Scavenger Life Episode 497: Comparing COGS

1/9/21-1/15/21

Total Items In Store: 2199
Items Sold: 44
Gross Sales: $1526
Highest Price Sold: $140 (BK Precision Oscilloscope)
Average Price Sold: $34.69

Returns:  1 $78
Money Spent on New Inventory: $187
Number of items listed: 13

• A great week of sales. Some great high dollar sales and consistent sales all week.
• I am generally very good at following Jay and Ryanne’s advice on dealing with “bad buyers” with silence. That being said, I dealt with a buyer from Australia this week that just about threw me over the edge.  The situation was exacerbated by the fact that I couldn’t get the buyers refund processed through eBay for some reason despite multiple calls and chats with them.  The red flags were everywhere with this buyer, but I was lulled by the chance to make a good sale on multiple items.  Buyer offered a decent price on 3 items, then offered a lower price on a 4^th, then we went back and forth on shipping costs, then wanted a 5^th item for free with a higher shipping cost.  Classic bad buyer behavior.  After figuring everything out and getting paid, the buyer came at me with issues with tracking not being uploaded (it was).  At that point I looked at his feedback left for others and immediately cancelled the order and voided the label.  I did explain to this buyer exactly why I cancelled his order (I know…not smart).  Shipping was $60 on a $78 sale and I’m sure I would have ended up losing big on this one.  This was on Tuesday, and I am still getting nasty e-mails from this buyer…which of course I am ignoring.  End of rant..sorry!
• Scavenge of the Week: Went to an auction this week and filled my truck for $187.  I listed 10 items the next night and sold 3 of them for $216 in less than 24 hours.  My auction is paid for already and I still have a nice pile in the garage to list still.
• Great podcast this week…can’t wait to hear about the possible new venture.

Items in Store    1464

Items Sold           25

Total Sales          $1,163.00

COGS    $165.00

Total Profit         $998.00

Average profit   $39.92

Average sales price          $46.52

New Listings       58

Items scavenged              25

Sourcing Allotment         17

So I went over my sourcing allotment of 19 items last week – sue me. I did make sure to list immediately every item over my allotment so they didn’t go to a death pile. One of them already sold for $45 so it paid off. That’s $45 that would not be in my pocket if I had held to my cap. The cap is performing it’s intended goal of getting me to pass on lower profit long tail items.

While I may be a failure at holding to a hard cap on scavenged items, it is forcing me to avoid buying long tail items. I passed on at least as many items as I bought.

I’m only buying $20-30 items if they are a sure thing quick sale, and mostly sticking to items that sell for $50+. My average sales price has been right at $35 for 3 years now. On top of raising my number of weekly sales, I’d also like to finally raise my ASP. I can only do that by selling more higher value items.

I listed at least 25 more items than I sold, which is my goal each week in order to reach 2000 active listings.

I was really concerned about this week on Friday as my sales were really bad! I even had a day with no sales and I honestly can’t remember the last time that happened – I don’t think it happened once in 2020. All was forgotten though as I had a monster weekend to save the week.

This week I’m going to try and list 100 items. I used to create listings on my breaks and lunch at work. This week I’m gonna do that again in order to gain a bit more listing time.

Hi guys, great to hear from you as usual – and thanks for the kind words about my business! especially from you from whom I’ve learned so much over the years it means a lot. Most of what you said is basically correct, including the listing over poutine, lol. My business has become very capital intensive and most of my effort goes into scavenging, which is how I like it. But it is eating a lot of my time lately.

I happened to have the first really good week in a while after a slow December and January.

Sales: CAD$7812, 18 sales, COGS: $967, Fees: ~$1054, Postage: $592 –> Gross profit: $5198

Expenses: $123, New inventory: $101 –> Cashflow: $5942

Biggest sale was $3800 for 20 new HVAC controllers, from the great HVAC controller pick of May 2020. I still can’t believe this windfall, I have now made about $6000 off of this $10 investment and I still have 180 of the units left to sell. May not strike it this lucky again in my ebay career. Anyway it was most welcome as I am still trying to work off the big 2020 tax bill and get caught up on my prepaid taxes as well.

Great podcast as always. I think I was the first to announce my guess that you were planning on opening a coffee shop back when you announce that you made a very expensive eBay purchase. This was an easy guess knowing commercial roasters cost a lot AND how much you two love coffee. I am looking forward to you opening your newest business…so much so that we plan on visiting on June 2nd…on our way to a Maine camping trip.

