Scavenger Life Episode 453: Mistakes That Cost Us Money

3/1/20 – 3/7/20

Total Items In Store: 3272
Items Sold: 23
Cost of Items Sold: $ 70
Total Sales: $ 738.22
Highest Price Sold: $ 65 (Leather Work Belt)
Average Price Sold: $ 32.10
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 63
Number of items listed: 10

Gut Sales Report for the week: This was again a good average week in terms of sales.

Challenge of the week: Personal life took over again last week and I need to get organized this week.

Scavenge of the week: Nothing too interesting, just good bread and butter items for cheap.

Mark S

Hey guys, if you go to the spring seller customer service faq, the details on the new return system is on there. It’s a bit buried, but they do have it in writing. Here’s a link.

https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/seller-updates/2020-spring/service.html#m22_tb_a1_19

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by WabashValleyRelics.

March 1 – 7
Total Items in Store: 3,711
Items Sold: 33
Total Sales : $993
* Above yearly average of $925
Highest Price: $250 (Paqui Carolina Reaper Pepper One Chip Challenge HELL IN A BOX Kit)
Average Price: $30
Returns: 1
Cost of Goods Sold: $241
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 162

This week started out with a whimper and ended with a bang. I was very happy with all my sales on Friday and Saturday.

I finally upgraded to an Anchor store! I did that math and found that I would actually be saving money if I accounted for the extra $150 a quarter eBay supply coupon rather than the $50. And I think I discovered something cool. I’m positive I used my $50 coupon for 1st quarter already. When I upgraded to anchor, I automatically had my $150 coupon ready for me to use! And it worked too. So if anybody is thinking about upgrading their store, make sure you use your shipping supply coupon before doing so.

I got my taxes back from my CPA recently. I actually overpaid on my quarterly estimates! So I don’t have to pay a dime. Instead of receiving a return, I opted instead to apply it toward 2020s quarterly estimates so they’ll be a bit lower. Woot!

Interesting topic this week. Mistakes happen to all of us. One of the worst mistakes I ever made was to wash a valuable coin in silver cleaner when I was working for a coin dealer. The silver coin’s surface had “tarnished” into a rainbow tone that is very valuable, but I was new and didn’t know any better. According to the lecture I received from my boss, it cost us about $500 in value. Whoops…

First week of sales, and I’m happy with the results. Sold a few “freebies” for low prices but if you don’t count those my average price was $6 higher. Going to a couple auctions this week for the experience and to scout the companies who are running them, hope it goes well.

March 1st-7th

Items in store – 41
Items sold – 7
Total Sales – $73.59
COGS – $20.75
Highest Price – $22.95 (Wilson tennis racket bag)
Average Price – $10.51
Cost of Sourcing – $0
New Items Listed – 11

It is so difficult to find complete, unsensationalized information about COVID 19 in one source. The US government Centers for Disease Control site at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/ is probably the best for US-centric info and the BBC has a very good page at https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51048366 .

That type of jacket you washed is often called a cruise jacket or tour jacket although sometimes they’re simply listed as satin souvenir jackets.

I’ve made many costly mistakes in my scavenging lifetime. One early memorable fail was the 19th century sapphire blue glass Harden’s Fire Extinguisher Grenade I sold for fifty cents at the flea market, thinking it was a cheap Pier 1 imported vase someone had filled, corked, and waxed. That was good for a couple hundred out the window even in the ‘80s. I recall it to this day because once the buyer paid for it and had it in his hand he couldn’t contain his glee. He told me all about what it was and how much it was worth, apparently forgetting his audience. I had to resist the urge to punch him in the nose and grab it back from him.

Ebay is definitely on the back burner as we prepare for another move in a couple months and my sales are definitely reflecting the lack of activity. But after getting moved in I hope to ramp things up to the next level and maybe then my numbers will be worth reporting.

I had a listing deactivated on me due to coronavirus… weirdly it was some dispensers for hand sanitizer I’ve had for ages, and not touched the price of… but ebay is being careful that nobody is seen to be “price gouging”. Good to know we are all being protected from the dangers of adequate supply. I have some respirator cartridges on auction but they have not yet been taken down.

I had a good week on ebay, and my new job is secure so no longer facing a cashflow cliff at the end of March.

