was like a few people got the idea of the potential that the city could have, opened some different stores and restaurants, and more and more people got on board with the idea. Now they’re tearing down dilapidated buildings to make room for more businesses. And all it took were a handful of people with a vision to get it started.

RR Store Week July 8-14, 2018

Total Items in Store: 1599
Items Sold: 37
Cost of Items Sold: $43.29
Total Sales: $780.65
Highest Price Sold: $74.99 (Tommy Bahama shirt)
Average Price Sold: $21.10
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $12
Number of items listed this week: 12

I spent most of the week helping my parents pack up their house for their move to Arizona, so very little listing got done. But the good news is I now have a huge new death pile of fresh stuff to list. They have to downsize, and my sister and I are getting first dibs.

J&R, I’m SUPER excited about your newest purchase! Can’t wait to hear when you have planned!

Paul

I haven’t had a chance to listen to the podcast yet, but just wanted to say congratulations on the new building! It feels like I’m watching real-life Monopoly with you two. So cool.

My stock levels are really high right now, so I am taking it easy from both listing and sourcing. I am running an experimental sale on my store right now to see if large sales boost overall sales of long-tail stock. I will post results when the sale is done.

Congrats on the new building purchase! I’ve long been drawn to real estate-based projects, as sticky and costly as they can get – the potential is so inspiring. Looking forward to learning more as it all unfolds for you.

I’m recovering from a late night bout of food poisoning or bug, so keeping it short:

07/08/18 – 07/14/18
Total Items In Store: 883
Items Sold: 21
Total Sales: $697.93
Cost of Items Sold: $26.25
Highest Price Sold: $120 – Vintage Pendleton Glacier Park Wool Blanket
Average Price Sold: $33.23
Returns/Refunds: 1, false INAD
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of Items listed this week: 30

Hey, It’s Jean – you played my voice message near the end of this podcast
Thought i’d share an update about the new eBay Australia fullfillment program by “fullfilio”
I exchanged a few emails with fullfilio and they were still quite vague about what kind of inventory they would allow.
this is from the last email they sent me.

“Unfortunately, we aren’t currently setup to support businesses sending less than 200 orders per month.
The good news is, once your company is close to this volume, we can get you on-boarded very quickly – in most cases in less than a week!”

At this stage, I’m lucky to get 50 sales a month but i’ll definately give it a go when I step my inventory up a bit more.

Total Items in Store: 1562
Items Sold: 20
Cost of Items Sold: $48.37
Total Sales: $1030.32
Highest Price Sold: $750 (Yashica 35 mm camera)
Average Price Sold: $51.52
Returns: none
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 14

Enjoyed the podcast and good luck on the new venture. Another slow week for me with the one big sale that pushed my numbers way up. I don’t hit many home runs but that was definitely a big one – $2.50 yard sale find & sold in 3 days.

Wishing everyone a good week of sales and scavenging.

I am a veteran of many many estate sales in an urban area. You can’t generalize about estate sales–sometimes the prices are insanely high and I leave within 60 seconds. However, sometimes they just want to clear out the house because the real estate has a lot more value than the contents or other reasons.

At two sales that I went to this weekend, as soon as people walked in, the people running the sale said “Make a big pile, it will be cheap.” It was– cheap as in $10 per trash bag full of stuff. And these were professionally run sales.

Jay and Ryanne, I think it would be great if you added in the cost of your employees labor into your stats. Also, that might give you insight into which items are high-enough value to spend your time/labor costs on.

I think the whole key to this business for me is to stay away from the lower value items. It is so difficult to do ack!

Oh and to clarify, when I discussed the two estate sales where things were cheap… They were cheap at the very first hour of the sales. This was not the last day.

Congrats Jay and Ryanne! Awesome building. Any plans on whats going in to store front?

Hello from Bend, Oregon. We are on vacation scavenger style staying free at my cousin’s house. It was a soft week on EBay before I left.

R&J congrats on your purchase! It must be exciting to help shape the future of your little town. It would be cool if the lower half became a coffee shop / beer & wine destination you could cross market to your guests. Having no familiararity with it, it makes me wonder if this is a riskier endevor than your previous projects. Perhaps you might stick more closely to a budget this time if true. This says the person spending mucho to redo a kitchen as we speak. 🙂

I’m the noodge who keeps suggesting you to go to urban garage and estate sales. I think some may be busts, crowded or expensive. But I still believe it would pay off in more premium inventory that sells faster. Shopping in Bend and some other places makes me realize how good I have it at home. Too much new made in China crap here. At home, lots of baby boomers and elderly, lots of rich people who donate nicer brands, and busy younger people without time to scavenge. I can’t wait to clear the piles and go to estate sales as my reward!

