Scavenger Life Episode 331: List and Forget, The Buy And Hold Strategy Of Ebay

10/15/17 – 10/21/17

Total Items in Store: 2,095
Items SOld: 13
Cost of Items Sold: $120 (around)
Total Sales: $621.31
Highest Price Sold: $90 (3 way tie – 4 1986 Santa Bears, Burton Boots, Mid-Century Girl Scout items)
Average Price Sold: 47.80
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 231
Number of items listed this week: 37

New twist on the Converse All stars that sold last week. It appears that you are not allowed to import Converse All Stars into Japan. The GSP would not allow the shoes to go to Japan. The guy who bought them was upset (not at me) but I got to keep the $850. Expensive “mistake” for the GSP. I wonder what will happen to those shoes?

I had an interesting pick this week. I went to a nice newer condo in a nice neighborhood. I wasn’t expecting much, but this sale had a ton of Pendelton. I was so busy grabbing all of the the Pendelton in this modern environment that I didn’t realize that these Pendleton’s were mostly from the 60’s and 70’s. Another reason I didn’t notice was that the clothing had been kept in such good condition, they looked newer. It was only after I got home and started looking closely at the tags did I realize the timeframe they were from. The mens Pendleton Jacket was worth the most at about $120. So I went back the next day because there was a Ralph Lauren 3 piece suit that I wanted. So I went back and got that suit and took 2 others with it. I offered $20 for the 3 of them and they took it. I didn’t think there was anything special about these until I got home. By looking at the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union Tag on the Ralph Lauren suit and the Austin Reed suit, I was able to determine that they were from between 1962-1976, based on that tag. See below:

http://www.steelzipper.com/ACWA.html

The 3rd suit had Turn Back Cuffs which I have read are very uncommon. I am going to list all 3 suits for a high dollar. Looks like these 1960’s items keep following me.

Mark

Wow, cool cutting board!

I am definitely seeing sales pick up a fair bit. This week was the best I’ve had in a while although per the pareto rule most of that is accounted for by 1-2 items.

Sales: CAD$1777, 7 items, $253/item avg
COGS: $227
Gross profit: $1290
Notable sales: addressable smoke detectors (qty 13) $65–>$800, massage machine $12–>$300.
Expenditures: $84
Net profit: $1206
Hours: 12, $101/hr this week
Listings: 11 items, appx value $1540

I like the analogy between list it & forget it and buy and hold. I found myself in the car on the way to work considering the similarities and the differences.

Where the analogy really works is the psychological dimension. An investor is a fool to look hourly/daily at their stock prices. The daily fluctuations in their net worth are garbage information, pure noise. Moreover the pain of seeing the ticker go down 1 point does NOT outweigh the pleasure from seeing it go up. Still worse is trading on a similar timescale. Apply to eBay: looking hard at watchers, views, etc, or worrying a lot that your items won’t sell and habitually adjusting prices are analogous to this kind of self-destructive investor behaviour. (I have to admit I look at watch counts a lot on my phone when I’m bored… gotta stop doing that.)

The main disanalogy, to my mind, is storage. EBay sellers pay storage costs that can be pretty high, even if not measured in monetary terms. What I am finding is that I can indeed keep making money by “feeding the beast”, but to maintain or grow eBay cashflow, I have to keep listing, and my # of listings keeps rising and rising. That’s fine as long as I have space to expand into but every time I get more storage, it gets filled up pretty quickly. I think every seller needs to deal with that somehow eventually, either by going all in and buying a new shed or renting storage or w/e, or by trying to price to sell fast. (The latter is very hard to do with long-tail items, unfortunately.)

Hey, at least you get to resell those Converse again, Mark!

I seem to be having good luck with Etsy actually. A shirt that I could not seem to sell on Ebay sold within a week on etsy. I just transfer over the same photos, minus two since Etsy only allows 10 pics. And it sold for more too! I was pretty happy with that. Also, someone bought the coolest 70s New York button up shirt on Etsy for $30. It was like a New York time capsule that showed drawings from Times Square, burlesque bars, and taxis from the time. It was too big for me or I would have kept it. https://www.etsy.com/transaction/1335370978

Good ep as always!