As always, thank you for the great content!  I am an avid weekly listener, and I did use to post my numbers, but time is of the essence, and I have not lately.

However, I want to express my sincere gratitude for you all posting your numbers every week.  It is one of the main reasons I adore your podcast.  It gave me hope and real life examples of people making a living selling online without any of the bravado.  It was and is a true inspiration because no one in my sphere shares their numbers and it is impossible to tell the truth of the situation.

So, thank you!

I very much so enjoyed the last 2 podcasts.

I started out doing it exactly like you two and was really hammering out auctions full of random old stuff.  I found many gems over the last couple years, but really get tired of the research for some of the stuff.  It’s just a lot more time consuming researching and packaging some of the weird items.  When my other business essentially was shut down in March and auctions were also closed, I began looking for different sourcing options.  We shifted into purchasing truckloads of customer returned items.  It is a ton of work, and costs a lot more, but I don’t have to research.  Most of the items I can simply scan a barcode and price them.  Our gross sales on Facebook are absolutely crushing our eBay sales at this point.  I’ve had 4 warehouse sales that went pretty well without any advertising, so this month we finally started to use social media…and I am nervous it will be too busy!  At our last sale we had 20 groups of people show up each day with 15 of them making a purchase.  Our facebook group added more than 600 members in the last 3 weeks.  If even a fraction of our group members show up, we will have a very hard time keeping up.  On top of that, I actually spent a few bucks on fb ads run over a 30 day period.  Previously, I’d never advertised more than 2 or 3 days before a sale.  I’m excited and terrified.

We have been purchasing 3 semi loads per month, but are moving to a larger warehouse where we will be purchasing 3 per week and hiring an employee.  The real goal here ties into last weeks podcast–I want this to be able to almost run itself.  I don’t know that would be possible with vintage.

I really have no way of tracking COGS on a weekly basis.  This week we sold a hot tub for $1800, but it was part of a semi load from November.  Hard to quantify the actual cost when it was just 1 out of hundreds of items.  It just feels like a waste of times, so we keep track of cash deposits vs inventory kind of like a bar would.

Kind of, but not really a store.  No thank you on the retail!

First truck purchased was an Amazon truckload for about $9k and it took around 4 months to recoup the money.  We have made money on it and still have inventory, but a lot of it is not ideal for shipping and quite honestly I will probably never buy one again.  That’s kind of why the warehouse sales came to be.

Lately we have been buying Lowe’s returns, which are under $4000 with freight.  The loads are a lot more junk(25%?) and a lot more work, but the cost is low and we have recouped the money much faster through local sales.  We do list a decent amount of it on eBay to keep the pipeline flowing.  Net profit varies, but avg $4-5k per load.  I am working on networking with local landlords, plumbers, etc so I can sell some of it immediately.

The first couple took 5-6 weeks to recoup the investment.   It has gotten to be closer to 10 days now.  We get a lot of repeat items, so we are able to find a missing part on truck #10 for an item we got on truck #3.  I outsource almost all of the repairs so I can focus on listings and sales.  The last 3 loads were full of grills and smokers, so we use a couple as parts to repair others.  Lots of broken glass light fixtures or dented items that still hold value to people looking for discounts.

We never know the contents, so sometimes they are slam dunks while other times we really have to grind to break even.  I think it’s a numbers game.  We haven’t actually lost money on a truck yet..just time.

Biggest constraint is space.  We have 3k sqft and are likely signing a lease for 10k that can be expanded to 22k if needed.  My wife and I can process 2 trucks in a week by ourselves, but we end up moving stuff 5 times just to make room right now.

Hi R&J. Thanks for the podcast.

Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 4389
Items Sold: 50
Total Sales: $1059.37
Cost of Items Sold: $129
Average Price Sold: $21.19
Average Cost of Item: $2.59
Highest Price Item Sold: $114.95 Lot of 2 Apple A1521 Airport Extreme WiFi Routers
Number of items listed this week: 84 worth approx. $1955
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +3%
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 120.5
Hats sold this week: 41 (82% of sales) worth $688 (64% of sales $)

I was happy with my sales this week. They were a little below last week but still good for this time of year.

In regard to slow shipments, a few days a package that I sent to France finally arrived.  It was shipped in November and seemed to get stuck waiting for a ride to France for weeks.  Speaking of which, this was an Ebay Standard International Delivery.  Ebay customer support gave me this tracking tool (for DHL orders):  https://webtrack.dhlglobalmail.com/  (Ebay’s own tracking stopped updating started in early December).

