Scavenger Life Episode 423: Home Runs vs Bread & Butter

Get this party started. *Jay’s voice* Happy Monday All. 🙂

Week August 4 – August 10, 2019

Items in store: 4263 Listings for 6212 Items
Items Sold: 78 transactions for 88 Items
Gross Sales: $4739.66
Highest Price Sold: $408 …. LVC Leather Jacket
Lowest Price Sold: $8… Necktie
Average Sale Price: $53.86
Cost of Goods Sold $322, Plus consignment.
Number of new items listed this week: 118 items
$$ spent on new inventory this week $175
Repeat Customers: 9

Our 4 day vacation this week was nice, but short. 6 Boxes of consignment arrived while we were away, and 3 more are on the way this week. Somehow I managed to put up 140 listings since we returned, in an effort to stay ahead of the tidal wave.

This week I sold a vintage sport coat to the costume department of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. I dropped a letter in the box just in case they needed any specific items, or wanted to off-load any unneeded costume pieces. Never hurts to ask.

Here is my wimpy what sells on eBay report for July. Was a really slow month but August has already been better!

Items in Store 1194
Items Sold 20
Total Sales $1,016.40
COGS $137.00
Total Profit $879.40
Average profit $43.97
Average sales price $50.82
New Listings 34

Summer Sales Goal: OVER weekly goal by $141.40 (YAY!)
Running total is still trailing by $1425.60

I only have 3 weeks left for my summer goal, and I would need to average $1350 in sales a week to meet the goal. I’m listing again, but posting 3 record weeks in a row in the summer seems like a long shot. My very poor week last week shot me in the foot pretty bad. On the whole though, I’ve done very well. There were two very bad weeks that made up almost $1100 of my deficit.
Our vacation is booked and paid for – a 3 bedroom oceanfront condo. We decided against doing a 2 week vacation and instead split it up. We plan to go to Orlando for a week in February.

Scavenging this week I bought 2 electrolux canister vaccums with the power nozzles at yard sales.I almost walked away from the second one because I didn’t want to pay $8. Lol! I only paid $2 for the first one so $8 felt like highway robbery! I tried the walk away thing and it didn’t work, so I circled the block and came back and paid. Just the hose sells for $40! I’ll make over $100 for each vacuum.

I’m going to hit the listing hard for the rest of the month. I want my fall sales to really step it up a notch!

Great Podcast, thanks again.

8/4– 8/10/19 (no cross listing is done between platforms)

eBay store: totommyto

Total store items: 716
Number of items sold: 9
Total eBay sales (not counting s/h): $213.50
Cost of items sold: $18
Highest price sold: $47.50 – old long handled miner’s hatchet – paid $5
Average price sold: $24
Returns: One – $20 lot of vintage plush
Money spent on new inventory: 0
Number of new items listed this week: 0
Sell through rate for the week: 1.2
Number International sales: 0

Etsy store oldfleatoymarket

Total store items: 658
Number of items sold: 6
Total Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $150
Cost of items sold: $12
Highest price sold: $45 – rusty old shark hooks & rigs assortment – paid $5
Average price sold: $25
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: 0
Number of new items listed this week: 0
Sell through rate for the week: 1.0
Number International sales: 0

Good morning.

Went camping this weekend, and I’m going on a business trip on Wed-Thurs. So it’s gonna be a hectic week. I still have shipment from last week too, which was a good one.

Sales: CAD$3161, 10 items, COGS: $948 –> Item profit: $1663
Expenditures: $194 –> Cashflow: $2417
Listed: $220, 2 items
Hours: 4
Notable sales: big one this week was an addressing printer that sold for $2200 (paid just under $700 at auction). I hesitate to call this a home run because I did pay up, but I feel good about the hourly rate on this. Also sold a medical wall panel thing with otoscope etc. for $250 (paid $30).

I have some thoughts about “home runs”.

First of all, let’s clarify that the whole concept of home runs is graded on a curve relative to your ASP (or perhaps median sale price?). So “you can’t constantly be getting home runs” is true tautologically, for the same reason not everybody can be above average.

BUT – can you build a business on those rarer (by definition) home runs? To a *limited* extent, I think I already have. Based on past dives into my selling data, for example, 25% of my profits came from $600+ items. Stated another way, for me, median sale price is $80 (bread and butter), but average sale price (which is what ultimately matters for income) is $148. So the higher dollar items are pulling more than their fair share of the weight, almost doubling the average from what it would be if I only sold “bread & butter”.

Now I know that other sellers have a much flatter price distribution where bread and butter stuff generates the overwhelming majority of their profits. But yes, I think it is *possible* to have a store that kind of capitalizes on outliers. It requires somewhat high risk tolerance, although not nearly as much as would be required to say, buy $10k worth of a single widget from China and sell it private label.

