The Numbers: Week of December 24-30, 2023

I’m sure you’ll get action on that stuff when you list it on Marketplace. Facebook sales have crept up near 25% of my total online sales over the last year.

Paintings, stereos, lamp shades, Cosco stool, cabinets.
I’m starting to do more crossover listings between eBay and marketplace on items I’d rather not pack.

Total Items in Store: 1,148
Items Sold:  31
Gross Sales: $1,256 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $826 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $201
Highest Price Sold: $130 (4 New plates, paid $27 on clearance 12/23)
Average Price Sold: $41
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $100
Number of items listed this week: 70

Very interesting week on Ebay.  I sold items sourced at the flea market, estate sale, Target, Mercari, Anthropologie, Pottery Barn, a Goodwill bins trip, and various thrifts around town.  I notice what they have in common is they are all quite recently listed.  Makes me wonder some more about staleness and the algorithm.

I also made some interesting connections this week.  I sold a Midcentury figurine (I got for free from a guy at the flea market) to a local dealer with a shop who asked for local pick up.  She wants to meet up for coffee or I can go by her store in the cool gentrified post-industrial part of town.  Sounds fun.  She sells very high end Midcentury Modern.  I also made an offer to fellow Anthropologie flipper for an item I couldn’t get my hands on to complete a set.  We ended up chatting online a bit. She declined my offer. LOL  I won’t pay the prices we charge.

Finally, to my surprise I was quickly accepted as a seller on Niknax, the new Crazy Lamp Lady platform.  They want vintage items 20 years old or older.  To tell the truth I’m not sure exactly why I applied.  I was a bit late to the party and there are now 1600 sellers and 16k items.  I’ll have to take a look and see what kind of stuff sells on there or see if I can find other people who have written reviews or posted about selling on there.  I have zero interest in doing live sales but thought I might piggy back on the popularity of the Youtubers on there.  The subscribers often overpay for items they sell live.  I’ll let you know how the listing experience is if I go forward.  https://district.net/niknax

Over on Mercari, I did a little sourcing.  Under the new function of bundling offers as a buyer, you don’t have the usual 20% off limitation.  I had one offer accepted for half off and combined shipping and I have another out to a different seller.  These are outlet sellers in the middle of the country.  Mercari has been very dead to me in the past year as a seller of our used clothing.  People will like an item that is priced under $10 and still not buy it when you offer or promote.  My daughter wants to try Depop.

Hope everyone has a very happy new year.  I have a lot to do here at the house and some reselling organizing and maintenance to do.  I’m also contemplating what I should be focused on going forward.  Really it’s a little bit of a 2025 plan since I have quite a backlog left.

Items in Store: 2975
Items Sold: 32
Total Sales: $2,025.00
COGS: $163.00
Total Profit: $1,862.00
Average profit: $58.19
Average sales price: $63.28
New Listings: 122
Items scavenged: 24
2023 weekly new listings Avg: 48

Ah well back to the grind today! I had a great holiday at home with the family. I didn’t really do ebay much. I completely renovated a bathroom – that was a job! I played video games with the kids. I took ALOT of naps. I chilled in the hot tub regularly.

I was content with not meeting my lofty listing goal. Then this weekend I got the wild hair to list 100 items in one sitting. My daughter did the photos and I did all the listings. All clothes. She kept  up with me the whole time. Normally she taps out after 10 items, but there was a sweet Kung Fu costume/uniform that was her size she saw in the items she wanted real bad. I told her she could have it if she finished all 100 items. Needless to say, she spent the rest of the day rocking her kung fu outfit. I believe we started around 1:30 and finished up around 5:15. I was IN THE ZONE!

Premium Hoarder update:

I sold 4 items for $900. One of the items was a pair of shoes I sold for $600. It is an interesting sale as the buyer is local in Huntington. They buy alot of high end stuff and do leave the occasional negative so I countered his offer of $500 with $600. He accepted and paid. I was expecting an offer to do local pickup but didn’t get anything. Naturally curious, I checked out the address/name to see who it is and where they are. It’s pretty much the nicest house in the best location in Huntington. The house and the owner’s interior decorating has been featured several times in local papers and magazines.

I have decided to include a thank you card with the shoes along with my personal email if they would like any more items from this collection. I will also point them in the direction of all the hard goods/interior design stuff. It is highly likely this buyer knew the person the collection came from.

Speaking of goals, I hit both of them!

I finished up the winter listing goal with 1123 – 10 over my goal. That puts me at 2510 new listings for the year. I’ve never broken 2000 listings in a year so that is a major upgrade.

I also blew the $70k in gross sales out of the water with $71531.

I had almost $56k in gross sales in the last half of the year. Never in my wildest dreams did I think when I set those summer listing goals in June that things would take off to this level.

