Scavenger Life Episode 370: Auction Elves

Looking forward to the podcast!

I had a super slow week…but I had flu/mild pneumonia so can’t say as I minded all that much not having to pack. Hopefully things will pick up this week.

Sales: CAD$459, 4 items, COGS: $95 –> Item profit: $282
Expenditures: $214, –> After-tax cashflow: $90
Notable sales: rosetta stone cd set $0–>$300.
Haven’t scavenged very much. Did get one super fancy faucet, $150, expecting $600-800.

I’d love a good auction haul about now. I haven’t found anything amazing in a while.

07/15/18 – 07/21/18

Total Items In Store: 2,407
Items Sold: 6
Cost of Items Sold: $25 (around)
Total Sales: $ 232
Highest Price Sold: $ 75 (Electricians Leather Pouch)
Average Price Sold: $ 38.67
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $
Number of Items listed this week: 2

Very slow week even for this time of the year. But today has been a good day already, so things are looking up.

My process improvement for the week: I wrote a script for WL to get all of my unshipped sales and create a pick list. The pick list is automatically sent to an Excel spreadsheet with the following information: Title, Purchase Date\Time, my Bin #, my COG, Price the buyer paid, and shipping charged. Later, I am going to tie this to my container table so that it will tell me where exactly where the bin is located. Then I will have all the information I need and more to go get the items. This is just a little help right now because I’m only selling a couple of items a day if that. But it will be great for the busy season when I have to pick over 10 items at a time.

Scavenge of the week: I took my 10 year old daughter with me to an estate sale. I had been busy buying large Matchbox cars from the early 70’s. My daughter saw my interest in cars and alerted me to some really old dusty cars. I couldn’t really tell what they were because they were caked in dust. I could tell they were promo cars and 2 were from 1964 and 1 from 1963 (I could read this on the license plate). The lady only charged me $1 each, so I couldn’t go wrong with my educated guess. I had to wipe all the dust away at home to see what I had bought. To my surprise, after all the dust cleared (literally), I had a 1964 Corvette Sting Ray Promo Car in my hand! The only real issue was the front chrome bumper was missing. I am still going to ask $200 for this car. The other two cars were a 1964 Oldsmobile Cutlass and a 1963 Corvair Convertible with some issues with each of them. I will still ask $75 each for the other two cars.

Mark

Regarding the new shipping page:

It doesn’t offer Fedex labels and doesn’t have a way for you to purchase insurance through USPS. They offer a button for switching back to the old format (for now), but nothing to make that switch permanent. And it’s a stupid modern-looking format designed to make the process look simpler for new members. I encourage everyone to click the “How do you like our new format?” link and complain about the bizarre oversights in common functionality, and suggest that they revert to the old format.

Total Items In Store: 115 (81 listings)
Items Sold: 12
Cost of Items Sold: $11.50
Total Sales: $ 251.37
Highest Price Sold: $80 (old 1st gen iPad mini that was ours)
Average Price Sold: $20.95
Returns: 0

We finally picked up our listing on eBay – mainly some blu-rays and DVDs of ours that we don’t want anymore (uploaded them to our digital library). They’ve been selling pretty well. Our cost of items sold does not include those items, or the iPad we sold, as we paid retail without the intent of selling.

Our odd story of the week is about some toys we found at Target. We like to sell vintage collectible toys, and a popular brand from the 70’s is Mego. I have fond memories playing with my Mego Batman and Robin. Originals in package can go for $300 or more. Well we were in Target this weekend and saw that Mego is back. They had a Wonder Woman and two General Zods (from Superman) for $20 ea. Before I bought them, I checked eBay to see what they’re selling for. Well, none were listed. Upon further research, I found that these were announced at the San Diego Comicon this weekend and will be for sale exclusively at Target starting July 29th. So our Target must have accidentally put them out too soon (We checked other Targets and found nothing).

Being the first person with them for sale, I wasn’t sure what to list them for. I didn’t want to put $100, and have it sell right away. How much would I be leaving on the table? Remember, mine is the only one you could buy before the 29th (there are a few more listed now). So I put $300 Best Offer. Not that I wanted $300, but that was a high enough ceiling to allow for offers to pour in. Or so I thought.

