The Numbers: June 19-25, 2022

Number one, thanks for keeping the Forum going. I really hope you continue on Ebay and in the Forum.  Next, interesting re the restaurant closure. You already have the fab place Jay dreamed of to connect with people and it’s super successful.  I imagine that you are pretty busy with all of the current balls in the air.  Wondering if you are finding enough quality employees locally to help keep it all in the air.  Miss the podcast guys!

Total Items in Store: 317 – back over 300! 🙂
Items Sold: 6
Gross Sales: $281.81 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $183.16 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $32
Highest Price Sold: $100 (two sets of Flower of the Month Royal Albert tea cups and plates – paid $14)
Average Price Sold: $32
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $65
Number of items listed this week: 37

Sales a bit anemic for how much I started listing the last couple weeks, but I’m taking and making offers to get at least some sales.  I’ve been ignoring my stale old items and not looking at their views. I don’t seem to be able to sort the column by views.  But, I’m thinking I might end and sell similar on those and see if it helps as someone suggested on the Forum.  I should have some good listing time this week, so look forward to that.

A couple of items from the college recycle sale sold, and I paid like .50, which is unheard of pricing around here. I love rummage and church sales the most!  Yard sales definitely take more time and I haven’t been doing that though I would enjoy it.  I’ve caught up on a tiny bit of RA and recent thrifting purchases.  Now need to get another dent going in the piles.

The excitement this week is that we had a leak in the upstairs bathroom above the garage.  The testing is finding all kinds of ’70s hazards so we will gut it soon and part of the reno will be covered by insurance.  Bad news is everything must come out of the garage either this week or next week. That’s all my listed and unlisted inventory, packing materials, etc.  Oof.  Good opportunity to reorganize but lots of chaos.

Wishing you all a great summer week of sales.  Saw the Elvis movie with my daughter and loved it.  We are waiting for the end of Stranger Things.

@christiner You have rummage sales? I haven’t been to one of those for years (a.k.a. jumble sales). Can’t say I miss them. I had to play rugby at school- football was banned- and the experience was about the same, except with old grannies.

No sales this week, 40 quid’s worth last week. Bought a large 3 foot by 2 foot etching in a broken frame from a flea market for £5 thinking it was a Norwegian artist. Turned out to be Bruce Onobrakpeya, Lagos, 1971, retails at around £800 to £1,000 if some professional framer hadn’t framed it with a matt made out of some industrial packing material, which has left a brown ring round the print and over the signature and title.

Yes, yard sales are the way to go now. The thrift store experience is VASTLY different than it was a few years ago. The really fun stuff rarely hits the storeroom floor now and if it does, it is priced high.

I’ve really enjoyed the eclectic selection of stuff I’ve been finding at yard sales this summer. I’m still at capacity even with my prolific listing, so I figure once yard sale season is over I’ll shut down sourcing for a while to get caught up.

I don’t fault auctions or thrift stores for maximizing their income. That’s their job. It’s my job as a scavenger to adapt. If you can’t adapt then might as well exit the game.

That’s the sourcing side. The selling side’s becoming so rule-bound that adapting without considering alternative arrangements becomes difficult. Like this VerpackG nonsense from Germany.

Items in Store 2001
Items Sold 32
Total Sales $1,171.00
COGS $134.00
Total Profit $1,037.00
Average profit $32.41
Average sales price $36.59
New Listings 92
Items scavenged 45
Listing 2022 weekly Avg 50

Now this was a great week.

I’ve been eyeballing my wardrobe storage in my inventory shed this week. Coats/jackets have my worst STR and also have the worst value per sqft of storage rating in my inventory. I plan on being aggressive with my coat pricing this fall and eventually liquidate with $9.99 auctions at the end of the year. The space my coat/jacket inventory takes up would be better served to hold 32 more of my standard bins. How bad is it? My listed coats/jackets are about $50/sq ft inventory space. My average for bins is almost $400/sq ft!!

So…I explained all this to my wife. It was her idea to wait to liquidate until Christmas. So immediately after this conversation where I said I’m getting out of the coat game….I leave a yard sale with 7 coats!!! LOL!  Why did I do this? Because this person had 7 Harley Davidson leather riding jackets for $5 each. These are a special exception because they have a great STR year round and sell for more than $100 each. I just sold a fabric harley davidson pea coat last week that was listed less than 1 week. I’ve sold similar jackets for $200+ before.

So now it is time for the mid-year round up.

First things first, I hit 2k listings! Yay!

Items listed so far 2022: 1294 ( 93.5% increase Year over year)

Items sold:  688 ( 13.5% increase Year over year)

Total Sales:   $24611( 8.5% increase Year over year)

It seems my listing is helping and hopefully will compound in Q4. It will be a real stretch, but I’d love to beat my 2020 abnormally high sales due to my listing push.