Sales: CAD$3,627, 17 sales, COGS: $494, Fees: ~$490, Postage: $582 –> Gross profit: $2,062
Expenditures: $396 –> Cashflow: $2,742
Think my biggest sale was a laser for $400, to a buyer in China. Post is still going! just with some delays.
I got in a really great buy. Got qty 200 of a new Siemens widget that sells for $50-300 each, for a grand total of $5.99 (local pickup). My proxy bid was $2100… man, that’s satisfying.

My wife is feeling unwell enough, and is concerned enough about this pandemic, to be going on Mat Leave early (baby is due in July). Need to sit down with my accountant ASAP and figure out how much we need to claim she is making from the business… it’s a double mess because in 2019 we went from a partnership to a corporation and both of those arrangements factor into the mat leave calculations.

Week of 3/1-3/7
Total Items in Store: 3,320 (Up 14% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 60
Number of Items Sold: 58 (Down 38% YOY)
Weekly STR: 8% (Down 46% YOY – PY STR 14%)
Total Product Sales: $1,784 (Down 22% YOY)

Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Down $879
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Up $367
Cost of Items Sold: $316

Another slower week, but Etsy came back with 3 sales, even had 1 sale on Bonanza. Poshmark sales are down but we are still getting at least 4 sales a week on there.

Going to keep plugging along, but making changes again this year. Good thing I am back at work, because the last few months would have had a big dip into savings to cover us without it.

Multiple streams of income is a good thing…

I know it’s an unproven theory, but I agree with the statement on the show about listing supercharges your sales – I had $80 in sales this week going in to the weekend. Started listing and then had $700 in sales over the weekend. 🙂

I’ve been listening every week, but haven’t been posting enough… life has been getting in the way of posting & catching up on things like this. So here are some numbers for the month of February:

Total Items in Store: 1,040
Items Sold: 58
Cost of Items Sold: $725 (29.1% of sales)
Total Sales: $2,490.71
Highest Sales:
$250 Led Zeppelin I Quiex pressing
$180 Lot of loose He-Man figures & accessories
$170 NWA Straight Outta Compton 1st press
$120 1997 C3PO Wind Up Toy
Average Price Sold: $42.94
Sales drop from January: -46.87%
Sales vs. Feb’19: -4.53%

Since sales had such a huge drop from January to February, wanted to compare to February last year and that was much less dramatic.

3/1/20 – 3/7/20

Total Items In Store: 927
Items Sold: 45
Cost of Goods Sold: $ 962.57
Total Sales: $ 1,964.00
Average Price Sold: $ 43.64
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 900.52 (36 Items Friday, 58 Items Saturday)
Number of items listed: 46
Highest Price Sold: $ 109 (Nike Air Force 1 Black History Month)
https://imgur.com/a/lpBH7Pa

Gut Sales Report for the week: It was a really good week for us, averaging a little over 6 sales a day and we have been focusing for the past few month on sourcing higher quality items and taking care to photograph them well. Even though our overall ASP is around $34, in the past month we are getting closer to an ASP of $44.

Challenge of the week: We have a backlog of 150 items that we are trying to work through, but we realized in February that we sourced 333 items, and listed 343 items, which meant we essentially hadn’t made any significant dents in our back log. Our perception was that we had made some real headway, but the numbers told a different story.

Scavenge of the week: 3 Pair of Tory Burch slip on’s for $15 a piece.
https://imgur.com/a/bWyiX0O

Ken

Sales are currently Q4 level strong here. I don’t know how long it will last, but I’ll take the extra work!

Sales right now/normal Q4 level – 30-50 packages shipped out on Mondays & Fridays, 20-30 packages shipped out Tuesdays-Thursdays.

Normal sales for the rest of the year (other than January, which is usually as busy or busier than Q4): 20-30 packages shipped out Mondays & Fridays, 10-20 packages shipped out Tuesdays-Thursdays. This was what it was like until the past week.

Sales are all over the place. From the cheapest items ($5 free shipping ephemera) to expensive – sold a $200 movie last week! Also, all ranges of dates listed – items listed for 10+ years to items listed yesterday. Getting rid of lots of old stuff on both Amazon & Ebay. It’s nice to see a lot of it go – I’m just filling the newly empty spaces from the backlog.

