The Numbers: Week March 17-23, 2024

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- 03/28/2024 at 8:38 am #102702
  Jay
  Keymaster
  Location: Virginia
  @jay
  Normal week for us on eBay. On Sunday (not reflected in these numbers), we sold $400 of some fancy plates. Dishes and china are difficult to store and
  [See the full post at: The Numbers: Week March 17-23, 2024]
- 03/28/2024 at 9:34 am #102704
  Retro Treasures WV
  Participant
  Location:
  @retro-treasures-wv
  Items in Store: 2976
  Items Sold: 33
  Total Sales: $1,962.00
  COGS: $223.00
  Total Profit: $1,739.00
  Average profit: $52.70
  Average sales price: $59.45
  New Listings: 18
  Items scavenged: 28
  2024 weekly new listings Avg: 36
  2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,600.17
  2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 36
  2024 ASP $44.66
  2024 projected total sales $83,208.67
  
  This week was pretty busy. I had to catch up on shipping in the first half of the week which took up alot of time. Baseball season kicked off with practices and it’s gonna be quite time consuming with 5 kids playing this year. I was hoping to hit my 40 listings but my daughter laid an egg and only photographed 12 items this weekend. I had over 50 items ready for photos… Oh well, I’ll just have to make up for it this week.
  
  I gotta say, the current state of inflation and the absolute UNHINGED state of real estate prices in my area have got me bummed. I got a raise at work, my ebay business is cooking, and yet there is no way I can afford to move to a bigger house. The houses big enough for my family are now selling for $500k. These same houses were selling for $325k just a year ago and $250k in 2020 pre covid. Combine that with the interest rates and well, we’re gonna get pretty resourceful to keep making our 3BR house work.
  
  It just sucks to know I’m making more money than ever and can’t do anything with it. Could I make it work between my day job salary and my ebay business? Yes. Can I justify locking myself down to a $3k a month mortgage payment? NO! If something happens that impacts my earning that would be very bad.
  
  I still have on the table doing a home addition that I’ve previously drawn up. Doing that would still be cheaper than moving with current rates and prices and I’d have a house big enough for everyone to fit. Still not cheap though…
  
  Premium Hoarder update:
  
  Sold 10 items for $1256. I sold 4 pair of shoes this week and was getting inquiries on other pairs. I suspected more would sell once spring sprung and it seems that is the case. I hope to sell a bunch more over the next 2 months! I’m at $20k PROFIT now on the hoarder collection.
  
  A pair of shoes I sold last week – Gucci Soccer Cleats – went through the ebay authentication process. This is one of the first pair I listed from the collection and I was a bit skeptical of the authenticity at the time. They were in the sporting goods category and got pulled into the authentication process after I listed it. Knowing all I know now, I knew these were authentic and just as suspected I passed the authenticity check no problem.
  
  It just really surprised me when I first started on this collection that just because something is high end designer and super expensive does not always mean the items are on an order of magnitude higher quality than “normal people” high quality items.
  - 03/28/2024 at 10:17 am #102705
    Jay
    Keymaster
    
    Location: Virginia
    @jay
    You and we are in the same general area I think. 2-3 hours from DC. The secret is out about how cheap houses were in our area. Even $500k is cheap compared to prices in NOVA. You’d need to move further into WV to get cheaper real estate.
    
    Building new or adding into your current house is the play.
- 03/28/2024 at 12:41 pm #102706
  Sharyn
  Participant
  Location: Central NJ
  @sharyn
  Retro – I’m with Jay. Go for the addition. It will increase the value of your house as well as providing room for your very large family.
  
  Week of Mar 17 – 23
  Total Items in Store: 1643 eBay, 28 Etsy, 43 Ruby Lane
  Items Sold: 9 eBay, 0 Etsy, 0 Ruby Lane
  Cost of Items Sold: $0 + $90 Commission
  Total Sales: $249.63 eBay
  Highest Price Sold: Tie-ish eBay $55 Gold Chain Necklace with Unknown Pendant & $54 Skechers DLites Sneakers Women
  Average price: $27.74
  Returns: 1
  Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
  Number of items listed this week: 8
- 03/28/2024 at 2:08 pm #102707
  craig rex
  Participant
  Location: south jersey
  @craig-rex
  Had a crazy good week, with 36 sales from a 200 item store, even though I didn’t create a single new listing last week! There is always an element of luck with eBay. But I have started to master an important skill within my main niche — listing individual cards when the market is at its peak and pricing my listings so they sell. Last week, I sold 5 cards of one player to 3 different buyers and 9 cards of another player to 2 different buyers. It would have been a solid week without those sales but it was a great week with them, and I had multiple copies of some of the sold cards so I have already listed them again.
  
