The Numbers: Week June 2-8, 2024

Items in Store: 2845
Items Sold: 24
Total Sales: $885.00
COGS: $147.00
Total Profit: $738.00
Average profit: $30.75
Average sales price: $36.88
New Listings: 10
Items scavenged: 15
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 27
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,405.39
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 33
2024 ASP $43.21
2024 projected total sales $73,080.35

I sound like a broken record, but I spent all week busting my butt on home projects. We have some family visiting this week and we want to make things look nice. I am over 200 drafts awaiting photos with the work I do during breaks/lunch at work, and this week I WILL get those listed. School is done, baseball will wrap up this weekend with the last of the playoffs, and all the house projects are (mostly) finished.

Yard sales were disappointing this weekend. There were lots of sales but prices were sky high or everything was junk. Sometimes both at the same time! I also just wasn’t really feeling it this weekend and was mainly looking for home runs. My favorite find was a personal item. I really wanted to get an edger to make my sidewalk look nice. I was going to buy one but was holding out hope I could find one at a yard sale and I did! I picked up a corded edger that I immediately put to good use.

Something I REALLY want to do is empty out my garage/office into the driveway and fully organize everything. That will be a MAJOR project but one that must be done for me to take things to the next level. I need to get to the point I have good functional space as what I have now is bare minimum functionality. This is a project that will need a couple days without rain so I can leave some things out covered with tarps if needed. I have a vision for what I want and I think I can get there.

Premium Hoarder update:

Sold 7 items for $404.

A good assortment of sales this week from shoes and clothes. No super big sales, but they all have to sell eventually. I sold a pair of shoes right off the bat this week for $215 so I’m off to a good start.

Total Items in Store: 890
Items Sold: 7
Gross Sales: $211 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $110 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $25 (plus one item ours, got money back)
Highest Price Sold: $36 (two new mugs, paid $16)
Average Price Sold: $30
Returns:  1 cancellation (broken item)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $40
Number of items listed this week:  2

Vintage market booth:  Gross about $600, rent $80, COGS roughly $80-100

A very rough week on Ebay for me.  I haven’t been listing for weeks but started a 30% off sale and sales definitely picked up already.  I have a bunch of drafts ready for photos but life is a bit crazy with family and friends visiting.  My youngest graduates today from high school. I literally can’t wait until next week when things calm down a bit next week.  There is a big solstice parade the following weekend and the market is closed so I decided to go again this Saturday and it looks like the fog is going to clear.

I’ve already explained in other posts why I like doing the market.  It’s a bit of work and a lowish hourly return but I enjoy it.  I am clearing both some larger art work I don’t want to ship and a bunch of vintage smalls death piles and clothes I would have put on Mercari but never get listed.  The foot traffic was actually better than I expected last time so I’m hoping for a good Saturday.  Pricing for live selling is a bit tricky and my COGS is all over the place so some items I need to charge more and those tend to be people’s favorites.  Some of the large art I only paid a buck or 5.  The best sellers were art, small ceramics, tiny figurines, clothing, sunglasses.  Not doing well with hats (though it was foggy), pillows, large ceramics.

I hope to get back to Ebay next week in earnest and following one of my youtubers make it the “summer of sales” taking offers and running out lower dollar stuff.   If anyone knows a bulk way to drop my Ebay offer floor, please lmk.  Thanks!

@Retro the other fun part of course is the bargain hunting!  Can’t do that if we are at or near capacity as I think we both are.  I am blessed with great sourcing here.

My son was helping transport and he asked me how long some of this stuff has been around.  The playing cards, for example, I’ve had since R&J were talking about it on the podcast!

I did have two garage sales and went through all the death newbie coffee mugs last summer.  I hope to make a big dent this summer in the rest and maybe even do the flea market or yard sale at the end of the summer.  There are still things that came from my parents’ house.  In the meantime, I have a lot of linens to put on EBay.  I’m moving some very low dollar stuff from EBay to Mercari.   I’m definitely getting a feel for multichannel selling.

I’ve been a hot streak lately which makes it easy to get into the groove of eBay, planning one day’s work at a time in a very organized way and really focusing on my current projects: spring (now summer) cleaning, small and large lot listings and listing individual items when I think they will sell fast. I hope this is the start of a scorching summer of sales. But as the temperature goes up, there are always down sales weeks too. I’ve found it’s best when I stay on an even keel with eBay. Get my processes in place, do the work, and trust that it will pay off — if not now, then sometime sooner. And often listings will sell when you don’t expect them to.

