The Numbers: April 3-6, 2022

I’m a night owl, so a late numbers thread feels like a good “excuse” to get a jump on my own numbers. My packages and SCAN form were ready to go this afternoon, too. Good start to my week!

I hope to take a short vacation by the end of the summer, and your experience is another piece of evidence that “Time Away” might slow down sales. It will be interesting to see if your eBay numbers tick upwards next week as your store returns to “normal” active status in the search algorithm. I think the old method of changing the handling time and messaging buyers is still the best way to approach a vacation or time away, as long as it’s feasible.

It makes me so happy to see that your coffee shop continued to flourish while you were away, and you had a nice equipment sale as well. Your businesses remain a huge inspiration.

4/3/2022 – 4/9/2022

Total items in store: 2373 (down from 2451) I am still listing every day, and still purging my inventory of low-dollar, slow-moving listings.

Items sold: 46 (23 via best offer, 4 via seller initiated offer)

Gross sales: $2649.31 (down 18% from one year ago)

Net sales: $1903.80 (down 19% from one year ago)

Lowest price sold (net): $11.16 — DeVante Parker 2015 autographed draft rookie card

DeVante Parker was traded to the Patriots last week, and no surprise that led to a few sales of his cards to New England addresses. I have been trying to find and list more low-dollar items which I think will sell quickly, and it’s still gratifying anytime one sells.

Highest price sold (net): $133.53 — Dwayne Haskins autographed jersey rookie card #05/14

I sold 6 autographed cards of Pittsburgh Steelers QB Dwayne Haskins on Saturday morning at full price, and another 2 later that day. Sadly, this was because Haskins died unexpectedly early Saturday morning in a highway accident. He was just 24 years old and had barely started his life, never mind his quarterback career.

My card inventory has been built on finding bargain cards. Once or twice I bought cards when sellers incorrectly spelled his name “Haskings” but mostly I found good deals because Haskins was finding his way in his pro career. He had been released from his original team (a bad fit) just one year into his career before catching on with Pittsburgh, where he was working to find his place in the lineup. Since Haskins was a 1st round draft pick from a top football school (Ohio State), I figured his card prices would rise eventually. I was correct about that, but (obviously) wrong about the reason why, and I felt sad as these sales rolled in one after the other on Saturday.

Part of those feelings were definitely existential. Seeing a person (especially a young person) die in a strange and unexpected way is always a reminder of our own mortality, and the people in our lives who we lost too early. The card market is also irrational around in how it responds to a death. Prices spike dramatically, especially for autographs, and then after a few weeks or months those prices (mostly) return to whatever normal was for that player. The exception is for players who had a limited number of autographs, but Haskins was a 2019 rookie and high draft pick quarterback. So, he had autographed cards of all types distributed across 40+ sets — some more valuable than others depending on quality of card and set, but significantly more autographs across the board than players who only had an autograph in one or two sets.

Some of these sales are undoubtedly a nostalgia factor or emotional purchases. But I’m just as sure that part of the spike in prices after a death is from people who are purely in it to profit off the tragedy. Obviously there are a lot bigger things to worry about than sellers who put RIP in their titles, but it’s still tacky to see it happening in real time. At least those sellers are late to the party as far as selling at the peak. And wasting valuable characters in their titles, as well.

One of many things that I love about selling on eBay is that with one search and a few clicks of a button, I was able to send a small donation to Haskins favorite charity. I’m usually cynical about how much donating money really helps, especially in small amounts. But it felt better than doing nothing.

It may not have been the vacation setting Jay.  We had a dismal week and we were running in the full ebay mode.  3 items sold!  Not even worth posting my numbers:(  Total net sales of only $103.

Highest price sold was a lot of 5 Bratz dolls for $50.

We will be traveling for 6 weeks soon.  I’m trying to figure out how to do that with the new time away.  Probably put on no sales time away mode for a few weeks and then switch to changing handling time in business policies.  If anyone has a better way, please share!   I’m open to suggestions.

I came here to say the same thing as @cherylvintageserenity. This week was dismal for sales, and I only sold 6 items. If it weren’t for one larger sale, my total for the week would be sub-$100.

@craig-rex – Having grown up in Pittsburgh and still having a sister and other relatives who live there, I was following the news story about Haskins. I recall hearing about how the Steelers had just hired another quarterback to replace Roethlisberger. So sad, but seeing an increase in sales after a death is nothing new. I recall (as a kid) how Elvis had faded in popularity, but then suddenly sales hit the roof when he passed. My mom had purchased a black fuzzy poster of him for a dime somewhere, and she was thinking she could sell it real high. I forget what happened, but I think she ended up giving it away.