I’ve actually experienced slow shipping from the other side too.  A buy start a return and shipped a camera before Christmas. It’s still not back.  I refunded the buyer because it didn’t seem right to hold their money so long.

On the podcast you were randomly talking about smoking on planes. Smoking on domestic flights was banned in the 1980s but not on international flights.  I did an international flight from New York to London in 1992.  The seats next to the window were designated as smoking seats. I was traveling with my wife and we made the mistake of swapping seats with a smoker. He got the isle seat, my wife got the window seat.  I spent hours on the flight inhaling smoke as the smoke from the smoker’s  cigarettes travelled past my face to get to the window where the air intake was apparently located. It was one of the more miserable flights I’ve ever had.  I felt like an ashtray by the time we arrived.

Total Items in Store: 326 Ebay, about 75 Mercari
Items Sold:  4 Ebay, 5 Mercari
Gross Sales: $431 Ebay, $74 Mercari
Cost of Items Sold: $167 Ebay, $0 Mercari (our stuff)
Highest Price Sold: $295 (New bedding set, paid $160 last month RA clearance)
Average Price Sold: $107 Ebay, $15 Mercari
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 31

Thanks for the podcast.  Your old “Equation” episode was my all time favorite.  As a new and used seller, I enjoy both the faster listing on the new end and the cool vintage stuff with low COGS on the other end.  I will not enjoy listing all of my death piles though as my standards have changed over the last 4 years.  Got back into listing this week and hope things continue. There are some changes in my day job that may result in more of that work after this month but in the meantime I’ve been enjoying listing again.  I hope you share pics when you have the shop all set up.  Have a great week!

Total Items in Store: 121

Items Sold: 7

Total Sales: 193.50

Highest Price Sold: $45 Planet X Pottery desert sunset plate

I echo the previous comments – thank you so much for this website, the podcast and forum! It inspires me and helps me keep working at this crazy venture. So hard to tell people what I do, they think an antique dealer is just old furniture and a picker is what they see on TV. It is nice to read about the real experiences of others working as resellers.

I had an average week, but was totally bummed that my best sale was cancelled because (supposedly) a kid used their parents ebay account. Relist and keep moving. I so wanted to file an unpaid item so they would get a strike, but reading here I know better. Keep it easy and move on! I am behind this week already, don’t need any more grumbling. Off to list some death pile stuff!

Yes, the USPS seems to have righted itself, although it still isn’t fixed. All of my delayed packages from last year have been delivered. The one Christmas brooch that was purchased on Dec 2 and delivered on Dec 28 has not been returned yet, and I hope it stays that way. I had someone open up a case yesterday asking why they haven’t received their first class package (purchased Jan. 6, opened Jan. 18), and I want to say “You have no idea, this is not late at all”, but I gave my regular answer about delivery issues and pointing them to the USPS tracking site that provides more information.

I’m also wondering about this new business venture of yours. With your helpers for eBay, cleaners for AirBnB, and, eventually, your partners with the coffee shop, you two are becoming more like managers that still do some of the grunt work. Some day, perhaps, you can arrange your businesses to run without you (the topic of last week’s podcast), and then you can be freed up to be globetrotters again.

Anyway, an average week for me:

Week of Jan 10 – 16
Total Items in Store: 1445 eBay, 27 Etsy
Items Sold: 21 eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $24.75 + $33.50 Commission
Total Sales: $438.68 eBay
Highest Price Sold: $51.90 for 4 decorative globe lightbulbs; $50 for 1960 Gillette adjustable safety razor
Average price: $20.89
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 21

Good show this week.  Can’t wait until the coffee shop opens and we have a new reason to return to Luray.  Sounds like it is going to be awesome.  Not a lot of competition for you and they seem to be in a different class altogether, from what I saw.  And that location…

Had a great week on eBay with several high dollar sales.  Sold another of my vintage Ansel Adams National Park posters, this time for full asking price of $399.95.  Another cool sale was a 1960’s Knucklehead ventriloquist doll for $300. Another Radko Christmas garland for $200 and a fly fishing rig for $200.  Don’t see weeks with that many large sales often.

Tried our hand at another online auction this past week, but prices are still through the roof on most of those around this area.  We lost every bid except one, an antique bronze bust by a listed Belgian artist.  Paid a bit more that we’d have liked, but my wife is Belgian and she thought it’d be nice to have around the house until it sells.  After the purchase I found where another local eBay seller had the exact one listed on eBay until mid December.