Total Items in Store: 454
Items Sold: 14
Cost of Items Sold: $142 + free shipping $29
Total Sales: $668
Highest Prices Sold: $85 & $86 (Giant vintage 50s Santa Litho art poster – paid $1 + free shipping; Used tea set)
Average Price Sold: $45
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: About $110 (RA + Used)
Number of items listed this week: 19

Solid week on Ebay for my little store. My daughter had a long playdate this weekend and I treated myself to a little bit of morning sourcing and afternoon of listing. I was very picky about my sourcing and mainly bought things I have sold before. I did splurge a bit on a lot of Dansk flatware for $50 because that grumpy thrift lady knows her stuff. We were both grimacing after striking the deal. It was fun to get out and I had a long chat with a regular who has an antique booth about the pros and cons of sourcing estate sales, thrifts, and social networking locally. Renewed my pact to get through my rookie backlog and go to estate sales for the good midcentury stuff. I continue to work though the backlog, bringing one box of seasonal or similar items up from the garage at a time. I love taking a box down that’s listed. On the RA front, I sold a whole box of dog art plates before I even had the chance to unpack them so that was great too.

I get emotional on Ebay only about giving up on stuff that is not selling. I finally donated a handful of items a couple of times last year that had very few views and it hurt a little bit. It’s like admitting defeat, but I know I can make better choices today as a picker and there is just so much stuff out there to keep the store more active. I also get a bit impatient and frustrated talking to the basic store reps overseas. I always end up politely asking for a supervisor.

R&J: after enjoying some time at home I’m wondering if you might like to do more multi-day sourcing trips in the nearby metro area(s)? Perhaps you could swap AB&Bs with someone or sign up for an online luxury pet sitting service? Reflecting on some of the great items you pulled out of there before I imagine you would find even more amazing stuff. Just a thought. Have a great week everyone.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by ChristineR.

Week of Oct 15 – 21
* Total Items in Store: 1099
* Items Sold: 22
* Cost of Items Sold: $43.20 + $0 Commission
* Total Sales: $427.86
* Highest Price Sold: $45 Johnnie Walker Emblem Wall Clock
* Average Price Sold: $19.45
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 42

Solid week for me. I am trying to keep sourcing down since I have such a large backlog. I will go to an auction on Thursday, but that is it.

To find out if you are in the Guaranteed Delivery Program, you should just be able to click on Performance in your Seller Hub and it will give you your stats. Once you have been in it a month or longer it will give you your “If we evaluated you today” evaluation.
Sorry this went through two times somehow.

To find out if you are in the Guaranteed Delivery Program, you should just be able to click on Performance in your Seller Hub and it will give you your stats. Once you have been in it a month or longer it will give you your “If we evaluated you today” evaluation.

Oct 15-21 2017

• Total Items in Store: 848
• Items Sold: 20 all eBay
• International 1 GSP
• Total Sales $1231
• Highest Price $300 Apple 100 monitor & video card
• Average Price Sold: $62
• Returns: 1 boots for fit
• Cost of Items Sold: $310
• Cost of items purchased this week $40

Although I used the best available information to price the Apple monitor it seems I may have still underpriced it as I have received a couple of offers if the sale didn’t go through of $400.
It was part of an Apple IIe system I picked up at an auction last week.

I’m pretty must all list it and forget it although occasionally I’ll browse my items and make some obvious adjustments. Whenever I list something Jay’s voice is in my head, “this could take a couple years but it’ll sell”.

ebay absolutely puts up the stuff not shipped through GSP back on ebay–I have seen someone (awhile back) prove this with a link to something he sold, but was stopped at the warehouse, the same item appeared back on ebay. I expect that the sneakers will be listed on ebay in no time. I wonder why they couldn’t ship sneakers to Japan however, I ship all sorts of stuff there, although it has been awhile.

Loved that cutting board with original paint–I would also date it in the 1800-1825 era, American painted primitives have been a little down in price recently but you proved that there is a market out there still for the right object.