Anyway, my dismal sales are shown below. I did replace all my packing time with listing and ended up hitting an all-time high for me.

Week of Apr 3 – 9
Total Items in Store: 1546 eBay, 36 Etsy
Items Sold: 6 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $9 + $0 Commission
Total Sales: $224.43 eBay; Includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $130 for 2 volume book set reprint on the history of Westchester county
Average price: $37.40
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 72

I hope you see the uptick in sales after time away expires like I did.  I got no sales on my vacation.  I have heard from other honest “influencers” that sales have slowed though. This week was pretty dead for me.  Made about $200 last week.

Today I am quitting my part-time job of 20 years with a generous hourly pay rate. It’s scary to “retire” at age 53 but I need to support my teen who is seriously struggling and take care of my own mental health.  Family and exercise will be a priority but we’ll need to be even more frugal and my husband wants me to work on clearing the piles, some of which is my parents’ stuff.  At this point, there are some things that might not be worth it due to the shipping increases over the years.  When I started you could ship a coffee mug for like $5 and change.  I’m grateful to have Terapeak now to check and I may have a yard sale if there is enough stuff that’s not worth listing.  Stay tuned.

Hoping for good sales for everyone.

Items in Store 1748
Items Sold 23
Total Sales $625.00
COGS $87.00
Total Profit $538.00
Average profit $23.39
Average sales price $27.17
New Listings 24
Items scavenged 0
Listing 2022 weekly Avg 51
Sourcing Allotment 14

Ooof, It’s actually much worse as I have 3 unpaid items pending. One of them is a $110 dryer part. I looked at that buyers feedback – he leaves alot of neutral feedbacks and the feedback left for him as a buyer has a BUNCH of false positive feedbacks where the seller said “buyer never paid or communicated”.

If I take out those three sales from my numbers my total sales drops to $468 and a net of  $386.

I have a canned response I send unpaid item buyers on the 3rd day explaining how the unpaid item system works. It rarely matters – most never respond or pay. Occasionally I’ll get a response that they no longer want the item. I really only send the message to get those buyer confirmations that they won’t pay so I can go ahead and cancel/relist since the auto unpaid item system went away. I hate that ebay doesn’t send a message or relist after 4 days. I do get an email, but I don’t check emails that often.

I did not meet my 40 listings this week. It was a rough week. I haven’t been feeling great and my wife has been dealing with vertigo since last weekend.  Ebay has taken a back seat for the time being. I’m just trying to stay on top of shipping for now and I really don’t even want to do that most days.

Hopefully once the weather stabilizes we’ll get outside more and get to feeling better.

Today I got the wonderful news that two of my coworkers have Covid. They went to a conference in Chicago last week and came in for a couple hours on Friday. I had conversations with both of them Friday morning – not within 6 feet of each other but I’m super anxious now.

I agree that sales were in the toilet this past week. We had a big sale of some networking equipment we sold on consignment for a friend but that pretty much saved the week. We split the profit (after eBay fees and shipping costs) with the friend 50/50 so that is why our cost of goods sold is so high. On the sourcing side of things I decided to attend a local train show on Saturday. It’s been many years since I went to one of these and never went with the intention of buying to resell so it was an interesting experience. Most of the vendors at these shows are pretty old-school and it was refreshing to see how willing they were to haggle and give large lot discounts. I ended up purchasing a whole bin of 40 old HO train car kits for $2 each and these will sell for anywhere from $12 to $25 each so I consider that a win. There is another show in two weeks and I think I’ll be going to see if I can do even better.

Total Items in Store: 566
Items Sold: 27
Gross Sales: $2,227.85 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $1,765.76 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $825
Highest Price Sold: $1,350 (lot of 3 cisco network switches)
Average Price Sold: $82
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $133
Number of items listed this week: 55

Week Ending 4/9/22
Gross Sales (w/o shipping, tax): $780.27
Net Sales (after fees): $648.19

Total Items in eBay Store: 1048
Items Sold eBay: 12
Total Items in Etsy Store: 160
Items Sold Etsy: 1

Cost of Items Sold: $146.34
COGS Percent 22.58%
Net Profit Margin: 64.32%
Highest Price Sold: $196.00 Vintage Camera
Average Price Sold: $60.02
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Average Days Listed: 261
Longest Listed: 1072
New items listed: 11

My sales were OK and about my “new” average.  I was averaging about 19 sales per week last year at this time, and this year I’m at 12 per week.  I should expect lower sales for me, though, as I’ve only been averaging about 8 listings per week this year, versus 18 last year.  Considering what others are saying, I guess I did OK this week.

