Scavenger Life Episode 504: eBay Spring Seller Update

Goal This Week: 7 Listings

Goal Last Week: 7 Listings (Achieved!)

Total Items For Sale: 60 eBay (+1 on The Real Real)

Profit: $113.43

Items Sold: 3

Items Listed: 7

Items Ended: 2 (Low Quality Items)

Average Profit: $37.81)

Highest Profit: $67.98 (Electrolux Vacuum Canister)

I posted my numbers in last week’s thread for the first time, and though I haven’t listened to this week’s podcast yet, I want to maintain that positive momentum!

I mostly sell modern sports cards, so my sales numbers are nice but my inventory costs are high, often 1/3 of my sales or even slightly more.

2/28/21 – 3/6/21

Total items in store: 2274

Items sold: 54

Gross sales: $1889.91

Net sales: $1276.52

Highest price sold: $144 — an autograph of Civil War general Thomas Henderson

Lowest price sold: $13.24 — A numbered sketch card of late Phillies pitcher Roy Halladay from the hilariously expensive Topps Transcendent set

This week felt relatively ‘slow’ (I use that term lightly) and that feeling is reflected in my sales which are down 30% from last week. In reality, this is something like an average week for me over the last 15 months, and it (mostly) all evens out.

I had listed a few non-sports cards early this week, not a niche that I deal in very often. With how eBay’s search engine works, it’s probably not a coincidence that I saw a number of non-sports card items sell. Two war-related autographs from the same set (both to the same customer, obviously a collector of some kind), a few other non-sports autographs, and even a couple of media items from my library sale days. Boy, do I miss library sales. They weren’t all that profitable but it was a great way to spend a weekend morning.

A little anecdote about modern card collecting/speculating: I sold two autographed cards of Taylor Heinicke this week for about $40 each.

A big part of why these sales happened is because of this week’s news that Washington Football Team had released quarterback Alex Smith, an older player who is close to retirement after a long and moderately successful career. This elevates the mostly unproven Heinicke to become Washington’s starter next season, unless or until Washington acquires a new quarterback. (They probably will, but for now, let’s not worry about that.)

Heinicke had only played in a few games before this season in a mostly itinerant career, but he was forced into action near the end of the season because Alex Smith was hurt and his injury caused him to miss more time than the team hoped. Unfortunately for Washington, they had to keep playing their schedule even though they didn’t have their best quarterback. To nearly everyone’s surprise, Heinicke almost led Washington to a victory over Tampa Bay in their playoff matchup, making a few truly outstanding touchdowns in the process. During the game, and ever since, his few cards have skyrocketed in price, with autographs seeing the biggest bump. Unknown players tend to have less cards than those with high draft pedigrees, for fairly obvious reasons. (Generally speaking, no one wants a card of the third-string running back.)

I had purchased a number of Heinicke cards for a few dollars each before Washington’s playoff game on the chance he might get an opportunity. Most of the time, these little gambles don’t result in making or losing very much, at least for me. I happened to get very lucky this time. This is a whole niche within modern cards called ‘prospecting.’ While I did very well with Heinicke cards, I am a guppy in a sea of sharks who may spend thousands of dollars on one particular rare autograph of the next surefire star. Often these players are teenagers, or just out of college. But their athletic potential is sky-high and so are their card prices.

Maybe someday I will be one of those speculators buying and selling thousand dollar cards. I don’t think so, but I wouldn’t have predicted this level of sales a few years ago, so who knows. Heinicke money will pay for groceries this week, though. Thanks, Washington Football fans.

Items in Store    1472

Items Sold           28

Total Sales          $908.00

COGS    $73.00

Total Profit         $835.00

Average profit   $29.82

Average sales price          $32.43

New Listings       2

Items scavenged              26

Sourcing Allotment         2

Busy week this week outside ebay. We did the gender reveal thing – we’re having a girl this time. Our last 3 kids we did not know until the baby came out, so this was a fun change.