I still have a goal to shut down listing and scavenging on Thanksgiving for the year. I’ve done well so far and I think I can push my listing rate to get to 2500 new listings by then. I’ll need to average 60 listings/week from here on out because I also want to take a 2 week vacation in the fall. 20 work weeks left in the year. Let’s do this!!!

I’m blown away by the free shoes sales.  Is that just a NYC thing?  I lived in downtown Washington, DC for several years and don’t recall the same phenomenon there.  Wonder if there are other big cities with that culture.

Had two good scavenging events last week.  Got lucky at an auction for a change and picked up a good amount of quality items for reasonable prices.  Some antique wood planes and post-war era Lionel trains were the highlights.  Then stopped at an Estate Sale and picked up a trunk load for only $71.  Best was a like-new space heater for $20 that I should be able to get $150.  Kept me busy during the week researching and listing.  Still have a lot to list this week.

Sales are still slow for me.  Got busy with life stuff last week and didn’t get to post my numbers, so here are both weeks:

Week Ending           6/18/22           6/25/22
Gross Sales:              $272.38         $203.80
Net Sales:                  $242.95         $165.18
Items eBay Store:         1051               1062
Items Sold eBay:                 5                     6
Items Etsy Store:            246               256
Items Sold Etsy:                   1                   0
Cost of Items Sold:         $65.00         $12.95

Highest Price Sold:         $74.95         $74.95
Average Price Sold:         $45.40         $33.97
Returns:                                         0                 0
New Inventory cost: $168.91          $71.00

New items listed:                 7                         17

I am doing these numbers after enjoying today’s Too Good To Go surprise bag from the local coffee shop a short walk up the street in my small town. My bag contained two scones, two chocolate croissants and a small container of carrot sticks in some kind of sesame dressing, all for $3.99. I don’t eat a lot of sweets or carbs when I’m not obsessed with a new food waste app (thanks J&R, sincerely Craig Rex’s waistline). So I loved to see a savory, healthy snack in there. I can’t imagine the shops or the app make a ton of profit since prices are so low, but I hope everyone makes just enough that this app continues to be widely used.

I had a really nice experience at a library sale late last week as well, lots of good quality items and a very friendly staff. So it’s been a very positive week of a scavenging life even if eBay is still pretty slow.

In contrast to eBay, my consignment sales remain strong. This month was my third consecutive with over $6,000 in consignment sales and the last two months are very close to one another in terms of quantity of items sold and total dollars. Before you get too jealous, those numbers are gross, not net. My monthly profits have been about half that since I pay a fee every time a card is processed and added to my port, and I have sent in a few hundred cards every week for the last 3-4 months, so those $0.50 and $1 charges (sometimes more) really add up. 95% of the cards I’ve sent in over the last few months have been processed by this point, which means I won’t pay as much in processing fees in July but my sales will likely slow down. Stuff that is priced well sells very quickly on COMC, often within minutes. It’s a unique marketplace. Everyone in the trading card world is complaining about how slow sales are on every platform, but I wasn’t selling on consignment last year, so I’m really happy with my sales, and eBay still has its bursts of activity now and then.

@maybel9 had a great post in last week’s thread about ending 10 to 20 items each week to sell similar. I haven’t done that since January, so I’m going to play around with it this week in small batches and will report back.

6/19/2022 – 6/25/2022

Total items in store: 2091 (down from 2123 last week)

Items sold: 34 (22 via best offer, 4 via seller initiated offer, 16 via promoted listings)

Gross sales: $1880.83 (down 43% from one year ago)

Net sales: $1344.73 (down 45% from one year ago)

Average sales price: $55.32 (down 15% from one year ago)

Time spent searching through online auction listings for new trading cards inventory: 11 hours (down from 14 hours last week)

Highest price sold (net): $140.95 — Richard Mentor Johnson 2018 Historic Autographs cut signature

Richard Mentor Johnson was the ninth vice president. I don’t love a lot of the contemporary political trading card sets for a bunch of different reasons. But this oversized autographed “card” is a little piece of Americana. I paid about $50 and listed it for $250. I knew that this would be worth something in that range to the right collector. My buyer had sent an offer a few months back of $150, and I countered to no response. But after I put a 10% public coupon on all my listings last week, the buyer tried again with a $175 offer, and I wasn’t going to haggle over $10 or $20 when things are so slow.

