Scavenger Life Episode 473: Does Insurance Make You An Adult?

Hello all, nice episode. Hearing Jay saying he was 35 before you guys bought a house was a bit comforting for me. We’re planning on having enough of a down payment to buy a home next year, so it’s nice to be reminded that it’s not abnormal to be in my position. Life insurance is a big step. Buying something that reminds me of my fleeting mortality is a step I’m not ready to take yet. Heck, I don’t even have or understand how health insurance works.

As for Ebay this week, we did a little over 4k in gross sales, which does make up for the sluggish sales last week and I think is a personal record for us. Our week started off strong Sunday, with that Dolly Parton Jacket selling for $375 that I talked about on the board. Then we had another big sale the next day. We sold a comic that was missing it’s front/back cover and had a large tear in the back for $500. I buy these kind of “junk” comics a lot at auctions because it’s one of those things that are often overlooked. This one came from a lot that I picked up two years ago for $2.50. It broke down to around a quarter a comic, 90% of them were thrown away.

July 19-25

#listings – 15,001

Gross sales – $4,117.98

#orders – 131

total # of items sold – 142

Cost of goods sold – $3 for the Dolly Jacket, 0.25 for comic, $4 for a wrestling promo, $5 for a large hand saw, $2 for a fishing lure, $7 for a Marvel Puzzle, $2 for some board game parts. Everything else sold was either from the large magazine haul we got for free or items we paid a dollar or less for, (records, hats, pins, postcards, Mugs, comics, sheet music, piano rolls, other smalls)

Estimated total cost of goods sold, ~$30

Sales so far today? $57..lol. Ebb and flow.

Anyways, hope everyone had a great week.

My Sales Week Ending 7/25/20

Notes: Improvement. Moving forward. Checking offers while in the bathroom at work. No judgment.

Total Items For Sale: 73

Profit: $113.17
Items Sold: 5
Items Listed: 8
Average Profit: $22.63
Highest Profit: $56.65 for antiquarian art book trilogy set
Cost of Items Sold: $0
Returns: 0
$ Spent Sourcing: $0.11

What a week, I’ve been useless. I had to get my wisdom teeth taken out this week and got my first late shipment because of the surgery. Moved shipping from 1 day handling to 3 day and I haven’t sold anything since Friday. Rough.

142 Active Listing

20 New Listings

7 Items Sold

$133 Sales

$4 = COGS

Have been doing well on sourcing. Bought out 45 boxes of vintage goods from an 85 year old’s estate for $330 including truck fees. Because of the wisdom teeth I haven’t been able to go through more than a couple boxes, but I have $300 in 2 boxes of vintage heels alone, so I’m not super concerned about it, it’s not the highest ROI compared to some other finds, but it’s a lot of my type of stuff and gives me a bit of stock to source over the next few weeks.

07/19/20 – 07/25/20

Total Items In Store: 3333
Items Sold: 20
Cost of Items Sold: $ 50
Total Sales: $ 541.16
Highest Price Sold: $ 70 (Skates)
Average Price Sold: $ 27.06
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 23.55
Number of items listed: 8

Gut Sales Report for the week: Sales are still about normal for this time of year for me.

Challenge of the month: I was able to reorganize a part of my basement inventory that was getting very disorganized.

Scavenge of the week: Got a nice working VCR \TV combo for $5.

Trends of the week: Selling a lot of my older items that are on sale, so average price has taken a hit. But good to clear out very old items that have been sitting in my store.

Personal savings for the month: Two calls saved and a little work saved me $160 per month in this past month. The first was my car insurance, saved $100 by calling to switch out of the Michigan Insurance that required you to get 100% medical coverage whether you needed it or not (I didn’t need it). That ended July 2nd by law, so I switched it. I saved about $60 on my cell phone bill for 3 phone lines from Sprint by doing the Military discount and direct withdrawal.  I submitted my dad’s discharge papers from WWII and they accepted it for the military discount.

