Scavenger Life Episode 503: Main Street USA

02/21/21 – 02/27/21

Total Items In Store: 3294
Items Sold: 23
Total Sales: $ 703.43
Highest Price Sold: $ 80 (Vintage clock)
Average Price Sold: $
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 30.58
Number of items listed: 11

Gut Sales Report for the week: Sales were good till about Tuesday, then they dropped till about Friday. Ended up ok, but way down compared to what I have been doing for the last 90 days.

Scavenge of the week: Bought some nice jackets at the thrift store for half off.

Mark S

2/14/21-2/26/21

Total Items In Store: 2133
Items Sold: 28
Gross Sales: $567
Highest Price Sold: $43 (Sima Video Copymaster)
Average Price Sold: $20.25

Returns:  2 $126
Money Spent on New Inventory: $151
Number of items listed: 24

• Sales for the week were low again and very low average price sold. February ended up being a pretty slow month for me and averaged less than $1k a week.  Hoping things pick up in March.
• Scavenge of the Week: The Christopher Banks store in our local mall went out of business and had clothes 90% off with buy 1 item get 2 free.  We bought over $100 worth and got a lot of good stuff.  I added it to this week’s numbers even though it was actually on Saturday.  My wife will be keeping some of the loot, but the rest will go up for sale.
• Thanks again for a great podcast. Got me thinking about how long I’ve been doing eBay now.  Selling for over 20 years now and still love the process.  It’s such a part of my life that I can’t imagine not doing it.

One of my goals for this month is to start tracking my weekly numbers more precisely, and I thought a way of holding myself accountable would be to post them here each week.

I mostly sell modern sports cards, so I have high sales numbers but also very high inventory costs, typically around 1/3 of my net sales and occasionally more than that.

2/21/21 – 2/27/21

Total items in store: 2309

Items sold: 76

Gross sales: $2765.25

Net sales: $2008.66

Highest price sold: $180 — A glass card of Boston Celtics star forward Jayson Tatum

Lowest price sold: $6.38 — A green parallel (a parallel is like the regular ‘base’ card but decorated with a different color or foil or finish) #3/5 (meaning there were only 5 of this particular green parallel — other colors have numbering to 10, 25, 50, etc.) of New York Jets safety Jamal Adams

This may seem like a crazy amount of packages, but one buyer purchased 16 items from me and a few others, including the buyer who bought the lowest price sold, purchased multiple items. So I did 12-15 packages every other day, a manageable routine since most of my packages are very small (4×8 envelopes) and quick to pack up.

This has been a fairly typical sales volume for me over the last year or so, though my average sales price has slowly risen from <$20 to $35 or $40 while my inventory level has remained mostly stable. I rarely list items for less than $20 anymore, but for a couple years that was how I built up my store from a few hundred items to the level it’s at now.

I looked up my sales from 1 year ago and my net sales are up 107.6% this year!!! Really puts things in perspective.

Ryanne,

If you are stressed out, then do this: Have helper come every other day instead of every day for a while. Put your store on vacation for a week, but keep “casually” shipping so it doesn’t back up.

This will reduce your load and you won’t feel obligated to do as much on ebay. You may find this is enough to get over the hump and you’ll be ready to hit it full on the next week.

Ebay is not my main income and I definitely put it on the backburner sometimes. For instance, this week I barely did anything – no listing and just shipped when I absolutely had to to meet handling time requirements.

Items in Store    1498

Items Sold           24

Total Sales          $1,121.00

COGS    $64.00

Total Profit         $1,057.00

Average profit   $44.04

Average sales price          $46.71

New Listings       1

Items scavenged              25

Sourcing Allotment         2

So last week my day job work issues were resolved. I got my promotion and raise. The site managers also hired the person I recommended to be the manager of the department I support. I feel MUCH better and have a renewed energy for my work. I have a clear future at my workplace now and I think I’ll be here for many years.

With that burden lifted, I’ve been able to take stock of just how much stress I’ve been under for the last few months. With the situation at work combined with my wife’s pregnancy, I’ve been under a TON of stress. I’ve been eating more and exercising less for a few months and it shows.  I need to focus on myself this week and realign my physical needs.