Instead, what I got were lowball offers from collectors berating me for “cheating” and “scamming” and “price gouging”. They couldn’t believe I was charging $300 for a $20 figure. I thought maybe that was a bit high and people were missing the point, so I lowered to $149.99 Best Offer, and the attacks kept coming. I decided to increase the price to $10,000 to troll them, but that just made them madder. I don’t understand why people get so upset. I see inexperienced sellers on eBay with overpriced items all the time, but I just roll my eyes and think “good luck, that’s not gonna sell”. Some of these people said they reported me to eBay for being offensive.

I put it back to $149. I suspect I won’t get a real offer until these start selling on the 29th, and sell out. Come Christmastime when they can’t be found anywhere, I’m sure I’ll make a profit. Just thought it was a funny situation to go through that fellow sellers on here would appreciate. If you want to check it out, here’s the listing: https://www.ebay.com/itm/113160378017

I’m freaking out… can y’all PLEASE show a pic of the Ouija board?? I just want to see the design. I’m currently looking everywhere for vintage Halloween (blow molds, Beistle, etc.) and that’s one of the things I look for. The people around here do not value vintage Halloween at all so they practically give it away, but ouija boards are one thing that’s a little harder to get find. I suspect it may be the area that I live in, they get weirded out by them.

A note on auctions, I went to my first antique/vintage auction, and it was one of the weirdest things that I’ve witnessed in a while. The lady running it eventually started running around this cramped room full of stuff SCREAMING at us about what we wanted to bid on. She kept saying, “I don’t know what you want to bid on if you don’t tell me”. And then sometimes she would refuse to let things go for a low price. She would occasionally leave the room and the auctioneer would say, “Well, since she’s gone maybe we can actually sell stuff.” Then there was a lady in the front who was super weird and would win a bid on stuff and then try to get random free stuff with it. Fun people watching for sure.

I’ll sell anything with no shame, but there is one item that won’t come into my ebay room and that’s a Ouija Board.

Speaking of your Ouija Board, you had a cha ching at the exact moment you asked if the board was worth a bunch of money. Coincidence – I think not! At least you got a nice Ouija board that wants to make you money. 🙂

I haven’t listened to the podcast yet, but here are my numbers

Week of July 15 – 21
* Total Items in Store: 1211
* Items Sold: 7
* Cost of Items Sold: $8.92 + $0 Commission
* Total Sales: $155.75
* Highest Price Sold: $50 Holmes Edwards Silver Plate Flatware 39 piece set
* Average Price Sold: $22.25
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $59.17
* Number of items listed this week: 29

Items in Store 1020
Items Sold 24
Total Sales $701.00
COGS $68.30
Total Profit $632.70
Average profit $26.36
Average sales price $29.21

It feels so good to have good sales again. Hopefully that total sales number continues to trend upwards. Poppa needs a nice vacation fund!

I opened a new personal checking account because the local offices of my existing account all closed. I decided to keep the old account active though and use it exclusively for the ebay business. It’s already set up with paypal and all of my bill pay anyways. My goal with this new setup is to have ebay pay for all of my routine monthly bills (cars, house, electric, etc) through the dedicated business checking account. This provides me with the motivation to increase my weekly sales. Having a clear goal in mind definitely improves mental focus. It is also nice to see my personal checking account grow unimpeded! To date I have simply co-mingled my ebay and personal funds and used ebay just as a nice supplement. Now that I have monthly bills to pay I can’t slack off on ebay and let my sales bottom out again.

Scavenging wise I got some awesome stuff this week. I got that vintage telecopier that may be a $750+ item I’ll sell on auction. I got a nice horse saddle that I’ll list for $250. I’ve been doing great buying clothes and shoes at yard sales. The 99 cent tag sale was stacked and I loaded up on nice clothing inventory yesterday.

Have a great week everyone!

Week of 7/15-7/21
Total Items in Store: 2,481 (Up 63% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 166 – New Record!
Number of Items Sold: 69 (Up 1% YOY)
(Includes 6 Etsy, 2 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether)
Weekly STR: 12% (Down 7% YOY)

Total Product Sales: $1,826 (Up 17% YOY)
Cost of Items Sold: $337
Highest Item Sold: $75 – Burberry London Flip Cuff Casual Dress Shirt
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Troy wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 16-13 – holy moley! I won two in a row! Who knew? .

eBay Clothing
# Listed: 1,599
# Sold: 47
STR: 13%
ASP: $26.52

eBay Shoes
# Listed: 319
# Sold: 9
STR: 12%
ASP: $27.14

eBay Hard Goods
# Listed: 563
# Sold: 7
STR: 5%
ASP: $25.83

Etsy Hard Goods
# Listed: 160
# Sold: 6
STR: 17%
ASP: $34.52

Welcome from Las Vegas! We got in last night, and met up with our friends that are also going to eBay Open and had a great start to the week. Plus, we brought our own blender, alcohol, and Keurig Coffee maker, so we are set up to party on the cheap!