Oct. 15-21
Total Items in Store: 713
Items Sold: 25
Total Sales (Gross Profit): $1,810 (!!!)
Highest Price: $750 (Four Intelligent Instrumentation Operator Keypad Terminal Panels)
Average Price: $72 lol
Returns: 0
Cost of Items Sold: $77
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $0

BEST. WEEK. EVER! It may seem pretty average for a store like you guys’ but to me this was incredible. It was mostly thanks to a very high dollar sale on Wednesday, but I also did very well with my weekly photo slide auctions. I sold over $700 in slides last week to my huge surprise. It must have been a hot lot. A few other notable sales included an old wooden bentwood bucket and a scary looking wheat hand scythe for $72 and $75 respectively. I wish every week was like this.

I’m really glad you mentioned checking your invoice on the podcast this week. I was curious and upon looking found 5 cases where I was being charged a dollar extra for Gallery Plus. Bummer. They were for somewhat older listings too so I’m wondering how much extra I’ve been billed over the past months because of it.

This week, I’m going to force myself to get back into the game. I’ve been too lax on listing for various reasons and my store size is slowly dwindling. I wanted to make it to 1K items before the start of the new year but I don’t think that’ll happen now.

Is it Mindhunter?
I’ve powered through the first 9, one left, I like it.

RR Store Week Oct 15-21, 2017

Total Items in Store: 1,427
Items Sold: 33
Cost of Items Sold: $48.04
Total Sales: $1,147.95
Highest Price Sold: $322.99 (1960’s video camera)
Average Price Sold: $34.79
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $38.50
Number of items listed this week: 52

This is the craziest business. Two weeks ago was my worst week of the year. I was literally reaching out to local friends about getting a job. But instead, I hunkered down, did some aggressive sourcing and listing, and had one of my best weeks.

That camera was a surprise sale; I’ve had it for years, and I sometimes forgot about it until I would see it on the shelf. When it sold, I realized that it was the most expensive thing in my store. That really got me thinking. It’s great to find a shirt for a buck and sell it for $30 bucks, but I need some higher end stuff in my inventory. But my available cash is thin as a result of some very slow weeks. So after some careful research and number crunching, I decided to get a Working Capitol loan from PayPal. I borrowed the minimum amount, $1000, repaid at 10%. The fee is only $40 bucks. The estate sale people in my area know their stuff, so they sometimes price high, but still leave some meat on the bone. With this cash infusion, I can buy a few higher end items along with the usual purchases. And I love seeing the loan get paid back in real time, dollar by dollar. I don’t like borrowing money or buying on credit, so this was a big step for me. I think I made a good choice.

*Paul*

Oct 15 – Oct 21, 2017
Total Items in Store: 356
Items Sold: 19
Cost of Items Sold: approx. $48
Total Sales: $310.35 (excluding shipping costs)
Highest Price Sold: $59.99 (Ferragamo shoes, sz 4.5!)
Average Price Sold: $16.33
Returns: 0
International Sales: 2
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $59.21
Number of items listed this week: 18

Got back to sourcing this week and it was good. Thank you as always for the podcast, look forward to it every week 🙂

We are still so new at this that there are a lot of teaching moments in revisiting what we have listed. Our confidence is not so high that I would be comfortable in forgetting about it just yet, but soon I hope to be that confident and get on with listing and forgetting.

However! I did find that Ebay changed something in the way they do the sales tax check box and all of my listings were unchecked! In relisting items that ended I have had to fix each and every one of them to be correct so that I don’t end up having to pay the sales tax for my California buyers.

I did watch a video from a woman that sells on Ebay and she claimed her sales increased when she started revisiting unsold items and checking for errors. It would be a very interesting pilot, Jay, if you took say about 100 really old items and tweaked them (maybe change category, not necessarily price), just as a pilot to see if they increase your overall gross income every week. If not then no harm done.

Sigal

I currently have 700-ish items in my store and revisit listings if they haven’t sold in 2 years. Sometimes they just end up being very obscure long-tail items and I don’t change a thing, sometimes it’s due to a misspelling or bad titles, and sometimes it’s because the market for those items has changed (i.e. generic clothing from most of the old “BOLO” brands you see discussed on Youtube has dropped significant in the last few years). I’ve definitely had success with this method and it feels great seeing something you’ve had for literally years finally sell, the bigger and more obnoxious the item the better 🙂 .