  Barring some kind of crazy buying spree in the next few days, this was my slowest month of consignment sales since October. But you can either complain or think about your processes when things slow down. I chose to get more analytical about the different ways I can sell through consignment, so I tightened my belt in terms of buying for flipping purposes and I started their live auctions and taking notes. These live auctions run 8 hours a day, and each item starts at $0.99 with 15 seconds live bidding and 10 second extensions when someone bids. This wasn’t the main reason why I didn’t list on eBay last week, but it was part of it. I felt like this research was important. Previously, I had been sending old inventory to live auctions (the fee is $1.50 to $2.00 and there are a limited number of slots in each sport) and taking whatever I can get, even if it was the $0.99 opening bid. But after a week of taking notes on the live auctions, I’ve completely changed up my strategy. Certain cards sell for more than you’d expect, and others sell for less than they’re worth. Different hosts focus on different areas. This is a pretty typical lesson of arbitrage — things will sell for different prices on different platforms. Educate yourself and maximize profits with the same amount of work.
  
  I assume this is what the rest of my year will look like in terms of reselling on consignment, and I’m excited for it. In terms of eBay, I expect that oddball items will become a larger part of my inventory as I continue to reorganize my inventory space and figure out what I like to sell and what I don’t. I have a few bins of autographed sports and historical memorabilia to get listed in April. But first, more spring cleaning with some card listings. It’s long overdue. I never had time for these big picture things as I was building my business. There were always too many day to day tasks and not enough money in my bank account. I’m happier where my business is at now.
  
  3/17/2024 to 3/23/2024
  
  Items in store: 181
  
  Items sold: 36 — 23 via best offer, 3 via seller initiated offer, 25 via promoted listings
  
  Gross sales: $1664.66 (up 1.6% from one year ago)
  
  Net sales: $1113.93 (up 0.5% from one year ago)
  
  Average sales price: $46.24 (down 40% from one year ago)
  
  Highest price sold (net): $135.04— TJ Watt Steelers 2018 Panini Rewards cracked ice autograph #10/10
  
  Lowest price sold (net): $9.60 — Jimmy Carter 1977 presidential inauguration parade tickets
  
  I don’t know much about presidential collectibles but picked up a small pile of tickets like this for about $10. Then tossed them on a shelf where they sat for a year. Got them listed a few months back and this one sale basically covers the lot. Get some of those death pile items listed folks!!
  - 03/29/2024 at 5:55 pm #102711
    Jay
    Keymaster
    
    Location: Virginia
    @jay
    Had a crazy good week, with 36 sales from a 200 item store, even though I didn’t create a single new listing last week!
    
    Wow. You only have 200 items in your eBay store?! Assume you keep the store small because all your card inventory is at consignment + you don’t have storage for any other kind of inventory?
    - 03/30/2024 at 3:15 pm #102718
      craig rex
      Participant
      
      Location: south jersey
      @craig-rex
      
      Wow. You only have 200 items in your eBay store?! Assume you keep the store small because all your card inventory is at consignment + you don’t have storage for any other kind of inventory?
      
      186 items to be exact. I’d be lying if I said I totally planned it this way. It’s been a combination of things. I ran anywhere between 250 and 500 auctions every month last year. After I finished shipping the auctions, I’d go through the unsold to remove any slow movers and add those cards to my next consignment shipment. So that’s a big part of how I’ve whittled my eBay store down from 500 listings to 200 over the last year and 2000 to 200 over the last two years.
      
      But I’ve listed about 15 new items in the last three days. Started tackling some death piles. Hoping to keep it up!
      
      I have one normal sized bedroom with all my eBay stuff which has always been a real mess. I don’t know about anyone else. But that’s been my scavenging life. You should have seen it after my Chicago trip last year when I bought all those bulky classical music box sets. Just boxes stacked and piled everywhere. Probably a fire hazard. It looked like Tetris in real life. But I got everything shipped home. I got it all listed. Most of it sold for the prices I expected. I made money on the trip. A great experience. 10/10, will do again soon.
      
      But the trip made me keenly aware of my mess. I couldn’t deal with it right away. I needed to focus on buying and selling in Q4 like anyone else who sells things online, then I spent a lot of January working on my consignment pipeline and learned a ton. Most of all, I needed a plan.
      
      There are a lot of small boxes stacked up underneath my desk and on shelves and in corners. I buy a 20 card lot for one valuable card and then stick the other 19 in a box. They’re not worth dealing with when there are so many other valuable cards. But my business is all about buying and selling. So the purchases keep coming. Eventually clutter piles up. One of the hazards of my line of work!
      
      I’ve been pretty motivated to start to deal with this over the last few months. Best part — in all this clutter, occasionally I’ve come across cards which should have a home — either my curated card lots, or I send the card to consignment and sell it for a few bucks. Sometimes more than a few bucks. Get all this organized and I have an easy system in place as long as I keep up on it. It’s pretty motivating.
      