Mark S

Good old Facebook marketplace. It’s definitely not all that she has, but it’s a good start. She’s still living and is downsizing and boxed up 43 boxes of vintage stuff (homegoods, shoes, etc) and was asking $8 a box. I told her I’d get it all for $5 a box and she took it. Uhaul was more expensive than expected, thats the next stretch goal is a little trailer. I’ve only opened a few boxes so far (not cherry picking, just starting on one side and moving to the other) and nothing has beeen totally worthless. Not a lot of super high dollar items, but a lot of $15-$30 items so far. We’ll see how it goes once I get through more of it.

Items in Store    1315

Items Sold           30

Total Sales          $1,153.00

COGS    $70.00

Total Profit         $1,083.00

Average profit   $36.10

Average sales price          $38.43

New Listings       3

My two best sales of the week were two sets of water skis. A couple years ago I stopped at a yard sale late in the day and there were several sets of water skis. The person at the sale said I could just have them if I wanted them. I FINALLY listed them from the death pile a few weeks ago and I’m glad I did.  $150, $100, $250 were the sales prices on them! They are a pain to ship, but very much worth it.

This is my first post.  I have been a listener for a long time and enjoy the podcast.  It has helped our business grow.   I was listening to your podcast and you were talking about using the term “Stranger things” in the title.  I just wanted to warn you guys about something similar.  I got a vero a few years back for using the term “Mad Men”.  The production company that made the show gave me the vero.  I used it on some mid century modern clothing items I had.  We all know how much a vero can stop your business in its track for days and days.   Thanks for all the info the past couple of years.

I’m really liking the increased listings since 99.9% of mine are in the collectibles category.  Between my anchor and premium stores I have about 25,000 listings.  By closing the premium store and downgrading my anchor to a premium (it has the larger feedback #), if my math is right I’ll save over $13,000 year.  I’m paying $300 a month for the anchor store and an additional $600 a month for the extra 12000 listings over the 10k they give me.  Downgrading from anchor to a premium and cancelling the other premium store would be a wash.  But the extra 2200 listings over the 1,000 the premium store provided was another $220 a month.  I’ll also be able to close my second Hippostcard.com store linked to the premium store and save another $120 a year.  Again, if my math is correct, just on ebay,  my listing fees will drop from $1,180 a month down to $60 a month.

Listening to your one caller in the RV (my dream by the way), you could easily specialize in specialized postcards.  But postcards are still quantity over quality.

I may have disappeared, but I’ve always been listening.

Hi Popeye  We miss your channel very much.  Good luck!

Morning guys!

We are sort of over-insured right now… I think having kids was the catalyst for that because you run through all the nightmare scenarios and have to plan for them. It works out to $9000 a year for all of our home, and life etc. insurances. But every time I try to cut one, I talk myself out of it.

I had another slow week on eBay. Definitely summer doldrums.

Sales: CAD$766, 8 sales, COGS: $205, Fees: ~$115, Postage: $91 –> Gross profit: $354

Expenditures: $81 –> Cashflow: $479

7/18/20-7/24/20

Total Items In Store: 2037
Items Sold: 39
Gross Sales: $1296
Highest Price Sold: $400 (Multi Module Output Relay)
Average Price Sold: $33.25

Returns:  2 $23
Money Spent on New Inventory: $332
Number of items listed: 30

• Pretty good week in sales and it was aided by a $400 sale early in the week.
• The $400 sale was for a circuit board for commercial washing machines. I got a tub with about 20 new boards in it at an auction last year for $30.  They are very slow sellers, but when one sells, it makes your week.
• Picked up a bunch of new inventory from a local online auction of an industrial motor repair company that went out of business. I was a filthy mess after retrieving everything from the warehouse from all the dust on everything. Once cleaned up, there are some good high dollar parts to sell.  A lot of them are new in the box.
• I really need to take a look at all of our insurance policies also. Especially the house and rental property ones.  Over the years they have really gone up and I am probably over paying.

