The Numbers: December 26, 2021-January 1, 2022

12/26/21 – 01/01/22

Total Items In Store: 4226 (was 4253 previously listed)
Items Sold: 28
Total Sales: $ 996.63 (no shipping included)
Highest Price Sold: $ 140 (Pair of Boots)
Average Price Sold: $ 35.59
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 65
Number of items listed: 0

Gut Sales Report for the week: Sales were very consistent.

Focus for the week : This week I am going to get my basement more organized.

Scavenge of the week: Got two unique pairs of Mens sneakers for cheap that I think I can get $125 and $175 for respectively.

Thoughts for the week: Didn’t get much done with company in town, so still working on getting my Youtube channel going.

Mark S

Looks like J&R had a good week. Be safe in NYC.

re: TV models… lots of reasons for buying a model you already owned… sometimes we lose a TV here where I work and we need one to match the space as best as possible because maybe a wood frame was built for it… so we try to hunt down the size so it fits within the frame – like say a 48″ TV but that size may not be made anymore… so we might be willing to hunt it down on eBay… I’m sure there are other reasons, too. Cool. Close to original retail is awesome!

Only put in about half the hours I committed to for the year but made about 157% of the profit… not bad. Happy New Year, everyone.

Total On eBay: 79

Items Sold: 2

Total Profit: $46.76

Average Profit Per Item: $23.38

Highest Profit: $23.63 (Box of 14 Vintage Slide Carousels, various brands)

I did a check of my inventory. I think this is the first time I reconciled my spreadsheet with my actual listed inventory. I have 200 items listed. I found 4 items in my inventory that weren’t actually listed. One of the items I remember delisting. I think the other 3 had something to do with buyers buying the item and immediately cancelling. I failed to relist. Passing this along so you can be sure to relist these types of items/situation s.

Week of Dec 26 – Jan 1
Total Items in Store: 1392 eBay, 29 Etsy
Items Sold: 10 eBay, 1 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $0.75 + $7 Commission
Total Sales: $140.96 eBay, $38.95 Etsy; Includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: $39 for 7 vintage airline blankets on eBay, $39 for three wood frames on Etsy
Average price: $16.36
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0

I was out of town last week, so I started with a long handling time and slowly moved it back. I do have about 15 items to ship for the sales while I was away, so I didn’t do too badly.

My average price is down because I had four sales of Rummikub tiles, which I sell at $0.99 each plus a flat $4.99 shipping (no matter how many purchased). The money I make from shipping doesn’t get into the average. I can sell these over and over again and not have to create one listing per tile, so it is totally worth it in spite of the low value.

I’m now running a 25% off sale for the first week of the year, so I expect more volume this week.

Anyone having problems with GoDaddy not being able to import Etsy sales?

Total Items in Store: 270
Items Sold: 2
Cost of Items Sold: $
Total Sales: $87.44
Highest Price Sold: $49
Average price: $33
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 16

Slow sales but I’m happy that I got some items listed.  Dreading bookkeeping for taxes.  Happy New Year. Enjoy NYC R & J.

In 2021, in addition to the usual numbers I record, I kept track of where I purchased every item.  Last night I spent some time analyzing the data.  In total I had over 30 different places I sourced from over the year. I discovered that 25% of my profits for 2021 came from one epic estate sale haul!  It was the estate of a clothing hoarder addicted to eBay auctions.  It was probably a once in a lifetime estate sale but fingers crossed I’ll come across one again.   After estate sales, items from an Amazon liquidation store accounted for 19% of my profits, followed by Goodwill at 11%.    My least profitable sourcing location was the annual library book sale – maybe I’ll skip that one this year.

Items in Store 1521
Items Sold 17
Total Sales $1,440.00
COGS $88.00
Total Profit $1,352.00
Average profit $79.53
Average sales price $84.71
New Listings 43
Items scavenged 4
Listing weekly Avg 43
Sourcing Allotment 16

What has 2 thumbs and already did all their taxes bookkeeping? This guy! I was aided in the fact that I did the first half of the year back in July, and that I was prepared for the godaddy audit since I went through the painful process already last year.  The big 2 issues are duplicate data from paypal and my business credit card feeding bad categorization data to godaddy. Now I just have to wait for my W2 and other personal tax documents to come in so I can wrap things up. I’m looking forward to that hefty child tax credit.

