The Numbers: Week August 11-17, 2024

Aug 11-17, 2024
Total Items in Store: 4468 listings for 6900 items
Items Sold: 61
Gross Sales: $5048.98 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $3830.94
Cost of Items Sold: $806 ($258 mine / $548 consignors)
Highest Price Sold: $450 Anderson Sheppard Jacket (found a few days earlier for $7.50)
Average Price Sold: $82.77
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $382
Number of items listed this week: 112

My store is predominantly best offer, largely promoted between 3-8% with storewide Buy 1 Get 1 Half Off and Buy 2 Get 1 Free promos running all the time, both with bonus FREE shipping. I send offers to watchers often throughout the day usually 10-15% off with some type of verbiage about the promos like ” Offers Welcome! Click/tap “the-seam-store” to see our full selection. Want a quick deal? Check out our Buy 1 Get 1 50% off and Buy 2 Get 1 Free promos.T&Cs apply. Thanks for supporting our small business.” or  “Don’t miss out on a FREE item! If you’d like to take advantage of our Buy 2 get 1 FREE promo, DECLINE THIS OFFER and use the “ADD TO CART” option to add 3 items to your cart. Discount applied at checkout. T&Cs apply.  

I also had a crappy week, about half of what I did last week, and I have a rare return on top of that.

I haven’t listed much for the past few weeks, but I did this week. I would have had 12 more listed, but I decided to schedule them out for the next two weeks. My parents will be visiting, so I won’t be able to list much. At least my store will look alive to the eBay algorithms.

My high sale was for a flatware set that I could not fully identify. The markings appeared to be for the Food Network, but it didn’t match exactly. My guess is that their logo changed over the years, and this set was older. It still sold in just a few weeks, and I wonder if they match the buyer’s set or they were just close enough.

Week of Aug 11 – 17
Total Items in Store: 1749 eBay, 37 Etsy
Items Sold: 6 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $11 + $0 Commission
Total Sales: $123.73 eBay
Highest Price Sold: eBay $42 for 48 Pc Set Flatware Stainless
Average price: $20.62
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 27

Items in Store: 3121
Items Sold: 40
Total Sales: $2,366.00
COGS: $268.00
Total Profit: $2,098.00
Average profit: $52.45
Average sales price: $59.15
New Listings: 31
Items scavenged: 4
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 38
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,530.88
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 33
2024 ASP $46.43
2024 projected total sales $79,605.70

Oh yeah we are cooking now! I broke out my talk on promoted listings to a separate thread. Good stuff – go check it out.

https://www.scavengerlife.com/forums/topic/promoted-listings-my-results-with-trying-new-percentages/

The big push I had listing all of that retro toy haul has paid off. I’m close to $500 in sales already from that $200 buy. Man I’m glad I didn’t let that stuff sit anymore.

So I have an interesting project going on this week. My older kids did a yard sale at their grandma’s house last weekend and this past weekend. They made…$0 the first week and $15 this past week. Ouch!

They are wanting to save up a bunch of money to do a bigger haunted house this year, and to have money for the anime convention they go to in October each year.

They were dedicated, punctual, and did all the work themselves at those yard sales. I’m very proud of their efforts even if it didn’t pan out. I’ve always said that if you are able to make good money at a yard sale then you are REALLY leaving money on the table (for people like me!). I made an offer to my older kids this week. I have a wardrobe full of coats and suits that I’ve let sit for years unlisted. I want it all listed now. If they can do all the work and get the 60 items in that wardrobe listed this week I will pay them $2 per listing AND 10% of the sales price for every sold item. The 10% commission is contingent on all the listings getting done this week.

My daughter already had an email account from a past attempt to get her into creating listings for me. If you haven’t tried it, ebay lets you assign different privileges to “authorized users” so you can let employees or helpers only have access to certain parts of your store. In this case I gave them access to creating drafts and terapeak access. You can also grant a helper access to printing shipping labels among other things. They can do all the work with drafts but cannot make any listings live.

