Scavenger Life Episode 469: Nothing Here vs Nothing Here

You guys are down to 7700 items, you must have sold a lot. I slowly reaching 2000.

My Sales Week Ending 6/27/27
More focus. More productive. Listed 6 items.
Total Items For Sale: 64

Profit: $7
Items Sold: 1
Items Listed: 6
Average Profit: $7
Highest Profit: $7 Set of Books on Star Wars Legos
Cost of Items Sold: $0
Returns: 0
$ Spent Sourcing: $0

Hi!! For some weird reason….. I’m not finding my extra free ebay shipping supplies coupon. Does anyone know how to find it? I’ve looked and all it is showing is regular shipping coupon has been redeemed.

Thank you,
Anita (seller nitascot )

June 21 – June 27, 2020
Total Items For Sale: 312 Unique = 404 Total (Plus FB Marketplace)
Items Sold: 59 (16% Sell Through Rate for Week, FB Marketplace and Multi Quantity Listings make this look higher than it should be)
Gross Sales: $1493 (Includes Shipping)
Weekly Profit: $530.86, $75.83/Day (after shipping, fees, COGs)
Cost of Items Sold: $422
Highest Price Sold: $180 (Lego Creator Winter Village, Loose)
Average Price Sold: $25.31
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $135
Number Of Items Listed This Week:44 ($2269 gross) Includes some multi-quantity
Weekly ROI:2.26x June ROI: 2.75x 2020 ROI: 2.52x

Looking forward to the podcast at work tomorrow.

Overall impression of the week: I bought 50 cockroach bait stations that were new in package from a thrift store. I paid $1 each and I am selling them for $11-15 each. So the return over the whole haul is great but the per item return is just $3 if I sell one alone and $5 each if I sell two together. So that has brought down by ROI for the week. Still a great week and well above the goal. This is making up for some weak months earlier in the year. The real question is “Will it continue”?

June 21 – 27
Total Items in Store: 3,975
Items Sold: 31
Total Sales : $963
* EQUAL yearly average of $963
Highest Price: $215 (Pair of Technics 3-Way Floor Speakers)
Average Price: $31
Returns: 1
Cost of Goods Sold: $30
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $43
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 51

Not too bad of a week. It felt a lot slower than it actually was. I had a couple semi-decent sales that really saved it for me.

Not much going on here to talk about. We hit up some yard sales again. Picked up a set of Bose speakers for $25. Unfortunately, when I brought them home I found out that a mouse had made a home in one of them. I might be able to salvage the speaker and tweeter, but the box is shot.

I had a local pickup sale with those Technics speakers that I mentioned above. I’ve had them listed for 3 years with a lot of people asking me if I could ship them. Nah, just didn’t feel like it. Finally a buyer from a couple hours away found them and we negotiated a price. I’m so happy to have them out of my storage.

Thanks for the podcast Jay and Ryanne.

Here are my numbers for the week:

Total Items in Store: 3994
Items Sold: 51
Total Sales: $1046.91
Cost of Items Sold: $118
Average Price Sold: $20.53
Average Cost of Item: $2.32
Highest Price Item Sold: $101.96 R-Type III for Super Nintendo
Number of items listed this week: 55 worth approx. $1697
YTD Sales: $28335
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +14%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 438
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 280
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 202
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.28%
Hats sold this week: 39 (76% of sales) worth $677 (64% of sales $)

Sales-wise this was a reasonable week. It was mainly low-value items again but it was pretty constant. I took a couple of days off work as it was my birthday week and I dragged my wife to some estate sales on my birthday. We showed up to one house clear-out and everything was free so I walked away with several bags of stuff until my wife got hangry and dragged me away. I also stayed a a hotel overnight a couple of hours north of here (Sacramento) and spent a day doing garage sales there (as there are still very few locally). I was pretty surprised by how carefree people were about wearing masks. About 75% of people at the garage sales didn’t have masks. That’s an area where bars & nightclubs are being closed again due to an uptick in cases.

It’s funny that you mentioned Alone. I started watching that for the first time today while listing. I was OK with concentrating on my listings when a squirrel got an arrow in its ear and a mouse got pancaked with a large rock.

On the topic of draft listings. I often have more than 100 drafts. I’ve not been able to find any official info about how many drafts are allowed. (I have an anchor store). I occasionally bump into the draft decay problem where photos start to disappear off the listings. I wish ebay would fix this to allow us to keep drafts for longer. Especially for people paying considerable monthly fees.

Hope everyone has a good week.

