Scavenger Life Episode 522: Bottom of the Pandemic Wave

Items in Store 1455
Items Sold 15
Total Sales $483.00
COGS $45.00
Total Profit $438.00
Average profit $29.20
Average sales price $32.20
New Listings 13
Items scavenged 24

Ooof, another crappy week. Thankfully I sold two higher dollar electric wheelchair parts early in the week. Those saved me as the rest of the week was TERRIBLE.

Seeing some of you folks with giant stores having sales in my ballpark is a little concerning to me.

So last week  I said I needed to stop scavenging. Ask me how that worked out….Lol! I found MULTIPLE items  that sell for $200+ this weekend. At one yard sale a guy straight up gave me a brand new trailer hitch that will sell for $200. Got a 3 bike trunk carrier that sells for $200. An IBM printer that sells for $200, and strangely enough an old copy of quickbooks that sells for $200. I assume it sells for so much because quickbooks is a subscription now.

Picked up one of these too:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=canon+pixma+pro-10&_sacat=1245&LH_ItemCondition=3000&LH_Sold=1&LH_Complete=1&_sop=16

I did get some listing done this week. I’m going through and cherry picking $100+ bulky items out of my death piles to list. If I only have time to list a few items a week, might as well get the best bang for the buck for my wallet and physical space.

It’s ironic that the week I decide to list $100+ items, I find…a bunch of $100+ items.

My goal is to list 10 $100+ items this week.

07/11/21 – 07/17/21

Total Items In Store: 3650
Items Sold: 14
Total Sales: $ 595
Highest Price Sold: $ 240 (Lot of Typing Paper)
Average Price Sold: $ 42.50
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 351.45
Number of items listed: 29

Gut Sales Report for the week: Yes, it was a very slow week. The Typing paper sale really helped out. I am trying to focus on where I am going instead of what sales currently are. See my Focus for the week
below.

Focus for the week (and rest of the summer): Starting this week till the end of August, I am trying to get 100 items a week listed because my summer help goes back to school in September. I have been buying like
crazy and buying containers to store all of the new mechandise.

Scavenge of the week: With all this buying, I found some really good items. Got several $50+ shoes for under $5. Got a handmade Backgammon game for $10 that I think will sell for close to $300. Picked up a new
Croquet Set for $22 that I think will sell for $200. Also, I hit a mega sale that had some really good brands – Carhartt, Patagonia, Merrell, Keen, Cabella’s, etc. I picked up 67 items for $126.

Mark S

Weekly sales 7/11 – 7/17
Random Item Store
Total items 668
Items sold 17
New items listed 50
Gross sales $624.15
Net sales $403.83

Patch Store
Total items 2667
Items sold 45
New items listed 56
Gross sales $357.68
Net sales $256.93

Etsy
Orders 13
Gross sales $189.85
Net sales $161.37

Facebook Sales $600.00

Net sales total $1,422.13

Had another decent week with my eBay and Etsy stores and sold an old Fender Twin Reverb amp for $600 on Facebook. I got the amp for $10 so that was a great sale. Haven’t gotten quite as many items listed as I would like to with my 3 free weekdays but at least things are selling and my stores keep growing.

Interesting numbers realistic talk from a video game reseller.

He recaps his 2020 year selling video games on ebay amazon.  I eventually abandoned scanning things in the amazon seller app.  Maybe it is time to revisit?

His story about flipping Wii’s on amazon during the height of lockdown is crazy. People were paying $200 for a used Wii????? I guess that is the benefit of being focused on a specific niche – he was able to see the trends and pivot quickly.

Hi, Jay and Ryanne,

I was the person who gave you the link about Time Away not being compatible with GSP.  When I went on my vaca I adjusted handling time Only…my concern being that if I activated Time Away AND adjusted hadling the ETA would double (taking the automated Time Away window and adding the Handling Time Days increase to it!).  I just took a look at your store and it appears that is exactly what’s happening.  Example:  First Class shipping item “Lot 3 NEW Vintage MAGIC MARKER Large BLUE Ink Waterproof Permanent Ink PEN USA” has a Delivery Estimate of  Sat. Aug 21 (shipping to Ohio which would take 2 days transit time).  I would advise you turn off Time Away and just stick to extending handling.

Have a great trip!

Glad you guys are enjoying your vacation. We had a mini vacation / family reunion this weekend, which was great. Kids played with their cousins and watched trains.

Had a very good week on ebay again.