As for ebay, I had some GREAT sales this week. The highlight was a Pendleton western jacket for $275. I would have loved to get more since I had it listed for $400, but I was hungry for a sale. I had 2 $200+ sales and 1 $100+ sale.

I also made a CRAZY purchase. Goodwill had a mobility scooter for $100. This was the style for a person who is paralyzed.  I debated the whole time I shopped whether I should get it. It’s so big and HEAVY. Well I did. Luckily that store had several young men working there to help me load it. When home I disassembled it in the back of my van so I could get it out. I’ve already parted it out and started creating the parts listings. I’ll make $600-700 off of parts easily.

Speaking of parting out, our dryer died again this week. I’ve fully rebuilt this thing once and replaced heater parts several times. It was many years old when we moved in and I’ve kept it running for 8+ years, so it was time to get a new one. Once the new one was installed, I tore down the old one and kept all the parts I wanted to sell. I have started making the listings and I’ll make a couple hundred parting it out. The only thing broken was the heating element burned out again.

So I didn’t officially list anything this week, but I did spend plenty time parting out two big items. I’ll start seeing the fruits of that labor this week.

Hello again to all! Hope we have a fine week. Last week was pretty good.

Sales: CAD$2103, 12 sales, COGS: $81, Fees: ~$282, Postage: $355 –> Gross profit: $1385

Expenses: $198, New inventory: $5 –> Cashflow: $1263

One thing that is irritating me about managed payments is reconciling fees for tax purposes. Previously it was easy to know which fees to deduct because it was the big monthly invoice from “ebay” that hit my account. Now they are sucking fees out on each sale, which is fine, but it means I have to record fee amounts for each individual sale. This would not be so bad, but that information is only presented in the “payments” tab and doesn’t include sale price vs shipping breakouts. So to record a single sale transaction I have to navigate to two different places in ebay to get these 3 numbers.

Is there a single place I can see a breakdown of transactions c/w shipping income AND ebay fees?

Goal For The Week: 7 Listings

Total items For Sale: 57 eBay (+ 1 on The Real Real)

Profit: $0

Items Sold: 0

Items Listed: 2 eBay (+ 1 on The Real Real)

Glad you guys got to go to a restaurant. We’ve been a few times, mostly in the summer when we did go on a vacation. There’s a place near us that has these bubbles outside with one table each, but they were all taken when we went a few months ago. I hear that they are still cold, but bearable.

Week of Feb 21 – 27
Total Items in Store: 1376 eBay, 30 Etsy
Items Sold: 20 eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $38.02 + $46 Commission
Total Sales: $454.70 eBay
Highest Price Sold: $70 Antique Chase desk lamp
Average price: $22.74
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $5.75
Number of items listed this week: 5

Sales were better than last week, but not as high as January/beg of February.

I really hope your coffee shop really takes off! We are only a 4 1/2 to 5 hour drive from Luray. I’d like to make a trip out there, maybe a long weekend, once it opens. I’ll have to figure out how to work it in with husband/son/daughter’s different schedules. Maybe later this summer. We shall see.

Feb 21 – 27

• Total Items in Store: 4,081
• Items Sold: 47
• Total Sales:  $1,162
• * ABOVE yearly average of $1,070
• Highest Price:  $150 (1960s Grants Electric Popcorn Corn Popper)
• Average Price:  $25
• Returns: 0
• Cost of Goods Sold:  $70
• Costs of Goods Purchased this Week:  $0
• Number of New Items Listed this Week: 39

Good week of sales over here. That popcorn popper was a nice treat! I bought it at a yard sale for $2. It looked brand new and unused other than the opened box. The fact that it came in a nice red color probably helped the high price I got for it. It sold within a matter of days from listing.

We got our taxes back from our CPA. UPH!! We both got hit with a pretty tax big bill. And of course they raised their prices AGAIN on us! It looks like we’re going to start shopping around for a new CPA this summer. As for the tax bill, I think the reason it was higher than 2019’s total was due to several higher tax write-offs from the previous year including the business van. That’s what I’m going to tell myself anyways. I’m still going to look over this really carefully just in case they messed something up which wouldn’t be the first time.