I lost a day of productivity on ebay because my ebay computer is messed up. I spent all day trying to fix that. I HATE working on computers.

I changed my day job work hours to 6am-3pm. While it is nice to get home so early, my whole schedule is kinda bungled right now because of it. I’ll need to readjust to the new schedule and figure out how ebay fits into it.

Hi guys, good to hear from you again!

Glad you hit on the seller update. Those changes aren’t happening here yet but I’m sure they’ll follow in a year or so. I’m a premium store which sounds like it’s still probably work well after.

I had an excellent week on ebay.

Sales: CAD$7719, 15 sales, COGS: $141, Fees: ~$1036, Postage: $582 –> Gross profit: $5960

Expenses: $540, New inventory: $5 –> Cashflow: $5556

Not scavenging much, trying to save a big chunk of change for an auction in late March.

Items in Store    2503

Items Sold           57

Gross Sales          $2642

Net Sales  $1698

Average sales price          $46.35(Shipping included)

Did not scavenge anything, but got a bunch of pressure washers, paint sprayers, etc back from the repair ship.  Total repair bill was $345.  Should get about $1100 from the sale of those items.  They would have otherwise been trash, so I am happy with that return.

The subscription changes are pretty great.  This will save us $150/month right now, and $250/month if we get back to pre-covid listing levels.  With 2500 listings, we were paying the 10 cents/listing over 1000 as it still made sense over going Anchor.  With these changes, we will not have to pay those overages anymore.  Nice big win.  Seems to me the slight FVF increase will be taking a few extra pennies from all the casual sellers and rewarding the sellers with a store.  Makes sense.  So many sellers refuse to list more because they don’t want a subscription, while those of us paying for stores got stuck with listing fees.

We may take you up on trying the Guatemalan, but I’d have to insist it gets shipped 1st class–still a lot more fresh than our Folgers morning blend!

I’ve been drinking Burundi for the last week. The sample pack of whole beans lasts quite a while for a single cup a day. It is a very interesting change from dark roast. To me it tastes more like a very high quality robust tea than a coffee.  I drink it straight with no additions – adding anything would ruin it in my humble opinion.  I also am significantly less jittery after drinking my 20oz serving of this compared to my usual southern split.

I got a sample of every flavor, so I’ll do guatemalan next.

2/28/21 – 3/06/21
Total Active Items (3 different IDs): 358
Items Sold: 13
Gross Sales: $263.40
Highest Price Sold: $58 –Challenge Coin for the USS ELLIOTT destroyer.
Returns:  0
COGS: $36 (including commissions but not including cost of any family castoffs sold)
New Listings: 34
$ Spent on New Inventory: $0

We held a big yard sale last weekend. We put out lots of low value household stuff and larger items not worth much (and some more valuable items that I couldn’t bring myself to pack and ship on eBay, like a couple chandeliers, for example).  It was fun to see the different types of buyers who came by.

I have to thank Craig Rex for the very informative sports card background he provided this week. I was never into professional sports, either as a kid or now, so I don’t have the knowledge to sell them but the collector psychology in that area is interesting, and cards in general are enticing as easy to list, pack, and ship smalls. Of course the most important thing I learned is that my gut feeling that keeps me from buying the piles and piles of “junk wax” cards that I run across at yard sales and flea markets for cheap is well founded.

Feb 28 – March 6

• Total Items in Store: 4,091
• Items Sold: 22
• Total Sales:  $463
• * WAY BELOW yearly average of $1,063
• Highest Price:  $100 (5x 5-Piece Place Settings MARGATE ARCADIA Flatware)
• Average Price:  $21
• Returns: 0
• Cost of Goods Sold:  $38
• Costs of Goods Purchased this Week:  $0
• Number of New Items Listed this Week: 49

It was a SLOW week for both me and Steph. But I think this may be the calm before the storm type situation. When those stimulus checks get sent out later this month, I believe all our sales will be through the roof.

