Scavenger Life Episode 409: Working Together

Wow! Nice surprise Podcast on a Sunday afternoon, and all my Sundays are spent in a VERY BORING yet peaceful Sunday Workplace.
Slapping the number down fast so I can hang out with my friends J&R!

4/28 – 5/4/19 (no cross listing is done between platforms)

eBay store: totommyto

Total store items: 627
Number of items sold: 10
Total eBay sales (not counting s/h): $280
Cost of items sold: $14
Consignment payouts $0
Highest price sold: $45 – 1980’s toy lot – zero cost, COGS covered months ago, these are extras!
Average price sold: $28.00
Returns: TWO – $20 vintage ‘dried out’ Tandy paints (discard), $70 car part not fit (easy resell)
Money spent on new inventory: $42
Number of new items listed this week: 21
Sell through rate for the week: 1.6

Etsy store oldfleatoymarket

Total store items: 634
Number of items sold: 5
Total Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $118
Cost of items sold: $10
Consignment payouts: 0
Highest price sold: $45 – Rusty crane hook – paid $5
Average price sold: $24.00
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $6
Number of new items listed this week: 4
Sell through rate for the week: 0.8

The fact that you work together well is a function of the fact that you have a functional relationship to begin with. Being able to communicate effectively, resolve differences, and share common goals are all vital to working together in my opinion. Not every couple has that down pat, so I imagine that working together isn’t possible for every couple.

I had to laugh about you guys bringing frozen food to NYC. Last year we scavenged the world’s cheapest trip to Atlantis ($287 for the entire week in a 1 bedroom timeshare unit due to a fluke with the timeshare trading company we use). Atlantis is SO expensive for food and we have 2 kids, so I was absolutely determined to bring ALL of our food with us. We don’t live very far from the Bahamas so I didn’t even use a cooler…I packed a suitcase full of food and drinks including perishables lol. We literally didn’t spend a dime on anything the entire time we were there. When we were checking out we saw a family with a food bill that was over $1000 for the week. No thanks, I’ll do it the scavenger way. If we ever head to NYC I’ll be the lady with the frozen packs of chicken in my suitcase!

As for my week, it was about $1300. I have shifted most of my business over to Poshmark at this point, although I do still sell some things on Ebay. Ebay really scared me off last year when they randomly suspended me for 30 days for selling “adult items” and then admitted that they made a mistake and immediately reinstated my account. They’ve never been able to tell me what triggered the takedown, so I’ve gradually moved almost my entire business off of their site. I’m almost at 70K followers on Poshmark now, and I like the platform more and more. One thing that I love is that when a buyer makes an offer and you accept, it’s done. There is no waiting to see if they pay. Ebay should have that feature.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by ChristineK.

April 28 – May 4
Total Items in Store: 2240
Items Sold: 19
Total Sales : $668
* BELOW yearly average of $877
Highest Price: $110 (Four (YES, 4!) Cooper Bros & Sons QUEEN ANNE Dinner Forks)
Average Price: $35
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $80
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $185
Number of New Items Listed this Week: Zero!

Good job on your sales this week! You had some pretty nifty sales for sure! And great topic too. Steph and I have our own system that seems to work so far. Basically, we work together by not working together. We have our own separate stores. We both do all of the aspects of running those stores (scavenging, researching, photographing and listing). Of course, neither of us would refuse to help the other if asked, but it’s kind of nice to not have to rely on the other to do a task for a shared store. The only downside that I’ve noticed so far is when we go together to auctions, it sometimes happens that we both want the same stuff (even though most of the time our interests take us in different directions). When that happens, I just have to remind myself that we’re still a team and it’s not a competition. The money that both of us earn is going toward the life that we’re building together.

So I decided to take the week off from listing to focus on my growing list of to-do’s around the house. I feel like I’ve accomplished so much! My biggest accomplishment was installing a security camera in front of our garage where we leave our packages for pickup. Now we feel a lot better about leaving our boxes out of our view.