Items in Store 1401
Items Sold 24
Total Sales $965.00
COGS $66.00
Total Profit $899.00
Average profit $37.46
Average sales price $40.21
New Listings 7

Sourcing has been very good the last few weeks…. a little TOO good! I think I’m gonna have to shut it down because I’m filling back up my space at an accelerated pace.

Friday I happened upon an estate sale on my walk during break. The house was full of AMAZING stuff – a whole room of vintage toys, tools, electronics, etc. I took my lunch early and shopped a while. Prices were reasonable…if you talked to the right person. They lady in the toy room was incompetent and if you showed interest in anything she’d say “here let me look that up on ebay to figure a price”. Ughhhh… I bought a bunch of vcr’s, and a Commodore color monitor (big bucks!). The lady running it told me about her auction business and encouraged me to try her auctions out. She is reseller friendly and we had a good chat about ebay in general. They planned on auctioning the unopened out buildings at this estate on Sunday and the remaining household stuff as well.

So Sunday it was pouring the rain all morning. We always end up down near where the auction was every Sunday anyways so I decided to stop by at 2:30 (it started at 10am). They were just getting ready to do the main house stuff, and the Mid century egg chair I really wanted from the estate sale was coming up so I decided to stick around. I won the chair for $27.50. Then I won the lamps I had eyeballed for $4…then more and more. Everyone had left so there were only 3 other bidders there and they weren’t interested in anything I was interested in. I was getting stuff for $1 regularly.

I bought things I would have NEVER considered any other day: two 6 gallon vintage butter crocks, even a 1920’s working Victrola record player! I ended up with a good pile of stuff I had some knowledge of in the doll/toy room. So much of that stuff I think was junk – it is highly specialize knowledge to identify the older dolls that I don’t have. I did get a Miss Revlon doll but it is just in okay condition.

It was fun, but I think this auction was a fluke – a perfect combination of location (terrible access up on a hill), bad weather (long delays in bidding), odd auction day (Sunday vs Saturday). Either way, I have made a contact with a good auctioneer in my area.

In other news, yard sales were also fruitful Saturday – got another pile of good classic rock vinyl for 25 cents a record. Also bought a sirius radio with boombox I tested last night and it is a lifetime subscription unit. SCORE!

Total Items in Store: 400 Ebay, 115 Mercari
Items Sold: 11 Ebay, 2 Mercari
Gross Sales: $350 Ebay, $28 Mercari
Cost of Items Sold: $103, some items ours
Highest Price Sold: $80 (two new pillow shams, paid $45 recently on clearance)
Average Price Sold: $32.67
Returns: 2 cancelations – one buyer mistake, one listing mistake
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 14

It was a slow week with a better finish. I hope to get more listing done in advance of the holiday weekend but I did make it back up to 400 items in the store last week. Lots of piles to sink my teeth into. For RA people, the Fourth sales are already starting. So far, not too much I’m interested in for resale and not enough extra % offs yet for home goods.

I enjoyed the podcast. I think Jay might like to see the bin hoverers involuntarily thrown into the Alone woods. 🙂 That would make a good show and I’d bet they would do quite well. Hope you find a good helper soon.

We are on the orange list coronavirus-wise but so far our community is not spiking. Everyone has their eye on the tourists from LA, who are now supposed to have to wear masks while visiting. We went North to a town where the numbers are super duper low and everyone was wearing a mask. It was great to be out but still you feel uneasy and lots of the bathrooms were closed. It was a strange experience but nice to get away from home for a day trip. Some of the thrifts are limiting the number of shoppers, but GW is not. I’ve only been a couple of times and did not go this week. I found it to be pretty picked over so the scavengers must be going out in force. My very favorite charity thrift has all very elderly volunteers. They said on Facebook that they are working on plans to reopen and I’ll have to decide if I want to go but I’m leaning no since it will be well attended.

I just remembered some inventory cost. For the first time I bought some art (lot of 3 for $72) to flip on Ebay. I was browsing the big city GW Ebay auctions on my phone and a promoted banner came up with a lot of paintings. Strangely, I searched for them separately and could not see them. Weird.

Week of June 21 – 27
* Total Items in Store: 1262 eBay, 32 Etsy
* Items Sold: 14 eBay
* Cost of Items Sold: $15.27 + $15.68 Commission
* Total Sales: $223.10 eBay
* Highest Price Sold: $28 framed print
* Average price: $15.94
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 10

Slow week. My parents were in town, so I didn’t mind.

