The Numbers: May 15-21, 2022

W/E 5/21/22

Total Items In Stores: 4,384
Items Sold: 31
Cost of Items Sold: 149.78
Total Sales (Sales + Shipping does [not inc sales tax]) 1,343.61
Ebay / Paypal / Shipping Costs / Fees 344.71
Net Profit 998.90
Highest Price Sold: 249.99   1972 Western Electric Circular Slide Rule
Average Price Sold: 31.65
Number of items listed: 63

Scavenger Of The Week: x2 Rookwood Pottery Bookends (still trying to figure out exact value)

Sales are continue to be a bit sluggish BUT this week was rescued by 2 high dollar sales.  My gut tells me is that people are still willing to spend, but impulse buying isn’t happening as much.

That app sounds great!

I love that you still update us on your life 🙂

Zero sales. Ouch. I turned promoted listings on a few days ago. Listed 20 items (good for me).  Hope for a better week this week.

I feel like I’m in the business of stuff management as I finish going through everything for the yard sale this weekend.  Lots of scanning, lots of items worth selling on Ebay.  Guess I’ll have plenty of work cut out for me listing.

Enjoy NYC.  That app is such a great idea to reduce waste.  I’m glad you found it. We also like the happy hour locator one.

Wow that app sounds awesome. I can’t be the only one who wants some details on the best stuff you got.
instead of “what sold this week” , I wanna see “what stuff we ate this week”

Yes, what did you get to eat with the app? How exactly does it work?

Mark

Here is an article with some more details about Too Good to Go. Also some criticisms which make important points about food insecure populations, but I don’t think that’s the point of the app. I will have to give the app a try the next time I’m in Philly without specific plans to eat somewhere and report back.

One of my favorite things about living near a city is the wide variety of good food available. Nothing better than finding a good hole in the wall place to have a meal…especially when I check eBay later and see that my sales paid for the meal. I had a night like that last week. Such a great feeling.

5/15/2022 – 5/21/2022

Total items in store: 2138 (down from 2144)

Items sold: 53 (39 via best offer, 3 via seller initiated offer, 26 via promoted listings)

Gross sales: $2750.96 (down 3% from one year ago)

Net sales: $2009.30 (down 1% from one year ago)

Quantity sold: 53 (up 8% from one year ago)

Average sales price: $51.90 (down 10% from one year ago)

Highest price sold (net): $469.64 — over a dozen cards to the same buyer, here are the high price and low price cards

Every week, I’ll get a buyer who purchases 2 or 3 cards, but I haven’t had a buyer grab a big pile of cards from my store like this in at least a few months. This buyer focused on football cards of current players with an individual low serial number and unique jersey piece and often an autograph. They purchased three or four cards of players from one team (the Colts, who are expected to do well next season), but overall it was a wide variety of players and sets. Some of these cards I’d had listed for a few weeks or months and others for longer. Some were promoted listings or on sale, and others weren’t.

If you’re into cards, I see the logic behind spending a few hundred dollars on unique individual cards instead of buying one or two boxes with no guarantee of what you’ll get. This is basically how I acquire my inventory, though I use auctions to buy and BIN/BO to sell. Since this buyer purchased rare, high quality cards, all they need is one or two of the players to play well next season (or beyond) and they can make back a good chunk of the money they spent if they choose to sell.

I have my offer settings set to auto decline offers which are below 50% to 75% of my asking price, and I think that’s particularly helpful with buyers like this. If I had my auto declines set lower, this would have been a complicated negotiation and lots of back and forth. Instead, I accepted the buyer’s offers as they came in and sent them an invoice with free shipping when they were done buying. Then they paid the next day. Nice and easy.

Lowest price sold (net): $9.70 — Jarrett Culver Panini Mosaic Blue Chips white prizm #01/25

While I’d love to sell $460 worth of cards to a single buyer every week, this is a much more predictable way to build a business. I bought this card of a recent first round draft pick for about $2.50 at auction, relisted as best offer and sold it a week later for $11.50 to a buyer located in the same state as the player’s team.

This card is a good example of modern card designs. A better player, more desirable set or lower serial numbering card can sell for quite a bit more. A card which features a worse player or lacks any serial numbering might sell for a few cents, or a lot of 10 for $2. Often these very low value cards are used as “filler” (packing material) or they’re bought and sold in bins full of cards for $0.25 or $0.50 at local trading card shows. Sometimes I will go to one of those shows if there is one near me, but there are so many more deals and steals on eBay.

Week Ending 5/21/22
Gross Sales: $871.60
Net Sales: $719.62
Total Items in eBay Store: 1053   Total Items in Etsy Store: 234
Items Sold eBay: 16   Items Sold Etsy: 1
Gross Sales eBay: $836.65   Gross Sales Etsy: $34.95
Net Sales eBay: $691.89   Net Sales Etsy: $27.73
Cost of Items Sold: $25.65
COGS Percent 3.56%

Highest Price Sold: $350.00 Antique Divination Cards
Average Price Sold: $51.27
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00

Average Days Listed: 527
Longest Listed: 1264
New items listed: 18

What a difference a week makes.  Nice to have a bit of a return to normal sales last week.  Sales were really boosted by two large sales, a set of Divination (tarot-like) cards from the 1870’s for $350 and a vintage surfing poster for $200.  These sales were even more satisfying in that the objects were basically free to me having been unexpected items included in some auction lots I purchased.  My favorite type of sales.  Both were best offers and had been originally priced much higher prices.

