Scavenger Life Episode 513: On The Thought Train with Past Jay and Future Jay

May 2 – 8

• Total Items in Store:  4,179
• Items Sold:  24
• Total Sales:  $643
• * BELOW yearly average of $1,095
• Highest Price:  $100 (Pace Two-Way CB Radio Base Station)
• Average Price:  $27
• Returns:  0
• Cost of Goods Sold:  $44
• Costs of Goods Purchased this Week:  $0
• Number of New Items Listed this Week:  47

I had an alright week. Kinda slow in sales. I managed to get a lot listed though. With the crumby weather came an opportunity to put all my efforts into the eBay business. This week looks to be more of the same while it slowly warms up again.

Jay, you mentioned your sales decline, and could it be because of downgrading your store? I suspect not, BUT I do wonder what impact all those free additional listings have had on the competitive climate? If a lot of sellers really maxed out on free listings, that’s not only a lot more stuff for the search engine to search for, but it’s also just a lot more stuff for buyers to buy. Another possible factor is ebay’s change to Automated Promoted Listings….again, if a lot of sellers have adopted this, it might give them an edge over those who either don’t promote or who have been promoting say with a flat 1%…..but I’m just tossing these ideas out there. Sometimes it is just the ebb and flow of retail….

Items in Store 1464
Items Sold 32
Total Sales $1,191.00
COGS $127.00
Total Profit $1,064.00
Average profit $33.25
Average sales price $37.22
New Listings 9
Items scavenged 32

I’ve been really struggling to find time for ebay lately. I make time to ship, and we still go out and scavenge on Saturday and Sunday. That’s about it. I got a couple records photographed and listed this weekend.

Our Governor just set a date for dropping masks in our state – June 20th. Who knows how that is going to work out. Will businesses keep the requirements? Who knows!

Nothing much else to report. Ebay is kinda a backburner thing right now that I hope to kick into high gear in June.

I called on a couple of friends a week back, who run an antique shop in a small town. Not having been there since September last I noticed that a lot of new investment had come in- Ye Olde English Pub is now a spirit bar, the working man’s caff is now a wine seller’s ‘bottle shop’ and there’s new houses built in local stone all over the place. There’s an atmosphere of Covid paranoia all over the place, mixed in with commercial paranoia. We visited a farmers’ market- desperate stallholders trying to sell tomatoes at a dollar each, and Scotch eggs at four dollars.

The antique shop re-opened at the end of April, and apart from an initial burst of people looking but not buying, custom is now minimal. They took 50 pence (about 75 cents) in the hour I spent with them. They’ve got permission from the landlord’s agent to sell the business- the setup is rather feudal, the shop’s in a 14th century barn back of the mansion so the landlord is actually a land lord.

It’ll be interesting to see how life is after things open back up.

Boom and bust I reckon.

Slow and Steady!

Total Items For Sale: 74

Items Sold: 3

Items Listed: 2 (Goal Achieved!)

Average Profit Per Item: $37.42

Highest Profit: $58.70 (Ralph Lauren Vintage Mini Hand Bag)

Goal This Week: 3

Hello all. Another good week on ebay, although it “felt” slow.

Sales: CAD$3657, 16 sales, COGS: $1444, Fees: ~$475, Postage: $438 –> Gross profit: $1300

Expenses: $0, New inventory: $0 –> Cashflow: $2743

For the past few months I had been using UPS more and more as they were turning out cheaper and faster, on paper, than Canada Post, AND they picked up from my porch. I think I am done with that for good. Two packages, one worth $4000 and one worth $1500, had basically the same screwup happen starting nearly a *month* ago which UPS has failed to correct, so the funds are still in jeopardy:

• Customer owes customs
• Driver tries to deliver but for whatever reason is unable to collect customs
• Buyer pays customs online
• UPS tries to deliver again, demands customs, and leaves
• I call and yell at them
• “Oh sorry, we’ll deliver again”
• UPS tries to deliver again, demands customs, and leaves (x6) (no I’m not joking about the 6).
• UPS loses the package
• UPS finds the package
• UPS loses the package
• UPS tries to deliver again, demands customs, and leaves

I am really at the end of my rope with them, and their customer service is appalling. It’s near impossible to get a hold of a real person, tracking numbers just lead you to a “do everything online!” dialog. You have to “trick” the robot into connecting you with a person by mumbling inaudibly when it asks for a tracking number. I might have had better luck putting my package in a wicker basket with an address label and floating it down the river to rely on the kindness of strangers.

