Scavenger Life Episode 439: Missing Item Detective Work

2019-11-24 – 2019-11-30

Total Items In Store: 3388
Items Sold: 25
Cost of Items Sold: $ 70
Total Sales: $ 720.10
Highest Price Sold: $ 60 (Woolrich Jacket)
Average Price Sold: $ 28.80
Money Spent on New Inventory: $21
Number of items listed: 33

Gut Sales Report for the week: Good consistent sales, but nothing great. Very low
ASP for me this week.

Challenge of the week: I still have a lot of items I need to process and list.

Scavenge of the week: Nothing this week came remotely close to the Red Line Hot
wheels cars I got last week.

Missing Item Detective Work: I have had to do some Missing Item Detective Work in the past. It is sometimes like solving a crime. It is worth it though, because I have been successful the majority of the time.

Mark S

Nov. 24 – 30
Total Items in Store: 2685
Items Sold: 25
Total Sales : $834
* Below yearly average of $909
Highest Price: $200 (Industrial Plumbing Pipe Snake Cable Drum)
Average Price: $33
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $57
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 52

Great podcast again, guys! I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit more about your online scavenging. You don’t have to give away your secrets, but are you buying things from sellers on eBay with saved searches or bidding at online auction house sites? I feel like the trend is slowly moving toward online scavenging with auctioneers going online instead of in person sales and I just want to stay ahead of the game, even though I really dislike the idea.

I had a decent week of listing and selling. Not quite as good as my average though. My weekly ASP has been dropping steadily with all the slow sales I’ve been having. I’m hoping things pick up again soon. Though I can’t complain too much since I’m still well over my comfort number.

Glad to hear ebay isn’t the issue for most of your missing items. I have had an inventory system for a while but recently I have been re-inventorying some things (because I’m moving them to my main storage unit) and I notice most of the missing items are in 2 categories:

(1) Items sold, then cancelled (this is less of a problem now as ebay has introduced the “relist after cancelling” checkbox). One that was really frustrating is a GIANT FREAKING PIANO KEYBOARD that has been unlisted for a year, after someone made an offer on it then balked at the shipping, and I failed to relist.

(2) Items listed as QUANTITY, sold, then cancelled. The quantity stays what it was after sale, it does NOT go back up once the item is cancelled. This is still a problem. For me, it is fairly self-solving, since when I sell the “last” item of my stock it usually cues me to notice there’s still one left on the shelf. But a seller with a different system might not see that.

Sooooo…. what kinda stuff are you guys sourcing online? I have been devoting a lot of time to sourcing on ebay. There was one weekend where I spent like $1000 on ebay stuff. None of it has sold yet, but my instinct tells me there is one home run there, and the rest was not really worth it upon receipt and further research.

I had a great but weird week on ebay. Until Friday it was absolute crickets, then a huge sale, then more crickets till 5 minutes ago.

Sales c/w shipping: CAD$4110, 5 sales. COGS: $189, Fees: ~$552, Shipping: $228 –> Gross profit: $3369
Expenditures: $553 (mainly rent) –> Cashflow: $3005
Notable sales: about half a year ago I got a bunch of wall mounts for monitors (for medical settings) at $30 each, I sold 6 on Friday to one buyer for a total of $3500. Brand new so little risk of return. Glad to get them outta storage, they were big and heavy.

Didn’t find much this week to scavenge really.

We did get a deep freeze so I’ve been doing a lot of meal prep. Forget if I mentioned last week. Really that’s more critical than scavenging since food costs are a big haemorrhage in our budget (no freezer space + picky kids + I don’t have time during the week).

November was a good month for me with one $340 sale and two $250 sales.

My Numbers for Nov. 2019

Total Listings: 1083 with 1365 items
Items sold: 59
Gross Sales: $1,791
Cost of Items sold: $121
Highest Price Sold: $340 – 120 Sealed VHS Tapes ($10.80 Cost / 9¢ a tape)
Average Price Sold: $30.36 – Average Cost: $2.06
Spent on new inventory: $0
Number of items listed: 56
Issues: 1 return

The VHS tapes went to a blank media reseller on the opposite coast. Due to the tons of VHS tapes listed on eBay I had these listed with free shipping with a multiple purchase discount. Even after the $75 cost to ship them I still made a nice return of over $200.