I had some huge sales this past week. The current week is also off to a great start as I had a whopping $534 in sales yesterday.

As stated in my new years goals post, my plan is to average at least 40 new listings a week this year in order to really put a dent in my (neatly organized) death pile. I wrapped up my no work December and hit the ground running this weekend with 43 listings. I also have 34 listings created awaiting photos for this week.

This week my goal is to do an inventory consolidation in my storage shed to make some room for more stuff. I pull all the nearly empty totes and move those items to other partially empty totes. Then I bring in the empty totes to fill with newly listed inventory. It lets me do a partial audit on my inventory as well as keep things neat n tidy. It’s a good mental boost to see the empty totes rather than just pile new inventory on top of the old.

Happy New Year fellow trash elves! Not the best christmas selling season but Ill take it! Sold some things we have had at least 5 years. Also a 100 pound lot of books! Sent in 3 boxes, found out how easy it is to spilt a shipment on ebay. Whittled down some death piles as the sourcing kind of dried up so that was good. Had a bad fall a couple days before Christmas walking the dog. Fractured a rib and messed up my back. Lucky to have a very helpful partner! One thing this accident has made me take a hard look at is where we store some of our inventory. It is in places that I cannot get to in my current condition. Under the bed and on the floor under our shelves seemed perfectly logical at the time… this will have to be addressed at some point. Maybe clear out space in the garage for more shelving. Wishing us all great things in 2022!

Happy New Year!

I’m mid-shipping craze following an extended handling time for holiday travels, so I haven’t pulled my numbers together yet, but December was my best sales month to date, even with extended handling time, so I am thrilled about that! For the first time, we did over 10k in gross sales in a month. January 2021 was previously my biggest month to date, so I am very curious to see how this January goes! I’ve made a few notable changes for the new year, starting on tax prep next (so jealous of @retro-treasures-wv for having all your tax bookkeeping done already! Agh!!) I ended my promoted listings campaign to see how the store does without any promoted listings. I am just not convinced it helps enough to justify the cost, because it’s taking the fee if someone buys your item within 30 days of clicking an add… I guess we’ll see! Honestly if I have a really low week of sales, I may turn it back on at an even lower percentage or something. But I’d rather not have to do it at all since I’m not selling iPhone cases 😉 Another reason is that I have officially updated the vast majority of my listings to give a percentage of sales to the Midwest Innocence Project…so I’d rather spend a slice on that than promoted listings. It’s all an experiment, so we shall see if that swap serves my store well or not.

Also, the Up & Running online training webinar stuff starts next week–excited to see what I learn and what the community is like! I’ll report back about it as much as I can. Another change I’m making this year is trying to hold myself accountable to a maximum number of work hours every week regarding the store. There will certainly flexibility and exceptions on occasion, but as the rule, I’m trying to work more on a basis of abundance and rest than I did last year. When things were slow, it felt good to work overtime, but that wasn’t the healthiest as the year wore on. I’ll report back about that too, lol. I like to work, and it’s the default for me. However, I have other projects and things I’ve somewhat neglected while being preoccupied with my store and often working more out of stress than anything else in 2021.

I hope everyone is off to a good start this year! I have some catching up to do to finish shipping (35 more things to ship today, shipped 65 yesterday) from the break, and I also need to create all my new 2022 spreadsheet pages, total things up, finalize all my 2021 records in my own numbers once I’ve completed shipping for all the items that sold at the end of 2021. It will feel great to have that stuff set up ASAP! Then it’s on to processing through a huge estate full of stuff in ATL, as well as a bunch of farm estate auction stuff I brought back with me from my hometown in IL. Lots of work to be done–you can see why I have to limit my hours haha! I will say though, I am excited and healthfully motivated to jump in. Wishing that for each one of us!