We did go to a few sales though. My scavenge of the week came from a church rummage sale. I picked up a bunch of stuff (mostly kitchen items for myself) which included a Sirius radio kit. I’ve heard that some models have the lifetime activation on them, so I was thrilled when I plugged it in and started receiving all of the broadcasts. I’m hoping this is one that won’t expire, but I’m going to keep it until it does anyways. It’ll make those long auction road trips so much better.

I agree TTT: Nice to slide back. enter data and listen to Pals Jay and Ryanne on an afternoon.

Interesting that SL has a little over 5,400 members and only 27 are logged in today.

I know it is Cinco de Mayo, but hard to believe that 5,373 members are either out drinking Tequila or at an afternoon church service. And I also won’t believe that over 5,000 people are out buying “STUFF”!!! Out playing Golf?? Uuhh no, don’t think so.

So like the game “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego” … Where is the World are 5,000 SL members??? Hhhmmm. I know where one is, T-Satt is home inputting numbers like always. For all the numbers he “crunches” got to take a day before the week starts to “DO DATA ENTRY”.

Nice and quite so thought I would have some fun and burn some real estate space before all the hard line number crunchers hit.

Finally made the transition over to SixBit from WonderLister and that took from March 26th until the first of this month. So about 6 to 7 weeks. But up and running with SixBit with help from the SB IT Team and some help from Troy. Just now starting to get things being listed the way we want. Much faster and everything we post to Ebay is posting to Etsy except for a line or two of cut and paste including all shipping info. and the photos. I will be getting with Troy to discuss getting all the shipping to run through SB.

Any sales made on either platform are automatically ended and SB has separate financials on both platforms.

So speaking of working together, wife Susan and I celebrated our 50th Wedding Anniversary on April 25th. We have been through and seen a lot in our half a century together. But we have been slow working together at our business the last few weeks. One reason, making the SixBit transition from WonderLister coupled with some bad news / good news personally this month.

My wife Susan got a positive result from biopsies done a few weeks back and it confirmed uterine cancer. But good news is, that the doctor said it was caught so quickly in early Stage 1, Level-A, that a full hysterectomy on June 12th will take care of it with no radiation or chemo. He is 98% positive and of course a round of biopsies after surgery will confirm it.

It was a relief to us both and I asked the doctor, will a two week sick leave from our Ebay Store be enough recovery time, he laughed and said she should be recovered in one to two weeks, barring any unforeseen.

So long for now.. Good hunting and picking…

Kindest Regards from Hot’Lanta

Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art

Amazing $270 on the lid! I get it. It is obvious the buyer recognized the lid, a hand carved specialized antique and maybe soon to sit on top of a very expensive jar? It might even be the correct lid for a $5,000 jar, soon to be a $7,000 jar now that it has the lid! Would be very cool!

Hey you guys almost blew my peaceful Sunday!
I wonder sometimes if my wife and I will work this business together as we slip out of our regular jobs. I’m about to ruin my peaceful Sunday again just thinking about it…she would agree

Week of 04/28-05/04
Total Items in Store: 3,224 (Up 54% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 130
Number of Items Sold: 103 (Up 14% YOY)
(Includes 0 Etsy, 9 Poshmark, 0 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether)
Weekly STR: 14% (Down 3% YOY)

Total Product Sales: $2,945 (Up 38% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Up $616
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Up $187
Cost of Items Sold: $675
Cost of Labor: $177
Highest Item Sold: $200 – Canali Suit
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Troy wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 11-8.