Sales: CAD$9323, 15 sales, COGS: $872, Fees: ~$1212, Postage: $209 –> Gross profit: $7030

Expenses: $151, New inventory: $380 –> Cashflow: $7371

Big sale was a pipe fusing machine for $5500… mind you, now I have to ship it which is going to be a real pain.

My father in law is picking up another small auction haul today for me. This has been great and allows me to buy a lot more without worrying about the logistics with work.

Enjoy your vacation in NY. I know that many New Yorkers bought homes in NJ and other surrounding states in the past year plus many people are making up for lost vacations, so I’m sure that’s why it’s a bit quiet. For a while, a few Facebook groups in my central NJ area had many posts complaining of NY drivers on our streets. Many weren’t accomplished drivers or were driving in the suburbs using the same methods that they did in the city. It seems to have quieted down now.

This past week sales were miserable. However, I had sales on Sunday totaling over $150, so I’m already 300% ahead 🙂 .

Week of July 11 – 17
Total Items in Store: 1378 eBay, 43 Etsy
Items Sold: 3 eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $1 + $0 Commission
Total Sales: $40.86 eBay
Highest Price Sold: $16 for 5 vintage/antique children’s books
Average price: $13.62
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 5

Total Listed: 74

Items Sold: 2

Items Listed: 0 (As planned.)

Total Profit: $40.61

AverageProfit Per Item: $20.31

Highest Profit: $20.71 (Meditation Cushion)

Goal This Week: 0 (Still)

Go For: 2

Total Items in Store: 159

Items Sold: 7

Total Sales: $150.15

Highest Price Sold: $45 Breyer unpainted Clydesdale Foal

Seemed like a super-slow week, but looking at the numbers it was low but decent. I did just discover a new gripe with eBay – noticed they charge a fee on sales tax! That is a super-bummer since I had never really put it in my thought process for pricing items. It ends up quite pricey for some sales! I understand the rationale for charging a fee on shipping, and the discount makes up some of that, but the sales tax fee is a lose-lose for me. I also had an odd occurrence about a week ago, my listing eligible to send offers went from 25 to 2 overnight. I don’t get a lot of sales that way, but some, and usually higher priced items so I was pretty unhappy. Then every day it increased by 1-2, so I am now up to 9 items, many of which were there before but disappeared. Dunno if it is a programming glitch or what, but I am keeping an eye on it.

I am slowing my scavenging, but went out on Saturday running errands and had to stop at the thrift store I passed. Found nice stuff, of course! Taylor and Ng naughty rabbit mugs, a rarer Lefton Teapot, a baggie of neat old toy cars, and an awesome mid-mod pink and gold bowl. I did spend time sorting old paperwork which is frustrating until you find something fun. I keep all receipts, but don’t have a good organization system, so I am working to rectify that. This week my focus will be on reorganizing the storer room – it gets out of hand quickly!

7-11-21 to 7-17-21
Total Items in Store: 1575
Items Sold: 11
Gross Sales: 314.27
Net Sales: 200.95
Cost of Items Sold: $ 10
Highest Price Sold: $ 99.00 Lot of 2 Eagle coins
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 0
Number of items listed this week: 25

Enjoy your time in NY, you both deserve it.

Slow sales but a coin sale or 2 each week keeps me hitting my goal. Have been listing the heck out of my death pile. I’m down to less than 100 items to get up. After that I have a huge lot I bought which will wind up being over 1000 listings. Death Pile first.

I was so thrilled to hear a Scavenger Life podcast from the road once again, and New York City in particular. Those episodes are always my favorites because they synthesize the scavenger way of thinking so well. For most, vacation is a thing you have to save up for and scrounge together time off for and maybe you don’t even get paid for that time. But for a scavenger, we can make back some of that money by keeping our eyes peeled at thrift stores or flea markets or finding “trash” on the street or printers on Craigslist. Plus we can have our eBay store running in the background as well. I haven’t had a vacation in some time, but I can see a not-too-distant future with the means and more importantly the time to travel more, and it’s one of the things that keep me going week after week.

This was a very busy week of sales for me. The high priced item (not really one item but 8 items to the same buyer) was among 27 (!!) items that sold on Saturday. No single item above $75 but it all added up, nearly $750 net after shipping and fees, and just under $450 after cost of goods sold. Most days aren’t nearly that busy but it’s nice to have a big pop once in a while. I listed probably 100 new items late last week, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I had so many items sell immediately after. So if anyone needs a little anecdotal incentive to list more, even if sales are slow, consider this your friendly encouragement!