December is looking great so far, already today on the 1st I have had $173 in sales (though some of the items have free shipping.)

Week Nov 24 – Nov 30, 2019

Items in store: 4491 Listings for 7351 Items
Items Sold: 99 transactions for 106 Items
Gross Sales: $8281.65
Highest Price Sold: $450 Vintage Tanuki Fur Coat….sold a few weeks ago and was never paid, relisted and resold for $75 more.
Lowest Price Sold: $12….Bowtie
Average Sale Price: $78.13
Cost of Goods Sold $398, Plus consignment payout, roughly $1200
Number of new items listed this week: 74 listings for 146 items
$$ spent on new inventory this week $427
International Sales, 29%
Returning Customers 11

Scavenge of the Week: Chester Barrie Cashmere Sport Coat

Broke a new monthly sales record in November!!! $31,042.84

Totals for the MONTH of November 2019. I am mainly a mens clothes seller, free shipping, free returns, 1% promoted listings, no best offer, good till cancelled.

Listings/items at end of month = 4286 / 4843 Total listed value $107,201
Items sold = 383 Down 7% YOY
$ sold = $11,972 Up 3%% YOY
ASP = $31.26 Up 10% YOY
Monthly sell through rate 8.9%

Expenses
Postage = $2015 (20.8% of gross)
Ebay fees = $1197 (10% of gross) (includes Promoted listing fees of 69 sales totaling $2095 ($20.95-8.33 credit = $12.62) 18% of items sold/ 17.5% of $ sold) and return labels
COGS = $1137 (9.5% of gross)
Returns = $910 (7.6% of gross) Some pretty big $ returns this month!
PP Fees = $890 (7.4% of gross) INCLUDES SALES TAXES REMITED TO EBAY!

Total operating expenses = $6149 (51.4% of gross)

Total operating profit (my name for it – does not include expenses such as mileage, shipping supplies, depreciation, etc …) $5823

Notable sales:
Vtg Lasonic TRC-931 Stereo Boombox Ghettoblaster 1st Generation See Description (buy price $21.20, sold for $545.23) BIGGEST SINGLE SALE EVER AND BIGGEST SINGLE ITEM PROFIT EVER!
LL Bean Mens A2 Goatskin Leather Bomber Jacket Dark Brown XXL 2XL USA Made FS! (buy Price $31.80, sold for $149.99)
Woolrich Hunting Suit Orange Jacket Coat and Bib Pants XL Goose Duck Down (buy price $6.99, Sold for $127.99)
Vintage Alpha M-65 Field Jacket With Liner Large Regular Tiger Stripe Camo FS!(buy price $11.99, Sold for $123.49)
Vtg Tundra Canada Mens Sweater 100% Cotton Coogi Cosby Biggie Style 3XLT XXXLT (buy price $2.10, Sold for $99.99)

YTD Items Sold = 3263 (+10% YOY)
YTD Gross = $86,370 (+8% YOY)
YTD Net = $43,459

Great Podcast! Thank you! I took my time driving home from work last night for a chill listen.

11/24 – 11/30/19 (no cross listing is done between platforms)

eBay store: totommyto

Total store items: 867
Number of items sold: 11
Total eBay sales (not counting s/h): $516.50
Cost of items sold: $38
Highest price sold: $295 – Holland Royal coffee Service Set – paid $23 at the thrift
Average price sold: $47
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: 0
Number of new items listed this week: 6
Sell through rate for the week: 1.3
Number International sales: 1

Etsy store oldfleatoymarket

Total store items: 657
Number of items sold: 8
Total Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $150
Cost of items sold: $12
Highest price sold: $26 – 1987 Marriott Hotel lapel pin, paid $1
Average price sold: $18.80
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: 0
Number of new items listed this week: 2
Sell through rate for the week: 1.2
Number International sales: 0

Items in Store 1348
Items Sold 27
Total Sales $832.00
COGS $60.00
Total Profit $772.00
Average profit $28.59
Average sales price $30.81
New Listings 34

It was a better week than I thought it was. We had a good Thanksgiving and I took a couple days off from listing. We binge watched Cobra Kai (awesome show!).

Scavenge of the week was a Mountain Hardwear mens Kilt. It was my size so of course I wore it around the house yesterday, much to the dismay of my wife and oldest daughter. Lol! It was quite a freeing experience. I can see why dudes wear these when playing disc golf. I’ve seen multiple guys wearing kilts on the disc golf course so it must be a hipster millenial thing. Alas, my wife threatened to video and facebook shame me so I had to take it off and put it in the list pile. Should net somewhere around $80.