Clothing
# Listed: 1,930
# Sold: 65
STR: 15%
ASP: $27.42

Shoes
# Listed: 695
# Sold: 28
STR: 17%
ASP: $31.93

Hard Goods
# Listed: 599
# Sold: 10
STR: 7%
ASP: $26.85

EBay
# Listed: 3,224
# Sold: 94
STR: 13%
ASP: $25.76

Etsy
# Listed: 232
# Sold: 0
STR: 0%
ASP: $0

Poshmark
# Listed: 768
# Sold: 9
STR: 5%
ASP: $58.22

Love the main topic. For Veronica and I, it is just finding out what we each do well, where we support each other, and treating each other with respect. After almost 24 years of marriage, we have learned that we truly love and respect each other. This includes the annoying things that we do to each other that grates on our last nerve sometimes. Those things just don’t matter. Our marriage and relationship matters.

Plus, we talk about suggestions on improvements to a process. Not “here is a better way”. Just hey, should we think about a change? We don’t put down how the other does things, we suggest how we can improve the business.

And Ryanne and Veronica are similar in giving up a process. Veronica started this business, and this was her baby. When I came in to work it as well, it was very hard for her to give that up. And I have learned so much about the business, what sells, how to photo, etc. I had to learn how to work at home, how this all works, etc.

Success is when we BOTH get better.

Here’s my what sells on eBay post for the month of April. I cover everything I sold, how much I paid for it, and where I bought it.

Total Items in Store: 1929
Items Sold: Ebay 22 Poshmark 2 Etsy 1
Total Sales: $785
Highest Price Sold: $130 Grateful Dead Tank Top, $158 Puzzle
Returns: 0
Money Spent Inventory This Week: $45

Great episode discussion, working as a couple sure does have its ups and downs. I find after being with my husband for more than half my life we are pretty well suited to work together. Mostly he just puts up with me being ornery. I like what you said about going on walks, Edgar and I find that to be a great time to discuss life and work.
It would be great to see a video of a “Day in the Life of Ryanne and Jay”. I can come over and film it, they can edit it. 🙂
Selling lots of low priced items at the moment, almost no clothing. Thankfully had a couple items that were over $100 to save us. We are continuing to work on our death piles, ug.

2019-04-28 – 2019-05-04

Total Items In Store: 2949
Items Sold: 15
Cost of Items Sold: $62
Total Sales: $506.37
Highest Price Sold: $60.00 (Youth Clothes Set for Dirt Bike Racing)
Average Price Sold: $33.76
# Items Listed: 24
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 139.37

Gut Sales Report for the week: Felt like I had a lot of sales, but it was mostly
starting in May.

Challenge of the week: Buying awesome inventory. See below what happened.

Strategy of the week\month: Scavenging was the story of the week. For $20.50, I
bought 5 items that will sell for an average of $150. The first item was at a rummage sale. They wanted $20 for a Sony 300 CD Changer with a remote control, but they didn’t know if it worked. I got it marked down to $10 and it did work great ($150 worth). The scavenging jackpot came on Friday at at a garage sale and stumbled upon a cache of 4 vintage 1970’s – 1980’s Children’s Complete Play sets still in the original box’s! These are in excellent condition. I don’t think you could get much better condition unless they were unopened. And the good news is that all of these items will sell relatively quickly.

Mark S

GoodsbyGarcia wrote:

Month of April
Total Items in Store: 23
Number of Items Listed: 28
Number of Items Sold: 5
Monthly STR: 17%

Total Product Sales: $391.90
Cost of Items Sold: $46.98
Cost of Labor: $38
Highest Item Sold: $250 – Vacuum

Overall taking it slow until I find a suitable storage option. Fees killed me/underestimating shipping. However, I’m having fun again the worst part has been trying to make this work with my infant daughter at home with me. As a first time parent, I hate taking her out since I don’t want to cause her discomfort. We’re seeing good returns hopefully I can pick up another home run like that vacuum. Doing a couple of experiments with B2B products. Just starting out again so I did monthly numbers. A lot of people will say LIST LIST LIST. Which is true but I don’t feel like necessarily your bet best for incremental growth. At this slow pace, I can buy, evaluate, strategize. Now I know to buy vintage vacuums. Whereas if I just went and bought 40 porcelain dolls, 20 Pots, and 15 pairs of shoes now I’m stuck with that sunk cost of inventory. I have no pressure to scale. So, for now, I’m growing slowly and at a comfortable pace. Looking to grow my inventory but about 50% this month. No sales targets. Slow and steady wins the race.