Regarding clothing measurements – I’m near Atlanta, very much a “dress-to-impress” city so good clothing is plentiful to flip and make up the majority of my store.  I provide a lot of measurements but no matter where I include them in my listing, I get questions every single week asking for a measurement that is already provided in the listing.  I finally switched to writing the measurements on a whiteboard, photographing it and putting it in the pictures, thinking people just weren’t reading descriptions.  Wrong! People are still asking for measurements even when I’ve included a pic of that measurement and referred to the photo in the description.  I even had a “Karen” scold me telling via ebay message that I won’t sell a certain vest without measurements.  It felt good to message her back immediately to let her know that actually the measurements she wanted are included in the last photo, which was also clearly stated in the short description.

Another measurement rant – no matter how many measurements I include, every few weeks I get a message from someone asking for some off-the-wall additional measurement like “length between waist and armpit” or something.  No other retailers who sell online provide measurements beyond chest, waist, hip, length but on ebay buyers expect 20+ different measurements.  It’s ridiculous.   If the item is inexpensive I won’t reply – it’s really not worth my time to dig it out of storage, unwrap it, measure it, etc. when half of the time it won’t lead to a sale anyway.

Jay – Somewhat recently, you changed your weekly sales number to include shipping & fees and added net sales without shipping and fees. Before you started showing  your numbers this way, didn’t you calculate your sales with the eBay fees but not the shipping? And then compared that to $1000? Now, you are listing your sales without any fees and still comparing to $1000?

If I remembered this correctly, the $850 you made this week would then be very close to the $1000 a week you want to see.

Anyway, my numbers:

Week of May 2 – 8
Total Items in Store: 1323 eBay, 44 Etsy
Items Sold: 10 eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $8 + $60.70 Commission
Total Sales: $400.34
Highest Price Sold: Tie, $75 Signed & framed print “Cobb Island Decoys” & $75 for 3 dental implants sealed in box
Average price: $40.34
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 23

While I didn’t sell many items this week, I did have a high average price. I was also more active with listing, so that did help. Three items I listed sold within 24 hours.

5-3-21 to 5-9-21
Total Items in Store: 1405
Items Sold: 14
Gross Sales: 1016.58
Net Sales: 884.49
Cost of Items Sold: $ 15
Highest Price Sold: $ 115.50 Lot of 2 American Eagle Dollar coins
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $4
Number of items listed this week: 25

Big week because I finally listed some of the coins I have from a large collection. Have tons more to list but I will be taking my time with them.

Actually went out to the stores this weekend. It felt great to do that and be pretty secure (had both shots and 2 weeks have passed). Found a great item, an original Ghostbusters Firehouse playset in amazing condition. It was missing a few pieces but I never see actual vintage toys in good shape anymore. And it was half price ($2). Nothing like a fun find to renew the scavenging battery.

Concerning shipping more than one box for an order, I seem to do it a little different every time but if the two boxes combined is not over 70lbs I will measure out and enter the dimensions of the largest box and combine the weight of both and it usually comes out in my favor by a couple of bucks. Of course I’m more central in the country so that may be a factor. I’ve also done the extra handling route as well, I’ll figure the rate to the furthest destination and use that has my handling fee, you can always refund the buyer of any over charge but its tougher to get them to pay more after the sale.

Glad to hear the coffee shop is hopping and you are open 7 days a week. Our vacation plans changed by a couple of days. We will stop by the coffee shop on morning of 6/4. I hope to meet you both! Maybe you can arrange a “Scavenger Meetup” there and others come as well.

5/1/21 – 5/8/21
Total Active Items (2 different IDs): 338
Items Sold: 7
Gross Sales: $251.46
Highest Price Sold: $108 – WWII soldier folk art painting on board, a $2 flea market find
Returns:  0
COGS: $59.83 (including commissions but not including cost of any family castoffs sold)
New Listings: 14
$ Spent on New Inventory: $0

I was out of town for half the week so slow was ok. I had to laugh when I heard about the resignation of your employee as my 17 year old son did the same thing to resign this week, though we made him add a signed letter. He was in charge of the bakery several nights a week at a nearby grocery. He did it long enough to appreciate the value of the college education he’s headed off to. They did not want to see him go – “you’ll come back and work when you’re on break, right?” they said. They seem desperate for employees.