I was really happy to see us hit a new listing record. This happened even while I was working two days at my contract gig AND doing some sourcing during the week (I was getting light). Good to know that we can crank our more listings faster and faster.

To that end, we are going to shift some focus, and have Veronica focus more time on listing hard goods when we return to get ready for Q4. So I will be taking on doing jeans and helping Veronica prep shoes so she can focus more time on hard goods.

Remember to send me any questions to try and ask the eBay folks while we are at the Open.

PS – I saw that Cyndi from AmazingTaste is going to be part of a panel here at the Open. I will tell her hi from the Trash Elves!

Total Items in Store: 2172
Items Sold: 32 (29 Ebay, 2 Amazon, 1 Etsy)
Total Sales: $958
Highest Price Sold: $68 (Puzzle)
Returns: 3
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0

Loved the picture of J and R’s truck from the auction. It always feels like we are playing Tetris when we buy too much at auctions, we have had to make multiple trips in the past as well. I get how Ryanne feels about taking care of your stuff at auctions, people steal things for sure.
I finally shut off free returns, I did the math and decided it was not worth it to me. We will see if my sales are affected. I think my selling clothes is causing more returns. I am hoping things change with ebay, it has been very frustrating to feel like they are stepping on their sellers to make their way up the amazon tree. Calling ebay has been infuriating, I just don’t have time to call ebay constantly to fix INAD cases. I hate having to jump through hoop after hoop and spending hours of my time waiting for someone to actually pick up the phone.
I have not been on the ball with listing, just trying to get things organized instead. We did put a bunch of stuff on craigslist and got some things out of our house. Hoping to get into gear again, I have had difficulty feeling motivated. We have a lot going on with our upcoming trip, building a house, and getting our son off to his new “adulting” job. As he says, lol.

July 15-21
Total Items in Store: 1574
Items Sold: 16
Total Sales : $566
* below yearly average of $728
* above 2017 total week sales of $356
Highest Price: $115 (1961 Green Coleman Gasoline Lantern Model 228E)
Average Price: $35
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $36
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 0

I had a pretty average week last week in terms of sales. I was happy to sell a few largish items that have been taking up room on my shelves. Overall, I haven’t really been motivated to sit down and list. Maybe it’s because of my new 1 hour commute to and from work everyday. Or it could be all the little things that need done right after buying a house that’s taking up most of my time.

Speaking of taking a lot of time, I spent most of the afternoon on Saturday disassembling a refrigerator with a blown compressor that was here when we moved in. Normally I would have just hauled it away, but something compelled me to look up Sub Zero refrigerator parts on eBay. They sell for a lot of money! $40, $60, even some things for over $100. I stripped everything! Shelves, knobs, hinges, timers, grates and grills. I bet I could make over a thousand bucks from everything.

I’m glad you mentioned the new label pages. I HATE IT! It just seems so unnecessary when the classic page worked just fine. There’s so much white space. I hate having to scroll down and click more options every time I want to choose Priority instead of Parcel. The label sizes are different now so when I print, the little “Cut Along Line” goes over to the other label. The little buttons where you can adjust your lbs, oz, and dimensions will allow you to go below zero into the negatives for some reason. I’ve been writing to them using the feedback button everytime I’m annoyed by something, but I have a feeling they don’t really read those. Kind of like the complaint box that feeds into a shredder. But the good news is it’s showing the correct prices now. I’ve been comparing everytime I’ve sold something and they must have fixed that bug.

