The Numbers: February 13-19, 2022

Total Items in Store: 266
Items Sold: 3
Gross Sales: $164.28 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $106.36 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $17
Highest Price Sold: $91 (Danish cross stitch kit, paid $3)
Average Price Sold: $44
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0

Sorry to hear about the bummer customer service/no pay week.

I’m almost done with my COGS to finish up taxes.  As usual, hoping to get back to listing soon.  Next week may be more favorable.  Still need to consolidate inventory.  Basically no scavenging for months as I have focused on family.  No word from last week’s painting buyer so I hope he is pleased.

02/13/22 – 02/19/22

Total Items In Store: 4273 (was 4245 previously listed)
Items Sold: 15
Total Sales: $449.87 (no shipping included)
Highest Price Sold: $80 (Vintage Coat)
Average Price Sold: $ 29.99
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 14.60 (Lousy Estate Sales lately, none worth going to)
Number of items listed: 43

Gut Sales Report for the week: Sales were still eratic. Low ASP and low STR. I listed a lot, but it didn’t seem to matter. But then today, sales started to take off.

Focus for the week : Trying to keep up with listing. Trying to get taxes done.

Scavenge of the week: Got a good deal on a pair of NAOT shoes. These shoes are made in Israel and I always buy them.

Thoughts for the week: Estate sales have not been good lately, so I don’t go to them. This works for me because I have plenty of backlogged items that are ready to go and my go to thrift store is still turning out the deals.

Mark S

Our Store Week February13 – 19, 2022

Total Items in Store: 2288
Items Sold: 14
Gross Sales: $ 934.50  (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)

Net Sales: $ 775.07 (minus eBay fees, shipping, taxes & Store Subscription of $21.95)

Item Sales:  679.97
Cost of Items Sold: $ 32.27
Cost of helpers: $0
Highest Price(s) Sold:  128.96 – Book – Iron Melting Cupola Furnaces for the Small Foundry 2000 1st Ed 3rd Prtg Chastain

Average Price Sold: $ 66.75 – Gross

Average Price Sold: $ 48.56  – Net

Returns: 0 – But 2 are coming back – One a jacket which the customer tore when she put it on –claimed it arrived damaged and a Luckenbach Deputy Badge – says it wasn’t authentic – we did not list it as authentic but obsolete so that is our mistake – if we decide to list it again, it will clearly be stated replica – should have done that in the beginning.  $152.36 Plus we’ll have to refund shipping they paid and pay to get the items back. Ah well!

Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 79.14

Number of items listed this week: 26

We don’t get many returns, so it’s an opportunity to remain calm.

Week of Feb 13 – 19
Total Items in Store: 1420 eBay, 29 Etsy
Items Sold: 15 eBay, 2 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $9.50 + $62 Commission
Total Sales: $567.98 eBay, $51.35 Etsy; Includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $164 VHS player, new open box
Average price: $36.43
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $33.83
Number of items listed this week: 20

Pretty good week for me. The VHS player was only open box because I opened it to take photos and see what was rattling around (it was the accessories bag).

I’ve been checking out a thrift store near where I work, and boy are prices high there even with the 50% off. I just listed my first item from there; lets see how it goes. I don’t really need to source because I’m selling my neighbor’s stuff, but I decided to buy a few things if they were unique and valuable enough.

Week of February 13 – 19, 2022

Total Items on eBay: 175
Items Sold: 9
Gross Sales: $ 189.58 (including eBay fees and shipping)
Net Sales: $ 86.80 (minus eBay fees and shipping)
Cost of Items Sold: $ 11.94
Highest Price(s) Sold: $ 17.50 – set of 4 Nestle globe etched glass tumblers
Average Price Sold: $ 21.06 – Gross
Average Price Sold: $ 9.64 – Net
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory this week: $53.64
Number of items listed this week: 39

Hey, folks! This is my first time posting one of these. It was kind of a slow week with my only sales being pretty low-priced items. Hoping for higher numbers as I get more inventory listed, which is my goal right now. Planning to open a store once I hit 250 listings (goal is by the end of the month—might be a stretch, we’ll see!).

I tried a new experiment, sending out at least 15 offers to watchers every day this week, in addition to listing at least 3 new items every day as I have been, and it all led to a nice week of sales. A coincidence or meaningful data? No clue, but I was surprised to see how quickly — often within a few minutes — interested buyers accepted a 10% or 15% offer. I had 4 sales from offers tonight (out of about 50 offers sent) and 2 on Thursday afternoon out of about 20 offers sent. It’s a reminder that with the eBay app, a potential sale can happen very fast. All it takes is a push notification and a few taps of a phone screen. So send those offers, run those sales, create those coupons.

2/13/2022 – 2/19/2022

Total items in store: 3349 (down from 3363)

Items sold: 62 (34 via best offer, 14 via seller initiated offer)
The sales tab also says that I sold 19 via promoted listings, which can’t be right since I’ve never used promoted listings before. Unless I got auto-enrolled somehow…?

Gross sales: $3622.01 (up 30% from one year ago)

Net sales: $2551.37 (up 35% from one year ago)

Lowest price sold (net): $5.49 — Joe Staley rookie card

Another sale from aggressively cutting prices on low dollar items — in this case, a rookie card of an offensive lineman who spent his whole career with the San Francisco 49ers. No surprise that the card’s going to live out the rest of its years in sunny California, where it belongs.