Total Active Items 955 (Excited to hit 1000!!!!!)
Items Sold: 16
Gross Sales: $930.10Highest Price Sold: $110 – Gumball Machine
Returns:  2 Grrrr.
New Listings: Only 1! However my helper is back this week and already working on more! Found her on this forum (hi Paula!!) She’s great!!
$ Spent on New Inventory: $50. Maybe a flea this weekend!

Net Gain: 630.99

5/1/21-5/7/21

Total Items In Store: 2182
Items Sold: 27
Gross Sales: $583.77
Highest Price Sold: $80 (Dancing Woman Ceramic Sculpture)
Average Price Sold: $21.62

Returns:  0 $0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $26
Number of items listed: 16

• My sales have also dropped quite a bit recently. It’s been about ½ to ¾ of what I normally do.  I’ve made no changes to my store bc the store level changes didn’t justify it.  It just seems like a lot of my lower dollar items are selling lately instead of higher dollar items.
• I’ve always hated selling clothes. I try to avoid it, but sometimes the money is too good to pass up on some items, so I bite the bullet and take all the measurements.  I did get lucky a few months ago when CJ Banks went out of business and got a bunch of jeans and tops for $1-$2 each.  Nice thing was that I got multiples of some of the sizes so I could measure once and list several.
• I’ve been seeing a lot more auctions in my area on auctionzip lately. 2 of my favorites still have not opened up yet, though.  I think one of them might be done for good.

Thanks for the podcast.  I’m happy to hear that the coffee shop is still very busy. I hope it continues that way.

My numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 4574
Items Sold: 64
Total Sales: $1226.35
Cost of Items Sold: $180
Average Price Sold: $19.16
Average Cost of Item: $2.82
Highest Price Item Sold: $54.95 Sega Dreamcast Vintage Promo t-shirt
Number of items listed this week: 101 worth approx. $2296
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +25%

My sales were back down to normal levels this week.  I had no high-value sales this week.

In regard to your Jay’s theory about the store downgrade being responsible for slow sales,  I also downgraded from an anchor store to a premium store and didn’t see a big change in my sales.   If you think about it from eBay’s perspective, they probably don’t really care what kind of store you have. They make most of their money from final value fees so their primary interest is in helping sell as much stuff as they can to collect those fees.

I hope everyone has a good week!

Thanks for the show.  Glad to hear the coffee shop is doing well.

With a third of the year behind us, I took a look at my numbers year to date and compared to last year.  Net sales are down 18% for me so far.  I initially thought it was due to posting less, but actually have listed about 14% more this year (322 vs. 281).  My store has roughly the same number of items as a year ago and I’ve actually sold more items (343 vs. 330), so it’s my average price per sale that seems to be making the difference.  I’m going to have to give that some more thought.  Working harder and making less money not what I had in mind. 🙂

Sales Report for: 5/8/21
Total Items in Store: 1130
Items Sold: 17
Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $554.24
Net Sales (After fees): $449.69
Cost of Items Sold: $37.44
COGS Percent 8.33%
Net Profit Margin: 74.38%
Highest Price Sold: $100.00 Star Trek Enterprise Collectible
Average Price Sold: $32.60
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Sold via promoted listings: 11
Promoted Percentage: 64.71%
Average Days Listed: 461.82
Longest Listed: 1778
New items listed: 10

Here is a tidbit I just discovered doing some research on hat sizes.