Thanks for another informative podcast, Jay and Ryanne. I had wondered how you handled health care insurance. I tip my cap to you for having the guts to go without it. ACA is a step in the right direction. I was always baffled for a country that tells itself how great it is for entrepreneurs, why affordable health care insurance was so expensive or even unattainable for the ‘little guys’. Glad those days are behind us.

Total Items in Store: 651
Items Sold: 14
Gross Sales: $284
Highest Price: $36 – ONKYO RC-253M REMOTE CONTROL
Average Price: $20
Cost of Goods Sold: $25
Returns: 0
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: 0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 17

Gut reaction to the Week: Super slow. Roller coaster ride this month. The week before was probably my best week ($639), this past was likely my worst. Used the slow down to clean and reorganize my work area and order shipping supplies.
Scavenge of the week: Parted out an old Roomba. One of those experiments I’m not sure will pay off in terms of time invested vs ROI. Kinda fun though. Since I was a kid I’ve enjoyed taking things apart. Went to a few yard sales. Am re-learning you need to get these things early to have a shot at decent stuff.

I rented the office at the beginning of the month and am starting to fill everything up. Plan is to sort through it this week and whatever is really not ebay-worthy see what is Facebook-able and able to be lotted up.

Regarding death piles/life piles:

Same as with most things in life, it can be good or bad. It all depends on your plan.

If your plan is

1. Collect piles

2. ……….

3. Profit!

Then you definitely have death piles.

If you simply have no plan and you’re just piling up junk, then honestly it is WORSE than death piles.

If you are going to play the game of purchasing everything sellable that comes across your path then you have to plan.

You MUST have storage

You MUST have an organizational structure

You MUST be efficient and list as much as possible when you can.

You MUST NOT have a “precious” mentality towards anything in inventory.

You MUST be able to establish and uphold self imposed limits/constraints at any time.

I try to stay mindful of my death/life piles but they can still get out of control occasionally if I have a stretch of amazing sourcing and limited listing time.

My whole purpose of having death piles was so that if I lost my day job I could hit the ground running with zero scavenging for 6 months so I could maximize cash on hand.

Next month will be my 5 year anniversary at my current job, and after talking with management last week it seems I’m up for another promotion likely around that anniversary date. It looks like there’s no end in sight for my current career, but I still have those death/life piles.

So….I have to adjust my plan again if I want to keep them as “life piles” instead of “death piles”.

That plan is hiring my children to do alot of the work. Time will tell if that works out. If not, I’ll adjust.

Total Items in Store: 402 Ebay, 101 Mercari
Items Sold: 10 Ebay, 3 Mercari
Gross Sales: $531 Ebay, $33 Mercari
Cost of Items Sold: $184 Ebay, Mercari stuff ours
Highest Price Sold: $212 (New duvet and sham set bought in late spring; paid $100)
Average Price Sold: $53 Ebay, $11 Mercari
Returns: 0, 2 cancelations
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $150 RA Summer Clearance
Number of items listed this week: 18

Busy week outside Ebay, sales doing ok.  Went to a thrift store once (with my N95 mask on) but no great scores.  Went by a retailer having a clearance and it was surprisingly busy even though I could not go at opening.  I was in and out of there quickly and already sold one item from that trip.

Haven’t listened to the podcast but look forward to it.  Still hitting the piles.  It’s hard to read and watch the news these days.  Things are weighing on my mind.  Stay safe everyone.

Hi Everyone.

Thanks for the podcast J&R!

Here are my numbers for the week:

Total Items in Store: 3979
Items Sold: 72
Total Sales: $1514.74
Cost of Items Sold: $253
Average Price Sold: $21.04
Average Cost of Item: $3.52
Highest Price Item Sold: $84.95 Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness Nintendo GameCube
Number of items listed this week: 76 worth approx. $1904
YTD Sales: $33478
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +16%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 453
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 319
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 141.5
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.81%
Hats sold this week: 58 (80% of sales) worth $1009 (66% of sales $)

I had a very busy week this week.  Shipping was annoying yesterday which is always a good sign. So many hat sales …. supplemented with the results of being able to source new stuff at a few garage/estate sales.  My biggest sale of the week was a video game I found mixed in with some DVDs at a garage sale. I probably paid $1 for it (I bought a pile of stuff for $10).