7/22 – 7/28/18

eBay store totommyto

Total store items: 605
Number of items sold: 7
eBay sales (not counting s/h): $423
Cost of items sold: $7
Consignment payouts: $98
Highest price sold: $225 – 1:18 scale Diecast car model
Average price sold: $60.42
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: 0
Number of items listed this week: 24

Etsy store Oldfleatoymarket

Total store items: 527
Number of items sold: 12
Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $289
Cost of items sold: $48
Consignment payouts: $4
Highest price sold: $60 – 4 vintage boxed Gerber steak knives
Average price sold: $24.08
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $2
Number of items listed this week: 2

Etsy sales were much healthier than usual, especially since I feel the sold prices were slightly higher than what I believe I could get on eBay. Some of the sold items I simply would not have listed on eBay at all.
I paid $25 on the sold set of vintage Gerber knives. Research showed the knives topping out around $50 sold on eBay, yet I picked up $60 on Etsy Shortly after listing. $25 was too much to pay for resale, but being a Gerber guy from waaaay back, I could not resist the buy and happy for the fast flip to recoup the $25 spent, and grab some profit.

Dumpsters and trash piles are some of my favorite places to source lol. Honestly, you can find good stuff in ANY dumpster, so don’t rule out the ones in your area. People throw out good stuff in the most random places.

Heads up on the new Evaluated Payments system. We got the message on this a couple of days ago, and then eBay call us directly to talk more about it. I have some time planned with them this week to talk more in depth.

Two big items came from our phone conversation. First, as Mike said, you HAVE to list direct through the Seller Hub for it to work. I get why, as with any implementations, they have to ensure that they control the environment as much as possible. This will probably be a deal breaker for us. I will try to find out when they will add the SixBit and WonderLister platforms.

Second, when you go to the new Managed Payments…people that want to pay via PayPal cannot buy from you. They can buy through credit card, just not through PayPal. I don’t know how many people that cuts out of the mix, but will try to get more info. Plus, I will try to find out more on why and how long it will be when PayPal is allowed back in (are we talking weeks or months).

Thanks, T-Satt – those are both questions I’m interested in hearing more about (and anything about the new payment system, really). When I did the survey on this, they noted something along the lines of some/the majority Buyers use credit cards for their purchase, so I’m not sure how it would impact sales. I kinda hate having yet another platform tied to my bank account tho. First World Fears…

Seemingly now-standard sales #s last week. Of my death pile stuff, I’ve pretty well stuck under my desk what seems like lower dollar stuff, and am focusing on just the higher dollar potential items…I’ve got less than 100 items for listing within my current store, so just trying to be a bit strategic right now, and in the lead up to Q4.

07/15/18 – 07/21/18
Total Items In Store: 908
Items Sold: 18
Total Sales: $642.21
Cost of Items Sold: $38.35
Highest Price Sold: $90 – 3x Johnson Bros English Transferware Cup & Saucer Sets
Average Price Sold: $35.68
Returns/Refunds: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $56.63
Number of Items listed this week: ~29

Two things:
1. Jay, I would suggest maybe that you should add a permanent topic in the main menu here on your website called something like: “eBay System Issues” where we can go straight to that and chat as a community for anything major that comes up (like the photo issue). Otherwise, I seem to be hunting through the meta tags and other forum subjects to stumble onto postings regarding IT bugs and glitches.

2. Getting a discount for the photo issue. I’ve called twice and posted once up to the eBay for Business FB page and have not been able to get any discount whatsoever from eBay. I’m one person with 32 items that have only 1 photo. Each time, I asked nicely for the discount. Each time, I was told that there is “none being offered at this time”, so I would like to know how many of us are being denied the discount vs how many are getting it. It seems discriminatory.

My Store Week July 15-21, 2018
Total Items in Store: 1080
Items Sold: 10
Total Sales: $215.18
Cost of Items Sold: $8.69
Promoted Listing Sales: 3
Ad Fees for Promoted Listings: $7.38
Highest Price Sold: $40 (Worn Out Birkenstocks)
ASP: $21.58
STR: 4.0%
Returns: 1 (Hasn’t Shipped Yet – I hope it doesn’t!)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $23.55
Number of items listed this week: 25

Really looking forward to listening to the podcast, and hearing about this Ouija Board! No way I would bring one of those into my home – although I know they are worth a lot of money. Interesting story, I was in a Salvation Army buying some shoes with my kids this past week and we ran in 10 minutes until closing time just to quickly check inventory. The worker was trying to close and shoo everyone out and made an announcement “Get out now, or you will be locked in for the night…” I was standing next to him, so I jokingly said, “Well, it would probably be fun to be locked in here for the night…” and he said emphatically, “NO, no… it wouldn’t at all….” And I asked him why not? He went on to say that the Salvation Army was haunted and that there were ghosts in the building. I asked him how did he know that? He explained that the local ghosthunting club had brought in their equipment and recorded high EVP activity throughout and especially “near the back door” where the donations are stored. “Lots of dead people’s stuff there…” he said. So, that just got me thinking about one of my “creepy dolls” that has been listed for a few years in my basement and am hoping that thing sells someday, LOL!!!