You should be proud of the business you’ve built. We know that struggle in the early days of listing listing listing. Must feel nice.

Thanks Jay. I am lucky to have a supportive partner and to have found this community, which is such a huge source of inspiration and positivity especially compared to most eBay/flipping forums.

I am still adjusting to not having to list 20+ items every day. That was how I got to this point. Before I built up my inventory with good sellable items, I might have a good week or two of sales (especially around the holidays) but I didn’t have a big enough inventory or items that consistently sold for >$20 to sustain that.

But good things happen if you keep learning, and adapting, and putting in the work to feed the pipeline.

Total Items in Store: 394
Items Sold: 4
Gross Sales: $385.64 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales:  $234.70 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)  68.8% Down vs. prior time period

Cost of Items Sold: $
Highest Price Sold: $240 (New bedding set RA, paid $110 in January)
Average Price Sold: $79
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 34 – Almost back up over 400 items 🙂

Slower week for sure on Ebay.  Enjoyed getting away to an Airbnb this weekend. I’m doing better with listing lately and I’m getting back my desire to enjoy Ebay.  Yeah!  Look forward to the podcast and some coffee shop photos soon.  Hang in there.

Total Items in Store: 134

Items Sold: 8

Total Sales: $129.50

Highest Price Sold: $50.00 Of Muppets and Men book

Hrmph, I packed so many boxes this morning I thought my total would be higher. Fine for me, but I was spoiled earlier this month with good sales. Spent last week researching and listing VHS tapes, already sold 2 and still have quite a few to list. My least liked part of the ebay payment reports is that they break out tax collected in 1 spot, but adds it in to total selling costs. If ebay collects and pays the tax it is net neutral, why combine it into my sales/costs? Makes the report messy for me to look at and actually see how I am doing.

Anyhow I already have this weeks listings prepped and no purchases last week so work should be pretty light. I need to organize the storeroom/shipping area (again!), it gets out of control quickly when I am rustling about. I need to clear more room for listed inventory, it is starting to spill out onto other shelves and that is a recipe for disaster. Weather is improving, might get the bike out for a spin. That is the best part of the scavenger life – being able to be flexible and take advantage of having fun when we can. Back at work I’d have been working from dark to dark and only seeing the sun on the weekends.

Numbers for February 2021

Total listings: 1230
Items sold: 47
Sales: $1124
Highest price sold: $85 – Schepens-Kraus Watercolors (sold 3 for $255 total)
Average price sold: $23.91
Cost of items sold: $149.09 / Average cost: 3.17 each
Spent on new inventory: $474
Number of items listed: 66
Returns: 1

From eBay Performance Page:
Gross Sales: $1,490.48 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $932.02 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)

The watercolors sold to two different buyers at the full asking price which was nice, I assume that the second buyer saw that one sold and bought up the remaining two, not bad for small paintings that I paid 50 cents each for at a yard sale. Due to the big storms in the middle of the country, I’ve had five or six emails from buyers wanting to know where their item was. All of a sudden, tracking started to show up again for most of them Sunday night but I still ended up issuing one refund, I requested the USPS return the item to me, I’ll see if that happens.

My new inventory costs were kind of high for February, but $295 of it was due to an invitation to an estate pre-sale – the first one I ever got. The place was packed with stuff, and since it was a pre-sale the prices were high and not very negotiable. I still bought a huge lot of slides, a bunch of leather holsters, a ship’s wheel, and some Hawaii items, maps, and books.

Hey gang!  Been a LONG time since I’ve posted, but I’ve been listening every week and following along – eBay sales, rentals, coffee shop, and R’s real estate Instagram.  Just stopped by to post my 2020 total numbers since I just did my taxes last week.

Overall, it was my best year ever in terms of volume of sales, gross sales, net sales, and avg sale price.  Since I used to source most of my items from estate sales, I had to change course last year.  I joined several FB groups, not only to source but also to sell.  It’s been great – because of the competition of online sales groups and online estate auctions, my COGS were higher than ever before and my profit margins were lower, but it was in a concerted effort to get higher quality items.