Also, I scavenged a Dymo 4xl thermal printer from Staples a few weeks back, paid $20.48 after coupons and Staples rewards bucks and a gift card. I picked up a few rolls of official Dymo brand labels from random eBay sellers and finally got it all set up the middle of last week. Just this past weekend, the dymo probably saved me a half hour of cutting and taping, and I also found it much easier to keep labels and packing slips organized. Thanks to so many of you for the encouragement to pick up a thermal printer. I am often slow to change my processes, but I felt confident because of the consensus about the Dymo, and I would recommend a thermal printer to almost any seller who sells 10 or more items a week on eBay or other platforms. It truly pays for itself with all the time saved from cutting and taping, and the Dymo in particular is a very fast printer and the Dymo brand labels are great quality, very sticky and the perforations separate perfectly every time.

7/11/21 – 7/17/2021

Total items in store: 2868

Items sold: 77 (34 by best offer, 26 by seller initiated offer)

Gross sales: $3049.61 (up 18.8% from one year ago)

Net sales: $2165.64 (up 25.8% from one year ago)

Highest price sold (net): $174.88 — 8 $25 autograph booklets from the Historic Autographs company all to the same buyer (link is to 1 of the 8)

Historic Autographs is a smaller card manufacturer out of Pennsylvania. They don’t have any official licenses, so they don’t have current players in their sets, and their designs and sets can be very hit or miss, like their recent 1969 set which I think is comically ugly and their Written Word sets where a lot of the cards contain a piece of handwriting (from an old document) rather than an autograph. I guess I can see the appeal but they’re not for me.

However, I really like some of their booklet sets which combine a certified autograph with a (usually heavily damaged) card of the player from the 1930s or 1940s. I think they’re kitschy and unique. I might have made a little more profit if I held onto these longer and waited for an individual buyer for each one, but I like selling multiples to one buyer. I threw in a lagniappe autograph, a little free bonus, in the hopes that will entice this buyer will come back and buy more from me. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

Lowest price sold (net): $6.98 — Bobby Hull printing plate

This buyer buys 1 or 2 printing plates from me every month or two, never totaling more than  $20 or $30, and they pay $10 to ship to Canada every time. I find it interesting how they return again and again but never spend much. They must have a pretty strict collecting budget. It’s cool that they spend a part of it on my inventory.

July 11 – 17

• Total Items in Store:  4,203
• Items Sold:  17
• Total Sales:  $352
  • * WAAAAY BELOW yearly average of $1,021
• Highest Price:  $60 (Antique Ornate Wood Carved Gesso Picture Frame Gold)
• Average Price:  $21
• Returns:  0
• Cost of Goods Sold:  $14
• Costs of Goods Purchased this Week:  $22
• Number of New Items Listed this Week:  33

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted. It’s somewhat reassuring in a weird  twisted way to see others on here having crappy weeks of sales like myself. At least I’m not alone. I keep telling myself that this is a typical summer, and that we were spoiled last summer with the stimulus checks and the bored buyers. I’m hoping things will pick up again for all of us.

Not much has been happening around here lately. I’ve just been slowly working on projects around the house while maintaining my eBay store, all while trying to enjoy my summer. We’ve been  hitting the yard sales every weekend. It’s hit or miss, but I did manage to score TWO like-new Wilton bench vises that sell for over $120 each. I also bought a unique Bible at a tag sale which can sell for over $70. Plus all kinds of bread and butter stuff.

I hope you have a nice relaxing vacation. You two deserve it!

You want slow sales?  How about over 28,500 items on ebay and on Monday, July 12 I sold 4 postcards for a total of $27.46.  Gross sales for the week: $687.  Slowest week in almost 2 years.     I was thinking of opening a small brick & mortar shop, but I’m going to wait and see how I do at a live postcard show coming up on August 7 in Havre de Grace, MD.

I think the best part of this week’s podcast were the early references to there not being good garbage on the streets!  Erika and I had a bit of a laugh about that.  Successful entrepreneurs disappointed that they won’t have enough good garbage to scavenge while taking a break from being scavengers, coffee shop owners, and real estate moguls…couldn’t make that up if you wanted to.  Very genuine!

eBay is super slow for us.  The last 90 days we have only grossed $10k, which was about an average month for the previous year.  There has been a lot more people at our beach and state parks here–we frequent the parks often and it is unbearable on the weekends.  I am confident this is just a natural backswing after everyone was cooped up.