Starting to change the way I go about shipping – used to take Ubers for the larger ship-outs. Now they’re just being walked in. Uber drivers are starting to get the coronavirus, so I don’t want to risk taking one if I don’t have to. Also skipping out on public transportation if I can avoid it, so I guess I’ll just get used to carrying more than normal. At least most of the items I sell are small – I don’t know what I’d do if I had to carry in 20-30 large boxes of random items each day – probably use a large bicycle trailer cart to walk it in? I’ve still got mine from when I used to hitch it to a cargo bike, but I live in a bad location to bike in.

Purchased nearly 200 books this weekend because sales are good. This might be it for awhile – keeping an eye on another 200 books, but eh. I don’t know how long sales like this will last for. It could go from Q4 type sales to a trickle at any moment.

I live in one of the worst-hit places for the coronavirus, but life is just going on as normal. I saw no one in masks when I went out today, people shopping, eating out, living life like normal. Other than the stock market tanking, everything is completely normal. It’s eerie to see that and read about potential future quarantines in the news for where I live, but eh.

I do clean up some of my inventory, especially stuff that is not that old and will probably be used rather than collected. But, yes, I’ve ruined a few things by cleaning them. For instance, brass does not clean well for me. These days, I might wipe brass down, but that is it. I’ve definitely cut back on cleaning after some discussions here on the forum.

I had a really good week with a number of high priced sales. GoDaddy is still including shipping in the sales price, so I estimated it and took it out of my numbers. I also had my first big inventory purchase of the year from a live auction and an online auction, both on Friday.

Week of March 1 – 7
* Total Items in Store: 1457 eBay, 34 Etsy
* Items Sold: 18 eBay, 1 Etsy
* Cost of Items Sold: $47 + $29.40 Commission
* Total Sales: about $700 eBay, $36 Etsy
* Highest Price Sold: $124 Blue Smith Corona electric typewriter
* Average Price Sold: $39 ish
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $109.25
* Number of items listed this week: 9

Thanks for the podcast this week.

Here are my numbers

Total Items in Store: 3642
Items Sold: 56
Total Sales: $1163.85
Cost of Items Sold: $125
Average Price Sold: $20.78
Average Cost of Item: $2.25
Highest Price Item Sold: $94.95 ICOM/NAVICOM IC-A20 VHF Aircraft transceiver
Number of items listed this week: 62 worth approx. $1339
YTD Sales: $9960
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +21%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 447
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 261
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 66
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.54%
Hats sold this week: 41 (73% of sales) worth $714.33 (61% of sales $)

It’s been another good week sales-wise this week. I’m still tracking 20% ahead of my YTD sale. I’d be surprised if it stays that way as I’m not doing anything differently this year.

The virus thing doesn’t seem to be impacting my sales but the impact on the stock market is concerning as I’m less than 4 months away from my planned retirement date and 65% of my retirement assets are in the stock market. I know it will come back up eventually but it’s hard to watch.

On the upside, my company has just told us we have to work from home the next 2 weeks which will eliminate my long commute. I’ll be on vacation after that so I wont be back in the office for a month which I’m not sad about.

On topic, I’ve done all the dumb things that resellers do at one time or another. I wonder if anyone else has ever bid against themselves. I have 2 ebay accounts. One day I put in a high advance bid on an auction from one account but forgot I’d done that and, as the auction was closing, I started bidding from my other account. Once the auction ended I realized that I’d been bidding against myself. doh!

I’m not afraid of the virus, but me and my husband are in this weird situation where we have tickets to Japan literally for late this month. We’ve been planning this for nearly 2 years. We had tickets that had gone through China for a layover. That eventually got cancelled and got my money back when the coronavirus hit china hard. So then I went and bought nonstop tickets straight to Japan, because I had no idea how crazy this whole thing would get. Then a week ago, I had a talk with HR telling me that if I went to Japan (only a CDC level 2) I’d need to quarantine myself for 2 weeks without pay and get a doctor’s note before I come back. There’s only 2 people and my boss who would be able to cover my shifts. So we’ve decided not to go. Tickets are nonrefundable. I have the worst luck ever when it comes to traveling, and I literally never want to fly again.

So sorry, Thrift Raider.