Sorry about that every one the formatting got messed up then I got locked out of the post. Appreciate the repost Jay.

Edit: to add to post don’t want to spam

My wife is amazing and I make an effort to put that disclaimer out because she does so much for our family. She’ still in the military and comes home and kills it as a mom so I’m just the pinch hitter (kidding, we’re both parents here). So kudos to her.

Some tech accessories, fleet vehicle equipment. So far I’m not finding the views and follow through. I’m theorizing that entrepreneurs/business owners/reseller aren’t sourcing from eBay. Or maybe my prices are too high for a margin for them. Only time will tell. Meanwhile, I’m looking for more vintage vacuums.

Coming from a government background. I know sometimes government employees are quick to discount stuff as broken. When really all it needs is to be cleaned or maintained. I can recount a printer where I used to work was “broken” and we were ready to send it to the graveyard but the plug was just loose and needed to be held in place for it to work. So, I’m hoping to cash in on that. Also sometimes things NEED to be replaced after their useful life even if they’re not broken or used. There’s a lot of waster in the government even more so because it’s not the person’s personal money at stake when they make that determine whether something is useful or not.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by GoodsbyGarcia.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by GoodsbyGarcia.

My wife is not involved in my eBay business, though she supports it. So I don’t know about working on paid work at home with a spouse. But I believe if two people are butting heads at work, what’s often at fault is failure to delineate separate responsibilities. The solution is to parcel out responsibilities and give both parties their own pieces of the business, for which they are accountable. For example, the Czar of shipping and the Czar of listing, each in their own separate Imperium. Or, the Task-Oriented one and the Big-Picture one (this is a bit more hierarchical, which may be fine with you or may not). Conflict comes from two people having the same responsibility and blaming the other instead of discharging their portion. In the corporate world I’ve heard the term “two-in-a-box” for this troublesome arrangement, and likewise the military is very skeptical of co-command, for good reason (only example I know of that worked well is Lewis & Clark).

I had a good week.

Sales: CAD$1145, 4 items, COGS: $25 –> Item profit: $935
Expenditures: $91 –> Cashflow: $869
Listed: $515, 11 items
Hours: 8, $109/hr
Notable sales: truck part from an ancient auction $280, more VOIP phones $350, half the remotes I bought last week $25–>$405.
Scavenging: a whole bunch of surplus lab/medical equipment for very cheap ($2-$5 each piece for ~8 pieces that should be $100+ each). Instrument sterilization trays, mainly.

Items in Store 1141
Items Sold 23
Total Sales $873.50
COGS $197.25
Total Profit $676.25
Average profit $29.40
Average sales price $37.98
New Listings 73

I was a listing BEAST this week! I knew I was doing pretty well, but I was still shocked when the number 73 popped out. That is the most I have EVER listed in a week. I also believe this is the most listed items I’ve ever had. To think I did that number on top of all this:
– Most of the chores/cooking as my wife is still recovering from giving birth and concentrating on baby.
– Helping two oldest kids crate train 2 dogs.
– Newborn baby in the house
– Took 6 year old to music class this week
– Coach 2 baseball games with 8 year old
– Potty training 2 year old (she’s got the pee pee part down pat after 2 weeks. Yay!)
– Full time day job

And I still had time to practice baseball with older 3 kids and even played dollhouse with the two year old yesterday for like 2 hours.

I’m darn proud of averaging 10 listed items a day over a week. That is attributed to having processes, the right equipment, and working as efficiently as humanly possible.