We focused so much on the local sales rather than eBay in 2021 and we FINALLY got the occupancy permit Monday!  We are opening Thursday for 10 days straight before settling into Fri-Sun 10-4 as our regular hours.  I’m nervous and excited.  We have grown our FB following to almost 7,000 group members, but I worry that we will be too busy, or people will be unimpressed once they get inside.  I’m sure you went through all the excitement and stress opening the coffee shop.  I feel very underwhelmed by our place, our videos, etc—but we get nothing but positive responses.  I’m still waiting for that crash back to reality and hoping it never comes.

It makes me feel a little better that it’s not just me.  I typically carry about 400-500 items (similar in type to Jay and Ryan – vintage, one-offs, clothing, etc) and normally sell 2-3 things per day.  Today was day 5 of no sales!! Never happened before, even when traveling.  I had been listing, cleaning up my store, sending offers, everything I knew to do to kick-start things, but …crickets.

But I read something interesting on another blog on Pinterest the other day and wonder now if it truly does work this way.  It was on “6 things you can do to increase eBay sales” and one was “Ship on time – If you ship something late, it will hurt your sales for days, possibly even until the late item is delivered…”  I have one day handling and normally make sure to ship within that day, but last Friday I made a sale about 1:40 am.  Super busy day Friday with other things, so thought I’d just wait til the next day, but evidently that must be according to PST and I SHOULD have gotten it out, because it showed as late shipment.  Of course that was Saturday, so it really ended up getting to them late.  My bad!!  Sure enough, no sales all week, but when that thing delivered today, I got 3 sales in a row!  Hmmmm…

I’ve been a bit lazy recently. I listen every week but I haven’t posted my numbers for a couple of week.  So better late than never, here they are now.

Total Items in Store: 4667
Items Sold: 68
Total Sales: $1441.18
Cost of Items Sold: $202
Average Price Sold: $21.19
Average Cost of Item: $2.97
Highest Price Item Sold: $124.95 Pioneer Elite Audio/Video Multi Channel Receiver VSX-01 TXH
Number of items listed this week: 100
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +32%
Hats sold this week: 56 (82% of sales) worth $1035 (71% of sales $)

Unlike many people that posted this week,  sales continue to be strong for me.  I presume it has a lot to do with my ability to spend lots more time on eBay.  My wife and I continue to list between 60 and 100 items every week which presumably has a lot to do with our good sales.

As @BethGreen mentioned above, I was curious what would happen if you extend your handling time AND do Time Away.  It sounds like it doubles your handling time. That doesn’t seem good.  I wonder what the technical reason is that Time Away doesn’t work with GSP. I can’t think of a common-sense reason why that would be true.

R&J – I hope you get to do some good trash picking in during your trip.   I ordered some Broadporch expresso beans this week.  They arrived today so I’m looking forward to opening the bag and having that first cup tomorrow.

Hi, just signing in after a hiatus to say its been crappy here too. I got all the way to the 15th with like $150 in sales for the MONTH. ugh. I’ve gotten up to $550 in sales for this month. I didn’t put anything up last month due to personal reasons and am really feeling it. I did sell about $180 worth of china today to one person including a $125 teapot, so thats nice. Ebay is a little on autopilot as I just had to sign up to be grandma’s caregiver so I’m caregiving 25 hours a week now. Building was supposed to come last monday but they no called no showed (thanks carolina carports.) New date yet to be decided. Just trying to get all the ducks in a row and accepting that business is slow. Bleh.

Just back from vacation and catching up on listening.  Your comments regarding being flooded with new required fields when you updated your  policies struck home with us as well.  When I changed all my policies to allow for longer shipping times I had no problems, but when I tried to update them during my trip to lower the handling times I had hundreds of listings fail to update due to new required fields.  My percentage was much higher than yours, probably about 20% of our 1100 listings total.

It was very time consuming. After I went through and updated all listings identified by the required updates query, there were still about 100 listings that wouldn’t allow their policies to update. Turned out that they also had required updates, but just weren’t flagged by the query.  The only way I was able to make sure I got them all was to go direct to the policies with the failed listings and view active listings from the policies.

Most of my updates were related to Christmas ornaments.  A new “Type” field required ornament to be selected, even though they were all in the ornaments category and had ornament in the title.