$100k in gross sales in 2024 is definitely a possibility. I don’t think I can set that as a goal since I can’t control what sells, but I can set some goals to pave the way for that success. Mainly keep doing what I’m doing – 40+ avg listings per week, keep sourcing $50+ ASP items with good STR.

Clothing and shoes is my biggest sales category by alot.

Clothing and shoes makes up 60-70% of my sales.

I try to balance out my listing – do a bin of clothes, then a bin of shoes, then a bin of misc small trinkets/toys/electronics/games. I want sales coming in from every category to try and balance out my sales. It also keeps things interesting.

@Retro congrats!!!

$1200 is a very solid week!

I was gone most of the week, so the numbers are lower.

Week of Dec 24 – 30
Total Items in Store: 1706 eBay, 35 Etsy
Items Sold: 8 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $6 + $56 Commission
Total Sales: $222.63 eBay, $0 Etsy; includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $100 for Set 12 Santa of the Month Figurines
Average price: $27.80
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 2

My numbers for the week: December 24-30, 2023

Total Items in Store: 687
Items Sold: 21
Gross Sales: $698.18 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $366.63 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $68.90
Highest Price Sold: $40 (Tie between a Lacoste Hoodie and Frame Jeans)
Average Price Sold: $30.48
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $97
Number of items listed this week: 37

$ Amount listed this week: $1158.66

I have noticed a new scam on eBay. This occurs with new or fairly new electronics listings, it’s always electronics. A scammer will buy an item and immediately open a cancellation request. I will accept the cancellation and eBay automatically relists the item for me. Then, the scammer will send me an offer to buy the item for about 25% less than what I am asking and will also ask for free shipping.  The scam is that they are hoping that since this item was recently cancelled that the seller will be motivated to sell the item for less than what is being asked.  I deny the offer as it is obviously a scammer. Passing this along tip to you all.

Happy New Year!  I don’t think I checked in during 2023, time sure is fun when you’re having flies.

Total Items in Store: 3741 listings for 5398 items
Items Sold: 48
Gross Sales: $3802.75 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $2894.24
Cost of Items Sold: $731 ($242 mine / $489 consignors)
$Highest Price Sold: $275 Tweed Chesterfield Overcoat
Average Price Sold: $79.22
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $176
Number of items listed this week: 74

Dec 24-30

Total items in ebay store: 312

Ebay items sold: 4 for $165

Ebay COGs: $9, and consignment payout of $39

Ebay net profit to me: $97.23

FBM store items: 34

FBM items sold:  6 for $227.50  ( actually had someone haggle me in person for 50 cents)

FBM COGs: $0, so all profit.

On ebay the old maxim “they will buy it when they want it, doesn’t matter how cheap it is right now” held true.  I have had an 80s leather patchwork purse up for a year at $52.  It’s been on sale for $25, I had offer of $15, but never got an offer of $25.  Then on Dec. 26, someone bought it full price.

I sourced SO MUCH Dec 27-31. I dropped my daughter off at my parents on Dec 27 and then spent the next few days scavenging the neighborhoods and apartment complexes in my area.   I actually took a lot to Goodwill and SA that I ended up not wanting to list.   They were so full at GW that they were loading the new items directly into a truck to go to the Bins here.

FBM items I sold were a canoe shaped bookcase for $50 (sold overnight); a solid wood skinny desk for $40 within two days (to a local author named Leslie Manning, great YA books), a cornhole set of boards the SAME day for $30, a rug for $50 within five days, and then a trashcan and wall mounted shelves for $57.50.

Things I found for free during “Curb Purge New Year 2024” were a lift-top coffee table, turquoise metal garden chair pair, cherry TV console/entertainment center,  several throw pillows from World Market, boat cushions, pair of bar stools, rattan egg chair, and a white wood dresser.  Those are the items I kept, I actually took a truckload to GW that I didn’t keep.  There is one about five minutes from my house, so it’s easy to drive by and drop.

I’ve sold several items already from my curb purge finds, so those will be in the next set of numbers.   I just completed my 2023 spreadsheet for taxes, and I had NOT kept track of my mileage since I started cruising neighborhoods in July.  So I estimated 3 hours of cruising around at 15 mph for mileage, once a week.    I need to research apps for mileage.

Mostly offline this last week of the year.  Spent time with family and took a short trip up to Philly for a few days.  Ended out the year with a wimper.  Strange statistic from my store.  I sold the exact number of items this year and last: 634.  Hard to imagine that happening, but it did.

Week Ending 12/30/23
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $602.16  (eBay $550 / Etsy $52)
Net Sales: $491.88
Total Items Sold: 13  (eBay 11 / Etsy 2)
Total Items in eBay Store: 1114  / Etsy: 531
Cost of Items Sold: $41.06

Highest Price Sold: $225.00
Average Price Sold: $46.32
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Sold via promoted listings: 8

Average Days Listed: 323
Longest Listed: 1317
New items listed: 0
New Listings Value $0.00