Scavenger Life Episode 499: Diamond Hands

Numbers for January 2021

Total Listings: 1207
Items sold: 53
Sales: $1095
Highest price sold: $96 – Lot of 1950’s slides of Japan
Average price sold: $20.65
Cost of items sold: $134.86 / Average cost: 2.54 each
Spent on new inventory: $170
Number of items listed: 25

From eBay Performance Page:
Gross Sales: $1,446.09 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $844.59 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)

Thanks, R&J for the info on the eBay performance tab. Having the amount that eBay takes out in taxes will be a big help. The best part is, I was able to go back further than 90 days by using the custom tabs. I went back to January 2018 through March 2018 and it worked. It would be nice to be able to look at a whole year but it only seems to work for 90 day periods.

Good to hear from you guys again. Yes, I have been thoroughly amused by the gamestop saga as well.

Had a good week on ebay. My big auction haul last Saturday is still being processed, I think I’ve done 175 listings so far and I’m almost done… maybe another 50. It was a great haul and I’ve already sold about 10 items from it.

Sales: CAD$3255, 20 sales, COGS: $651, Fees: ~$442, Postage: $565 –> Gross profit: $1597

Expenses: $355, New inventory: $0 –> Cashflow: $1893

Does anyone know of an eBay integrated bookkeeping solution other than GoDaddy Bookkeeping? They worked well for me for years but too many glitches lately.

Was it two weeks ago when you guys mentioned that you had yet another business for your downtown area? Then today you talk about having time management issues? I realize that your business plans can take a year or two to come to fruition, but you two really do need to think about having an employee or two. Maybe just an assistant that can run errands and small tasks or someone more business savvy. Another eBay helper might be in order as well.

Week of Jan 24 – 30
Total Items in Store: 1435 eBay, 27 Etsy
Items Sold: 22 eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $19.90 + $46.47 Commission
Total Sales: $667.62 eBay
Highest Price Sold: $199 Vintage art deco metal enamel table top
Average price: $30.35
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 9

My total sales are about the same compared to last week, but I sold five less items. My average price is much higher. The nice thing about my highest price sale is that I got it for free! I originally had it for local pickup, but someone in New Orleans was willing to pay $100 to ship it there. Once this snowstorm blows over, I have to drive about 40 min to a box supplier. I will have to combine 2 boxes because they didn’t have one long enough.

1/23/21-1/29/21

Total Items In Store: 2218
Items Sold: 39
Gross Sales: $1270
Highest Price Sold: $300 (Vtg Nutone Radiant Ceiling Heater)
Average Price Sold: $32.56

Returns:   0 $0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0
Number of items listed: 33

• Sales ran similar to last week. Slow but steady, then a nice sale at the end of the week to bring it home.  I ended up averaging over $1200/week for January which has historically been a slow month for me.
• I always find it odd when certain items that have been sitting in inventory for a long time suddenly sell out. I’ve had several of these Radiant Ceiling Heaters in my store for a long time…all the sudden they all sell within a few weeks.  Makes me wonder what causes the sudden interest.
• I sold a vintage golf hat with original tags on it this week. They buyer messaged me saying he bought a $15 (tag price) hat from me for $30 and he will never be “taken” by me again.  I offered him a full refund to return it.  He responded that the hat is “dope” and said he was going to keep it, then asked if I had a matching shirt in size 2X I could sell him.
• Got an offer on a package of old clothespins that I had listed for $10 from someone in Nova Scotia. I don’t offer the best offer option on $10 items, so that was an accident to begin with.  They offered $5, so I countered $9 since I messed up anyways.  They countered $7 and I declined the offer and took best offer off of the listing…they bought them the next day for $10.  It was a week of odd customer interactions!

Items in Store    1515

Items Sold           21

Total Sales          $823.00

COGS    $75.00

Total Profit         $748.00

Average profit   $35.62

Average sales price          $39.19

New Listings       21

Items scavenged              20

Sourcing Allotment         2

Listing suffered this week. Just alot going on.

I had other things I wanted to talk about, but instead I want to speak a moment on motivation, exceeding expectations, and the rewards associated with these positive behaviors.

So with this ebay business, I get immediate feedback via more sales and higher sale prices if I put the work in. If I figure out a clever hack in shipping, that immediately pays dividends with cost savings. I work for myself, I get rewarded for making improvements.