I feel pretty accomplished this week. I churned out a ton of old Bibles and cookbooks that I get for $7 total. One Bible immediately sold for $55. I also finished up the last of my first big photo slide haul. I spent a little over $100 for thousands of slides and so far I’ve netted over $1700! They take some time to list, but I enjoy doing it so it’s a win win.

Thank you for letting me know about the store subscription changes. Looks like I’ll definitely be downgrading to the Premium store. I might wait until the beginning of April so I can snag that $150 package supply coupon. I hope they don’t get smart and stick me with the cost difference after I downgrade.

Thanks for reviewing the seller update.  I usually just skim through them and miss the big stuff until I notice it affecting me.  That bump in subscription numbers will make a good difference for us.  We’re at just under 1200 listings right now and 60% of our store is collectibles, so we should be able to drop back down to a basic store for a while.

Your numbers are great this week.  I’m constantly amazed at the consistency of the pipeline you’ve built.  I delude my self that I’m playing with the big boys during the Christmas season, but those of you that pull off big numbers year round are an inspiration.

I wasn’t able to post last week so have two weeks of numbers here.  I’ve had several large $150 dollar sales which really helped pull me off the bottom.  Sold my first military Challenge coin.  I found a Donald Rumsfeld coin in a trinket box that was sold for $3 and ended up selling it for $149.95.  Also sold a Franklin Mint Star Trek Deep Space 9 pewter model for $150, and an antique Christmas ornament for $150.  The ornament was one of the few times I’ve had a sent offer accepted.
<div><b>Week ending Feb. 27, 2021</b></div>
<div>
<div>Total Items in Store:</div>
<div>Items Sold:11</div>
<div>Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax):$622.06</div>
<div>Net Sales (After fees):$521.27</div>
<div>Cost of Items Sold:$58.42</div>
<div>COGS Percent11.21%</div>
<div>Net Profit Margin:74.41%</div>
<div>Highest Price Sold: $150.00 Star Trek Model</div>
<div>Average Price Sold:$56.55</div>
<div>Returns:0</div>
<div>Money Spent on New Inventory:$0.00</div>
<div>Sold via promoted listings:8</div>
<div>Promoted Percentage:72.73%</div>
<div>Average Days Listed:180</div>
<div>Longest Listed:760</div>
<div>New items listed:</div>
</div>
<div></div>
<div>
<div><b>Weekly Numbers 3/6/21 </b></div>
<div>Total Items in Store:1148</div>
<div>Items Sold:24</div>
<div>Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax):$1,083.66</div>
<div>Net Sales (After fees):$899.83</div>
<div>Cost of Items Sold:$124.82</div>
<div>COGS Percent13.87%</div>
<div>Net Profit Margin:71.52%</div>
<div>Highest Price Sold: $150.00 NPR Carl Kassel Bobblehead</div>
<div>Average Price Sold:$45.15</div>
<div>Returns:0</div>
<div>Money Spent on New Inventory:$0.00</div>
<div>Sold via promoted listings:13</div>
<div>Promoted Percentage:54.17%</div>
<div>Average Days Listed:361.71</div>
<div>Longest Listed:1312</div>
<div>New items listed:12</div>
</div>
 

My first time posting numbers

Total Items in Store: 1114
Items Sold: 14
Gross Sales: $308.60
Net Sales: $214.00
Cost of Items Sold: $7
Highest Price Sold: $49.99 Sony DVD-R mini disc 10 pack
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $1.05 (actually the mini DVD pack at a thrift store)
Number of items listed this week: 25

I’m a part timer. I achieved my goal of averaging 1 item sold per day last year. Goal this year is an average of 2 items sold a day. Put in a lot of work lately to slay my death pile. I am at the final boss, as I have 234 items to list.

I stopped sourcing while the death pile existed (except that mini dvd pickup that I couldn’t resist). I will probably start sourcing again slowly but wait until I’m closer to the end of those 234 before I really start looking again.