Ryanne….I’ve had the same “superstition” happen sooooo many times like that! I will go to pick out something else that sold and glance at something and have a thought about it…like wow that has been for sale for along time or something and then it will sell!! There is something too that!! I tell my husband about it every time it happens…it is a weird/cool feeling!!

I have had the “touch it and sell it” experience also, many times. I never thought of it as a superstition though.

Week August 4-10, 2019

Total Items in Store: 1015
Items Sold: 9
Cost of Items Sold: $174 (31.6% of sales)
Total Sales: $550.48
Highest Price Sold: $170 (1950 New York Yankees Sketchbook/Yearbook)
Average Price Sold: $61.16
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $213
Number of items listed this week: 13
Promoted listings test: 8 sales, $231.93 (37% of total sales), $11.52 fees (4.9% of sales)

Today’s show really hit home. I’ve made a really effort in the past year to stock my store with bigger, better, higher dollar items. As you can see from this week’s sales, that’s working as my average price is quite high and has remained over $40-$50 consistently. However, that comes at a price, especially in these slower summer months – low sales volume & high COGS. This weekend I went to 2 estate sales and focused on bread & butter, lower dollar but high yield items. Even though these items are all going to sell for $20-$30, I’ve also paid less than $1 for each item, pennies even sometimes. They will supplement the store and help bring that average COGS lower and *hopefully* increase volume as well.

One of the estate sales was on the final day and they were allowing great deals on piles/boxes. Grabbed a ton of stuff, anything that looked even remotely interesting, and threw it in a box – pins, medals, ribbons, tobacco pipes & accessories, costume jewelry, playing cards, etc. Paid $50 for the whole box, probably nearly 100 items, smalls mostly that will sell for $20-$30. Gonna take me a bit to list everything, but a few things I’ve been able to research & list already include: Odd Fellows medal, 1904 YMCA medals, 1932 Washington Bicentennial medal, and a neat 1950s foreign coin bracelet (which according to my wife were quite fashionable at the time). Excited to dig through the rest of the box throughout the week!

Thanks for the show Jay and Ryanne!

Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 3253
Items Sold: 54
Total Sales: $1280.78
Cost of Items Sold: $197
Average Price Sold: $23.72
Average Cost of Item: $3.66
Highest Price Item Sold: $64.95 Vintage CASIO VL-Tone VL-1 Synthesizer Keyboard
Number of items listed this week: 67
YTD Sales: $31,114
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +12%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 391
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 211
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 127
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.66%
Hats sold this week: 26 (48% of sales) worth $471.08 (36% of sales $)

This was a pretty good week for me especially as there were no home runs. Just a steady stream of bread and butter sales.

The low light of the week was having to put down my dog of 14 years. (He was around 16+ years old). I have a newly found empathy for people that talk about their pets as their children. The experience of saying goodbye was really like losing a family member. There’s been a lot of grieving going on in my house this week.

Back to eBay: The issue with eBay overwriting already-filled item specifics is continuing. I’m confident that eBay will eventually fix that when enough people are exposed to that “feature” and complain. The way eBay guesses at the brand is the worst aspect. Only a fairly small percentage of hats that I sell have a brand in the title so randomly using the first word in the title as the brand is rarely helpful. At a minimum there should be an “undo” so I don’t have to get out items to double check what had been overwritten.

Hope everyone has some fun this week and that sales of trash are good.

Jay, I fondly remember the early 1980s bank interest rates for CDs and money markets 16+% earning. Yes, so true! I was in undergrad and grad school then. My dad was so smart. He said we would NEVER see these rates again. He had me take out the maximum student loans allowed and we invested it ALL. Since my parents had been divorced the court ruled earlier each party pay 1/3 college (dad, mom, myself) so the $ was mostly available as I went to an inexpensive state college (Go Plattsburg SUNY) then got a full scholarship to Syracuse Univ for grad school. I made a boat load of money. I still had to pay off the student loans but my earnings were keep in a separate account with strict instructions not to touch, my profit was huge!!! I am forever grateful to him for his wise advice, wish he was still around so I could give him a hug.

Great podcast! I really don’t like selling clothes either, but I recently received a very large amount for free. This is my next project to get them listed as quickly as possible. I do have clothes on sale right now, but I may up the percent off to get them moving. I hardly have room for the 6 or so bags of stuff I have to list!!

I’ve been trying to get my average price up. I’ve been somewhat successful, but not nearly as much as I’d like to be. My highest price item is often a home run, but not this week ($32 bedspread).