First vaccine dose scheduled for Wednesday morning, so fingers crossed we start to get back to normal… itching to get to an estate sale!

Total items sold:  1297 (+58% over full year 2019)
Gross Sales (excluding shipping):  $75,600 (+114%)
Avg Sale Price:  $58.29 (+36%)
Net Profit after COGS, fees, supplies, etc:  $32,889 (+26%)
Net Profit Margin:  95% (-39%)
Highest Item Selling Price: $600 – Nirvana Nevermind promo (+100%)
Highest Item Net Profit:  $350 – 1965 Barbie American Girl (+135%)

2/21/21 – 2/27/21

Total items in store: 2518

Items sold: 39

Gross eBay sales: $1810

Net eBay sales: $1120

Highest price sold: $145—Greenworks 60v battery/charger

Lowest price sold: $7.17 — NFL Lanyard

We did OK locally.  almost identical to the eBay sales, but far fewer transactions.

We went to another auction.  I had a lot of items researched and had plans to spend a lot, but too many people bid close to ebay prices.  A bose system I bid up to $300 before I let it go.  Coolest score is a 1961 Supro Dual Tone guitar.  It is definitely worn, but I got it for $100 and should have no trouble getting 5x that.

I can’t think of anything other than Disney when I hear “Mainstreet USA.”  My daughter listens to a singalong ALL THE TIME when we drive and I just about know the disc by heart.

That being said, we are also trying to be part of the club!  We had the city inspector take a look at the property we plan to use for our new warehouse.  The hiccup being that we want to use the light industrial space and hold a monthly weekend sale. The inspector wants to have the city electrical, water, and fire inspectors to also come through and establish a max occupancy for the building.  Fortunately we have plenty of exits and the sprinkler system was 100% tested just a few months ago.  The main warehouse space is 10k sq ft with about 2k in office area as well as 2 indoor loading docks.  Sounds promising, but you never know when that many city employees get involved.  I am nervous because we are scavengers at the end of the day, and it is scary to think about huge improvements to meet their requirements.

When we listened to the podcast today, my wife and I were talking about how we’ve only heard it get heated 2 or 3 times over the years.  I remember 1 episode in particular where you commented about editing it out.  I suppose you’re working side by side less now than you have been, so the podcast is almost your weekly team meetings…with a large audience.  It’s actually refreshing to hear.  My wife and I work together every day, and we discuss the same type of things often.  Life, personal, and business all become entangled at times.  I used to have a hard time keeping business stress(former business) from spilling into marriage stress, but I’ve learned a lot and am now generally very good at it.  Being results orientated helps.

2/21/21 – 2/27/21
Total Active Items (3 different IDs): 337
Items Sold: 10
Gross Sales: $410.83
Highest Price Sold: $90 – 1970’s Russian rifle bayonet.
Returns:  0
COGS: $134 (including commissions but not including cost of any family castoffs sold)
New Listings: 23
$ Spent on New Inventory: $25

The bayonet sold to a former Russian soldier now living in the US who was looking for the type of knife he used to carry on his belt 40 years ago (or so he said). I let him have it on a low best offer for old times’ sake. I did spend much of my waking hours around 40 years ago training how to do him and his comrades in but no hard feelings now.

My wife and I drove up to visit friends outside of Atlanta GA last week and took the opportunity to hit a few antique malls and flea markets and found a few things that will pay for gas. It was nice to get into some interesting scenery of varying elevations. I love Florida but it is flat. On the other hand, it was too darn cold up there for me.

Ryan was talking about her cameo necklaces that are selling now.  On the Wandavision show on Disney the main villain Agnes Harkness is wearing a cameo necklace. I know comics that have any of the characters have gone up in value.

Ct

This was probably one of my favorite podcasts! All the laughing and fun you two had. Always cracks me up. Nice to know you two can live together, work together, vacation together, and still have a good laugh. Always a good time on the podcast. Thanks Jay and Ryanne!