I finally started listening to the podcast – just have to take a break from listening to say that I totally agree that long-term goals are everything. When you first start running a business, you are so involved in the day-to-day that you can’t see the the bigger picture of what you are doing at all. You are just trying to get from point a to b without failing too hard. Once you’ve gotten past that initial bump into a successful or successful enough long-term business, it’s like ? What do I do now? More of this, or other projects that more align with who I am as a person?

That’s the point when I’ve said that most people crash & burn in this business. It is so easy that processes learned can just run on auto-pilot. It is at that point that people are like “am I going to be doing this forever (until retirement or ?), just like you would at a normal job. What am I going to do now that I am doing fine enough?

You can run your business, and then do x or x or z or whatever. But there comes a point when you’re like what do I do now? I have already learned everything there is to know about all aspects of my business. What is next?

My own personal long-term goals have gotten me to start thinking in terms of an endpoint for all of this. I have been reading about what the FIRE people do when they finally have enough to retire – some say to continue working if you want to build more money, but others say that sometimes enough is enough. Just live off of what you have set-up and get out of the race to make money otherwise.

I’m at the point now where my projects outside of selling could fully absorb all of my time – but I do not have the money to do so. I first turned to online selling to give me time and energy to work on projects outside of a f/t job – now that I have a grip on those projects, I could devote all of the time that I have working on a business to working on them. But, I do not have the funds to go f/t on these projects.

So, I wish that I could find a current stopping point and just leave it alone at that, be completely free of online selling – but Ebay as it is for now will have to be my “stopping point” because I do not know how to break free of work and business completely in order to support myself doing what I really want to do. Online selling has given me a taste of what I am capable of doing outside of the normal conventions of “work.”

almasty, no need to answer if you’d rather not, but I’m curious: what are the things you’d rather be doing if you could afford to?

I enjoy doing ebay, and its something the better half and I like to do together, but sometimes I do get the urge to do some acting again, or to get back to doing local history research, or just try some new things. The urge generally passes, but it’s still there….

Jay and Ryanne, congrats on the store purchase! It’s great of you guys to invest in your local town and lead by example.

Only problem is I can’t get Seger’s “Down on Main Street” out of my head now!

Week July 9-15, 2018

Total Items in Store: 612
Items Sold: 19
Cost of Items Sold: $42.50
Total Sales: $731.74 (not including shipping)
Highest Price Sold: $120 Vintage Galoob Toy
Average Price Sold: $38.51
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $250
Number of items listed this week: 140

First time posting my numbers. About two months in, working diligently on eBay. My immediate goals are centered on building inventory and getting my active listing numbers up. This week I will source 200 items and get active listings to 750.

Great podcast and congratulations on your new property!

Wow! You’re doing great for two months in!!!!

Keep up the good work!

Are you a one man operation, or do you have help?

I had a soft start where I only listed around 50 items while building up inventory the first month. But the last two months I just got to work on listing!

Thank you! For sourcing I have followed what I’ve learned from the podcast (and from everyone here on the forum) and I hit an auction every Saturday (if there is a good Sunday auction I will do that as well).

I love auctions and find it easy to load up on great items. I’m not a fan of selling clothing so I don’t hit many thrift stores but I’m not able to drive by a yard sale without stopping, so I get some great items there.

I do all the pictures, listing, and shipping myself but my girlfriend helps with cleaning, testing, and she helps at the auctions. It would be difficult buying as many items as I do without her help.

Don’t know where to put this Jay, so if you figure out a better place, move it on over.

But, I just got an Invitation to opt into the first roll out beta trial of the “new payment processing” that ebay is going to move over to over the next few years. This is the second page of the invitation. The first part just says we were randomly slecetd and if we do wish to “opt in”, click on the reply tab and we will be added onto the list to get one of the early invitations to try the new payment and banking system we heard about in the last Seller Summer Update. Guess it is the European company, wasn’t it Adrian or something like that.