If the tickets are nonrefundable, can you change your flights to later in the year? I just changed mine from next month to August – not due to the virus, but other factors. If I could have flown now, I would have. They’re practically giving away upgrades! Sometimes you can change with a change fee, rather than lose a non-refundable deposit. Change to several months in advance, and then, about a month from now, see if you can upgrade to a class that offers a refund. With the change fee and the upgrade fee, it may work out to a few hundred, but less than the cost of an entire nonrefundable ticket.

Sad to hear about your trip, Thrift Raider. Never been to Japan and if I had to cancel a planned trip to there for something not in my control I’d be upset.

Thanks for the well wishes from everyone. I’m trying to source when I can and build things up.

It’s interesting that everyone seems to have a big “regret” mistake in our scavenging careers. When it happens, we all tend to feel so self conscious and embarrassed. It’s nice to hear I’m not alone in that.

Expensive mistakes. Definitely had a few of those. Some of the biggest have been lost opportunities when I hesitated to buy something only to find out later that it was worth more than I thought. I’ve also had a few items that I’ve cleaned the value right off an item, or early in this eBay experience, items I packed poorly, or dropped on the way to packing. I still clean, though, just more judiciously, and have my cleaning fluids shelf to testify.
https://imgur.com/a/QkFtH3h

Had a disappointing week of sales, the lowest in about 6 months. Getting motivated to post more items and bumped that up a bit this week.

Had some good wins at online auctions. Scavenge of the week is a lot of antique Christmas ornaments we purchased for $80, some extremely rare, that we hope to turn into a few thousand. Probably the nicest lot we’ve ever come across. It is a wonder any survived to get to us as they were all stacked in boxes on top of each other with no padding between.

Week Ending 03/07/2020
Total Items in Store: 1197
Items Sold: 11
Gross Sales: $380.18
Gross wo Shipping $293.80
Cost of Items Sold: $26.25
COGS Percent 8.93%
Highest Price Sold: $50.00 (pre-Columbian pottery)
Average Price Sold: $26.71
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $201.26
Sold via promoted listings: 8
Promoted Percentage: 72.73%
Average Days Listed: 413
Longest Listed: 909
New items listed: 31

Have already sold as much this week as last, so looking forward to a better week ahead. Maybe there is something to that posting myth.

Good morning guys: Don’t ask for help too much here at SL, but need a little advice here. We usually know how to handle most issues, having been doing this a long time, but every now and then we get something that we personally haven’t had to deal with. This is a first for us, a PayPal case opened.

A few minutes ago, we got a PayPal email that a buyer opened a PayPal case for a transaction and the buyer stated “they did not authorize this purchase”. This case was showing the Buyer’s name as Vincent [husband of the lady who purchased I am assuming].

The original order was placed on March 8th and the Ebay email address was his wife’s name [Marian with a 42 feedback rating] and the address was verified in the order. It was a small framed painting for $71.39 incl. the cal. shipping to Zone 8 which is Cal. for us here in Atlanta.Shipped Priority. Not bad to get to cal. in 3 days.

The item is showing the progress and it has arrived in CA. and marked out for delivery but no indication it has been delivered yet.

After some PayPal blah-blah it ends with “we will review this as soon as possible”.

It looks like to me that this guys wife ordered the painting [it is a small 6×10 miniature style], he saw the purchase and is trying to get out of it. As of yet, none of the typical by kid ordered it, or my dog bought it type of stuff we all laugh about here on SL.

I did search the SL forums but all the replies were for long, intricate detailed episodes of more complex situations.

So, what is the standard protocol here, for us as a first time receiver of this. Guess we just wait and see what PayPal says or is there anything you guys can suggest that I can do to be proactive in order to minimize the possibility that PayPal will decide against us and just pull funds and pay them back. secondly, will the buyer be forced to send the item back to us, thirdly should I call Ebay and give them a heads up that this is pending and or any other suggestions.

You guys also know us by now, we look at this like this as a cost of doing business, sort of a “shrinkage” type of thing and $72 bucks won’t make or break us by any means, but if without spending too much valuable, productive things we could be doing, like listing to generate more sales, it would be nice if we could short circuit this from happening or get the $72 dolars back at some point.

Any comments or feedback will be much appreciated.

Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta

Mike:
Be sure that you have done whatever Paypal may have asked you to do. It may as simple as uploading a tracking number inside the case even if they already have it from the transaction. You have to follow their instructions in order to protect yourself.