I found out over the weekend that I managed to swap labels on two of my sales last week and I’m now working to see if I can salvage them and convince the two buyers to ship them to each other rather than return them to me.  I did this once before a few years ago and lucked out.  Hoping to have a similar resolution this time.

Most of my new listings this week were from an auction lot of vintage smoking pipes I purchased the previous week.  I’ve done very well off of pipes in the past and I think these will also sell well.  They looked pretty shabby when I picked them up, but thankfully they cleaned up easily and didn’t require much beyond oiling and sanitizing.  Paid $31 for 8 pipes and a salt and pepper set and listed them all for $480. One pipe sold in a few hours for $49.95 so I’m in the money.

My focus this week is going to be on electronics.  I have a big pile of potentially high $ sales that I’ve been putting off because they all require testing.  Some audio equipment and some DVD/VCR combos.  Decided they are taking up too much space and I need to get them listed.

@craig-rex – I can understand your feelings about the card sales for recently deceased stars.  Feels a bit unseemly to capitalize on tragedy.

We had a really bad week as well. Silly, super low offers that try my patience and questions that lead nowhere… Part of the problem has been a real lack of sourcing opportunities lately. Sky-high prices at estate sales/nothing worth buying. This won’t last forever tho 🙂

A lousy week with $148 gross from only four items sold. I haven’t been listing, sending offers, or running sales at all recently which I guess puts me in the eBay search doghouse. I’ve been busy elsewhere with a few things, especially with tax prep since we sold a rental house last year that had been our residence which complicates things (but saves us on taxes) and now between my wife and I we’re up to four different Schedule C’s. Speaking of taxes, I noticed that our quarterly estimated tax payments are due on Monday the 18th, unlike last year when they were due on the 15th even though tax day fell later.

Regarding Time Away, the times that I have used it, it has strangely seemed to trigger sales for me while it was on, with more sales during the Time Away than either shortly before or after. But I have not needed to use it for almost a year now.

@ChristineR – I have never regretted quitting my steady law gigs. It was good for my mental health, and I’m sure it will be for you. On the other hand, I have regretted listing low value items that I normally would not have, but they were family items that I felt guilty about disposing of. Be strong! 🙂

@Temudgin  the road is littered with former attorneys. LOL.  Thank you!  I plan to go through and sort it all and have a yard sale/donate the small potatoes I think.  I live in an area rich for sourcing so no worries about finding other stuff to sell later if I can manage to get this stuff sold.  I’ll report back on what percentage was worth it. I’m thinking $20 potential profit is my cutoff maybe. I did start making a dent in my piles earlier.

I’m excited to say I had my best week ever on eBay, which is roughly the same as Jay and Ryanne’s worst week lmao!

I am now about 30 days into listing 5 items a day and I have doubled my weekly income (we’ll see if it continues with the summer slump). Home run sale of the week was a MARPAT Goretex (cold/wet weather Marine Corps parka) that sold within 3 days for $150, which I picked up for $7. I also hit 300 listings this week!

Weekly sales 4/3 – 4/11
Total items: 8933
Items sold: 157
New items listed: 350
Gross sales: $1,690.30
Net sales: $1,075.66
New buyers: 124
Repeat buyers: 5

Etsy
Orders: 8
Gross sales: $57.00
Net sales: $48.45

Gross sales total: $1,747.30
Net sales total: $1,124.11

Pretty normal week for me. I bumped up promoted listings to 5% so that may be why my sales weren’t down.

Once again, I’m late to the game with posting my numbers.

4/3/2022 to 4/9/2022

Total Items in Store: 1842
Items Sold: 26
Gross Sales: $570.96 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $319.58 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $79.11 (most from commission payouts)
Highest Price Sold: $62.02 (Set of 3 new Waterford Marquis ruby red goblets)
Average Price Sold: $21.96
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 19
Number of hours worked: 12:38:05
Average hourly salary: $25.57 (net sales divided by hours worked rounded to nearest half hour)