My numbers for the week of 10/15/17:
Total Items in Store: 99
Items Sold: 12
Cost of Items Sold: $41
Total Sales: $438 + shipping
Highest Price Sold: $145 (Cutco knife set)
Average Price Sold: $36.50
Returns: 0

An okay week, but down compared to my last few Octobers. I got bursts of sales with quiet days in between. The Cutco knives were a great sale. I got them at a garage sale for $8.
It’s funny how you said you are going to try some auctions. I am only a recent convert to a BIN seller. I used to do almost exclusively auctions back when there were 3 day durations without the ridiculous $1 upcharge. Earlier this month I put over a third of my listings on auction, and it confirmed that they just don’t work like they used to. I think there are several reasons for this: 1. Buyers habits just change and people want instant 2. The novelty of eBay auctions has long since worn off 3. There is just so much more inventory on the site, any basic keyword search leads to plenty of options, no feeling of scarcity. 4. Auctions are not getting the same priority ranking they once did. This last one is a big one. I had items ending soon that were pages into a basic search, not right up top for ending in a half hour like they used to be.
My below average auction results got me thinking of Mr.CustomerService. So I checked out his store and saw that over 2/3 of his active listings are currently BIN format. Guess I’m not the only one. Jay & Ryanne, I would love to hear you interview him again and get his perspective on the current eBay. It’s quite different from the last time we heard him on the show.

I had a “customer issue” this week…where I was the customer. My 10 year old son wanted to be a cow for Halloween (don’t ask me why). Since a full cow suit in pre-teen sizes is not the target audience for manufacturers, we couldn’t find one locally. Searching on eBay lead to bazillions of results from China, even when I filtered by US only. Some even had US STOCK in the title but when you read the fine print in the description, it’s coming from overseas. So after alot of searching I found a Chinese seller that claimed US Stock with a warehouse in KY. Against my better judgement, I placed the order and crossed my fingers we would actually get it in the 3 day window. This was over the weekend. Monday morning there were messages from the Seller…they are out of stock in the US but could send me a Medium (not the size we ordered and would be way too big) or Cancel. I responded that I did not want the Medium and to cancel/refund. They did…but chose “Buyer requested cancel”. We all know how this works. They should be getting a defect for not being able to fulfill the order, and holding us up so we couldn’t get another one in time from somewhere else. I’m not usually a PITA buyer, but we are held to standards that these overseas sellers get away with not meeting which aggravated me that day. I called eBay to report their incorrect “reason for cancel” choice. And I was told they would take the mark off of MY Account! Mine! So apparently buyers do get their account “marked” for not following through with purchases and requesting cancellations. I never heard of that before, I’m assuming that if you do it too many times you get in “eBay trouble” but not sure. Thing is, this seller could have done this with many other buyers who would have just been happy they got the refund. It was only because I am a seller myself that I realized he was misusing the system. Anyways, off to the stores after school today so we can get this kid something to wear for Halloween. I’m secretly glad the cow suit didn’t pan out!

I think someone up above mentioned Tim Chapman—he’s giving his Top Ten Tips for ebay Selling on eBay Radio today, for anyone who might be interested (If you miss the show, you can always listen to it in the Archives.)

Week of Oct. 16-22th, 2017
Total Items in Store: 493
Items Sold: 21
Cost of Items Sold: $69
Total Sales: $555*
Highest Price Sold: $60
Average Price Sold: $26.43*
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $17
Number of items listed this week: 18
*does not include shipping charges (paid by buyer)

Store Week 10/15/17 – 10/21/17

Total items in store: 1597
Items sold: 18
Cost of items sold: $25.75
Total sales: $634.40
Highest price sold: $95.00 (Pottery Barn Duvet)
Average price sold: $35.24
International Sales: 0
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory this week: $1.50

I hardly ever buy retail arbitrage stuff, but I recently bought a few Lego advent calendars that were on a screaming deal. They are about $35 at Wal-Mart and I got them elsewhere for $18.88 each. Not even close to the profit margins that I’m used to, but it looks like these ones sell on eBay for $40-$50. Should be an easy flip. And I have an appreciation for all things Lego since my son is totally obsessed!