Thanks for the podcast and all you forum folks for making this community so fun and educational. I learn something every week. I don’t drink coffee but I’ve been enjoying hearing about the coffeeshop. Hope there will be a hot chocolate on the menu.

Thanks for the podcast! I’ll be looking to downgrade to a basic store, but I want to see an official statement from eBay saying that the fees will be waived.

Week of Feb 28 – March 6
Total Items in Store: 1392 eBay, 45 Etsy
Items Sold: 9 eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $255 ($250 of it for a computer) + $17 Commission
Total Sales: $425.78 eBay
Highest Price Sold: $150 Large set of dishes with local pickup (buyer figuring out how to hire shipper)
Average price: $47.31
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 42

In either 2018 or 2019, someone posted on Facebook that they had an iMac only a “few” years old that they wanted to sell for $250. So, the normally level-headed me said I was interested, but didn’t ask for model or year. I did check that the computer booted up. This was very unusual for me; I guess I got caught up in the idea of getting a newer computer. Well, that computer, although in good condition, was from 2007. I was so pissed off at myself that the computer sat for maybe 6 months or more before I listed it. This week it sold for $115. The buyer did give me positive feedback, so I’m happy for that. I’m also glad I don’t have to look at it anymore.

I now have two “local pickup” items where I’m waiting for the buyer to figure out shipping. The sale this week was of a 92-piece fancy dish set. I tried to explain that the shipping was going to be prohibitive, but they wanted it. Normally, I would break up a set and sell it a few pieces at a time, but I didn’t find any similar dishes out there. So, I figured people wouldn’t be looking for replacement pieces, and I listed it as a set.

Total Items in Store: 394
Items Sold: 11
Net Sales (after fees, shipping, sales taxes):  $436.76 – 86.1% Up vs. prior time period

Cost of Items Sold: $131

Highest Price Sold: $99 (new pajama set – paid $45 in February)
Average price: $40
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: +/-$125
Number of items listed this week: 1

Enjoyed the podcast.  Fell down on the listing last week and now I’m getting piled on at the day job.  I’m going to try harder to get at least a few items listed each day.  I can relate to Julie with the lack of productivity and losing the day.  I need to make a recording of Ryanne saying “just do it” and “then work the rest of the day”.   I do have a high maintenance kid at home with remote school.  Honestly I’m super distracted by waiting for college acceptances and talking with other parents online who are going through the same thing. But I’m kind of reflecting on how I should have gotten WAY more done and now is the golden opportunity to make a bigger dent in the death piles and stuff from my parents’ house.

Almost done with the bookkeeping for our taxes.  I thought I made more money last year but it’s about the same. Good for taxes but kind of disappointing.  Also, I love selling new RA items but of course make much more on the used stuff.  I also think taking too many best offers on the new items put a dent into some of my profits so I’m tighter on that now.

Oh, interesting too that the retailer has chipped away at the ease of reselling their stuff.  First they stopped letting you go back and get stock photos on sold out items (but so far haven’t VERO’d) and now they won’t show you your complete order history unless you have the order number.  I managed to compile the information with the packing slips (which only showed prices about a third of the time) but they made me sweat a bit and take extra time and I think I am still missing a handful of COGS.  They also stopped their price adjustment policy about a year and a half ago.

Have a great week. I need to order more coffee!  It’s delicious and I drink it only with a bit of half and half – not a bunch of sugary stuff.  🙂

double post

<div>I’m on a Mac and – usually – TextEdit (the equivalent of Notepad on Windows) is enough to remove formatting for most situations. Not so with these Forum posts so, in the past, I have tried “format stripping apps” and have had problems. So I’ve just been typing into the Forum post directly.</div>
<div></div>
<div>Here is a new test…</div>
<div></div>
<div>This text I have placed in this post has been stripped with “Paste Plane Text” from the App Store which I downloaded on my Mac. I am hoping that it will keep things like commas, periods, dollar signs ($), etc. and only remove things like bullets and paragraph returns – basically keep all characters.</div>
<div></div>
<div>This should help make it easier to copy and paste and then just tweak it a little on the Forum post.</div>
<div></div>
<div>Let’s throw in some bullets and see if that works.</div>
<div></div>
<div>•$100</div>
<div>•$200</div>
<div>•$300</div>
<div></div>
<div>Testing.</div>