You’re brave to send that $100 coat to a repeat buyer/return-er. Hope it works out this time.

The call-in about toilet paper tubes is funny.  I save up the micro altoid tins and sell them in piles of 20 which pays for a good percentage of the mints.  I also have 10 years worth of beer bottle lids in my garage that I will sell one day (I’m still adding to it regularly).

Hope everyone has a good week!

July 19 – 25

• Total Items in Store: 3,973
• Items Sold: 40
• Total Sales :  $1,018
  • ABOVE yearly average of $978
• Highest Price:  $100 (SubZero Refrigerator Fan Shroud Assembly & Wiring)
• Average Price:  $28
• Returns:  1
• Cost of Goods Sold:  $41
• Costs of Goods Purchased this Week:  $205
• Number of New Items Listed this Week: 30

I had a slow start of the week but things really picked up toward the end. The refrigerator part was a nice sale. That old broken fridge was a blessing in disguise. We made over $2000 from the parts already with just a few more pieces left. I should probably put out a want-ad for broken SubZeros, see if anyone needs their’s hauled away.

So I tried an online auction last week. I figured since my inventory is starting to get low and the auctioneers all seem to be going digital, I might as well embrace it and give it a go. Well I think I did pretty well. I ended up winning two van-loads worth of stuff for about $200. I had some winners and losers, but my best score was a pair of Stephens Trusonic speakers. There was only one picture for the listing which only showed the fronts with no indication of brand or anything, so I got them for $2. I’ll probably try to sell them for $300. Another interesting win was a vintage soda can collection. Again, very few pictures indicating what I was getting. When I went to the attic to claim them, there were four huge boxes full of these things. Probably close to 1000 cans. I still need to do the research on these, but I may be sitting on a gold mine.

It was interesting hearing the caller talk about selling cardboard tubes. I actually just listed a lot of bubble wrap tubes recently. Ten 12×3” tubes will fit perfectly inside one of eBay’s 16x12x8 box. I’ll be excited if they sell since I’ve collected a lot of them from all of my bubble wrap rolls.

Realizing I am fairly late with this comment, wanted to say something I know may upset some folks: selling things like Washington NFL branded items makes me uncomfortable and I won’t sell those things. It’s a racist slur – that’s why the owner is being pressured financially to change the name. My family is Native American, raised on a Reservation, and it’s a hurtful word. There are so many things to sell, I don’t want to make money that way. To each their own. I’m sure I’ve sold things that would offend many people – leather items, etc. Just something to think about. I appreciate everyone here, have learned so much and because you so generously shared your knowledge, made income to help the people back home.

Something got screwed up when I did this the first time, so I am submitting it again:

When our children were toddlers, we realized that we needed to have life insurance that was not connected to our jobs. About six years ago, I lost mine (which is why I do eBay), so, if something happens to me, my husband will have additional money so that he doesn’t have to make any irrational financial decisions about the kids or the house.

By the time our insurance policy ends (10-15 years out at this point), the kids should be (better be) out of the house, and we will have downsized. We won’t have any dependents, will be retired or close to it, and will have our savings/pension/social security to fall on. We won’t need insurance at that point.

I hope you bought term life insurance. Any of the insurance that includes savings is bull crap, unless you are someone who can’t save money otherwise (and I know you two don’t fall in that category).

I just wanted to point out that this is the third week you listed “Highest Price Sold: $220 (lot of coffee repair parts)”, not that I’m counting 🙂

Yes, the summer slump is in high gear for me:
Week of July 19 – 25
Total Items in Store: 1256 eBay, 36 Etsy
Items Sold: 12 eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $8.95 + $10 Commission
Total Sales: $168 eBay
Highest Price Sold: $39 signed hand-thrown pottery platter (known artist)
Average price: $14.00
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $37
Number of items listed this week: 20

Good show. Smart to get the term life insurance.  The younger you start, the cheaper it is.  Obviously, one of those things you do for your loved ones and not for yourself.  Probably even more important for people in our line of work that don’t have some of the benefits that come with normal jobs.