Total Items in Store: 265 Ebay, 50 Mercari
Items Sold: 12 Ebay, 6 Mercari
Total Sales : $249 Ebay, $90 Mercari
Highest Price: $40 BO (Unique Couroc Vintage Trays
Average Price: $21 Ebay, $15 Mercari
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $57 + some items ours
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $17
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 50 Ebay, 12 Mercari

Great week of listing for once. Kids slept late during the break and we didn’t travel. I got a couple of death pile boxes out plus dug up some low dollar Christmas I don’t want to keep around another year. Feeling good about getting into the death piles.

ASP pretty bad on Ebay as I was again taking a lot of offers. Some
Thanksgiving stuff that didn’t sell. I tend to cut loose holiday stuff that makes it through the holidays now since I’m trying to downsize. Sales were really good until Black Friday hit.

Mercari seemed to pick up. I’m wondering if they are paying more to Google again for a holiday push. Updated the Mercari app and they have switched to calculated shipping, which will be cumbersome to newbies and casual sellers compared to their last button click system. I guess they didn’t have a choice since USPS shrunk the dim weight standards. Bummer though and no flat rate options yet.

We almost were evacuated with the big fire nearby but thankfully no homes were lost on this one. Looked pretty impressive from the end of our street. It was pretty close so kind of lost productivity and income for a couple of days on my regular job and Ebay.

It’s snowing out! First significant snowstorm of the year is happening today. The mail was already brought in, so now it’s just a listing day.

I had 23 sales on Black Friday on my main Ebay store, which I was not expecting at all! I thought I would get 3-5 sales total for the day. Just running a 10% off sale, nothing special. Sales on Amazon and other venues were also surprisingly strong for Black Friday. I think a lot of people are getting sick of fighting the crowds in stores, so they’re just sitting on their laptops/phones/tablets shopping instead. At 2 sales for Cyber Monday, but I don’t expect to get much today either. I need to catch up on listing, so it works either way.

Starting dates from my past 10 Ebay sales (Sunday afternoon through this morning). 1 item sold within 2 hours of listing, yay! This is what a long-tail store looks like that doesn’t end/relist every month or even every 16 months, per Ebay’s suggestion:

Start time: Jun 15, 2018 03:13:25 PDT
Start time: Jul 03, 2018 12:44:54 PDT
Start time: Nov 01, 2019 10:31:07 PDT
Start time: Jun 03, 2019 12:05:40 PDT
Start time: Dec 01, 2019 11:51:29 PST
Start time: May 10, 2019 11:02:27 PDT
Start time: Mar 26, 2019 14:02:24 PDT
Start time: Jul 25, 2019 13:27:54 PDT
Start time: Nov 11, 2019 12:44:35 PST
Start time: Jun 28, 2018 03:44:45 PDT

I had a great week with higher than normal number of sales. The only weird thing is the number of cancelations I’m getting. One early in the week (never paid) and two Saturday sales.

Week of Nov 24 – 30
* Total Items in Store: 1536 eBay, 35 Etsy
* Items Sold: 25 eBay; 1 Etsy
* Cost of Items Sold: $26 + $18 Commission
* Total Sales: $512.41 eBay; $77.95 Etsy
* Highest Price Sold: $100 for a 1980s Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme instrument panel
* Average Price Sold: $22.70
* Returns: 1 (I sent out the wrong item, so I sent the correct one and told them to keep both), 2 cancels (-$41)
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 24

I seem to be selling one item a week on Etsy. This was another international sale (to England) where I get to keep the shipping I’ve built into the item in addition to saving about $10 using Pirate Ship’s first class pricing.

The one bummer is that eBay pulled me out of being a top rated seller. All my numbers are great, but I did have two items I canceled (within the past two months) because I made a stupid mistake. I’m still angry at eBay, though, because I’m human and I like to blame it on someone else 🙂 .

Ack shipping labels are down. Ebay misspelled apologize. Sheesh.