Highest price sold (net): $253.04 — Hilary Knight Topps Olympics autograph

Talk about a very small niche — the extremely high card prices of the best cards of athletes in obscure sports, like Hilary Knight who is one of the best women’s hockey players. This sale worked like many of my best sales do — I bought this card before the Olympics (on a message board of all places), and sold it during the Olympics. Ryanne’s influence on how to price unique items helped make me some extra profit, as my price was above the highest sold listings, enough to get a snarky “why is this priced so high?” message from an “interested” buyer which I ignored because I rarely respond to price fishing messages and I knew my pricing logic was sound.

There were no other Hilary Knight Olympics autographs listed when I created my listing, so I figured there was a chance someone would hit the buy it now if the US won the hockey gold medal. They lost to Canada and got silver, but my card sold for full price anyway. I kind of understand why — almost all pro athletes in mainstream American sports sign hundreds to thousands of autographs every single year for dozens of sets, but Hilary Knight only has autographs in a few sets. Maybe 1000 total? And I believe this is her earliest one, from 2014. $300 is a good sale, but most of her autographs go for $100 and up, which is why it was a no-brainer purchase for me at $70. I didn’t expect it to sell quite this fast, but timing is often really important in sales of rare items.

I had a few other interesting high dollar sales this week, my favorites being this card with a piece of the player’s jersey from the NBA Finals and this autograph of one of the top young football defensive players. The jersey card was listed for just a day or two before the buyer sent me an offer that was maybe 15% off my BIN price, and the autograph was listed for a year and a half without a lot of offers. I accepted a counteroffer which was 30% off ($75) from my $250 price.

There was probably merit in holding onto both cards for longer, considering their relative scarcity (10 copies or less of both cards) and the quality of the player and card. It’s likely that one or both will be worth more in the next 6-12 months. I particularly liked the NBA Finals jersey card and completely understand why someone who buys cards for collection or “investment” would pay up for one of those.

But offers over $150 are hard for me to pass up. It used to take a lot of hours working for someone else to make that much money. I’m at about six months of doing this full-time, no other gigs, and every week of doing these numbers is a reminder that as long as I put the time in and continue to adapt and learn and grow, this is my life now. No more working for someone else, or watching the clock, or wasting time and energy at a job I hate. It’s pretty amazing.

Items in Store 1654
Items Sold 36
Total Sales $1,274.00
COGS $86.00
Total Profit $1,188.00
Average profit $33.00
Average sales price $35.39
New Listings 51
Items scavenged 5
Listing 2022 weekly Avg 46
Sourcing Allotment 23

I was having a phenomenal week and sales just died on the weekend. Sunday was super slow – I barely even had any offers to send to watchers. I did list every day this week.

I did my inventory consolidation this weekend and cleared up 13 empty bins. It is such a satisfying process to get all the remaining bins full and to see all those empty bins ready to be refilled with new inventory. It is a super motivating process. I found one pair of shoes that were no longer listed. I assume it was an unpaid item – of which ebay no longer auto relists for. Boo!

I’m making good progress on clearing out the ebay garage office death piles. On my current pace I will list 1450 more items through the end of the summer.  By rough estimation I think I have about 1200 items left in my garage to list. Just keep listing and here in a couple months my garage will be neat, organized, with LISTED inventory in the designated shelving and carts in their proper places. I’ll keep pushing listed inventory to my main inventory shed until it is as full as it can get.

Weekly sales 2/13 – 2/19
Total items: 7377
Items sold: 150
New items listed: 350
Gross sales: $1,627.41
Net sales: $1,122.29
New buyers: 115
Repeat buyers: 7

Etsy
Orders: 15
Gross sales: $219.00
Net sales: $186.15

Gross sales total: $1,846.41
Net sales total: $1,308.44

Another good week in the books. I’ve got a hat up for auction with a current bid of $320 so that’s going to be my best hat sale so far. Gave $2 for it

@Kati – Welcome to the numbers.  It’s a small thing, but taking stock of your numbers weekly provides a lot of insight into the business over time.

Total sales of $635 this week.  Week started out strong but ended with a whimper.  Usually, most of my sales take place on Friday and Saturday nights, but this week was front loaded with 5 items selling on Valentines Day, 4 on Tuesday, and only 1 sale on the weekend.

My big sale was a nice surprise and one where past experience really paid off.  I sold an antique, 1898, fishing lure that I paid $2 for for $200.  The lure was extremely rare, but I had purchased one a few years ago so knew it immediately when I saw it in the middle of a pile of lures up for auction.  I had placed a max bid of $50, but thankfully, no one else saw any value and I got the whole lot for $2.  It took two years to sell.

Got a bit of a shock when running my number for Etsy for the week.  I apparently sold two items via external ads that Etsy places and had to pay an extra 15% commission on each.  I recall reading about them when I signed up but pay a lot of attention.  This is where it is nice that Etsy doesn’t take offers as I would normally take an offer of 15% every time, but I wouldn’t want this on eBay unless they highlighted the extra charge on the page when the offer comes in.

Week Ending 2/19/22
Total Items in eBay Store: 1070
Items Sold eBay: 9
Total Items in Etsy Store: 129
Items Sold Etsy: 3

Gross Sales eBay (Less shipping and tax): $484.90
Net Sales (After fees) eBay: $406.28
Gross Sales Etsy (Less shipping and tax): 149.85
Net Sales (After fees) Etsy: 102.51

Cost of Items Sold: $55.44
COGS Percent 10.90%
Net Profit Margin: 71.42%
Highest Price Sold: $200.00 Antique Lure
Average Price Sold: $52.90
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Average Days Listed: 191.5
Longest Listed: 808
New items listed: 9

I see the USPS is creating new postal categories for business:

USPS Just Made This Major Change to Deliveries — Best Life (bestlifeonline.com)

@lukastreasuretrove thanks! It’s already been very enlightening. I look forward to seeing how things change over time (for the better!).