Week of Aug 4-10
* Total Items in Store: 1439 eBay, 3 Etsy
* Items Sold: 18
* Cost of Items Sold: $20.50 + $8 Commission
* Total Sales: $318.65
* Highest Price Sold: $32 Washington Bedspread
* Average Price Sold: $17.70
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $33
* Number of items listed this week: 51

I made the same sales amount as last week, but had to sell four more items to get there. Average price is down. However, I’ve already had two sales this week that are higher than the $32 bedspread, so things are looking up!

Aug. 4 – 10
Total Items in Store: 2436
Items Sold: 19
Total Sales : $626
* Below yearly average of $945
Highest Price: $135 (Marco Drain Cleaner Motor Part)
Average Price: $33
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $36
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $118
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 50

Bounced back a little bit in sales this week. With $600 being the low end of my comfort goal, I can rest easy enough. I had an annoying experience last week with a deliverer hired by a buyer. I sold some chairs to a guy in Georgia and he paid uShip to pick them up and deliver them. This was my first experience with a delivery service like this. Right off the bat I could tell that the driver was a flake. He wanted to pick them up early on Friday, which was fine since I now work from home. Then he didn’t show. I called him and asked what the deal was and he said he could either pick them up after midnight or sometime between 4 and 5 AM on Saturday! Well I opted for the latter. Woke up super early…and no show again! He then called at 8 AM and said he was two hours away and to expect him soon. So I waited (mind you, I had things I had to do away from my home, so this was a major inconvenience) and STILL HE DIDN’T SHOW UP! He didn’t contact me at all on Sunday and finally on Monday he called and wanted to get them in the evening. Fine, I said. That would give me a time-frame to go get my lawn mower worked on and be back before he arrives. WRONG. At noon, he texted me and said he was 20 minutes away. Luckily, Steph was home so she put the chairs out by the garage for him to get. It all worked out in the end though I guess. The buyer was happy. But the whole experience just left a bad taste in my mouth with uShip.

I went to a huge flea market on Saturday. Rogers Flea Market in Ohio. I was there for 5 hours and still didn’t get to see everything. I used some of your tips from the podcast. Look for the junky booths and don’t bother with the fancy ones with price tags on everything. I think I did alright. My buy of the day was a case of Kodachrome stereoview slides from the 1950s. There are some good airplane and automobile pictures in there. I also picked up a set of Lifetime cookware for $40. That was a little steep, but it included a stock pot which goes for $80-$100 used.

Goals for this week… list list list as always. But I would like to get some stuff done around the house that I’ve been putting off. Specifically, I need to power wash the side of our house. I’ve had to put it on hold since the water spigot wasn’t working, but I’ve since fixed that issue. I also need to do something about our rain spouts. They’re draining right next to our foundation which is a big problem.

Ryanne,
It was an ING Orange Savings account back in the 2000’s. The rate was 10%! It was an order of magnitude better than what banks were offering, which was around 2%. Even the best CD was 4-5% at the time.

My wife (then girlfriend) was in a car accident and she received a $20k cash settlement. Instead of spending it she put it all in that 10% savings account. Eventually the rate dropped to next to nothing, but collecting 10% on $20k was pretty cool.

That paid for the down payment on our first house.

Week of 08/04-08/10
Total Items in Store: 3,365 (Up 35% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 73
Number of Items Sold: 96 (Up 41% YOY)
(Includes 0 Etsy, 10 Poshmark, 1 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether)
Weekly STR: 12% (Up 1% YOY)

Total Product Sales: $2,581 (Up 22 YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Up $871
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Down $407
Cost of Items Sold: $528
Cost of Labor: $105
Highest Item Sold: $100 – Pendleton Shirt
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Troy wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 18-15.

Clothing
# Listed: 1,944
# Sold: 69
STR: 15%
ASP: $26.33

Shoes
# Listed: 823
# Sold: 23
STR: 12%
ASP: $29.11

Hard Goods
# Listed: 598
# Sold: 4
STR: 3%
ASP: $23.68

EBay
# Listed: 3,365
# Sold: 86
STR: 11%
ASP: $26.38

Etsy
# Listed: 218
# Sold: 0
STR: 0%
ASP: $0

Poshmark
# Listed: 808
# Sold: 10
STR: 5%
ASP: $31.20

Lower level of listing activity due to being gone to New Mexico for my Father’s Memorial and to spread his ashes in the mountians he loved. Forever missed, never forgotten, and this chapter is complete.

Got to get a bunch of items listed this week, as it looks like Veronica and I will have another trip to Montana for a week of ranch work sometime next week.

Sales coming back, hope to see a continued rise.

I like the topic of savings, though I don’t like saving dollars. A couple of items I use. Robinhood is a great app for investing as they have no commissions, and you can send as little as $1 at a time from your bank to them. I do a daily move of 1% of Gross Sales onto their site.