      It’s not only card clutter. I have a few shelves with my other listed inventory and a few random boxes and bins and piles of unlisted stuff in various spots on the floor. I get the good items and the weird items listed, but it’s not organized well and I have a lot of unlisted unvaluable stuff. A lot of the floor stuff might best be described as “things I should donate.” That’s probably my project for mid-late April.
      
      But this feels. It’s my first ever spring cleaning of my business. It’s nice to have the flexibility to tackle these things in a way that works for me, and doesn’t feel stressful or like it’s too much.
      
      I don’t think I will consistently hit $1000/week, or sell 36 items/week, with a 200 item store. I’m just not sure it is possible. But my weekly consignment take-home has been the same or more than my eBay take-home for the last six months. So I have the space to think about this bigger picture stuff, and if I have a down week on eBay or nothing sells for a couple days — no big deal!
      
      Very different problems from when I first started selling full-time with no other jobs two and a half years ago (time flies!) or when I was selling on the side while working dead-end job after dead-end job. But I like these problems now and it’s exciting to think about the future of my business after my very long overdue spring cleaning.
      - 04/01/2024 at 9:09 am #102730
        
        Jay
        Keymaster
        
        Location: Virginia
        @jay
        
        It is really exciting to see that consignment income is now your “base pay” and eBay sales can be your “bonus”.
        
        The fact that you sold 36 out of 181 items means you are selling lots of best sellers. $1113.93 on such a small inventory is amazing. Hats off!
        
        There was another scavenger on here several years ago that hated inventory that sat in his store. He had a whole system where he would lower the price over time and eventually move everything after x days Is this your plan too?
- 03/29/2024 at 8:21 pm #102712
  ChristineR
  Participant
  Location: Southern California
  @christiner
  Net Sales: $165.38 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
  Cost of Items Sold: $45
  Highest Price Sold: $44 (Royal Albert tea cup set)
  Average Price Sold: $40.38
  Returns: 1 ($25)
  
  <li style=”text-align: left;”>Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $125
  Number of items listed this week: 5
  
  Well, it is high time to start listing in earnest. A lot is going on and I’ve been neglecting Ebay. Had a wonderful trip and the sourcing was fun but competitive. I had major cart envy. The garage is quite hoarderish and I have some other family and fundraising obligations this week but it’s raining this weekend and I plan to dig in on listing.
  - 03/30/2024 at 11:03 am #102716
    ChristineR
    Participant
    
    Location: Southern California
    @christiner
    LOL above post is me being interrupted. @Craig you really seem to have things dialed in. You must be super good at pricing too. I really need to adopt that strategy. My high prices are not working well anymore, particularly when I’m not consistently listing.
    - 03/30/2024 at 3:37 pm #102719
      craig rex
      Participant
      
      Location: south jersey
      @craig-rex
      
      Hey, Christine. You’ve had some great weeks the last couple months and did a lot of grinding to get your store up near 1000 listings. Don’t let the slow spring season get you silly.
      
      But I hear ya on the pricing thing. It’s a double-edged sword, I overprice some inventory which sits forever and undersell other items. Got a whopper of a story about that for next week!!!
      
      Tomorrow is the last day of March. Probably going to be a slow weekend because of Easter but maybe send out some 20% or 25% watchers to buyers. Or maybe 10% to 15% if it’s an item you have on sale like your oranges towel. Picked that one specifically because it has 21 watchers. Watcher doesn’t always mean buyer but with a little work, you can get a $20 item with a lot of watchers to sell soon. With the low dollar items, my move has become after 1-3 months, send it to auction at half my BIN and if it sells, at least it’s gone. You have free collectibles auction listings too. But a 15% offer on an item that’s already 25% off would probably get one of those watchers to bite. Sure, 40% off “feels” like too much, but who cares once those towels are a decoration in someone’s Florida condo.
      
      You can also wait for the right buyer to come along and click your BIN, which feels great but when that’s not happening for me, I like to pull all these different selling levers to see what happens. Stuff will still sell if you do nothing. But auctions, end/sell similar and 25 to 40% discounts to watchers feels like you’re doing everything you can. Especially when there’s no time or motivation to create new listings.
- 03/31/2024 at 10:52 am #102724
  ChristineR
  Participant
  Location: Southern California
  @christiner
  Hi Craig, I send offers and set automatic offers on everything EBay lets me every day. However, in the past I’ve just been setting an offer from buyer, sale discount, and offers to watchers all at 20% max.
  