But I then went over the the FAQ page to see what they were asking and saying. this is what is posted there. So interesting things. But I especially noticed #4. That they will be askig the Sellers who sign up and use this to use the seller Hub for Listing? Are they laying the ground work to have Sellers who use SixBit or Wonderlister or other party listing and inventory management systems to not continue with those and to only use the Ebay Seller Hub?

They said in the summer update it would take a few years to migrate over to the new payment company but once completed, then we were all guessing that will be ebay’s choice instead of PayPal.

Anyone else get this “invitation” and what are maybe some thoughts on these FAQ’s.

Mike in Atlanta

SEE BELOW …..

Tell us what you want to learn about managing payments on eBay.
This will be a multi-year journey, and you’ve been invited to participate in the initial launch this fall. We want to keep you informed of our plans to manage payments. Before you sign up for managed payments, you may have questions. Here are answers to questions that may be on your mind:

What are the key benefits?

– One place to sell and get paid: manage all your selling and payments needs from within your eBay account.

– Simpler bills: all your fees in one place on your eBay bill.

– Consolidated pricing: all your fees in one place on one bill, plus special pricing for early opt-in*.

– Daily payouts: direct to your bank account. No need to transfer funds between accounts.

– New ways for buyers to pay: such as mobile payments with Apple Pay.

– Better protection: claim and chargeback seller protections provided by eBay, with one place to manage disputes.

– More control: accept your exclusive invitation now to get a head start on adapting your business to selling and getting paid on eBay.
What will eBay’s fees be?

In September 2018, you will receive an invitation to participate in our limited initial launch. To access the offer, you’ll be prompted to sign in to your account for more information and specifics like fees and additional frequently asked questions.
How will I access my funds?

All cleared funds will generally be paid in a daily batch and directly to your bank account, regardless of how your buyer chooses to pay. From your bank account, you can access your funds directly, with no need to transfer funds between accounts. In addition, we’re working with our financial partners to enable even more options for speedy access to your earnings.
What will I have to do to sign-up?

Your invitation in September will take you to a sign up page for a quick and easy enrollment process. After you enter a few personal details like preferred bank account for payouts and your social security number to verify your identity, we’ll manage the rest. We will automatically update your existing account and listings and transfer your existing listings to the new payments model. For new listings, we’ll ask you to use Seller Hub’s listing page and any existing listings APIs you use.

“and any existing listings APIs you use.”

I got the same invite, and I’m wondering if APIs include third party providers like SixBit,, since they use ebay’s API…

Congratulations!! I can’t wait to see pics of the new place!

My numbers for the week of 7/8 – 7/14/18

Total items in store: 253 eBay & 129 Etsy
Number of items sold: 27 eBay & 6 Etsy
Cost of items sold: $21.69 approximately
Total sales: $639.20 total: $599.20 eBay & $40.00 etsy
Highest price sold: $59.95 plus shipping for Janlynn Buttons + Bow Stamped Cross Stitch Baby Quilt Kit
Average price sold: $19.37
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $10.00
Number of items listed: 41

Another good week for my little store. I got so close to breaking the $600 mark on eBay alone, and actually did, but then woke up to a request to cancel a sale from the evening of 7/14 on the morning of 7/15. Oh well! It was still probably the highest $ amount week I’ve had yet.

Wishing everyone a great week!

Congratulations on your main street commercial property purchase. Are you guys keeping the intended use a secret, or do you really not know what you are going to do with the downstairs? Are you hoping to lease it out to a business, or run a business yourself? I would suggest you open an art theater to play independent movies and foreign films if you really want to invigorate the local economy. Or if not a full theater, then play stuff anyway. The local donut place downtown plays old sci fi serials (public domain stuff like b&w buck rogers) in the seating area. One of the brewpubs plays kung fu movies. Or if that’s too much money and time, then one thing that might be cool no matter what you do with it is to invite local artists to display their artwork on the walls. Our town (and lots of other town around here) have a monthly art walk where all the downtown businesses get involved. Bars, restaurants, even hair salons have a different artist every month. The local business association gets behind it and it draws people into town for the evening.

Also, what’s the parking situation? Jay could park his food truck there on the weekends.

Congrats on the new building! It’s heartening when local people are willing to invest in downtown buildings. Out of town investors in real estate are like vampires. They are merely there to siphon money out of the town into their pockets. We have one shopping center owned by a big investment company in NYC. It’s cheaper for them to use it as a tax write off and let it sit empty than invest $$ into fixing it up and renting it out.