I can’t stick my tongue out far enough to express last week’s sales, so I’ll just let the #s speak for themselves:

11/24/19 – 11/30/19
Total Items In Store: 833
Items Sold: 9
Net Sales (Total Sales – Selling Costs): $139.38
Highest Sold Price: $60 – Madame Alexander doll
Average Sold Price: $15.49
Cost of Items Sold: $10.94
Returns/Refunds: $0
Money Spent on New Inventory Last Week: $0
Number of Items listed last week: none (out of town)

Lowest sales and ASP since tracking this info. I sent out a bunch of offers, though rarely get anything from that, even though I often take a goodly (~$10) chunk off. I’ve set up a few sales in the past few days. Have a full bag to take to USPS right now, thanks to yesterday and today’s sales – hope it keeps up through the week. Might just start feeling like 4th quarter if I can keep emptying my shelves of things….Here’s to the money following.

Thanks for the podcast, J & R! I didn’t even dare go to a thrift store on Friday, since I was in the DC burbs and really couldn’t handle the shopping crowds everywhere. Uffa!

Thanks for the podcast. I have to confess I napped through some of it as I was on my way to work (on a bus). (I had taken some time off work so it was a shock to be back to my early morning schedule).

Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 3470
Items Sold: 45
Total Sales: $1264.71
Cost of Items Sold: $214
Average Price Sold: $28.1
Average Cost of Item: $4.77
Highest Price Item Sold: $274.95 The Bosns Whistle Magazine (38 magazines – 1941 – 1943)
Number of items listed this week: 53 worth approx. $1630
YTD Sales: $45923
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +6%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 421
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 233
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 244
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.3%
Hats sold this week: 23 (51% of sales) worth $406.12 (32% of sales $)

The holiday selling season arrived by Sunday for me. My big sale of the week were several lots of WWII magazines that sold to the same buyer a few days after listing. I wish I had finds like that every time I visited an estate sale. I paid up for them ($60) but the gamble paid off.

It’s good to hear that you’re still enjoying your inventory system. Over the years I regularly wondered how you put up with those odd items that didn’t fall neatly into categories. Every time I spend more than a couple of minutes looking for an item I have a mini panic about it.

I hope everyone has a busy and productive week.

Total Items In Store: 240
Items Sold: 8
Total Sales: $ 292
Highest Price Sold: $99 Flax Dress $80 Corral Boots-sent offer They countered and I accepted
Average Price Sold: $36
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0
Number of items listed: 0
We had a great week. First Thanksgiving in years with all my immediate family. And once we hit Black Friday we kept hearing ca-ching. The Flax dress took a few months. Same with the boots, but we went back and forth. About half of my sales are from offers from my watchers. Something to keep in mind when pricing.
I only had my kindle fire with me up north. I like it, but I couldn’t figure out how to get Seller Hub on the Kindle. They had a very basic Seller-sold, active, unsold page. But no hub. All my sales came after I logged onto someone’s laptop and offered slight discounts to my watchers. Any thoughts on how to navigate to Ebay Hub on my Amazon product?

Total Items in Store: 1237
Items Sold: 34
Gross Sales: $2156
Cost of Items Sold: $184
Highest Price Sold: $900 (MCM Painting)
Average Price Sold: $62
Returns: 4
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $150
Number of items listed this week: 31

First time posting my numbers. Have been meaning to for ages as I feel I need to get more focussed on bottom line. Getting a little more organized so makes pulling the numbers easier.

Had my best week ever, thanks in large part to my biggest sale ever. I sold a MCM painting for $900 for which I only paid $66. I hated to see the painting go though, as I really loved it and wouldn’t have minded it staying on my wall, however, bills to pay and all that.

Having 4 returns in one week was quite surprising, as we rarely get returns.

Biggest issue we have is that we lost our Top Rated Seller status a week ago after shipping 9 packages a day late back in August. I was surprised when they took it as at first they granted me a 30-day grace, then after not shipping anything late again, they still pulled the TRS. I missed the ship date after going on vacation and improperly setting my handling to 5-day instead of 6. I don’t think I’ve ever shipped late prior to that. I’ve opened an appeal, so hoping they see that my overall record is clean and that it was an anomaly. Concerned a bit about not having TRS during the Christmas season, but it didn’t seem to affect my sales last week.

As always, enjoyed the podcast.

I was listening to last week’s episode and planned to let you know this, but forgot until now…

InkFrog retains buyer email addresses indefinitely. Within InkFrog, just click Sold then Order ID.