Use the following equation to determine your Hat size:

US Hat Size = circumference of your head in inches / π (3.14)

For more information, see the link below:
https://www.levinehat.com/pages/the-origins-of-us-hat-sizes

5/2/21 – 5/8/21

Total items in store: 2300

Items sold: 41

Gross sales: $2150.10 (up 14.5% from one year ago)

Net sales: $1586.72 (up 26.3% from one year ago)

Highest price sold (net): $149.23 — a PSA graded Bowman Chrome blue autograph of Trevor Larnach, Minnesota Twins top young outfielder who was called up for his debut last week

Lowest price sold (net): $8.71 — printing plate of former hockey goalie Felix Potvin

I sold almost nothing last Sunday, just one sale for $23. I love a good conspiracy and I listened to the podcast on Sunday night, so for all of Sunday evening I was thinking about Jay’s throttling theory. Then as I was falling asleep, I remembered that I had kept my premium store this whole time, after debating a downgrade to basic. I hope to grow the store to 4000 items by this time next year so I figured let’s leave it at premium for now. So I couldn’t blame eBay throttling for my lack of Sunday sales after all! Well, of course I could still blame eBay if I really wanted to…but that’s why I like to hang out here. Our theories are all tongue in cheek. We know that the real solution is to list more.

So that’s what I did, 20 or so items each day, from last Monday to Wednesday. Then my sales were consistent the rest of the week and my weekly numbers are roughly where they’ve been for the last few months. It still “felt” slow in terms of numbers of items sold but this week, most of my sales were in that nice $50 to $100 range. Other weeks I usually sell a few more items and hit that sales number through quantity. But it mostly all evens out.

In “eBay fixing a problem that doesn’t exist” news, my main niche of sports cards received a big jolt this week in terms of eBay categories, subcategories and required item specifics. This was the message I received in the eBay app yesterday:

We’re optimizing trading card listings
Starting May 11, you’ll be asked to add new info to your listings that will help more buyers discover your items.
Learn more ➔
Now you can list sports cards by product type
•
Sports cards will be changing from sports categories into product type categories. Select from singles, packs, boxes, and more.
•
You’ll be required to choose a Sport under item specifics when listing.
•
If you don’t update your listings to the appropriate category, they will automatically be categorized as Sports Trading Card Singles.

Item specifics are required for all trading cards
After July, you’ll be required to fill out these item specifics to keep your listing live:
•
“Sports” under Sports Trading Cards.
•
“Game” under Collectible Card Games.
•
“Franchise” under Non-Sports Trading Cards.

New options for graded and ungraded cards
•
You’ll also be required to select if your card is graded or not in item specifics for single card categories.
•
Graded cards have additional item specifics, like Grade, Professional Grader, and Certification Number.

The biggest negative change so far is the combination of individual sport subcategories (Baseball Cards, Basketball Cards, etc) into one large Sports Trading Card Singles category. Now buyers who are interested in, for example, particular types of Panini (manufacturer) Prizm (popular set) soccer cards (like autographs or popular numbered variants like gold vinyl prizms or white sparkle prizms) have to wade through thousands of basketball, baseball and football Prizm listings. Before this change, that buyer could easily search for their prizm cards in the subcategory Soccer Cards. Really bizarre what eBay is thinking here.

This change has also created a glitch where I receive offers even if they are below my minimum offer price. I’ve used the decline offers below setting for so long that I forgot about how many buyers make offers that are just silly — $5 on a $30 listing and things of that nature.
Also, any time I try to send a counteroffer (regardless of the buyer’s original offer price), I receive the following error message: There is an issue processing your request.

I assume this error is specific to trading cards categories, otherwise there would be a post about it on the forums. There is an easy workaround which is to decline and send a message with the price I want, but it’s already tedious after 24 hours and maybe 6 offers. I love (almost) all my buyers, but I don’t want to exchange love notes with them to make a sale.

I am hopeful that all of these issues will be resolved, or at least acknowledged as problems by eBay, by this time next week. Surprisingly, my sales were fairly steady yesterday and today despite all of the changes. I hope that continues into this weekend since 8 of my 10 highest sale days in the last month have been Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays. For now, I am going to grin and bear these changes as much as possible. Very little about my listing flow has changed since I already used item specifics, and I already have my eBay store organized with subcategories for individual sports and types of cards. But who knows what other changes eBay has in store. I will certainly read the next seller update a lot more closely, that’s for sure!

Jay wrote

If we want to continue to grow your sales, I feel we need to find different kinds of items to sell.

Just sold a model locomotive tender (that’s the coal truck that follows the locomotive). Paid 40 GBP, listed for 125 GBP, 35 views, 5 offers, went for 110 GBP after 4 hours. I overpaid for it in the first place, but I fell in love with it 🙂 Apple green with gold lettering.

My helper and I do not live in the same town. Not even the same state!