6/2/2024 to 6/8/2024

Items in store: 232 (same as when I did the numbers last week, which has to be a first)

Items sold: 32 — 16 via best offer, 10 via seller initiated offer, 24 via promoted listings

Gross sales: $2279.81 (down 13% from one year ago)

Net sales: $1567.70 (down 13% from one year ago)

Average sales price: $71.24 (up 74% from one year ago)

Highest price sold (net): $267.52 — Paul Skenes 2023 Onyx Vintage autograph with Geaux Tigers inscription #5/12

Paul Skenes is the new phenom pitcher in the major leagues. His autographs have been priced high since the moment they were released, since he was the #1 overall draft pick last year, so my profit was only about 50 bucks on this card. I bought the card from my consignment site which charges a 10% cash out fee. So I saved myself the fee and earned a little pocket change. I like to get a box shipped from consignment to me every week full of cards for my curated lots and a handful to sell individually.

The buyer was a repeat customer and quick negotiator. $325 was his max, he messaged me, we both know that Onyx cards won’t hold their value long-term. I accepted his offer because he was right. Unlicensed cards like Onyx are much less valuable compared to cards with players pictured in their major league uniform, and Skenes value is most likely at its peak since he’s just debuted in the majors and pitching great. Kind of a funny message to go along with a $300+ offer — this won’t be worth this much ever again, but I want it anway. The ultra-modern card world is a quirky place.

This Skenes card was my largest individual sale, but I sold two flat rate boxes full of graded all sports and graded baseball — combined into one large box, of course — to the same buyer for $490.06. These are all cards that just miss the cut for sending to consignment, where my cut off is usually in the $10 sell range for graded cards. My COGS on these is two to three dollars each, so it’s a few hundred bucks profit from both.

Lowest price sold (net): $11.17 — Nestor Cortes 2023 Topps Allen & Ginter autograph

Another consignment to eBay flip, with my COGS in consignment credit at $10.25 which would be $9.23 after the cash out fee. Starting to look at these numbers more closely makes me realize what’s worth spending time on and what’s not. I like flipping cards like these that I can buy on the consignment site for less than $10 and list for $20. My thinking is, saving myself that cash out fee is worth it. But after fees and time spent making the listing, it’s really not. I’ll try and stick to larger flips (in terms of dollar value or percentage) going forward.

I missed this post last week (again), and I already wrote over the previous week’s numbers. I know my numbers were not high. Something like 8 items for about $150. The high sale was a set of speeding reading CDs, new & sealed. I listed 11 items.

I’ve started moving items from the Ruby Lane account I closed over to eBay and Etsy. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the Persian rug that eBay and Etsy won’t allow me to list. I’m thinking to contact my consignor and talk strategy. She hasn’t responded to my emails, so I’m wondering if something is going on. I had another consignor die on me, but I hope this is not the case this time.

I had some great scavenging last week for free stuff.  About four streets over an older couple was emptying out a garage and putting it on the curb.  I was there at 8 pm, and then 10 pm, then 11 pm, and then 6:30 the next morning!  I filled up my truck camper shell twice.

Here are my free items that sold last week  June 10-16:

– $125 / Vintage Tibetan painted style small media cabinet heavily damaged doors (sold to a vintage mall vendor for displaying items)(from house cleanout)

– $30 / rolling Eddie Bauer duffel bag (from apartment dumpster area)

– $70 / Safavieh 8×10 blue distressed look rug (from house cleanout)

– $30 / vintage faux wood mail letter holder and macrame pot holder (free from somewhere)

– $80 / large square fabric ottoman (free on a curb)

– $55 / large boat cushion (found free on a roadside on nearby island, must have fallen off a boat, I had planned to give back if the boat owner contacted me)

– $50 / nice framed print of a sea eagle bird in the vintage lithograph style (free from a Charleston home that was giving out stuff)

– $30 / cornhole set from an apartment complex

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So far this week I found:   vintage countertop radio tube display carousel, pair unfinished wood nightstands, a Sound N Motion rocking horse that works, am unused Ty Pennington stone planter and wood windchimes, metal yard items of rooster bike and bunny, yard tool shears, solid wood end table, broken antique side tables and chairs, and third row Lexus seats pair.

And I donated four boxes.   I could outfit several apartment kitchens a week with blenders, coffee makers, spatula sets, doormats, etc.   I usually donate at night but now I am doing it during the day so I can get receipts.   I am hoping to get a $1-$2K tax credit by the end of the year for my donations of free stuff.   I thought about creating “apartment move-in boxes” but I don’t want to clean appliances and they might now work.  Better to get the tax credit and have a sure thing.