So at my day job I’ve been working hard to learn some new skills, and I’ve really went above and beyond the call – HIGHLY self motivated to make improvements. I was expected to get a promotion as I applied for a new position that was opened up basically just for me at work. I was told the job was basically mine. Today I oversaw the first test of a large process improvement that I designed related to this new job. It went absolutely perfectly. It will save us a TON of money, and this is the first of many process improvements I have planned. No-one asked me to do ANY of this – I just did it on my own.

So on Friday my immediate boss kind of skirted the issue on my promotion when I asked for an update, and babbled about “head count” and other corporate BS. The alarms were sounding off in my head. So today after the successful test the site manager congratulated me, and said “yeah so I guess we’ll go ahead and reprioritize your workload to mostly foundry and I can call off the search for the foundry engineer job”.  I said “wait a second, what about the foundry engineer job? I’m not even going to change job title?” He babbled about head count for a bit and then said “Yeah I don’t think that’s really necessary to change the job title, but I guess we could.”

I’m just sitting here dumbfounded this afternoon.  This was supposed to be a promotion with a raise, and it turned into just doing more work on top of what I already do. My motivation to keep on improving things: GONE.  Me finally being happy to work here and actually looking forward to my workday – thinking I’m making a difference – dropping by the second.

I knew management here was bad, but this has just dumbfounded me…

…I suppose if I look at the bright side, if they’re freaking out about headcount and order intake at least I’ve increased my value so I don’t get cut if layoffs happened. The Keystone pipeline thing will have a direct impact on our order intake and will destabilize multiple customer bases for the pump manufacturing industry, so layoffs are likely to happen at some point this year. Have I really  increased my value though? To be honest I don’t really know.

Sorry for being a downer guys but this has just wrecked my day. It’s just such a different experience between being self-employed and working for a large corporation. Working harder here just means “hey, lets see how much more we can get this guy to do”. Maybe it is time for me to go back to considering going full time with ebay…

To end on a positive note, I picked up a rare Bose radio that will sell for around $500 this weekend. I’ve got it tested/cleaned, and I’ll get that listed this evening.

Total Items in Store: 128

Items Sold: 14

Total Sales: 503.48

Highest Price Sold: $95 Hagen Renaker Pottery Arabian Foal

Wow, I knew this week was good, but didn’t know how good until I did the numbers! I worked hard listing and it paid off, posting here helps keep me accountable and motivated. I spent a lot of time in the storeroom this weekend rearranging – to fit some workout equipment in. I’d love a permanent listing spot, but the light in the kitchen is too good and I am too bad at lighting to move it to another spot. On another plus side moving stuff around I found more to list so yay!

As to RetroTreasures work experience, that was exactly what led me to quit my previous job. More work, barely even a thank you and any promotion went to others. That is the corporate world! Work smarter, not harder – get it in writing that your work will be rewarded or leave it to someone else. 30 years in one career left me with good memories with coworkers and boxes of stuff to get rid of. Bah, now I gotta go list stuff to get my spirits back up! Scavengers forever!

Total Items in Store: 350
Items Sold:  10
Gross Sales: $800 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $652 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $249
Highest Price Sold: $350 (5 piece new bedding set, paid $165 this month RA clearance)
Average Price Sold: $65
Returns: 0 – had to eat an extra $5 label due to buyer address problem.
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $400+ (RA clearance)
Number of items listed this week: 20

OMG you guys crack me up with the super scavenger honesty, and this week with the eggs.  We’re not worthy.

So that new sales report is cool.  Shows sales are choppy.  Currently plowing profits back into RA inventory. Needed to strike while the sale was finally good enough. Tried and true items people will buy during shut downs.

I made it through another box of death pile small art last week and one sold today.  Some of it really I wouldn’t buy now so that went to Mercari and it’s getting some looks.  Speaking of Mercari, they cut a deal and have $7.99 smartpost shipping for under three pounds. It doesn’t seem to come up all of the time though.   I’m still pulling for Mercari to make it since the listing goes so much faster on their app.

I showed my friend Ebay this week.  I think she will try it with jewelry, shoes and accessories.  I reserved some more advanced things for part 2.  As I suspected, she has some uber wealthy clients who might offload good stuff if she mentions it.

Boring time of year.  Hopefully people are looking at stuff online this February.  Bring on the coffee shop photos. Have a great week!

Ryanne I totally understand your infatuation with all things cameo. The well made ones are truly things of beauty. Even as a child I would covet my mother’s wonderful cameo ring.