I create listings at work during my 10 minute breaks and during lunch at work.
I take photos and clean shoes at home in 15-30 minute power sessions when I can.
You’d be amazed at how much can be done in 10-15 minute intervals when highly motivated and dialed in.

Sales are up and I hope that trend continues. The weekend was a dud though. I countered a few offers that I wish I would have accepted. The buyers turned out to be “one and dones”. I hate when buyers don’t make it clear their offer is firm. I could have broke $1k if I would have accepted a couple of decent ones.

I love what Jay said in the pod cast:

” You don’t have to agree with what your partner says, but you have to at least respect it.”

I think my wife and I both struggle with this sometimes. It is hard to avoid feeling insulted or hurt when the one you love the most points out something you may not be the best at. I also tend to get frustrated when my wife misinterperets something I’m trying to convey.

One thing I don’t struggle with is apologizing. When I know I’m wrong, I humble myself immediately. It’s just the way its always been for me and I don’t understand why it is so hard for most people. My wife….not so much. Lol! It is probably the single most difficult thing in the world for her. I know for sure I can count on my fingers the amount of times she’s admitted being wrong. It is so funny when I can see the struggle just by looking at her that she’s connected the dots and knows she’s wrong, but cannot bring herself to admit it.

In my house this saying is very true:
“In a relationship there are two types of people: The person who is right, and the husband.”

We’ve been married 14 years this month but we’ve been together for 21 years – high school sweet hearts since I was 16 and she was 15. We’ve experienced the highs and lows of life together and there is no other person in the world I’d rather spend this life with.

Can’t wait to listen on my Monday evening commute, but in the meantime . . .
Apr 28-May 4

Total Items in Store: 3709
Items Sold: 60
Gross Sales: $991.79
Consignor Commission (COGS): $236.4(23.84%)
Highest Price Sold: $51.93 (Yoshi Yoshi Women’s Shirt)
Average Price Sold: $16.53
Returns: 3
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 92(personally 46)

Week April 28- May4, 2019

Items in store: 3667 Listings for 5757 Items
Items Sold: 84 Transactions for 102 Items
Gross Sales: $5763
Highest Price Sold: $342, LVC Leather Jacket
Lowest Price Sold: $2.74 (shoelaces)
Average Price Sold: $56.50
Cost of Goods Sold $421, Plus consignment
Number of items listed this week: 138 items
$$ spent on new inventory this week $19
Repeat Customers: 4

Amazon
Items Sold 2
Gross Sales $91.98
Cost of Good Sold $6

Direct Sales to Customer
Items Sold 2
Gross Sales $110
Cost of goods sold $10

I’ve been ok. The first half of April was super slow due to my 4 week surgery recovery. By the 15th I only had about $5800 in sales. Once my restrictions were lifted on the 18th I was able to crank it out and finish the month with $16580, respectable but quite a bit lower than my pre-surgery projections.

Now my back pain is back in full force, I have another CT scan (have one every 6 months) and a follow up in a couple weeks. Hope to get another steroid treatment which will lessen the discomfort for about a year to 18 months, hopefully.

I just wanted to say it was great to hear the 2 of you explain that you aren’t actually against people having a Tesla or a big house if they can afford those things. I am very frugal by nature but I own both and they bring me a lot of joy.

I justify having these 2 extravagant things with my frugal nature by knowing that we paid cash for both the house and the car and have more than enough money for the rest of our lives. Our house came with solar panels and a 240 volt wall connector port for charging the Tesla so I’m actually saving a lot of money by never buying gas for the car. I also don’t have to pay for or build outside storage for my eBay inventory (I could probably store 10x the inventory I have in our basement). And I certainly don’t mind driving long distances for scavenging and I have both the front and back trunks to stash my purchases.

I had felt kind of guilty in the past for having these 2 extravagant things but I also know how hard my husband and I worked to get here. No one ever gave us anything, we bootstrapped our way here through nearly 30 years of 7 days a week work right out of highschool and now are enjoying the fruits of our labor. Kind of the same way I imagaine the 2 of you will be doing in 20-30 years.