Anyways, they did 7 items yesterday and they asked good questions. Will they actually finish the job? Eh, stay tuned! I don’t think they will unless I really push them (which I DON’T want to do!) If they can get this done then I’ll have 2 helpers capable of doing complete listings. I have a TON of bread n butter clothing that I could put them on. This could be a game changer for my business. Hopefully they can keep it going.

Sourcing this week was ‘meh’. Just a couple items at yard sales.  I’ve sworn off thrift stores for the time being. Yard sales are winding down so I won’t get much more from them. That’s ok though, because I have to really hit the listing. Once yard sales are officially done I will go back to a once a week thrift store check for high dollar items.

Premium Hoarder update:

Sold 12 items for $1587.

It’s about time to list some more boxed new shoes as I’ve cleared out a bit of space in my inventory shed on the premium shoe shelves. I’ll try to get 10 more pair listed this week. I am back to doing a couple of the hoarder clothing items at lunch time at work.

Total Items in Store: 1123
Items Sold: 10
Gross Sales: $216 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $87 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $15
Highest Price Sold: $48 (Scandinavian art glass bowl)
Average Price Sold: $36
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $85
Number of items listed this week: 6

Terrible week on Ebay.  I did get back to listing the RA items.  My daughter is slowly moving over to her apartment.  First night as an empty nester tonight.  It’s just me and the doggo.

Speaking of dogs, the flea market was cancelled due to hosting the dog show, so I didn’t dump the clothing. However, I decided to try the vintage pop up in their new location.  It went fairly well and it was a smaller and more curated group of sellers in a nicer space adjacent to the vintage mall.  I cleared about $350 after rent and mostly it was all smalls, largely art.  Decent traffic, many young people.  I’m probably going to sell there again next Saturday because I’m hoping for overflow traffic from the nearby Pride Festival.  Then this Thursday I’m taking clothing and some awkward items to the flea.  Hoping to unload some bulk there.  It’s good quality but not trendy cool stuff.  I have some organizing to do before Thursday but I also plan to get back on track with Ebay listing. I’m overdue for an end and sell similar.  I have promoted at 4%, except clothing at 9%, but it looks like 6.9% average on my Ebay report.

The new antique mall is struggling a bit – due to it’s large size and off the main drag location mainly – and the organizer said he would take some high end smalls from me on consignment.  We haven’t talked about the terms yet, but I might take him up on that possibly.  It would get some unlisted breakable things out of my garage.  I need to see what his terms are and think about what makes sense in the space.  Hm.

Hope we all do better on Ebay this week.  Normally Septemeber – November are great for me, but I have much fewer new items in my store this year so we will see.

PS.  I made a new friend in a guy running an estate sale near my house.  I was selling on day one at the market, so I went on “blow out day”.  They had some art left by listed artists (they had an expert come through and help with pricing so it was still there).  Bigger than I would prefer to deal with but and I talked him way down because he started at half price and I was ready to leave without it.  He sells at the oldest antique mall in the main drag with the cheapest rent so we gossiped about malls and such.  Now I have to decide whether to use their Trader Joes enchilada sauce that’s quite past the expiration date.

Aug 11-17
Items in ebay store: 434
Items in FBM: 60+
Ebay items sold: 7
Ebay net after fees: $160
FBM items sold: 14
FBM net after fees: $685

Total items sold: 15
Total COGs: $19
Total profit: $ $826
————–
Some things I scavenged for free and sold on FBM last week were:
– 14 patio cushion set for $120
– 10 patio cushion set for $60
– Pouf ottoman for $20
– Two seater folding chair with umbrella for $30
– Box of gerbil pet supplies and toys for $25
– Two fold-flat Lexus 3rd row car seats for $130
– Two vtg 70s Chromecraft chairs for $100 ( I paid $7 at a SA for these)
– Faux side table cat litter box for $40
– Vintage plastic Syroco shelf and candle holders for $40
– Vintage 80s black vase for $25

Total miles driven for work/scavenging in my local area: 293.3

Shout-out to Retro for recommending the Everlance mileage tracker in January. I classify my trips everyday and realize this is my biggest expense!