Sometimes if I buy stuff at an estate sale or find it in a curb pile of what is obviously an estate cleanout, I keep it in the garage in case there is any bad juju attached to it. I guess the guy at the Salvation Army has confirmed my suspicious lol. My husband always laughs at this, but you never know!

Hi Ryanne & Jay… Thanks for the podcast

Here are my numbers for the week:

Total Items in Store: 2459
Items Sold: 32
Total Sales: $997
Cost of Items Sold: $139
Average Price Sold: $31.15
Average Cost of Item: $4.35
Highest Price Item Sold: $199.5 Apple Macintosh Keyboard Mouse Keypad M0110 M0100 M0120
Number of items listed this week: 72
YTD Sales: $24981
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: 178
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 96
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.3%
# of Hats Sold: 21 (65% of sales)

I had another good week. My garage/estate sale purchases have been making a big difference the last few weeks.

My high-priced sale of the week was an old set of Apple keyboard/keypad/mouse that I found in a dusty box at an estate sale on Saturday. I bought a pile of stuff and probably paid just a few dollars for the Apple stuff. I listed it Saturday night and it sold on Sunday morning. I would never have priced it that high except that there was a similar sale in the last few months.

I haven’t seen that new shipping page yet. I wonder what the justification for changing that is. Maybe they are simplifying it on the backend (while doing a UI upgrade). We forget that eBay has been building their site for 20 years. It wasn’t designed the way it is now. Rather, it grew bit by bit with things tacked on here and there and it probably has a lot of horrible legacy hacks, work-arounds and ugliness. Even websites that are only 5 years old will have a lot of technical debt that makes them extremely hard to maintain. The last 4 companies that I’ve worked for over the last 10 years have been battling the issues with maintain their original legacy site. Most of the technology that tech companies build with today, didn’t exist 10 years ago.

I’ve looked at Ouija boards before as I heard that have value but I’ve only ever seen recent ones that dont seem to do much better than your average board game. I’d definitely buy one if it was the kind that had value. I’m not superstitious at all. On a related note, I sold a deck of tarot cards today. I always buy them when I see them. They see to bring good money (for a deck of cards).

Hope everyone has a good week!

I’ve been on the new shipping label page for a few weeks and have not noticed a great difference until today. Today for the first time my SKU (custom label) appeared on my label page without me having to cut and paste it. FYI also a couple of days ago the SKU started showing up on the mobile app. eBay seems to have the crappiest feature rollouts of any website, but they are genuinely trying to improve things.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by Marshal_G.

Week July 16-22, 2018

Total Items in Store: 738
Items Sold: 16
Cost of Items Sold: $32
Total Sales: $632.68 (not including shipping)
Highest Price Sold: $90 Vintage Coffee Maker
Average Price Sold: $39.54
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $417
Number of items listed this week: 142

Haven’t listened to the podcast yet, but I will while listing after I get home from work tonight. Excited to hear about your auction experience. Other than earning an income, it is my favorite part of the job.

I was able to hit my listing goal for the week and the auction I attended was great and I was able to surpass my inventory goal as well. Felt like a soft sales week with mostly low dollar items but the numbers turned out to be acceptable for where I am at in regard to listed inventory. Same goals as last week for me, though I may have other obligations for the weekend which would prevent me from hitting an auction.

RR Store Week July 15-21, 2018

Total Items in Store: 1605
Items Sold: 16
Cost of Items Sold: $25.87
Total Sales: $337.06
Highest Price Sold: $60 (sewing pattern design book)
Average Price Sold: $21.07
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $22
Number of items listed this week: 29

I spent almost the whole week at my parent’s house helping them pack, so I expected my numbers to be low, but damn. I think this is the worst week I’ve had since I went full time! I get today to list, but the rest of the week I’m at my folk’s place. And strangely, I’ve made almost $300 just yesterday and today. Just gotta keep listing.