Weekly sales 12/26 – 1/1
Random Item Store
Total items 1632
Items sold 32
New items listed 70
Gross sales $641.59
Net sales $364.02
New buyers 29
Repeat buyers 1

Patch Store
Total items 4684
Items sold 81
New items listed 140
Gross sales $618.57
Net sales $415.58
New buyers 56
Repeat buyers 0

Etsy
Orders 22
Gross sales $160.00
Net sales $136.00

Gross sales total $1,420.16
Net sales total $915.60

2021 numbers:

Random store 2021
Total items sold 1121
Gross Sales $28,301.30
Net Sales $17,600.64
Average sold price 25.25
New buyers 1026
Repeat buyers 15

Patch store 2021
Total items sold 2669
Gross Sales $19,481.52
Net Sales $14,462.47
Average sold price 7.3
New buyers 1944
Repeat buyers 106

Etsy
Orders 889
Gross sales 8565.55
Net sales 7280.71

Gross sales total $56,348.37
Net sales total $39,343.82

Cost of goods $10,871.67
Expenses $1,505.75

Net income $26,966.00

The cost of goods I have recorded is the total I spent on items in 2021. That includes items that haven’t sold yet. Hopefully I can at least make double the net income in 2022 since I will be devoting full time effort all year.

Happy new year!

Also, I am in the process of combining my two stores. I had over 1000 hats in my random item store that I’m going to move over to my patch store and then I’m going to put the rest of the random items in my antique booth. It’s getting old, constantly switching between the two stores and I plan to eventually just list and sell patches so when I get to where I’m selling enough, I can stop listing hats and they will still sell since they’ll be in an active store with the patches. I’m still listing hats for now until I’m making enough to live on from patch sales alone.

Happy urban vacation J&R and happy New Year’s to everyone. I am excited to see what new tools eBay will offer us sellers and what new innovations (or “innovations”) we will learn to adapt to this year.

I wouldn’t have guessed my week was this busy until I ran the numbers. I knew I had a good number of $20 to $40 sales, and a few nice sales, but it was very steady busy all week. A nice way to end 2021, for sure.

12/26/2021 – 1/1/2022

Total items in store: 3312 (down from 3345, but I have built a nice backlog of to-be-listed items, so my listing numbers should grow and grow for quite some time)

Items sold: 81 (58 via best offer, 12 via seller initiated offer, 0 repeat buyers)

Gross sales: $3365.77 (up 34% from one year ago)

Net sales: $2289.64 (up 35% from one year ago)

Lowest price sold (net): $3.00 — Don Mossi autograph

One of 4 autographs to the same buyer. Almost every article on Don Mossi, a 1960s pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, references his huge ears and let’s be generous and call it “unique” face. I like to think that this is a buyer who is truly chasing nostalgia, like the author of this article about one of Mossi’s 1960s cards, but unless they purchase from me again, I’ll never know.

Highest price sold (net): $211.03 — Victor Robles 1/1 autographed Jackie Robinson patch

This listing is another good example of modern card collectors — specifically the money that gets tossed around on cards and the little intricacies to the cards. Victor Robles is a pretty average outfielder for the Washington Nationals, more potential than anything else so far in his short career. But this sale shows you can see how intricate (and expensive) modern cards can get, even for nondescript players and even when the card has obvious damage like this one did. There is a nice autograph on the card, a 1/1 serial number, and the card is from an expensive box where you can trace the provenance of each card’s jersey piece using MLB’s authentication website. This piece of jersey is from a 2019 game that Robles worse on MLB’s annual Jackie Robinson day, so it’s a completely unique piece.

You might think this lookup system would be possible for every card which contains a piece of jersey, but it’s very rare. Most modern jersey cards have language indicating they are “player-worn” meaning hastily put on for a minute or two at most during a photo shoot or autograph session, not during a practice or game. This has been a slow, steady change since the introduction of these types of memorabilia cards in the late 1990s. Easier to make a lot of jersey cards when you’re not only buying the jerseys used in the game. While most serious collectors understand that plain jersey cards are more decorative than anything else (most can be bought for $5 or less), once you start adding other features to them (like with this card), they get expensive quickly. That’s especially true for better players or the rare jersey cards with some provenance behind them.