Working together.

Some days I’m sure my wife hates me. It’s been a real struggle to teach her why I do things the way I do them after 14 years of doing eBay alone, I’m a little bit obsessive with my methods, and compromise can be challenging for me, but we are making it work better all the time.

It seems that she may go back to school for her masters degree, possibly next year….which means I will not only lose her part time help for ebay, but also lose her for the other daily life tasks 2-3 full days a week. I encourage her to do what she loves, and if a masters degree is part of it, I’m 100% supportive.

@VintageTreasures personal finance is personal. As long as you know what your cash flow looks like and you assign money where it creates the most value for you, you should never be ashamed. This is exactly the situation I was talking about in our other thread. Why wait 60, 70, years to enjoy life when you can die tomorrow. Not to say frugal people don’t enjoy life but I’m also a realist and know luxuries by definition provide some improvement in the quality of life at a cost. Whether that luxury is $150 dollar work boots or $40k electric car.

items sold: 39
sales: $1,014 (i don’t include shipping revenue)
average selling price: $26
cost of goods: $148.20
returns: 0
purchases: $138.35
store listings: 978
inventory $ risk: $3716.40 (what i paid for all existing inventory)
listed this week: 40
ebay hours: 15.5
what’s on my mind: 3 miserable buying experiences this week on ebay. don’t ever under estimate how many incompetent sellers are in this marketplace.

caught a bug & was in zombie mode all week. did nothing ebay related on thurs, fri, or sat. surprised to sell at avg for the year. listed 20 items on sunday.

Interesting topics today. My wife sells things out of her closet on Poshmark, but that’s less than 1 item per week. I can say that buying & selling as a stream of income are me only, and occasionally it has caused friction – mainly figuring out storage of items & do business (packing, photographing) while keeping tidy & not disturbing the rest of the apartment. The filter of what type of furniture we picked for the second bedroom (where I do most of my store work) had to not only look good but also had storage functionality. Also successfully lobbied for our building to build storage units in our basement – for a fee that works out to about $90/mo, have been able to store packaging material, big/bulky items, etc down there. It’s currently working, but have seen the friction it could cause.

Week April 21-May 4, 2019 (2 weeks)

Total Items in Store: 1,006
Items Sold: 20 (1 Amazon)
Cost of Items Sold: $227.99 (24.6% of sales)
Total Sales: $925.41
Highest Price Sold: $129.99 (1966 Beach Boys – Pet Sounds original mono pressing)
Average Price Sold: $46.27
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $725
Number of items listed this week: 45
Promoted listings test: 11 sales, $472.96 (51.1% of total sales), $21.99 fees (4.6% of sales)

Solid numbers if this only covered one week, but iffy since they cover 2 weeks. First week I only sold 5 items for $215 – I’ll blame not listing leading in and also up to 5 days handling time because I had to be away all week travelling for work. This past week was much more “normal” – 15 sales for a hair over $700. COGS remain a bit high due to higher dollar items selling, would love to still get them back down under 20%.

This weekend I plan to get out to a lot of estate sales & maybe even the flea market if the weather holds. My wife is going to Scottsdale with her sister, mom, grandmother for mothers day and is leaving me home alone for 5 days – WOOO, bachelor pad! But seriously, haven’t been out to sales in a couple months with holidays, work, etc getting in the way. With the weekend to myself, I can get up and in line at big estate sales and then have all day/night to list when I get home.

@retrotreasuresWV agreed on the cheap people! I’m glad you found the line between frugal and cheap. My hang-up is most people don’t get that. I subscribe to the value tribe.