Maybe they fell out of fashion but I’m sure sooner or later they’ll be back. I know I use my cameo pendant from Pompeii. And vintage jewelery… just gets more vintage! as the lovely Etsy jewelery seller on the forum wonderfully put it. Even if I have to wait a bit more to sell some things I like I never regret an experience and eventually everything sells.
<p style=”text-align: left;”>Regarding deliveries, I still find there are significant delays especially in the US – things seem to sit forever at the airport until they are scanned and tracking resumes. Buyers get really puzzled with the time things go untracked but are generally really patient after I explain it to them. Etsy buyers are the best</p>

I only sold 4 items, all low price, last week so I won’t bore you with the details. Re the podcast:

The 1 ounce 1st Class regular letter is still .55 but the prices for 2 and 3 ounces and for nonmachinable letters have gone up. (I was reminded of that the hard way when I had a DVD returned for insufficient postage.) Generally First Class Mail Packages have only gone up a bit. Now 16 ounces going across the country from Florida is $9.90 retail and $5.98 discounted.

Jay, your milk story had me rolling on the floor. There are some here who may not remember your legendary road burger. I am sympathetic as I have been known to eat pretty much anything even though there have occasionally been memorable regrets. (Like the time I ate a couple slimy Slim Jims out of an outdoor gas station vending machine near Buena, NJ, at about 3 am, on August 20, 1978.)

You ought to learn to darn socks to get more life out of ones that are getting ventilated. It works great, especially for wool.

Lastly, I am surprised Ryanne let you get away with your comment about New Hampshire and Vermont being the same.  C’mon, it’s the difference between Adam Sandler and Orson Bean!  Sheesh.

Jan 24 – 30

Total Items in Store: 4,103

Items Sold: 33

Total Sales :  $1,356

ABOVE yearly average of $1,074

Highest Price:  $225 (MCM Hanging Brass and Glass Light Fixture)

Average Price:  $41

Returns: 0

Cost of Goods Sold:  $72

Costs of Goods Purchased this Week:  $0

Number of New Items Listed this Week: 46

Another good week on my end. I also had a lot of higher priced items sell which raised my average more than usual. I hope this will continue like it did last year.

Last week I mentioned my vintage soda can experiment. I bought a huge collection for a few dollars at an auction and have since delved into the crazy world of pop cans. It’s sort of amazing how much some sell for. I’ve listed about 40 so far and two have sold for a total of $50. And I’ve got hundreds more to go through. I’m listing a bunch as auctions for now just to get an idea how much people are willing to pay. Once I’m more comfortable with my pricing, I’ll start listing them BIN. My biggest concern is going to be inventorying and storage. I’m going to have to come up with a system to keep them organized and easily searchable when each one sells.

@Jay Sounds like now that you have the coffee venture that would be an ideal thing to try out on Etsy! 😀

@retro-treasures-wv Sorry to hear of your job jerking you around. A near identical thing happened to my sister not too long ago. Fortunately she was able to jump ship within the industry through other contacts, and landed a more appreciative job. My husband has experienced similar, which is why I tell him not to put the extra work in unless he personally gets satisfaction from it regardless of pay increase/recognition. We have learned that the hard way with him sacrificing family time because he felt sure it was going to lead to some kind of promotion. He’s active duty so another thing we do is pick duty stations based off where WE want to go, not what we think looks good for career–at the end of the day the institution shakes their Magic 8 ball and lots of people who thought they had all the right checks in the box and all the justifiable overtime in get passed over. No thanks! The longer he stays in the more he likes the idea of becoming a Scavenger when he gets out, haha!

January was surprisingly solid for me. Last week or so has been tough for listing as I’ve been focused on getting designs and materials finalized for a bathroom remodel we’d like to start in a couple months. Lots of rain and a sprinkling of snow have also made it difficult for me to properly check new inventory for flaws due to low lighting. Hopefully I can get some power listing done before this baby is due in a couple weeks haha.

Hi R&J,

Thanks for the podcast!  I hope things settle down a bit for you. It sounds like you’re pushing the limits at the moment.  (Though I can only see things getting busier for a while longer until the coffee shop is running smoothly).

Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 4437
Items Sold: 63
Total Sales: $1248.09
Cost of Items Sold: $176
Average Price Sold: $19.81
Average Cost of Item: $2.8
Highest Price Item Sold: $59.95 Chauvet DJ Obey DJ LED Light Controller
Number of items listed this week: 121
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 359
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 118

Another reasonable week for me.  I have a hunch this week is going to be quiet for me.  There are still almost no real local sourcing options so I’m running out of everything (other than hats) which is likely to result in lower sales numbers.

