Sale of the week October 22-28, 2023

I had auctions ending last Sunday and got everything which didn’t sell relisted in my store by Tuesday, which was a new record for me. Usually I take a few days to remove things from my inventory (most often trading cards which I move to my consignment port) or tweak listings. But this time I was on top of things, and maybe it’s a coincidence but I had a great week of sales. Can’t wait for the numbers thread because my numbers last week were really interesting.

I listed a lot of new stuff last week too. It’s that time of year folks! Put in a little extra time with your store this week, you’ll be glad you did in a month or two.

The highlight of my week was a $242 gross/$169 net sale of this Walter Camp c. 1910 certified type 1 photo. Purchased in June for $25, eBay auction from the same consignment seller I get about 25% of my inventory from. I fiddled with the pictures and price in this listing a few times. But mostly I trusted my gut and stayed patient.

I didn’t know anything about the collectible photograph market a year ago, and this was my second $200+ sale of one this year. I have a few good ones in my death piles which I need to get authenticated so I can list them.

This Steve Harvey framed signed photo display sold at auction for my opening bid of $20, so it was $31.57 gross and $13.46 net. I paid $7.50 at auction in May. I like to charge flat rate shipping but sometimes it bites me, like with this sale. But I look at these small framed items as practice. I have a few potentially more expensive large framed items and I am working my way up to getting those listed.

Another World War 2 signed photo to a repeat buyer — gross $36.02, net $25.14, purchased for $10 back in March. I need to take a browse through my shelf of random autographs and my consignment port to see if I have any more of these. I’ve had pretty good success with selling items like this fairly quickly as long as I do the research to get them listed properly.

A wholesale lot of mixed sports cards for its $49.99 opening bid, $75.23 gross and $46.39 net. I probably only made a few bucks profit on this overall, but this is mostly data to experiment. I’ve had great success selling small lots curated by team, those have become 20 to 30 percent of my weekly sales and consistent sellers. But I have thousands of cards which don’t fit neatly into curated lots. So what is the best way to sell them? I hope to answer this question over the next few months by making more of these lots and slowly making them more profitable.

Believe it or not, this is the first year where I’ve really tried to time my trading card listings to correlate with what’s going on in the sports world. I think it’s been a huge part of why my sales have remained consistent with a <500 item store. This week was a great success, as I listed three autographed cards of Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Merrill Kelly the day before he was the pitcher in Game 2 of the World Series. He pitched a great game, and all three cards sold that night. This blue autograph serial numbered to 25 — not a rookie, but Topps Inception is a nicer quality set — was the high sale at $46.38 gross/$37.95 net. I bought the card a few weeks ago for $12.75 on the consignment site I use and had it shipped to me. I could have repriced it on there and sold it that way, but I think I made a little more profit this way.

What did you sell this week?