  Those curtains I paid only pennies for. For efficiency, I’ve just been using the highest 2 year Terapeak price and doing the 20% off one way or another. All or nothing no matter what I paid for something. I don’t really have the storage to continue that though. Perhaps I will take more advantage of the itemized sake feature but I think I would do better paying more attention to the sell through rate and original pricing. I feel like EBay made tweaks along the way that make you need to price it right out of the gate.
- 03/31/2024 at 2:26 pm #102725
  ChristineR
  Participant
  Location: Southern California
  @christiner
  PS. I haven’t had good luck at all with auctions in the past. I haven’t ended and sold similar in a long time. However, I am closing in on the 1000 basic store listings so I don’t want to incur .25 fees to do so.
  
  Our dads have both been hospitalized in the past couple of weeks. I’m a bit distracted by wanting to try some live selling and learning about that… I have sold a few items on the District platforms and went to a few estate and rummage sales in the past couple of months. I even went to the bins yesterday with my daughter because she’s on spring break and wanted to go prom dress shopping down there… So I’m all over the place. Lots going on outside Ebay. I’m opening my mind to being a multi-channel seller. I hope this week (and month) I am able to focus better and think about strategy more.
  
  At least I got the taxes done! It was a good time to reflect on what’s done well on Ebay while working on my COGS.
  
  Overall, I have a LOT of sourcing available to me, so I really should focus on the mantra “better to get some of the money all of the time than all of the money some of the time.”
- 03/31/2024 at 3:53 pm #102727
  Sharyn
  Participant
  Location: Central NJ
  @sharyn
  @ChristineR –
  
  If you have a basic store, then you actually have more than 1000 listings. Here is what the selling limit page says:
  
  Basic Store package Up to 1,000 fixed price + up to 250 auction-style
  + an additional 10,000 fixed pricing listings in select categories (see below)
  
  I’ve cut and pasted the select categories are below. I think you have quite a number of listings in the collectables group. These do NOT count towards your 1000 limit.
  
  If you want to find how many listings you have left towards your 1000, the best time is to look at the last day of the month (today!!). Go to the mobile app, click on selling on the bottom right, and then scroll down to the bottom. I’ve pasted in my screen from today at the bottom of this post. It shows I have 97 remaining on the last day of the month. Tomorrow, it will go back to 1000 and start counting down. I do not know where to find this information on the website.
  
  Sports Mem, Cards & Fan Shop > Sports Trading Cards
  Toys & Hobbies > Collectible Card Games
  Collectibles
  Music
  Books
  Movies & TV
  Video Games & Consoles > Video Games
  Stamps
  Crafts
  Home & Garden > Greeting Cards & Party Supply > Party Supplies
  
  https://imgur.com/a/sJVgxG0
- 04/01/2024 at 8:51 am #102728
  ChristineR
  Participant
  Location: Southern California
  @christiner
  Thanks so much Sharon! Unfortunately I am just seeing this post on the first, but I’ll see if I can figure out another way to see what I have left. I totally forgot about that collectibles exclusion.
  - 04/01/2024 at 10:43 am #102737
    Sharyn
    Participant
    
    Location: Central NJ
    @sharyn
    Whenever you have an item that could be in a couple of different categories, chose collectables if it applies. I have almost 1650 items in my store, but yet it said I had over 90 remaining at the end of the month.
    
    I’m going to ask eBay for Business on how to find that information. I looked in all sorts of pages online, but couldn’t find it.
  - 04/01/2024 at 11:32 am #102739
    Sharyn
    Participant
    
    Location: Central NJ
    @sharyn
    Actually, eBay for Business got back to me real quick!!! Click on “my eBay”, and scroll down to the bottom. There is a section “Promotional Offers” that gives you the same information as the mobile app. Now you have to set an alarm for April 30 to check your numbers!
    
    I have another idea to help you figure it out:
    
    To check the number of items you have in the collectable category, go to “Manage Active Listings”, select “eBay categories” first and “collectables” second, and then click on search. Under “results”, it will show you how many items are there. I have 563.
    
    To get a full count, select all the categories I pasted above and then click search. Note that some of these in the list are subcategories, but aren’t really listed as such. For example, in the books & magazines category, you should only select the books subcategory. I got 654, which matches what I saw on the mobile app yesterday.
    
    That should give you an idea of how many of your items are counted towards your 1000.
- 04/01/2024 at 11:31 am #102738
  ChristineR
  Participant
  Location: Southern California
  @christiner
  Good call. Honestly, since I am listing sell similar and they didn’t carry over item specifics until recently, I wasn’t paying enough attention to the category. Occasionally, I will look up and realize the category I’m copying from is no good.
- 04/01/2024 at 1:01 pm #102743
  ChristineR
  Participant
  Location: Southern California
  @christiner
  I have over 250 in collectibles to play with. I may end some items too and move them to the district platform, which is pretty fast to do.
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