Lowest price sold (net): $11.15 — Pete Pihos 1975 Fleer autograph PSA DNA authenticated

One of the mega card sellers whose auctions I look through every week (in fact that’s next up after I submit this post and drop off this weekend’s mail at the post office) ran a bunch of auctions last year with many multiples of the same item ending at the same day and time, or a day or two apart. I was fortunate enough to win a large quantity of these auctions for $2.27, $3.02, $4.26, prices like that. Every 3 or 4 weeks since, I’ve sold an autograph of Pete Pihos  for $10 to $15. He is an old-time football player who made it to the Hall of Fame in 1970, but he’s not famous enough that I knew that before Googling. I’ve also had quite a few sales of autographs of Red Sox manager Bill Carrigan, and I sold my first signature of the civil rights leader Barbara Jordan this week on the Juneteenth holiday.

Since I had so many duplicates, I also sent some of these autographed items to sell through my consignment port though they sell much slowly there, even though they are also cross-posted to eBay. Before the last few months, I had only ever sold on eBay so it is really interesting to see what sells on different platforms.

So, are you guys planning to add some lunch options to your menu? Did the dinner event last month go well enough to consider opening through the evening?

Week of Jun 19 – 25
Total Items in Store: 1602 eBay, 33 Etsy
Items Sold: 5 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $2 + $0 Commission
Total Sales: $110.02 eBay, $0 Etsy; includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $30 for two framed Lizars hummingbird prints
Average price: $22
Returns: 1 (sent wrong item, will resend correct item, buyer will keep wrong item)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $20
Number of items listed this week: 1

All our visitors have gone home and our family events are over. I will hopefully find time to list again, although my part time job has been busy.

I tried out the Too Good To Go app this weekend. It was $3.99 at an organic food shop for $12 of vegetables that were near their usefulness. I made Guacamole that evening with two avocados I picked up. I grabbed a bunch of soup veggies (turnip, parsnip, shallots, celery) that I plan to use for dinner tonight. The only misstep was some broccoli that really needed to be cooked that evening, but I’ll try for tomorrow night’s dinner. I enjoyed the experience, and I’ll do it again if anything for the novelty of it all.

I did go to a rummage sale on Friday. I wasn’t really finding anything, but then I picked up a couple of things that weren’t front and center and probably missed by others. I’m not planning on any auctions right now since I haven’t been able to list much.

Hi, not sure if anyone remembers me. I used to post 2-3 years ago. I kind of lost my scavenging mojo for awhile, sorted myself out over the pandemic, and now I’m back at it.

Items in Store 384
Items Sold: 32
Total Sales: $1297.19
COGS: ? I sold a mix of stuff I scavenged and stuff we no longer use.  COGS for the stuff I picked was $46
Total Profit $887.32
Avg price per item: $40.54

I’ve had a few really good months of sales. I think it’s a combo of looking at things with a fresh eye and not being precious with the pricing. I’ve been motivated to get my death piles listed and actually see light at the end of the tunnel! I only have 4 more totes to go and I’m 95% done listing everything from the last auction I attended.

@maybel9 had a great post in last week’s thread about ending 10 to 20 items each week to sell similar. I haven’t done that since January, so I’m going to play around with it this week in small batches and will report back.

Thought I would make a separate post about this in case anyone is in need of some inspiration during another week of slow sales. I have tried a new experiment this week where I sorted my listings from oldest to newest, then filtered by price. Then bulk edit, end and sell similar any listings that were older than 2 months and had 0 to 2 watchers, or where I felt the price might be a little high.

So on Monday night I did $19.99 and $29.99 listings, end and sell similar on about 50 listings. On the $29.99 listings I dropped the price to $19.99. I wasn’t going to lower the $19.99 listings any further but I did drop my minimum offer to $10.

One of these listings sold for full price within a few hours, and I received offers on two others which went nowhere but, hey, at least they got an offer.

On Tuesday I did $39.99 listings which I ended and sold similar for $29.99. Again one sold right away, and another the next day through best offers.

I have seen less success with these items selling in the last few days as I’ve moved into end and sell similar on listings priced at $50 and up, but I had nice sales in my store overall. I have found that over the last few months, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays have tended to be my busiest, and I also have a 10% coupon running on all my listings right now. But I’m sure all the “new” listings have been helpful. This has also been a nice break for a few days from the usual listing grind. It will be interesting to see how many of these items sell over the next few weeks and months.

I’ve had some luck as well at garage sales lately. I picked up 7 vintage wrestling shirts last week for 10 cents each (I just gave them a dollar and told them to keep the change lol) and I’ve already sold 3 of them for $220 total!

My community has several “free boxes” that I routinely pick for easy profits.  I don’t know why people sit perfectly good items out instead of selling them but I won’t ask questions lol.

Glad to see you’re still killing it.