Jay, I am the total opposite of you-I Love estate sales! My problem is that I can rarely spare an entire day for an auction. I can line up 2-4 estate sales and get a pretty good haul in an afternoon. Some companies run them better than others and I have learned which ones to avoid. I actually prefer family run sales because I stand a better chance of finding bargains. I never go first thing when they open-that way lies madness (and quite possibly bruised ribs!). I’m really good at finding unmarked items and usually I tell them what i’m Willing to pay. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Anyway, good week for me considering it’s slow season….
eBay July 8-13
Total sales. $146.73
Items in store. 1,038
# sold. 13
Avg. sale. $11.29
Returns. 1
COGS. $16.60
$ spent on new. $36.60
# listed. 20
Highest sale. $30 yarn from an unfinished project that my mom started, but didn’t leave a pattern. It was expensive yarn so I deconstructed what she started and listed it with the unused yarn.

I love Estate Sales- not just for ebay but for my shop and house too- all my hammers, pliers, wrenches, screws, drill bits, hacksaws, everything under the sun over the last 30 years, lots of tools. house light bulbs, weed and feed, cases of toilet paper.Cleaning products, vacuums, Tupperware,
my feet are up on a 400.00 coffee table i paid 30.00 bucks for at an estate sale.love em.

I’m also having luck at local pick up, online estate and consignment auctions in the area. Really easy to dial in the few great finds with little guess work online, look for comps, go preview and bid accordingly. pick it up and list it.

Well done on the commercial property Guys!

Re new payment processing, does anyone else participate in eBay Expressions (LOVE the name)? It’s their feedback survey program, where they email buyers to share thoughts and feedback on various things? The last one I did was in regards to the new payment processing and whether or not I wanted to early opt-in. I should have taken notes while doing it to share here, but they’ll start testing it out this Fall with those who opt in, and initial roll out of the new processing won’t include PayPal. They kept noting that PayPal would be added back into the payment mix later (though, why?). However a Seller pays – credit cards, etc – eBay would process using their new provider, and money *will* be deposited directly into your bank account – after a delay of 3-5 days, if I’m remembering correctly.

I’m usually not anti-change, but I find myself kinda dragging my feet WRT this. I generally expressed an overall “Meh” with early adopting the program, despite their selling it as “getting in on the ground floor,” lol. I’d rather someone else work out the kinks first, unless their incentives to participate are great. And I’m not holding my breath on that…

Jay: Today, I received an email from eBay with a request for me to fill out a survey. They asked me how eBay could be improved. I suggested they implement http://www.ebay.com/status and use this URL to display ongoing issue with eBay for the reasons you’ve mentioned.

Hey, that makes me think. Since I’m going to be there at eBay Open, let me know some big questions you would like answered (within reason please!) and I will see what I can find out…

BrianB: Great point. I sometimes wonder about that when we make multiple listings that are VERY similar, but only the size is different. We do this sometimes to avoid the Variations Listings (I don’t like those, since things like Size are a pain to put in the listings…someone talk me into them).

Duly noted!

I got that survey too and haven’t answered it yet. I’m not a great writer. If someone wants to write a good summary for me of a couple of things like the status page being more detailed and current and maybe customer service reps having current bug information I’ll copy and paste it into my survey….I know a lot of you on here are better at describing things things ’cause I read you all the time!

Congratulations on the new building!!! How exciting. I vote for a thrift store with a coffee shop but I imagine you have better ideas.

Auctions stress me out! Goes so fast and I hardly know what I am bidding on. But it has been a while so I might try it again now that I am more experienced.

Estate sales are very expensive in Los Angeles but as you all said, go at the end and see what is left. Usually not that much but I have found some good deals. And as was said above, family run estate sales (two thumbs up) absolutely!!!!

I like the easy pace of yard sales. If I can pick up 10 items in a half day of shopping that I have confidence in and got a good deal on, I feel it was a good day. I don’t have to buy everything, just enough to get some listings up and still have time to work on my death piles. If I hit the mother load in a yard sale, I count my blessing and pull out all stops.

Sigilini- I can’t imagine going to estate sales in LA. I can barely handle the parking at the midwestern ones I go to! 🙂

Parking is usually ok as they are in private high end neighborhoods and I go on Friday or late Sunday. But the prices! Bloomingdales!