Also satisfying was my COGS were only about 4% of sales, in Jay and Ryanne territory.  Mine usually run closer to 14%.

I’ve been running 30% off promotion on all items in my store that are over 2 years old for about 10 days (approx. 400 items).  Haven’t seen much action from it, mainly selling items that are marked down below $15 with the discount.  I have run sales several times over the years but never see much return from them.

I checked out the Too Good to Go app in my area of DC.  Only a handful of restaurants available, but the deals are very tempting with prices from $3.99 to $5.99.  Hopefully it takes off.

Week of May 15 – 22
Total Items in Store: 1614 eBay, 36 Etsy
Items Sold: 15 eBay, 1 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $26.50 + $112 Commission
Total Sales: $501.22 eBay, $23 Etsy; Includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $142 Gucci No 3 Eau de Toilette Spray
Average price: $32.76
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 6

I continue to have good sales because of the items I am listing on commission, but then what I owe on fees is higher.

I will be very busy with work, family, and home improvement for the next several weeks. I don’t expect to be listing huge numbers.

Items in Store 1798
Items Sold 17
Total Sales $533.00
COGS $50.00
Total Profit $483.00
Average profit $28.41
Average sales price $31.35
New Listings 49
Items scavenged 5
Listing 2022 weekly Avg 46
Sourcing Allotment 17

Sales stunk this week. In sales it is easy to have short term memory and automatically think the sky is falling. So what do I do in these doom/gloom times – look at data!!

The last 3 weeks of May apparently always suck. I keep thinking due to the growth of my store that my numbers should just keep going up.

This month so far I’ve sold 60 items for $1879.

The same 3 weeks last year was 67 items for $2336.

That’s not the whole story though – those numbers were bolstered by a very good first week. The second two weeks were $500 weeks with only around 16 sales. Looking forward, the last week of May last year was an abysmal 16 items for $326. The first few weeks of June sucked too.

While I would expect somewhat better numbers considering I have close to 1800 items now compared to 1490 last year, there’s always a bit of variation.

So what do I do this week to help out? I think I’m going to list clothing. I’ve been listing alot of toys lately and they just aren’t selling. They’ll be ready to rock in the fall though. I also listed some golf clubs that will hopefully sell quickly.

Just keep listing and when in doubt, look at your historical trends – you may be doing better than you thought.

Hello, new here to the forum but decided it was as good a time as any to start posting some of my numbers.

I’ve been selling on Ebay as a hobby since early 2000s and started taking it seriously in 2021. I sell everything and anything I can get for cheap  and have been learning as I go. I also buy the lots no one wants at auctions and leave with a fully packed car. An auctioneer has already told me “you dont spend much but you always leave with a lot!” It’s a lot of work hauling it all, and I’m usually the last person to leave because it takes so long to pack, but I’ve had some good wins in these lots and a lot of 10-30 sales. Spending $1 and my time (which is cheap right now) to make a couple hundred awesome. Being able to get a return like that with the small cash flow I have has allowed me to get a years worth of inventory in a a couple weekends.

Theres a lot I see being undervalued that could very well sell for more in the future, like VHS’s and depression glass. Just this last year I probably got 7 totes worth of depression glass no one wanted, and some the auctioneer put in my pile for free as a joke because I was the only one buying “junk”. Some of the pieces are crystal and look to sell for a good amount. This glassware stores insanely well, lasts forever, and I am willing to gamble my dollars on a box of depression glass to see if they rise in demand in the next 10-15 years. My up-front cost is a dollar and the effort I make hauling it to the basement. I’d rather do this than support the stock market.

I’m also seeing a lot of older party glassware like serving trays and punch bowls / glasses that are going for next to nothing. People may not be having parties now but maybe that will change in the next 5 years.

There’s definitely a lot of opportunity in buying the unpopular items. Reading this forum really drove that point home for me, so thank you jay and rayanne.

This week I shipped out 20 items and while my profit is still under $400 it continues to pick up as I list more expensive items. Up until recently I listed mostly small and inexpensive stuff, and kept a low number of active listings of 100-250. This last year had unexpected events that kept me from listing but now that things have normalized I’m able to do real work, listing daily.

See you all around the forum. It’s inspirational to follow everyone’s numbers.

Normally I don’t run auctions, but my daughter had a mixed lot of Barbie furniture and accessories and I wasn’t sure what to charge  I ran a 7 day auction and one of them hardly got any views at all for 6 days at .99!  I even paid a promotion of $1.50 on day 6 just to see what would happen and views did go up a little.  One of her other active listings has 1 view in two weeks and many of my new listings have hardly any views. I’m pricing with Terapeak so I don’t think I am way off on this.  Looks like others here are getting sales so I’m glad to see that.

Hope you had a nice time in New York.

Weekly sales 5/15 – 5/21
Total items: 10123
Items sold: 162
New items listed: 350
Gross sales: $1,659.39
Net sales: $1,098.00
New buyers: 131
Repeat buyers: 3

Etsy
Orders: 10
Gross sales: $75.00
Net sales: $63.75

Gross sales total: $1,734.39
Net sales total: $1,161.75

Feeling some gratitude this week. I was just thinking about how much money I’ve made from eBay and it all started by selling some stuff around the house then taking that money and using it to buy more stuff to sell. I don’t know that I’ve ever used money that I made outside of eBay to fund this business. It’s gotta be one of the best investments you can make if you’re willing to do the work.

I’m glad you made merch because I do not like coffee lol.