My goal for last week was $100 profit a day, and I met it! I have a lower goal this week of $50 a day, as I am traveling for four days to NC and won’t be able to meet up with people to sell on FBM. So I will focus on scavenging. My twin sister from Belgium has bought a house in NC and I am driving my truck up with free furniture finds to help furnish it for an AirBnB, and eventually we’ll get to live in the same town together.

My twin created an Instagram “thrifting”page – the Instagram page is “thriftshifttwins” aka Thrift Shift Twins. She posts items she finds around Brussels and mine from SC. She is pretty good at Instagram. She also has a grocery business in Europe called “American Groceries Europe” where she imports containers of shelf stable American items and sells at high markups. Check out our Instagram page – we aren’t selling anything, it’s more a way to communicate to each other what we find weekly.

This week I scavenged a World Market console table that is 72” long and is currently on sale for $399, so I plan to list at $200 when I get back from my trip. I have a second wood and metal console table to list too, as well as two amazing rugs I picked up on Sunday from a house. One is a vintage Tabriz and the other is a vintage Ralph Lauren brand. I listed the RL one for $4500 on ebay just to hear from some trolls/buyers and get a better idea of value. I also listed the rug on FB’s “What’s My Rug” group too. People post multiple times a day. Basically “rug porn”.

Items in Store: 15,467
Items Sold: 144 (Up 10.8% from previous week)
Total Sales: $1,439.08 (Up 24.1% from previous week)
Net Sales: $921.88 (Up 23.6% from previous week)
Average Sales Price: $9.99 (Up 12% from previous week)
Cost Of Goods Sold: Roughly $125
Number of Items Listed: 210

Good week for me, It helps to sell a $90 shirt and had someone come through and buy 7 hats in one order. I started sales on my store and it seems to have really helped multiple quantity orders. Yesterday I had someone buy about 30 patches for $165. They were patches I bought from a guy set up like a flea market at a gas station. I got about 1,000 patches for $250 and the great thing is there were multiple quantities of them so they’ve been recurring income from the same listings for months. I’ve easily made $1,000 profit and still have many more to sell.

It seems like maybe the beginning of the end of summer slow down is here. I hope Q4 is a good one, I’d like to throw a bunch of much money into my 4.2% savings account while I can still get that rate 🙂

Kept tracking of my daily listings last week for the first time in a long time (maybe ever), and it was definitely a nice little motivator for a few days! 86 new listings is double, maybe even triple, my usual weekly numbers. I haven’t been nearly as motivated to list this week, so we’ll see if I keep tracking the numbers. But eBay is a funny organism. One really strong week of work can pay off for you over months and months.

A few weeks ago, what motivated me was going through the store and ending all my listings over a few months which had zero watchers. I repriced, removed, edited. Then I did sell similar with my normal promoted listings rate (5%) and watched a lot of items sell which hadn’t been selling. That carried me through the dog days of August. I would recommend you do the same on 6+ month old listings if you haven’t recently. You want to give your listings the best chance to sell during busy Q3 and Q4.

8/11/2024 to 8/17/2024

Total listings: 338 (up from 277 two weeks ago)

New listings this week: 86

Items sold: 26 — 14 via best offer, 8 via seller initiated offer, 20 via advertising

Gross sales: $1105.35 (down 40% from one year ago)

Net sales: $710.46 (down 40% from one year ago)

Average sales price: $42.51 (down 44% from one year ago)

Highest price sold (net): $87.41— Maxx Crosby auto autograph card /50 2022 Panini Chronicles Paramount Raiders

Lowest price sold (net): $9.23 — David Ortiz 1/1 green proof card 2023 Leaf Vibrance Global Graphs Boston Red Sox