Jay, we have the long range model 3, and I wish it was only 40K, GoodsbyGarcia! Long range Tesla’s aren’t inexpensive. I do just treat it as a work car, and I’m still too frugal to have it washed much, much to my husband’s dismay…

Thank you for the podcast. I listened while I was returning from my dad’s on a road trip. My husband and I don’t work together on Ebay and are very compatible, but our occasional trouble areas are: (1) he is very goal oriented and I’m not. I can see the big picture, get what I need to get done, and don’t overspend, but I kind of take things day by day and do my best; and (2) sometimes we are in agreement but don’t explain things the same way – it’s a bit hard to describe but it frustrates him. Another thought is that while I appreciate his zeal for retirement savings, I wonder if I’m going to live to enjoy it. I have a sinking feeling that I will look back and wish we had traveled more and saved a bit less.

On vacation and closed the store this week for peace of mind. Have eight more boxes of stuff to add to my death piles. Sigh.

Good Week
Items sold: 6
Sales: $331
Average selling price: $55
Highest item sold: Vintage Men’s Sears Wool Lined Coat $150 to an overseas shipper
Lowest item sold: $13 Misc homeschool math items
Returns: 1
Purchases: $8
Store listings: 472
Items listed 8

Took my frail mother back home from hospital after heart issues. Busy week, got less than 10 items up. BUT, great Ebay week The coat was gorgeous. I did a Ryanne too high listing, and after a year, I got it. It was part of a hoarder/estate sale. I bought a few things from the men’s closet at the sale All clothing items were old and $2.
Also sold Robert Zur shoes for $60. Hope they fit this time.
This is so much more fun listing this than the bare weeks 2 months ago when I would sell 1-2 items in a week. Think my work back then is helping now.

I talked with my wife over dinner last night about our interesting partner conversation we are having here.

I really would like my wife to become more involved in our ebay business. In the many DIY projects we’ve done over the years, I cover the highly technical and process driven side, while she is the “outside the box” creative side.

I’m really only good at taking what other people have done and improving it. I’m a fixer, mainly because that’s what I do as an Engineer – improve processes. Sometimes I don’t think I have a creative or visionary bone in my body.

My ideal living room is big, symmetrical, and bare bones white walls. Clean, simple….highly efficient but bland and boring. She is the one that will add the character, the interesting asymmetrical lines and shapes, the colors, etc. Make it into something other people want.

My wife is the kind of person that spends some time learning the ropes of a new skill, then branches out to do things with it that other people wouldn’t even think to do – blaze her own path if you will.

I NEED her in this business to help it move to the next level, to evolve. Sometimes I feel like my ebay store is like that room – bland and boring. If we are going to turn this into our livelihood it has to be more than that.
I personally don’t know what “that” would be. I think she would once she knew the business enough to do her thing.

What happens when a return is approved automatically by ebay, but the seller does not provide shipping label by deadline?

Dealing with multiple, lousy, ebay sellers this week. Bought some new (used) hardware for my office. In one instance, seller took 6.5 days to get an origin scan, shipped parcel instead of the Priority mail I paid for & shipped the wrong item. Also, what they shipped didn’t work. Seller is an ebay trillionaire with 36,000,000 listings of amazon returns & outsourced $2.50/hr support. I am the dope who bought from him twice- he uses multiple accounts. So everything above x 2.

Ebay is not unlike a form of business format franchising. Franchisees exploit Ebay’s infrastructure, brand equity & network effects in exchange for x% of their revenue. The costs & barriers to entry are negligible. Anybody can splash around in the waters of ebay. However, when buyers encounter bad sellers, few will say: “well, that is the last time I am buying from \\cc111iill36xyv”. They just blame ebay. I don’t have a complete solution for the slow return process I am dealing with, but I would like to see one new feature for all buyers. Let us block sellers.