Some of the estate sales I go to are super organized with prices on everything. Some are crazy digger sales where the people running the sale staged very little. Most are somewhere in between. I still go to plenty of sales where I get to dig through boxes in the garage, drawers in the kitchen, etc. Most estate sales are most concerned with the big ticket items, so when I come up with a box full of random little junk, I usually get a good price. I’ve hauled boxes of nothing but paper ephemera out and been thanked by the sellers, who now don’t have to deal with boxes of “trash”. And yes, knowing the people who run the sales is a huge advantage. Doesn’t cost anything to be friendly, and it may even save you some money at checkout.

Paul

Echoing some of the discussion about estate sales – they’re my personal preference over thrift stores, auctions, yard sales, flea markets, etc. I’ll still go to other sources, but estate sales are my first choice/go to. Perhaps that’s because they’re so plentiful in the NYC area – no less than 20 within a 30 mile radius of me at any given time? But also I really like seeing things “in-situ”. Grandma loved cats and there are hairballs over everything; Grandpa was in the Army division that invaded Normandy and he took this souvenir; Uncle Harry really loved trains and kept them in perfect condition; Mom was in the Beatles fan club and has a huge box full of original memorabilia. Certainly you can find these things elsewhere, but I’ve found that estate sales are the perfect place to find collections, to understand the person that owned them, and sometimes get a really personal story.

Week July 15-21, 2018

Total Items in Store: 939
Items Sold: 13
Cost of Items Sold: $71 (16.3% of sales)
Total Sales: $436.89
Highest Price Sold: $99.99 (1/4oz Vintage Tiffany Perfume https://www.ebay.com/itm/192578385718)
Average Price Sold: $33.61
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $250
Number of items listed this week: 44
Promoted listings test: 2 sales, $29.98 (6.9% of total sales), $1.98 fees (6.6% of sales)

Standard week. Had 2 sales for $180 total that really saved the week. The Tiffany perfume was a nice score, paid $10. The other larger sale was a Foo Fighters t-shirt from the show last week in NYC – paid $25 for it at the show, sold it for $75, profit paid for my ticket 🙂 #scavengerlife

I focused on listing this weekend and it paid off. Emptied my death box that was about to over flow. Got 44 listings up, well above my normal week.

Birthday trip is ending up being in Seattle & Portland this coming Thurs-next Weds. Wanted to do Scandinavia, but probably need 10+ days and my wife couldn’t get that many days off from work. Flying to Seattle, AirBnb, rented a car and then driving down to Portland to another AirBnb. I’ve never been to the PacNW, so looking forward to experiencing that.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by Brian Treasures from Grandmas.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by Brian Treasures from Grandmas.

Total sales $40
Best sale J Crew pants for $20
Average sale $8 Holding my nose, but glad of the sales
Since spring my family has been dealing with some major medical issues. But now I’m starting to get back into listing-and I want to keep growing. I have a basic store 250 items-BIN 250 “free” auctions per month. I’m eyeing the next lever store, the premium level
So at what point should I move up? Basic is $22 a month, premium is $60. Each BIN over 250 costs me 25cents I think I break even at 402 I already have 370. If I do move up does it make any difference when I move? Should I do this on the first of the month if I do pull the trigger? Thanks

Total Items in Store: 1562
Items Sold: 13
Cost of Items Sold: $58.59
Total Sales: $704.95
Highest Price Sold: $335 (Ferragamo men’s shoes)
Average Price Sold: $54.23
Returns: none
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 11

Seemed like another slow week but really not bad thanks to a couple of higher dollar sales. Enjoyed the podcast. I have not found any good auctions near me yet but I can see their sourcing potential. I have used the new shipping page a few times and so far am not impressed. Looking forward to hearing about ebay Las Vegas happenings. Happy scavenging and selling everyone.

Long time since I posted but this summer has been OK as far as sales go, I still like thrift stores, I found a print for $9 a couple of weeks ago and took a $450 offer on it, this was a Goodwill btw, so stuff is still out there to be discovered.

Anyone else just get this note from eBay?

“We made a technical error during a recent update that caused many sellers to lose images associated with their Good Til Cancelled listings. We cannot, unfortunately, retrieve many of the lost images. If re-uploading images is feasible for you, we encourage you to do so.

We know this has been extremely frustrating.