I had a couple of similar cases over the years and all turned out good. Sometimes the case is weeks or months after the transaction, when disgruntled ex partner reviews statements after a break-up and no longer wants to pay for someone else’s stuff.

We are also in Gwinnett county but much too shy to share details online.

I can really relate to Ryanne’s comment during the podcast that if she can’t ship for a couple days, that stuff starts selling again once she gets everything shipped. I thought it was just me, as I’ve been noticing the same thing for at least the past year or more. Might be coincidence, but it’s just weird that it always seems to follow the same pattern – ship it to sell it.

Also, in regards to the PayPal issue above – I’ve had 2 similar issues recently and all I had to do was log into PayPal, go to the PayPal case and upload any tracking numbers to prove delivery. Then just waited (awhile!) and in both instances they ruled in my favor. This is what I’m going to miss once managed payments kicks in – not real confident that eBay will prove quite as seller friendly on these issues.

I tried the Wave accounting, but it only appears to go back 10 days for my paypal account.

I went to integrations and set Paypal to go back to December 1, 2019 but I still only get the last 10 days of activity.

Is anyone seeing something different than this?

Mark

Mark S, I had the same problem when I set mine up. I spent awhile on chat with a customer service rep. He walked me through a couple of things, but nothing worked. He said I would have to go back and manually enter everything that didn’t integrate. What a pain. I still haven’t done it.

Wave is also known for not integrating with many banks also. Only going back so far or being error prone. Complaints have been documented for some time about how Wave won’t synch with users bank accounts. Some banks I read even charge a fee to let Wave synch with them, but unsure on that.
It was not too long ago that wave was more of just an Invoicing platform for contractors to create and send invoices to their customers and accept payments against those invoices. But then they decided to gravitate into a receivable / payable system but unsure if it is a fully functional double entry bookkeeping and if so, then maybe being newer to it than Quicken and Quickbooks.

Personally I have tried other apps when I was looking to go from QuickBooks full blown app to something less costly and involved. I couldn’t find much other than Quicken. I tried one app back then that pulled a bunch of garbage from PayPal and I dumped it due to the issues it had with PayPal. Even Quicken had a problem once long ago.

So be careful with all these apps that claim to be an accounting program as in real double entry [i.e. General Ledger with accompanying Journals for user entries] vs. glorified invoicing apps with some add ons for handling receivables.

Something else I observed, when I leave the word WAVE out or any other Brand name out of a google search and just search for best bookkeeping apps, top 10 accounting apps, etc., etc. Wave doesn’t seen to show up in most of them. But, many of the better apps have a charge associated with them. At some times, when you pay a little something you get a better program or support. With Quicken, I can call them right now and someone will answer within a minute or two and stay with me until finished. But haven’t needed help with accounting in a long time, since i cut my teeth 20 or so years ago with Great Plains accounting [big guns-high cost] in my printing company, then QuickBooks desk top when I started my other businesses.

Nothing more than just an opinion …

mike at mdcgfa

Oh Ryanne: Yep I think you should go and read through the link you set. About 4 or 5 posts down there is a running thread from a user JSC and the administrator Alexia. Read on down through it.seeing things like have to set a start date, some banks only allow 30 to 90 days, have to use .CSV imports into Excel then back to Wave, glitchy categorizations, manual monthly updates, Wave doesn’t treat PayPal as a bank so pulls in data differently, etc., etc.

Now that thread seems to go back into 2018, so maybe Wave has fixed itself, but from I had seens some time back when I was switching Wave just didn’t seem to grab my attention and I ruled it out along with Sage, FreshBooks, Mint and a few others. There really are not many out there that are really good at all the accounting requirements of a dbl entry professional level program for the small business owner on the cheap.

mike

Items in Store 1486
Items Sold 11
Total Sales $258.00
COGS $38.00
Total Profit $220.00
Average profit $20.00
Average sales price $23.45
New Listings 5

Catching up from being on vacation.
Ouch…terrible week! I didn’t really care though as I was too busy preparing for our trip and worrying about all the virus crap in the media. I had 10 day handling time on my store for the last half of the week and it definitely hampered sales.

This week I was able to buy a pair of vintage Converse shoes. I believe they are from the early 70’s or late 60’s and are in awesome condition. One of the comps I have found sold as an auction for $580!!

I paid $25 for them on facebook yardsale.