Just to be clear: ebay is fine with drop shipping. You have a deal with a wholesaler, for example, and have the wholesaler ship to your buyer? That’s fine, and that is conventional drop shipping. What eBay prohibits is the sort of thing where I list an item I do not have, buyer buys it, and I then buy it on, let’s say Amazon, and have Amazon ship it to my buyer. In the first situation, I did not have the item in my possession, but I had an existing deal with the item’s possessor. In the second situation, I did not have the item in my possession, and I had no control over it when I listed it.

In regards to Replacements.com, did you guys just show up and get a tour, or did you have connections to show you around? Sometimes, I feel I have a mini-replacements.com in my basement. Partial sets are so cheap and easy to find, and I can get some decent sales when someone is looking to add to their set. On the other hands, some of it is very, very long tail.

Week of Apr 28 – May 4
* Total Items in Store: 1361, eBay, 3 Etsy
* Items Sold: 9 eBay
* Cost of Items Sold: $11.90 + $0 Commission
* Total Sales: $207.21
* Highest Price Sold: $40 Small African Ashanti wood stool
* Average Price Sold: $23
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $23
* Number of items listed this week: 33

Another slow week, but the ASP is up. I still have work to do on buying higher priced items.

I had a few interesting events this week (leaving out some drama curtesy of my kids):

On Friday, I was at an auction. I ended up bidding on a lot of “bottles” that happened to be filled with alcohol; liquors, wines, tequila, etc. I opened a small bottle of Lancers from 1977, which my parents used to order when I was a kid (for example, in 1977). It was actually pretty good. I’m saving the other two bottles for when they are visiting in June. As the liquids are emptied, some of the bottles will be worth selling. A neat looking vintage phone was included in the deal.

On Saturday, a couple picked up the 1940s refrigerator that I sold them a month or two ago. Talking about Ryanne’s friend who owns a $350k boat, these guys had an RV built on a truck chassis. My son asked them how much it cost, and he said that the retail price was around $500k, but he didn’t pay that much. I think that they paid probably the same amount as that boat. They also had a large enclosed trailer in the back.

They needed the refrigerator for parts. They had one of the same model that they tried to get working, but the freezer had been pulled out (something they didn’t realize initially). Mine the only one available online. They left their house in California a week earlier, drove to Boston to pick up a classic Toyota Forerunner that they had bought, and drove to my house to get the refrigerator. After that, they planned to spend a night or two in PA, then a few days in Indiana to get some warranty work completed on the RV, and finally home.

Interesting people with an interesting story; they are probably in their 60s, maybe 70s. They are most likely retired and enjoying life with by traveling in a very comfortable RV and buying and refurbishing items that bring joy to them.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by Sharyn.

Thanks for the interesting podcast this week.

Here are my numbers:
Total Items in Store: 2962
Items Sold: 38
Total Sales: $918
Cost of Items Sold: $96
Average Price Sold: $24.17
Average Cost of Item: $2.55
Highest Price Item Sold: $79.95 2 sales at this price i) Sony Handycam DCR-HC32 and ii) Bose Wave Model AWR1-1W
Number of items listed this week: 28
YTD Sales: $15868
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +1%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 382
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 226
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 96
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.28%
Hats sold this week: 28 (73% of sales) worth $521.72 (56% of sales $)

The week on eBay was solid. Nothing much to say about it.

My wife and I have a division of responsibilities with the business. That obviously eliminates most of the potential conflicts. My wife does most of the listing/photography for our hat listings. I manage all other parts of the business.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Another great podcast, thanks for keeping up on these, I look forward to hearing what you both have to say every week.
Slow week sales wise for me, but spent alot of the week getting ready to pick up two lots of goodies in cancun that I won at auction. Arranging a scrap dealer to meet me on site to buy a bunch of stuff there that I did not want to ship back here and then arranging the transportation for 3 pallets worth of decent stuff and helping load all that when the box truck showed up, very sweaty day overall. Now to list it all…
Good sales to come!

Pretty huge (good) news for all the Etsy sellers out there:
https://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/etsy-ramps-marketing-reversal-after-pullback/2170546