Sellers make up the backbone of eBay, and we’re committed to helping your business grow. To set you up for future success, we’re crediting you back for insertion fees on the impacted listings and providing you with 200 zero insertion fees to use until July 28, 2018.”

Seems like a bit too little and such a tight time frame – 4 days? And what about those with stores that already get those listings for free anyway?

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by Brian Treasures from Grandmas.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by Brian Treasures from Grandmas.

I was on the phone with ebay last night about the issue. I had opened an SR case and was calling for an update. The ebay rep was clueless and asked me questions totally unrelated. It soundedlike I was talking to a teenager who didn’t have a clue and didnt care. 35 min later (trying to explain the issue most of that time), they said there was no resolution. They put in a request to waive my subsscription fee for this month.

They really need to train the support people better. It feels like ebay is falling apart before my eyes. My vote is for ebay to hire T-Satt for 1-2 months for $50k to help get a better process in place for support and status.com. I think that would do it!

Mark

I read an article by the New York Times titled, “Why Amazon should buy ebay”. You can google it for a good read.

I think Amazon could fix the issues ebay is having, but That may be a tougher pill to shallow. They would probably make ebay just like Amazon, but only with used items. Maybe worse. So, maybe we should count our blessings with ebay and overlook the small stuff.

Mark

Slow week, but that’s okay because I had other stuff pop up. The new shipping page popped up for me last week. So far it’s been okay. I’m still getting the option to go back to the old page. As long as it works okay, I will try and stick with the new version. Got the offer today for 200 free listings because of the picture glitch. I plan to list like crazy and take advantage of those and diminish the death piles!

eBay July 14-21

Total sales. $106.69
Items in store. 1,043
# sold. 12
Avg. sale. $8.89
Returns. 0 (finally!)
COGS. $6.08
$ spent on new. $19.38
# listed. 19
Highest sale. $30 wooden art reproduction jigsaw puzzle

I like a variety of different places to source – thrift stores, estate sales, online auctions, rummage sales, etc,. I used to hit up yard sales when I had a bike and cargo trailer and did well, but I haven’t had that setup in years. Without a vehicle, it is impossible to hop from sale to sale.

I’ve never been to an in person auction, but they sound fun. I like the idea that you can get snacks and make money simultaneously. Like a bidding alamo drafthouse. When I do online auctions, I have to frantically refresh to see if time has been extended. It almost seems more relaxed in person. Still, if I find a good online auction, I’m in.

Estate sales are hit & miss. I like looking at the pictures of the sale to see if anything looks good in my specialty. If not, I pass. I go to maybe a dozen estate sales a year, but that has to be a really good year. Otherwise, maybe 1 every few months.

Thrift stores are fun because it’s ??? Also, they’re pretty much everywhere, so it’s fun to poke around for a few minutes and savor the a/c during this miserably hot summer.

I just thought of the perfect idea for your new downtown property.

Jay and Ryanne’s Spooky Museum of DEFINITELY Haunted Artifacts

A big thank you for posting the link to the photo scan. I was on vacation when the picture fiasco happened and wasn’t even aware of it until I was going through the forum on my return. I was just starting to go through my listings to see if I was affected this morning when I saw the mention fo the scan in weeks podcast post. About 48 of my 614 listings had lost all but their main photo. Thank goodness I save my photos and am able to pull them again. Of course, its still very time consuming to guess what I named them and add them back. Called eBay and they have put me in a queue with support for a call back with no ETA. Seems every listing that was renewing on the 23 or 24 of the month was affected. Can’t imagine the hassle that is causing some of the larger stores.

Best,

Mike
Luka’s Treasure Trove

I have the mid level store and I am maxed out on my listings, so 200 listings is a big deal for me. Part of the reason I have death piles is because I’m trying not to grow too much bigger than my thousand listings. When things pick up in the fall, I might change my mind about that, but things are too slow right now. I wish eBay had a level in between 1000 listings and the anchor store. That’s a huge leap and I don’t have time or space to get that big.

9 out of 220 of my items were affected by eBay’s goof with the images. 4% of my store was affected. Ebay sent me a, “We’re sorry” message today. I assume many of you received it too.

Total Items in Store: 2500
Items Sold: 33
Cost of Items Sold: $22.75
Total Sales: $1030
Highest Price Sold: $77.80 (WWII German binoculars)
Average Price Sold: $31
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $41
Number of items listed this week: 50

I am holding off to post my weekly and do a July report!