Hey Jay, Ryanne + forum,

Not sure if this has been talked about before somewhere else but you’ve mentioned Inkfrog in a couple of the latest podcasts.

I’ve been using InkFrog for about a year now and feel it’s everything eBay should offer in a listing management system but don’t – because they’re eBay…

I chose it for the mobile responsive template builder which is great if you keep it simple. The templates they offer are just awful. I keep my listings as simple as possible without any starbursts, clip-art, or sparkly frames. Just photos and description so it’s easy to see on a phone. That’s had a big impact on my sales.

The second feature I cannot live without is the archiving of sold listings in the library. I often sell same/similar things that I can resurrect after any amount of time, adjust and re-list. These listings can be duplicated easily for slight variations on a listing. This saves tons of time for me. Drafts stay forever too – as do archived sales as far back as you need – which provides a crazy amount of valuable business data.

The creation of a master listing template (or many) is a killer feature. You were wanting a t-shirt template. You can have any number of these templates.

The shipping profiles are really great too. I have perfected my approved list of ship-to countries and I can deploy this extensive shipping profile quickly with multiple tiered shipping options for the buyer. I offer free shipping on all listings and no longer get burned by international buyers (no GSP in Canada). I ship to 31 international destinations only.

It’s been true revolution for my business. Just wanted to share my thoughts. If you do get into it and need any help, lemme know – I can get you up and running.

Congrats on the new Main Street Property. You both are artist that just got a new canvas to work with. I would vote for a commercial airbnb space that people could rent out for a few day or a weeks for different projects, pop-up stores and such.

I’ve been fighting the missing picture glitch for the past few days. Out of about 920 listings I had about 100 listings with ether all or all but one photo missing. I used this tool that was mentioned in one of the scavengerlife forums:
http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/BulkPhotoScanner.htm. I used the fast scan option, then ran the report that shows the number of images in each listing along with titles. I had about 16 that had 0 images and about 75 that only had 1. I plan to call eBay on Friday to complain about not being notified about this problem and to also ask for a reversal of some store fees.

I mostly buy at estate sales and occasionally at yard/garage sales. I always make a pile of the items I want whether they have a price on them or not. I make sure to be there when they price the items I picked. When I think a price is too high, I’ll tell them no and pull it from the pile. After one or two no’s, miraculously the prices start to get cheaper. Sometimes I’ll mention that I’m a reseller and ask if I can get a better price which for me has worked far more times than not.

Now back to listing.

I really like estate sales the best! I’m never thrilled about not seeing prices on estate sale items but I usually find that it’s really cheap when I have a huge pile of unpriced stuff.

I think the sellers (or estate sale company employees) are so glad to see so much go that they give much lower prices than they would have on individual items. Or they get tired of pricing so many items on the spot and holding up the line and they just say $10.00 per bag in order to get the line moving.

It really depends on the sale though. Some companies do price high, but many seem to be just trying to get the property cleaned out and avoiding big dump fees. Their purpose is just to clean out the house so that the house can be sold.

Where I live the house and property prices are so crazy high that I don’t think a lot of heirs even care much about the $ that the home contents might bring. The most broken down shack sells for close to a million $ here. The heirs are just concerned about getting the place cleared out as cheaply as possible, avoiding the work to clean it out themselves and not incurring dump fees. They want the property listed on the market ASAP. Properties often sell as soon as the “coming soon” sign goes up in my town!

Congratulations you guys! That sounds like such a worthwhile project. I’ve been wondering what your project would be, but expected it would be something on a digital platform.

It’s been a long time since I posted my numbers, but recently I’ve improved things and thought it would be worthwhile to run the math.

eBay, July 8-14:
Total store items: 4008
Number of items sold: 64
eBay sales: $1,865.29
Average price sold: $29.15
Highest price sold: $550 Scientific Tool:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/273289871697

I’m not counting Facebook sales, which have been a really good supplement. I only just got access to Marketplace, and the North Jersey scene is very profitable, both for buying and selling.

26 year old guy expanding and professionalizing over the past 3 years by paying attention to everything suggested here. Just hit 4000 and $100,000 in active inventory. I’m still selling tons of cheap CDs and DVDs because I found a cheap way of shipping them (idea thanks to your interview with postcard man). Everyone has been complaining about this summer, but my sales have never been better, thanks in part to expanded inventory of more expensive inventory, and in part to learning to isolate listing work to expand efficiency.