What a week!  Had our best sale ever, our best week ever and all while we were away on vacation with 10-day handling turned on.  I mentioned a few weeks ago that we acquired a vintage Japanese tin robot at auction.  We listed it and it sold within a week for $1800.  We were asking $2995, but this one wasn’t working and had some cosmetic issues, so we were thrilled to get the offer.  We paid $40 for the lot of toys it came in.  This was one of my “bucket” items to find and sell, so doubly rewarding.  Sent it off to Singapore.  Also had a few other high dollar sales with $299 and $120 sales for some vintage Tonka toys to round out the week nicely.

I’ve had a mini-project where I changed the majority of my listings to self-ship for international sales in order to reduce the shipping costs for buyers as much as possible.  Finalized just before leaving for vacation.  I decided to do this after reading some posts about it on the Facebook Thrifting Board group.  It was more complicated than I initially thought it would be due to setting up shipping policies, but hopefully will be worth it in the long run with more international sales.  I signed up for shipping through Pirate Ship to reduce cost on shipping items under 4 lbs. internationally.  Saves my buyers as much as $10 on some shipments over what eBay would have charged for international first class.  5 of my 13 sales this week went internationally.

The Numbers
Week Ending 07/25/2020
Total Items in Store: 1139
Items Sold: 13
Gross Sales: $2,594.67
Gross wo Shipping $2,402.30
Cost of Items Sold: $116.36
COGS Percent 4.84%
Highest Price Sold: $1,800.00 Vintage Japanese Robot
Average Price Sold: $184.79
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $94.00
Sold via promoted listings: 9
Promoted Percentage: 69.23%
Average Days Listed: 303
Longest Listed: 609
New items listed: 0

Something changed either with Google Sheets or with the website.  Pasted my numbers the same way as always and this week it came up with all the behind the scenes code showing.  Had to edit to clean up.

I found a hack for the annoying YouTube videos. “<span class=”ILfuVd rjOVwe”><span class=”hgKElc”>An open source userscript manager that supports a lot of browsers. <b>Violentmonkey</b> provides userscripts support for browsers. It works on browsers with WebExtensions support. It supports most scripts for Greasemonkey and Tampermonkey.” It works well and cuts off those ads in the middle.</span></span>

@kentucky-picker Roombas are one of my favorite things to part out. Almost every single piece will sell! Even the parts that you wouldn’t think anyone would need will sell. I’m always on the lookout for older broken ones for real cheap.

@doublythumbs Thanks for the tip on Roombas! Mine is one of the originals (500 Series). Got it with a bag of other stuff for $30. Actually worked. My wife and I tested it on our floors. Did a pretty decent job, but comps only showed $40-60. Now I have 18 parts listed for more than $300 total. Eager to see how they sell!

@lukastreasuretrove What an awesome sale on your tin robot! Green with envy. I recently saw a Japanese robot toy on an auction site recently but it was a single item and bids were high. To find it in a pile of stuff is incredible.

Loved the podcast this week! I love it any time the ideas of never being too old to try something new, just getting started, and putting in the hard work are reiterated. It’s inspiring every time (almost as inspiring as the legendary “road burger” – LOVE it, haha.) I’ve been absent from posting my numbers the last few weeks, but I’m back in action this week. Been doing tons of eBay work, just not getting around to the forum in time! So, here’s my week last week:

July 19 – July 25
Total Items In Store: 5005
Items Sold: 30
Gross Sales (including shipping): $987.43
Cost of Items Sold: $32.52
Highest Price Sold: $127.66 (A revereware pot from a yardsale! Woohoo!)
Average Price Sold: $32.91

Not a bad week; it felt a little bit slow, but not terribly so. I’m really wondering how fall/winter are going to be in terms of sales, as I’m sure many of us are! Here’s to another profitable and enjoyable week of life for everyone! Cheers!