The Numbers: Week of December 10-16, 2023

Total Items in Store: 1147
Items Sold: 40
Gross Sales: $1,138.88 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $634.67 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $160
Highest Price Sold: $140 (8 new Christmas dishtowels)
Average Price Sold: $35.59
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $185 (RA and flea market)
Number of items listed this week:  38

Busy week of Ebay hustling, running sales, making offers, shipping.  ASP was ok, all things considered. Lower than I’d like.  Hoping for a good day – last day for guaranteed priority.

Thinking about my 2024 strategies and will use the slow time to reorganize.  If I’m lucky my college son will agree to get rid of some stuff in his closet so I can make a little more storage…

Hey Jay – the title for your Dec 10-16 has Dec 3-8 instead (dup of last week’s title).

I haven’t been listing for a few weeks, and it shows. I have created listings, and I’ve copied in photos, but just haven’t done the last bit of checking the details and adding in measurements. Just busy with the part time job and life in general.

Week of Dec 10 – 16
Total Items in Store: 1714 eBay, 35 Etsy
Items Sold: 13 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $40 + $47 Commission
Total Sales: $283.02 eBay, $0 Etsy; includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $44 Gorham Sterling Silver Christmas Ornament
Average price: $21.77
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0

Week Ending 12/16/23
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $1,130.20  (eBay $721 / Etsy $410)
Net Sales: $955.90
Total Items Sold: 24  (eBay 14 / Etsy 10)
Total Items in eBay Store: 1154 / Etsy 564

Cost of Items Sold: $80.32
COGS Percent: 8.40%
Highest Price Sold: $250.00  (Antique knife)
Average Price Sold: $47.09
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00

Sold via promoted listings: 8
Average Days Listed: 372
Longest Listed: 1832
New items listed: 16
New Listings Value $505.20

Another week of higher-than-average numbers.  Last week was the highest number of items sold for the year, but this week one-upped last week with 24.  Almost 1/3 of the sales were for items I just posted in the last 2 weeks. Always nice to see the quick turn-a-round.

My big $250 sale was for an antique knife that I purchased from an estate sale for $6.36.  It was covered in surface rust and looking pretty bad.  Thankfully, it cleaned up nice and turned out to be a fairly rare German make, Frederich Herder.  I originally asked $500, but after a few months of very low ball offers and lowering the price to $350, I jumped on the $250 offer without hesitation.

My one return was for the typewriter I wrote about in last week’s post.  Not technically a return, but a refund of $125 might as well be.

Thinking I will run a sale for the last two weeks of the year.  I posted a lot of ornaments this year and still have quite a few left after the Christmas rush.

Happy Holidays to all.

@Jay – Wondering if you meant $250 for the car instead of $25.  Assume so, since your average sale was almost $42.

When it comes to returns I give the buyer the benefit of a doubt. If it’s obvious we screwed up or the item arrived damaged or missing parts I offer some form of a refund. Most buyers are thrilled to get 25% – 50% off the item in exchange for them keeping an item even if something isn’t quite what they expected it to be. On the very rare occasion that I call BS on what the buyer is saying then I just tell them we have free returns and to please send the item back. More than half the time the BSers never return the item. Luckily model train customers seem to be some of the easiest customers to deal with on eBay that I’ve encountered in the almost 19 years I’ve been on the platform. We had over 3,000 transactions this year and I think I got maybe 3-4 returns and almost all of those have been the last 2 months. Christmas shopping does seem to bring out the fussy buyers.

My Store Week December 10-16, 2023

Total Items in Store: 751
Items Sold: 24
Gross Sales: $869.70 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $458.16 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $113.26 (higher than usual due to selling an expensive necklace that was never gifted).
Highest Price Sold: $95 (Vintage Ski Suit)
Average Price Sold: $36.24
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $44.98
Number of items listed this week: 21

$ Amount listed this week: $723.81

Just trying to make it through Christmas.  I probably won’t be able to list consistently like I have been doing in weeks past until the New Year, but doing what little I can. There is a brand-new consignment shop that opened up down the street that is EMPTY and buying clothes.  It’s a perfect excuse to comb through my inventory and sell off some of the cheaper and older goods as well as do a full inventory cleanup and consolidate my bins for next year. I already found a few things that have mysteriously unlisted… also things I intentionally unlisted and never pulled. I’m continuing to slowly get rid of lower priced and older items (that have zero views even after tweaking prices and titles and have been sitting for a few years). Happy to sell these items for a few bucks in cash and clear them out of my store. It does take a lot of time though, but that will be my main focus this upcoming week. Hope you all have a great week!

Items in Store: 2887
Items Sold: 52
Total Sales: $4,038.00
COGS: $370.00
Total Profit: $3,668.00
Average profit: $70.54
Average sales price: $77.65
New Listings: 43
Items scavenged: 30
2023 weekly new listings Avg: 46

Yeah baby! That’s a monster week! I sold 3 pair of hoarder shoes for a total of $2050 over a 24 hour period at the beginning of the week – all different buyers. The highest price pair was an offer of $750. I REALLY wanted to hit $800 sales price, but that’s just a vanity goal. I much more wanted the sale. It wasn’t worth risking the sale for $50. They hit me right in that perfect offer zone – good for the buyer! Also, I love auto payment. It gives me so much more confidence on these higher priced items when it comes to offers knowing the money is definitely coming in.

Listing wise, I started strong but finished with a whimper. I have soooo much on my mind with some non-ebay stuff that I just couldn’t focus on ebay. I’m off work from the day job next week. Shipping has been SUPER annoying and has eaten up alot of my time. While I’m going to end up close to 1500 sales on the year, I’ve shipped over 1000 items since the summer started. That’s a ton of shipping!

My fall listing goal was 1113 listings and I’m at 965. I’ll definitely break 1000 listings since 9/1, but I just don’t know if I have it in me to do 148 more. I do have a draft bank of 35 items that just need photos so that will get me off to a good start this week.

Will I hit the goal? I don’t know. My work space AND storage is an absolute mess. Maybe I should spend my time organizing so I can start the new year strong? I’ll just wing it – what gets done gets done. I may just do nothing and spend my mornings chilling in the hot tub watching youtube reseller videos like I did yesterday instead of working.

I just have to average $1130 the last 2 weeks to hit $70k gross sales thanks to this awesome week. I’m at $500 gross 2.5 days into this week so looking pretty good! It would be awesome to hit $70k goal this week and just call next week my “christmas bonus” and do something crazy/frivolous with the profit from next week with my family.

Premium Hoarder update:

I sold 15 items for $2891 this week. ‘Tis a monumental improvement over last week. I rocketed right past $10k in profit and am now at $11k profit. I still have plenty of shoes to list, and more than plenty clothes to list.

I likely won’t be on here to do numbers next week other than the occasional reply, I’ll see you all next year! Merry Christmas!

Oh wow, I have had some BAD customers this month. Rude, unreasonable, outright dishonest, and just plain dumb as dirt.

it only takes a couple bad apples to really make you start to dislike all apples. After dealing with a straight up MORON who left me a negative feedback this evening, I took time to read through a page of positive feedbacks. While I have had a few crap customers, I’ve had a TON of straight up awesome customers.

so if you ever get frustrated dealing with a bad Apple like I did tonight – don’t dwell on it. Block them – and go read some positive reviews. I feel so much better.

dwell on the positives, deal with and move on from the negatives.