2/27/21-3/5/21

Total Items In Store: 2219
Items Sold: 28
Gross Sales: $1086.97

Net Sales:  $656.61
Highest Price Sold: $80 (Pair of Sliding Cabinet Drawers)
Average Price Sold: $22.89

Returns:  1 $28
Money Spent on New Inventory: $19
Number of items listed: 66

• I changed my sales reporting to Gross & Net sales. My net ended up being pretty close to the way I reported them before.  Still a pretty low week for me, but I had a solid week of listing and I am already seeing some good sales from what I listed.
• Had to refund a buyer who bought a knife from me in January and it still has not arrived. Got scanned at a USPS distribution center and never moved from there.

Total Items in Store: 126

Items Sold: 6

Total Sales: $91.50

Highest Price Sold: $21.00 Frank Lloyd Wright tabletop decoration

I am rethinking my strategy of listing items as auctions first then changing to fixed price if they don’t sell since eBay now evidently does not relist items automatically at all. I had 134 items for sale last week, listed 20, sold 6 and am down to 126. It eats up my free quota to have to relist stuff 2 weeks in a row. Well, I wont ever get better if I don’t change and adapt, so I may move towards more list and forget over the need for instant gratification of sales.

On a thread in the last week someone asked about putting tape over barcodes on shipping labels. I am a rule-follower, so I never have. I got a box in the mail this week that made me laugh, they not only put tape over the barcode, they put it on so sloppily it had multiple creases and almost 1 cm high folds in the tape and had smudged the barcode in one corner. It still got here in a timely fashion, so I wont be so worried now when I am taping up boxes. I do still need to get off my duff and buy a label printer someday, but for now it is one less thing to obsess over in my routine.

Pasting this as plain text from google sheets:

Week of 2/28-3/06

Total items listed: 2,853 (80% of which are patches)
Total items sold: 61
Gross sales: $719.19
Net sales: $503.90

Where can I see how many listings I have left? I just hit 1000 listings, but most are in the collectibles categories. Does anyone know if the free listings are a permanent thing? If it is, I will go back to the basic store.

Items in Shop: 776

Items Sold on Ebay: 7

Items Sold on Facebook: 1 (However, I’m looking at my sold’s app and I think I have some FB’s Marked as Ebays)

Gross Sales: $189

COGS: $10

Net Sales, minus FVF: $179

Building Update: I sucked, wasted a week of time. Still waiting on the bank to give me an answer on if they’ll fund the physical building or not.

Ugh. I’m in a rut. I told my therapist all I want to do is sell china on the internet, and it seems like all I’m doing is not selling china on the internet. I am moving out of the office and into a storage unit. I decided to break ties with amazon and ebay just isn’t making enough money to pay for the office and building payments. So the plan is to store inventory and pack out of the storage unit (saving $750 a month) and then working out of my house to list items (ugh). I picked up a side gig which should net about $400 a month, but it’s 1099 so not only am I going to be paying the taxes, but I’ll also be making just enough that I’ll loose medicaid. However, I’m being trained to a higher position, so eventually I’ll be making $700 net, and it’s only on Saturdays.

listperfectly is great, but I cancelled my supscription after I listed all my stuff to FBM. Facebook was slow last week and it took me like 3 hours to renew my listings. I think i’ve sold maybe 10 or 12 items on FB since I subscribed, which are sales I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Everything was over 6 months old, which was cool. Listperfectly apparently prorates how long your subscribed, so I think I’ll resubscribe in a month to make new listings then cancel again, because the first week I had all new listings my sales were great on FB.

I just feel like i’m in a rut. We’re on month 4 of grandma moving in and she has 2 surgeries this month (6 appointments!) so I’m definitely finding myself away from ebay and trying to balance caring for 2 different people. I’m listing now, and hoping to finally break 800 listings tonight.