Week October 15-21, 2017

Total Items in Store: 927
Items Sold: 25 (5 Amazon)
Cost of Items Sold: $220 (19.6% of sales)
Total Sales: $1,119.84
Highest Price Sold: $200 (1962 #850 Mattel Barbie Bubble Cut Redhead)
Average Price Sold: $44.79
Returns: 1 (“changed mind” so paid for return shipping)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $290
Number of items listed this week: 41
Promoted listings test: 7 sales, $508.47 (45.4% of total sales), $21.26 fees (4.2% of sales)

Really great week in terms of sales, although I was getting greedy and wanted it to be bigger – had $850 in sales on Sunday 10/15, but less than $300 the rest of the week. Sold 2 more vintage Barbies from the lot I mentioned a few weeks back, bringing my sales to $715 on 4 of them (20 more to go, 55% of my investment back).

Pushed hard to get a bunch of items listed that were getting back logged since we’ll be away this weekend (also purged about 20 listings that were old & not moving – donating and taking the write off). Headed to New Orleans for the first time over Halloween – Saturday through Wednesday. Should be interesting!

October 15th – 21st 2017
Total items in store: Etsy 459 // Ebay 425 (Items not crossposted I list different types of things on Etsy and Ebay)
Items Sold: Etsy 11 // Ebay 12
Cost of items Sold: Etsy $21.30 // Ebay $54.10
Total Sales: Etsy $125.35 // Ebay $256.73
Highest Price Sold: Embroidered Western Shirt $35
Average Price Sold: $16.61
Returns: 1 return and 1 item that didn’t work (a video game)
Number of items listed this week: 33 (listed at $500)

I feel like October should be doing better than it is for me. Guess I need to list more!

Total Items in Store: 901
Items Sold: 15
Cost of Items Sold: $63
Total Sales: $443
Profit: $380
Highest Price Sold: $50 JVC Camcorder
Average Price Sold: $29.53
Average Profit: $25.33

My Birthday was Monday so we took a long weekend in Columbus (we get a floating holiday to use for our birthday at work). This was a working weekend getaway though, because I scavenge every day on Columbus trips. All told I spent $562.35 on inventory over the long weekend. One goodwill was the motherload of high end clothes and shoes – I spent $263 there! As usual, I was only planning on being there for a couple minutes as I didn’t have high hopes. After 5 minutes I recruited my wife to help me tag-team. We shoped for an hour and a half and we simply quit so we could go do something fun. I could have easily been in there for 4 hours doing a deep dive.

These weekends are so much fun for me. I get to spend a bunch of quality time with my family and I also get to do work that I absolutely love. Now I need to buckle down and list list list for a month before we go back for Wild Lights at the Columbus Zoo.

On another note, buying $563 of inventory at thrift stores over a weekend is ALOT of inventory. My death piles are becoming quite impressive. My wife and I are in agreement thought – the prices at thrifts are trending up at alarming rates and they are also getting in on the online sales games. Basically, we are “getting while the getting is good”. And again, if my day job dries up I won’t have to buy any inventory for many months.

Hey gang! I’ve just been lurking lately because my dad and husband have both had health issues lately. The podcast this week emphasized for me why list and forget works so well for me. On good weeks with nobody having issues I list like crazy and on bad weeks when I don’t get to list as much I still sell things. I never quite get caught up with my death piles, but they aren’t going anywhere. Just in the past couple months I’ve been getting notes from eBay on my older listings saying it’s been 16 months and I should consider revising the listing. Since my space is limited, I have been using those as a way to re-evaluate my older inventory. I either end it and relist with sell similar or end it all together. It’s usually just a few listings per week and i’ve Learned a lot in 16 months so I usually can spice up the listings a bit.

Here’s my numbers for last week, October 15-21

Total sales. $224.66
Items in store. 896
# of items sold. 16
Avg. sale. $14.04
COGS. $12.83
Returns/cancelled. 0
$ spent on new inv. $15.00
# of new items listed. 16
Highest sale- Cop R Chef sauce pan, $59.99 (cost $1)

Ebay Seller Hub down.. See comments in Random Thoughts section of Forum

mike in Atlanta

Working for me now—about 8:45 AM ET.