I wouldn’t have spent $250 on this card, but with the prices of modern cards, I can see why someone might. Robles is still very young, with a lot of potential, and this is a completely unique card. The buyer was very friendly and sent me a few messages about how much they  enjoyed watching Robles when he played for his local minor league team and how excited they were that I accepted their offer. So, I sent them a few less expensive Robles cards too. Once in a while, after I send these bonuses to a buyer, I look at their items for sale and find they have listed their/my freebies for sale. Usually these listings don’t sell, since I have a good idea what stuff is worth in this niche and why it’s valuable or not.

But I won’t be mad if a buyer ever makes a few bucks off one of my freebies. In fact, that would make me really happy since that’s scavenging at its core — find a few dollars when you can, especially when other people don’t see what something is worth or why. If there were more of a scavenging mentality with trading card buyers and sellers, I would have a lot less listings and a lot fewer death piles!

Monthly numbers: 12/1 – 12/31

Total listings: 1262
Items sold: 59
Sales: $1,145.64
Highest price sold: $100 – Dictionary
Average price sold: $19.41
Cost of items sold: $125.33 / average cost: 2.12 each
Spent on new inventory: $214.00
Number of items listed: 79

Another good month for me, any month that I do over $1000 in sales I consider good.

Happy New Year to everybody and I wish you all very good scavenging.  Now on to working on my taxes…

12-26-21 to 1-1-21
Total Items in Store: 1
Items Sold: 12
Gross Sales:$ 312.32
Net Sales:$ 226.54
Cost of Items Sold: $ 10.00
Highest Price Sold: $ 57.00 American Eagle coin
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 50.00
Number of items listed this week: 10

Posted my numbers all year. This was a goal of mine along with 2000 items and 1000 feedback. Came up short by 50 items and about 10 feedback. Very happy with that.

Thank you to the community for all of the questions answered and stories shared. I value this place so much.

Have a kick butt 2022 everyone

Sales Report for: 1/1/22
Total Items in Store: 1120
Items Sold: 15
Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $763.49
Net Sales (After fees): $621.47
Cost of Items Sold: $85.00
COGS Percent 13.68%
Net Profit Margin: 70.27%
Highest Price Sold: $294.95 c.1890 Fortune Telling Cards
Average Price Sold: $50.90
Returns: 2
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Sold via promoted listings: 12
Promoted Percentage: 80.00%
Average Days Listed: 358
Longest Listed: 1106
New items listed: 1

A little late the party again this week. A decent week to finish out the year and surprising for the week after Christmas. Have been busy with out of town guests and playing tour guide. Barely had time to get sales out the door, so no time to list.

Not a huge number of sales, but had one great sale of $295 for an antique c.1890 deck of fortune telling cards. Funny thing about this sale is that the buyer originally gave me an offer of $200 to which I countered $250. They countered again at $225 while I was making breakfast so I didn’t get back to their offer right away. Before I could respond again they went ahead and purchased it for full price. They sent a note saying that they felt the cards had “good vibes” and didn’t want to let them get sold out from under them.

I got a rare return of a camera I sold the week before. Buyer returned unopened because they found a better price. The morning I got it back I relisted it and it sold again within 2 hours for $13 more than I sold it the first time. Gotta love that.

Had one item break in shipping, again very rare for me. It was sent to France. It was a small building for an HO railroad. Easy for the buyer to fix, but I just refunded their full amount.

I just realized that eBay’s sales report will provide a full year of data in one report so I ran my report for 2021. Then ran the 2020 report as well. I feel like they used to not have data that far back, or maybe just not so easily accessed. My sales for 2021 were down about 16% from 2020. I was relieved as I thought it was much worse. Actually happy with that since it was a year full of distractions that kept me from listing as much as I would have preferred. I listed 782 items this year vs. 1024 in the prior.

Oh yeah, Happy New Year to all!