6/20/20-6/26/20
Total Items In Store: 2008
Items Sold: 39
Gross Sales: $1156
Highest Price Sold: $200 (Leinenkugel’s Red Canoe Rolling Cooler)
Average Price Sold: $29.63
Returns: 0 $0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $55
Number of items listed: 83

• Pretty solid week of sales. As expected, I got a boost from finally getting some inventory back into the store.
• Listed 83 items this week and got my store back above 2000 listings for the first time since early May.
• Had a couple of great sales this week. One was a large canoe shaped cooler for $200 that my wife grabbed from a thrift store last winter for $10. Also sold one of the vintage rotary phones for $100 from the lot I picked up at a garage sale last week.
• Ryanne, thank you for posting the coupon codes. I never got an e-mail from Ebay on the extra coupon. When I called Ebay about it, I was told not everyone got the extra coupon and if I didn’t get an e-mail I wasn’t eligible for the free supplies. Anyways, I tried the code and it worked.
• I also can’t believe that Ebay has never added additional listing tiers for stores. I think I figured awhile back that I would have to get to over 3400 listings before it made sense to switch the next level. It’s a huge jump dollar wise to go to the next level of store.

June 21 – June 27
Total Items In Store: 4741
Items Sold: 58
Gross Sales (including shipping): 1203.36
Cost of Items Sold: 37.32
Highest Price Sold: $74.47 (Slide Scanner)
Average Price Sold: $20.74
Returns: 2
Sourcing Cost: $0

Not a bad week! Lots of low dollar items selling, but I’ll take it. I loved the conversation on the pod this week; I tend to fall on the optimistic side of “nothing here” as well. I’d love to live in a place with a little more “nothing” someday, in fact. One of my dreams is to buy the farm I grew up on (no longer owned by my family) and live there again. One of my favorite places on earth, surrounded by lots of nothing! To me, space is one of the hottest commodities of all.

Total Items in Store: 607
Items Sold: 13
Gross Sales: $371
Highest Price: $54 – Jogger stroller wheel
Average Price: $29
Cost of Goods Sold: $40
Returns: 0
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $70
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 20

“Nothing here.” First reaction of an Alone contestant when he was dropped off in a fire-scorched section of the Artic lake in Season 6. After a few weeks he completely changed his view. The area had lots of game and fish. Good lesson to apply to sourcing. Many times I’ve found a second look does reveal value. Not always, but often enough.

Gut reaction to the week: Very slow. Same number of items sold as last week, but only half the revenue. The difference was every item was under $60. The lack of community yard sales is a problem. Call it the shotgun approach — hit dozens of sales in a couple of hours and take in armloads of stuff. Now I’m down to the rifle approach, scanning Facebook Markeplace and Craigslist and picking off select items. It’s working, but I’m not seeing high-ticket stuff. Case of “nothing here” thinking? Gotta look harder.

What a cool starburst clock Steven sold in the video!

I had a really good week last week.

Sales c/w shipping: CAD$4275, 19 sales, COGS: $350, Fees: ~$589, Postage: $273 –> Gross profit: $3063
Expenditures: $0 –> Cashflow: $3413
Sold a big ugly actuator for $450 that I am THRILLED to get out of storage, it weighs like 250 lbs and takes up a pallet worth of floor space. Buyer is arranging shipping to Vietnam(!). Hopefully it will be picked up today.
Also sold 7 standing desks for $300 each, but the shipping turned out to be a bit of a killer at $126 per desk. Still, I bought them for $30 each so I can’t complain. One weird thing is that I got a quote on freight shipment but it was double the price to send a pallet as it was to send 7 individual large 50 lb packages in the mail.

Despite it not working out this time, getting a relationship going with a local freight company is something I’d recommend if you ever sell big stuff, including furniture. Leaving it to the buyer to figure out freight loses you some buyers who don’t want the hassle.

My sales are decent over here (around $800-$1000 per week) but as I’m in a massively infected state (FL) I haven’t sourced at all. I’m listing my death piles, and then I’m not sure what will happen. We are staying in the house indefinitely at this point since our state is apparently going the herd-immunity route right now. Sourcing anywhere is out of the question. Almost nobody here wears masks and you don’t know who is infected. At this point I’m afraid to even go into the post office to drop off my packages. Good times.

Also, I’m going to be homeschooling my youngest and her best friend this coming school year, so reselling will have to be on the back burner for me. Still not sure if my oldest will be able to start high school in a month or not, so she may be distance learning too. I’ll keep my Ebay store and sell what’s listed in it but at some point I won’t be able to put up any new listings until I can safely source again. I’ve tried sourcing off Mercari and while I’ve found some stuff it isn’t super cost-effective and honestly I’m not finding enough to keep myself going once my death piles are gone.