…. I just watched the Craiglist Hunter video. (GSP resold)

I had an item GSP they said could not be completed. It was a wood composite…they said they could not ship wood items internationaly.
I Just searched for it and found it in completed listings with MY PICTURES and description. (I recognize the ruler in the pictures) I thought someone had just stolen my listing until I heard the craigslist hunter say it was a seller in Michigan…My Item was resold by a seller in Sandusky Michigan…. huh.
It was totally a one of a kind item… no chance some one else had another creepy bunny doll.
in completed listing….
Harold Naber Wooden Baby Bunny PJ 1996

(side note: This actually was the only item I have ever been creeped out by…. I was so glad to see it go.)

This eBay link has some info: http://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/faq/global-shipping.html#m22_tb_a10_2.

“What happens to items that can’t be delivered to my buyer?

If eBay and/or Pitney Bowes determines that a GSP item is undeliverable eBay and/or Pitney Bowes may elect to dispose of, destroy or liquidate the undeliverable parcel, at which time title to the GSP item shall transfer automatically from you to eBay and/or any third party designated by either eBay or Pitney Bowes…”

And

“What happens to the proceeds received from the liquidation of my item?

eBay and/or Pitney Bowes (and any third party designated by eBay or Pitney Bowes) shall retain all proceeds (if any) received from the disposal or liquidation of the GSP item.”

A useful link is: https://pe.usps.com/text/imm/ab_toc.htm, Which is a USPS list of individual country with information on prohibited and limited items for import. I checked the list for Japan but did not see any prohibition for shoes.

This is my first reply, hopefully I am posting correctly.
1.
As far as free return shipping, I would never consider this and I feel it invites the type of customer I am not interested in, but everyone is different. Was listening to Kim Komando show and she discussed how Nordstrom’s is losing money on this and is opening some type of Salon with no inventory to try a different approach which seems weird to her (me too). She even stated “we all do it buy a size 6 and 4 then send one back,” because we can. I sell on AMZ as FBM also and there is no free shipping option on mine and things still sell albeit slow.
2.
The buy and hold stradegy on Index funds or Mutual Funds, is a very old model and only works if one has an active manager over 1 millionK in the market and they aren’t buying and holding (from 30 years of having and account that was diversified and 3 major crashes). Ok, it does go up but after a crash when one has lost 50-75% of their principal, it never really goes up. I inquired with our employer broker and the new mantra is you need to hold for 50 years rather than 20years! What I will be 7 feet under by then. This is what they want just forget it, keep “dollar cost averaging.” Watch this 2001 ish skit from SNL: https://vimeo.com/64136086
3.
I watched one of your videos and Ryan you have lovely eyes and you look like Angelina Jolie (saying this as a compliment not a creeper stalker). Also, you both are so easy to listen to and have a magnificent show!

Hey guys, just thought I would pass along a cautionary tale for newbies.

This morning, I was listing used women’s leather winter gloves. While running solds, I found a pair that had sold in the last week on auction. They sold for only $2.24, with two bids. Pretty sad.

But it gets worse, much worse.

The seller offered free shipping…..USPS Priority Mail! Most of us know that the cheapest Priority Mail is going to cost $5.50 to $6.00.

And even worse….the seller had to pay sales fees on the shipping charge!

The math looks something like this: fees on a sale price of $2.24 plus $5.50 shipping, should be around $1.50. $1.50 added to $5.50 shipping is $7, minus receipts of $2.24 is a MINUS $4.76!

I call this the one-two sucker punch of ebay. List low (in this case most likely $1.99 and offer free shipping. (I LOVE ebay, but promoting this strategy to newbies drives me nuts!). The seller would have been better off donating the gloves to a thrift store.

I pulled up the full listing and found: seller had a 50 feedback score (so fairly new). Only one photo, and it was slightly blurred. The condition was “good”, but no explanation of what good is (any wear on leather? Stretching? Stains?). Additionally, you should be able to ship nearly any womens leather gloves USPS First Class mail.

I feel really sorry for the seller-What a tough lesson to learn.