I’ve made a decision I need to buy a BUNCH OF STUFF at once. Went thrifting at 4 stores, 4 hours, and got about 12 items. Even if I did this daily I would only have 360 items at end of month. Estate sale season has been good to me, and I seem to do good bulk buys at those. I have reached out Craigslist people asking for bulk items as well. Comfort zone be damned.

Anecdotal annoyances: I bought a NWT designer gown (buy high, sell very higher) at a ritzy thrift. Did comps in the store, and it looked good. Got to car, and instead of looking fast at eBay, I looked via Google shopping. OMG, that darn dress was like 99% off on the retail site, lower than the thrift store price. I went back into return it which was a whole ordeal, but I was happy I did. I told them too, which I am sure nobody cares. Esp when they tell me ” we research our things.” Anyway, same ole story 🙂

I found a good article about e-commerce free returns. They think it is a ticking time bomb.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevendennis/2018/02/14/the-ticking-time-bomb-of-e-commerce-returns/#44fc31724c7f

Mark

I’m too lazy to do a sales report every week like you guys, but I just wanted to share that I sold a sleeveless acid washed jean jacket to the costume department of the Goldbergs TV show last week. I couldn’t believe it but a Google search of address showed as Sony studios so confirmed. Didn’t Jay and Ryanne sell a rotary phone to the Goldbergs? Seems they very much shop on eBay. I’d love to see it on the show but I don’t really watch TV. If anybody spots it let me know?

After discovering I had about 100 items with lost photos and spending about 10 hours to fix them, I called eBay. After being on hold for only 17 minuets I got a sales rep. I first asked if the problem about the photos had been fixed and she said it had been. Then I made several complaints about how I never heard about the image problem from eBay and I only found out about it from discussion boards and other sellers. I told her that that is very inconsiderate of eBay and that it indicates that eBay dosen’t much care about their sellers. She mentioned that many other sellers had made the same comment and that eBay was listening. I then stated that I read that many sellers were getting a 1 month refund on store fees as compensation. She said that eBay wasn’t doing that and that she couldn’t authorized a refund. I asked to speak to a manager. After a manager came on and asked what I wanted, I explained it all again. I had to wait about 2 or 3 minuets and then she came back and said I would be issued a refund. I received it on Tuesday. I also received the eBay “Sorry” email with the free 200 listings which is almost useless to me. Sorry about the long post, but just one more note.

For estate sales I normally only go late in the day or on the last day, mainly to avoid the mad rush of the crowds earlier in the day. I will only go early and stand in line if I see an item in the photos that I just have to have or I know I’ll make a killing on. Going late in the sale, I almost always find great treasures that others have passed on, many times it has been items I’ve learned about hear on SL.

For those that are interested, I posted all of the information from eBay Open on the “eBay Open 2018” thread. This included answering questions that other Trash Elves sent to us as well as information we received while we were there.

Just had to share with you about the estate sale I went to yesterday. I went there last because I didn’t think it was in the best location-boy was I wrong! This house was 5 levels of stuff! It looked like the family had just walked out the door and said get rid of it all. The main level was the kitchen and living area. Downstairs was a rec room that was as big as my house, which led to a one car garage. Down a couple more stairs and I was in a two car garage which had a loft room on the right side for tools. Up one level from the living area we’re adjoining bedrooms with a shared bath. Down the hall and around the corner was the master bedroom with his and her bathrooms, an entire wall of closets all overlooked by a balcony of more closets. When I found the stairs to get up to the balcony closets, it took me to a storage room with enough holiday decorations to start a store. In the other direction from the balcony closets was a stairway to a study (again almost as big as my living room and kitchen combined. Full wall of books, multiple computers and tons more stuff. Every room was stuffed. I spent 2 hours there and could have stayed longer! Of course I had been to 6-7 sales and was low on cash. The art on the walls could have filled my car. Tomorrow is the last day and if any of you are close enough to drive to the Dayton area, I highly recommend the trip, even if it’s just to see the house.

https://www.estatesales.net/OH/Dayton/45415/1944546?utm_source=gmail.com&utm_medium=email&utm_term=45373&utm_content=Dayton-OH&utm_campaign=2018-07-26-1DaysBefore