Seller update looks great, premium/anchor bump is coming at right the right year.

Things will get better. But right now kind of blows.

@Craig-rex, You may want to turn away. When I lost the items I did to the water damage in my storage space, I lost about 200 baseball cards. I’m not really bummed about it. I have been lugging those around since the late 90’s (before selling on ebay) and didn’t have a clue about them. Eh! At least now I know what to do with them. Throw them out! lol

Is anyone else seeing all of that code in my post? That hasn’t started happening until the last couple months. Maybe its because I’m typing my post in a text document before pasting it here?

Nevermind, my post disappeared now. I’ll try again.

A while back I had to change my posting method. I used to be able to copy/paste my numbers from excel, but it started freaking out a couple months ago. I have to cut/paste as plain text into word, then copy/paste onto forum. It works, but adds a ton of space between lines. Oh well.

That sucks your numbers are so far down. I had zero sales yesterday, and none so far today. I definitely hope things blow up once they checks start rolling.

I’ve been noticing it and not sure how people are posting. Are people copy/pasting from another program?

<div class=”bbp-reply-author”>
<div class=”bsp-mentions”>@doublythumbs –  That just happened to me as well when I cut and pasted from a text document.   I’ve had it happen pasting from excel before but never from a text doc.  Hmmm.</div>
</div>
<div class=”bbp-reply-content”></div>

@Lukastreasuretrove: I do the cut and paste from a Word doc to post but I’ve learned I cannot have ANY formatting, including paragraph breaks, tabs, or bullets; and certain punctuation like quotation marks or anything superscript also throws codes. So I draft one long paragraph missing much of the punctuation, paste it here, then clean it up before hitting the Submit button,

Congrats on the Rumsfeld coin find and sale! One of the hardest things about selling the coins is competing with the many sellers who sell them too cheap or put them up at auction with a low starting bid. Glad you held out for a good price.

@temudgin – Thanks! I was worried I was shooting too high because I saw a lot of solds for less and a few listed for less than mine.  I just follow J&R’s advice to list high.  Sooner or later the others will sell and mine will be the only one left. :-)</div>

Funny thing, the codes don’t show up until I hit submit.  Before that it looks normal.  This time I used a blank Gmail for my text document, so won’t do that again.  That last post was typed directly into the text box here, though, so not sure what happened there.

If I post directly copy/paste from excel this is what it looks like now.
<table width=”206″>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td width=”134″>Items in Store</td>
<td width=”72″>1472</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Items Sold</td>
<td>28</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Total Sales</td>
<td>$908.00</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>COGS</td>
<td>$73.00</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Total Profit</td>
<td>$835.00</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Average profit</td>
<td>$29.82</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Average sales price</td>
<td>$32.43</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>New Listings</td>
<td>2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Items scavenged</td>
<td>26</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Sourcing Allotment</td>
<td>2</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
It used to import as tab delineated and looked good. Now it comes in as a table but when I hit submit it freaks out.

@Jay – Originally I cut and pasted my numbers from a mail document in Gmail.  Weird thing is, on the  second short post I just typed into the text box here on this page.  What I did notice just before I submitted was that at the bottom of the text box there was a DIV instead of the P that is normally there.  I had to close my browser to get rid of the DIV and get it back to a P (P for Paragraph I assume).

Items in Store 1472
Items Sold 28
Total Sales $908.00
COGS $73.00
Total Profit $835.00
Average profit $29.82
Average sales price $32.43
New Listings 2
Items scavenged 26
Sourcing Allotment 2

Ah, so at the bottom of the table after pasting, there are a few options. On the left is the word “table”. I right clicked on this and it let me choose “paste as plain text”. It did that and it reformated to what you see above. I learned something. Yay!

Not sure. I guess we could turn off all formatting on posts? But we wanted to allow people to add formatting if needed (quotations, bold, etc)