As for GSP, I recall a long time ago, users had to opt into the program. For the new aebay accounts not being able to offer GSP (and not on Managed Payments) perhaps that’s all that’s needed is to opt in:
Go to Site Preferences in My eBay.
Beside Shipping Preferences, select Show.
Select Edit beside Offer the Global Shipping Program, and then Opt in / out.

I used to do detective work when I found an item that wasn’t listed, but over time I became less interested in why and just got it relisted. I’m more concerned about the opposite situation where something sells that I no longer have, that situation causes extra customer service work and can be a bad experience for the buyer.

The process I am using now reduces these inventory issues. I use a picklist from my inventory app to pull daily orders, that list shows the number remaining and I physically verify if qty shows zero or only a few remaining on multi-quantity listings. Maybe once or twice a month I find an error and correct it without it ever becoming an issue. I started using the inventory app to keep inventory in sync between multiple marketplaces and the picklist is a bonus benefit.

I can also print the inventory list for an audit, but I haven’t done that for quite some time but probably should.

Nov. 24-30
Items Sold: 4 items, on 2 Ebay, 2 Poshmark, 1 Mercari, 0 Etsy
Items in store: 162 Ebay
Total Sales: $ 76.xx before fees and some little free shipping
COG: Approx $20. Or you could count it as zero…
Highest priced item: Big seller was a LEGO set that I had bought a couple years ago around Christmas on sale. I probably made a $12 profit on a $20 purchase. I got a lot of interest and low offers but it eventually sold for the asking price of $32, which had been lowered from $38.

Lighting, especially natural lighting was a challenge for me, and so I’m trying to get a set-up in my basement that will get me through the winter and any inclement weather.

Was grateful for the discussion of “NOT TESTED/NOT WORKING.” I have a piece of AV equipment that doesn’t have a battery pack. After seeing stars from the $300/$400 comps, I was bummed that I may take a big zero on this item. But I listed for $100, and will probably take any decent offer.

Listing was super slow last week with the holiday, but I enjoyed my family time.

This week, I am taking almost any offer. I want to get this stuff moving while I can. I imagine this week and next are the last shot I have for Christmas.

Total Items in Store: 1851
Items Sold: 46
Gross Sales: $1284
Selling costs:$204
Cost of Items Sold: ~$40
Highest Price Sold: $335 Cat Sculpture(looked like a preschooler made it)
Net:$1044 $22.70/item
Returns: 0
2 Selling errors! I sent an item to Goodwill, then it sold. Another sold on FB and I didn’t remove.

Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: 0
Number of items listed this week: ~150

I’m worried about missing or unlisted items after messing up twice this week, so I am going to to a basic bin audit myself. I am planning on the audit in a couple months when sales slow down more. On days where shipping is mostly 1st class, I may go through a bin or 2 and gradually complete the audit. Money is made proportionate to listing, not housekeeping, so I do not want to cheat our store out of those hours. It has not been a big enough issue over the year to warrant a listing hiatus.

I picked up a Zebra thermal label printer on ebay… It was so nice to just slap a label on and not cut/tape things. Bring on the volume!

Nov 24-30
Items:730
Sold:33
Gross sales:839
COGS:142
Highest item sold:95
ASP:25.42
Cost of new inventory: 136

Grrr..

Had been hoping to have a record week this week, but some eBay technical issues put a major damper on that idea.

I had a tiered discount cyber week promo with storewide free shipping scheduled to start Monday at 12AM and run for 7 days. By Tuesday afternoon only two tiers of the promo had started. I called merchant support and they told me they would monitor it for 24 hours and call me back. That night, I realized none of the items that were “stuck” in promo limbo were getting offers or being sold since Monday morning. The only items with any activity were from the two active promos, or newly listed items that were not included in the sale. Essentially 4000 listings were seemingly invisible and sales had definitely tanked for two days. I decided to “end” the promos. Even though the promos had never started, ending them took more than 12 hours to process. After they finally ended Wednesday morning, I immediately got 10-12 sales within an hour, and sales have been steady since.

Additionally, I was notified by several potential buyers that when they received an “offer to watchers” offer from me, they did not have an option to counteroffer or decline. The only option was to accept, so if they wanted to make a counteroffer they had to wait 2 full days for my original offer to expire.

Sigh, thanks eBay.

Sorry, wrong place.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by Retro Treasures WV.