Still have 8 packages lost in the USPS chaos.  Had to refund one buyer last night whose item had shipped over a month ago.  Had two negative feedback removed by eBay for Business on Facebook.  The standard feedback removal request was rejected but they took it off within an hour.

Weekly Numbers 1/16/21
Total Items in Store: 1156
Items Sold: 24
Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $1,714.37
Net Sales (After fees): $1,444.01
Cost of Items Sold: $348.00
COGS Percent 24.10%
Net Profit Margin: 63.93%
Highest Price Sold: $399.95 Vintage Poster
Average Price Sold: $60.17
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $517.55
Sold via promoted listings: 14
Promoted Percentage: 58.33%
Average Days Listed: 269
Longest Listed: 1262
New items listed: 17

When the smoking in bars/restaurants ban came into play, I was basically against if because I value the freedom even though I never smoked.  Now I really enjoy going out and not getting a headache from the person next to me.

Julie B-yes I watched a bit of RR’s stuff.  I still look at the totals from his sales, but I really never got into the hour long unboxing videos that most youtubers like to do.  That’s why I gravitated here instead.  I actually purchased 3 pallets of toys from him last year and he mentioned it in a video so I felt like a star LOL.  His August sale was something like $70k gross sales in 9 days, which is amazing but his avg item price was something like $4 if I remember correctly.  I really don’t have interest in that, but I did get the warehouse sale idea completely from him.  I am just choosing to use it for less higher dollar transactions.  Avg transaction was about $90 at our last sale.

We are definitely having fun.  The loads I purchase are really a set price item.  They did go up about $500 since Jan 1, but the quality also improved quite a bit so no complaints.

Simplicio-Expanding and dealing with current for sure.  It will cost 1 truckload per month to cover the lease, but we are fully capable of doing 6 additional trucks by ourselves.  Limited strictly by square footage right now.  We waste a lot of effort moving inventory to make room and also have a bit that we have never sorted or listed because they’re large and we never have the floor space.  Shower surrounds and doors in particular.  Lots of interest, but I literally do not sell them because I need room to inspect.  It feels foolish.  We list all the smaller long tail on eBay, but seem to sell enough that we have adequate storage in that section.  I am always more motivated to sell larger, longer tail items.  I sold a $6700 retail whirlpool tub for $1800 because it gave me enough room for 2 pallets.  I would have liked to hold out, but it’s a difficult item to sell and realistically it paid for 50% of the semi.

I know the added space will pay for itself immediately.  I just wasn’t sure how much I wanted to throw away at a lease.

Jan 10 – 16

• Total Items in Store: 4,118
• Items Sold: 36
• Total Sales :  $952
• * BELOW yearly average of $1,061
• Highest Price:  $250 (Pair of Stephens Trusonic 80-FR 8” Full Range Speakers)
• Average Price:  $26
• Returns: 0
• Cost of Goods Sold:  $28
• Costs of Goods Purchased this Week:  $0
• Number of New Items Listed this Week: 45

Another fine week of sales and productivity. I’m getting through my inventory pretty quickly and will need to replenish pretty soon. Fortunately, there will be another online auction from that church building turned eBay store which has been liquidating their hoard. I had really good success from the last auction, so I have high hopes that this will land some good inventory.

I did some rough numbers and I think I’m going to downgrade my eBay subscription back to Premium when it comes time to renew in March. Since Managed Payments sellers get an additional free 10,000 listings in the Collectables category,  it might save me over $150 a month since over half of my store is Collectables. Does anybody have any insight as to whether this will be a permanent thing?

Hi All!  I actually started a YouTube/Podcast channel called “Consignment Chats” that is dealing with consignment and ecommerce.  Would love to have anyone join us who is interested in consignment or looking at adding it as an option to their resale business.  Thanks in advance!  -Libby

Consignment Chats on YouTube

We would totally appreciate your support!!!

Late to the party, and originally posted on wrong thread:

1/10/21-1/16/21
Total Items in Store: 1682 (all Etsy)
Items Sold: 21
Gross Sales: $6,393.48
Cost of Goods Sold: $2,219.84

Gross Profit (before income taxes, office supplies, etc.): $4173.64
Highest Price Sold: $4,135.57 (14K Antique Pocket Watch)
Average Price Sold: $304.45
Returns: 1 (opal earrings, which I relisted at a higher price due to the increase in the price of gold since it was listed)
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0
Number of new items listed: 12
Clearly, one high-dollar sale can make for a very good week for me.