I’m in the holey sock club too though I have a self-imposed rule that I’ll wear things till they get holes but once they get holes they get thrown out.  Of course, since retiring I’ve learned how to use a sewing machine so maybe I’ll be trying some repairs in the future.

Random topic that I didn’t see mentioned in the forums.  Apparently eBay is going to be phasing out Parcel Select as as shipping option.  This last week I saw several people complain on Facebook forums that Parcel Select was missing as a shipping option even when that was the shipping option on a listing that sold. (It’s going to be a gradual phase out). Source

I hope all the east-coast folk get through the big winter storm unscathed this week.

I had this motto a long time back- if I wanted to work for an idiot I’d work for myself. Well, here I am 🙂 Damn fool management’s got me taking tea breaks every twenty minutes.

@ryanne @jay

This doesn’t help much with your recent chargeback, but for the future.

I’ve had that happen to me a couple times with CC NAD Chargebacks, especially since the latest paypal case webpage changes. But finally I had one last year, that with a phone call, turned out a little better for me.

The buyer had opened a return on ebay for “doesn’t fit”  on a NWT item, but failed to return the item in the allotted time. A couple months later he opened a chargeback with his CC claiming “not as described”. I went on paypal and uploaded the info, but decided to call in, just to make sure they received it and find out if there was anything else I could do to at least get the item back. The Paypal rep said she was manually adding a message to the CC that a refund would be issued upon return of the item.

The buyer never sent the item back and the chargeback ended up being closed in my favor.

That extra call, early on, may have made the difference, so I’ll be sure to try it again the next time.

I’m surprised that they are doing away with Parcel because not everyone is willing to use FedEx/UPS.

I use the Parcel Select option to give the buyer a discount on priority shipping. It is very rare that priority isn’t the same price with the eBay discount. However, lately I’ve been making FedEx the main option on anything big or heavy, so I’m really not shipping anything parcel.

Thanks for the podcast.

Late posting my numbers this week.  Been really busy and took an early day to go sledding with the kids.  One of the perks of working eBay.  🙂

Had an average week of sales.  Sourced from two online auctions and got some great stuff for decent prices.  One of the auctions delivers as long as you win at least a few items, which is an awesome perk and motivates me to buy even when I think my death pile is too high and I don’t have the time.  Already listed and sold two of the items which is also great.

Finally had the last of the “lost” packages delivered early this week, coincidentally, the day after I sent out a replacement item.  I shipped the package on 12/23 and it finally arrived on 2/2.  Just as that settled another customer opened a case because their item, mailed Priority on 1/21 hadn’t arrived

Weekly Numbers 1/30/21
Total Items in Store: 1154
Items Sold: 27
Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $1,072.45
Net Sales (After fees): $874.12
Cost of Items Sold: $82.00
COGS Percent 9.38%
Net Profit Margin: 73.86%
Highest Price Sold: $109.95 American Girl Doll
Average Price Sold: $32.37
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $258.00
Sold via promoted listings: 17
Promoted Percentage: 62.96%
Average Days Listed: 319
Longest Listed: 1677
New items listed: 14

eBay sales netted $984.98 with 47 total items sold.

We didn’t list much of anything as we were focused on our home improvement warehouse sale.  We had a nasty snowstorm on the 3rd and final day, but our daily gross totals were $5539, $5017, and $1530.  On top of that, we did just under $3500 in local sales from marketplace.  It is difficult to pin actual profit, but it was awesome to see the plan starting to come to fruition.    Everyone there was excited and the landlord association seems like they will become frequent visitors going forward.  I imagine it is just like seeing your online coffee sales exploding before you actually get the storefront opened…just validation that it does work and will only get better.

We bought another semi load this week and found an 8×12 storage shed kit in it.  Not a lot of fun to unload, but it will be fun to sell!

I haven’t experienced anything bad with Godaddy.  I mostly use it as a convenient place to record expenses and mileage.  I am sure it is a waste of money, but it did make taxes really quick with 7 different 1099s to deal with.

Retro-that really goes against everything taught by guys like Jim Rohn.  If the company finds itself in trouble in the future, they need not look any further than treatment and retention of employees.  Sure is nice having scavenging there, so you can feel confident speaking your mind.  I had a similar situation when I was 21–promotion and responsibility without a raise.  I did not have anything else at the time, so I stuck around for a while and resented the place before I eventually quit.  Hopefully they make it right for you, but if they don’t just add the improvement you headed up into your resume!