OneGold is a blockchain investment tool for purchasing Gold and Silver. You can buy and sell a digital version (backed by blockchain tech) of Gold and Silver at very low commissions. If you want to convert to physical gold or silver, they have decent rates as well. Investment transfers of as low as $100. I put 1% of Gross Sales daily into a separate account, and when I reach $100, I transfer.

I’m no stranger to making money off trash, but I love my trash to treasure moment this week. Found several wooden Halloween yard figures on the road a couple months ago after going to some kind of sad garage sales. They had issues like severe paint chipping and rusty nails but I figured someone could repurpose them. I immediately threw them up on Facebook Marketplace and sold them for $20 in the course of maybe a month. For those new to putting stuff on Marketplace it pays to be patient just like on ebay.

I’m a bit late to the party this week…

August 4 – 10, 2019

Store 1
Total Items in Store: 1,678
Items Sold: 16
Gross Sales: $359.42
Cost of Items Sold: $36.40
Highest Price Sold: $39.00
Average Price Sold: $22.46
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $68.14
Number of items listed this week: 55

Store 2 (CAD)
Total Items in Store: 993
Items Sold: 10
Gross Sales: $126.90
Cost of Items Sold: $12.25
Highest Price Sold: $16.99 (vintage patch)
Average Price Sold: $12.69
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 31

Amazon.ca sales: $741.97 (Approx $222.59 net profit)
Amazon.com sales (USD): $2,369.31 (Approx $947.72 net profit)

Did a bit of listing on both accounts this week. My wife has started pushing some of our new listings to Poshmark (both US and Canada). No sales there yet, but we’ll give it a fair shake before deciding.

It was a crazy busy week personally. We spent Thursday at the house we had offered on doing/having some inspections done. Pretty much everything checked out, so we removed conditions, and as of yesterday, there’s a sold sign up! We take possession on August 30th, but have our current rental until September 30th, so there won’t be a crazy rush to get moved in. We’ll take our time moving. Right away I’ll get at finishing the garage for ebay/amazon use. It’s heated, insulated, and drywalled, but needs the crack filling done, paint, some upgraded lighting, and I’ll finish the floor. Then we’ll air it out for a week or so, and start moving inventory, packing station, printers, photography umbrellas, etc in. Can’t wait to have a dedicated work space set up!

There’s a BIG annual flea market about an hour from us starting this coming Friday (16th), so we’re planning to spend the full day there sourcing inventory. I’m hoping/planning to wear my GoPro camera, so hopefully I’ll end up with some shareable footage when all is said and done.

Then the following Monday (19th) there’s a big charity book sale about an hour a way that I’ll go to in hopes of sourcing books for amazon.

Going to be a busy few weeks, but we’re very excited!

About Saving Money / Safe Haven
Friends, first a quick update on how my engine is moving today.
The bulk of my income is from my Consulting business. I have been trying to build a pipeline of opportunities where I can jump immediately from one to the other.
For example, current one I signed a 6 months contract in Feb.2017, the thing went so well that i had other 5 6-month renewals, last one expires in Sept. And in September the next one starts in Ho-Chi-Min, I think it will be a 9 months or 1 year contract with a few s or 3 week trips to Vietnam. Some of you might remember when I spent 2016 doing similar in Istanbul.
Then I have my eCommerce in which the mother ship is eBay. With the profits from this side goes to precious metals and pays for my Property Tax (they are heavy here in South Florida).
Another large bulk comes from my investments, this is where I wanted to get to. Even though I rarely execute those profits, they are automatically reinvested, there are times for surprises or when the other side does not cover something for whatever reason.
I have 5 investment bulks today. They are independent portfolios where I invest on stocks and funds. One of them is the largest one where I have a managed portfolio. One way or the other it only grow. Since it is managed, the reaction to whatever is immediate. Even though I had to use, it never gets lower than a certain level because it is a fast aggressive growth. The other is self managed. I had 3 stocks that went way under water. Then I grabbed whatever was left from those 3 and invested on Starbucks and GM. In 3 months Starbucks gave me something 14% (guessing, dont have the actual in front of me). There are 3 of them that are IRA/401K, I will merge 2 of them in October, so it will be one IRA for me, other for my wife. There are funds and stocks that gave me 28% year to date.

Moral of the story: I never ever ever put anything on savings. Neither do my sons. For example, I have a huge problem with change. I don’t leave a penny on the ground when I see one even if it is stuck in a pile of crap.
The same thing for banks and credit cards, I think my OCD makes it hurt to see cents and cents. So I opened an Acorn account and chose a moderate-aggressive (one of the five) profile. When it gets to a certain threshold, I grab the money and buy Silver (now I will wait longer and grab gold). Acorn is way better than any savings, but for my perspective it is “just an app”, so for me it is not an end in itself, it is only a means to an end.
Often I try other apps since they give you money to join: for example Stash, Robinhood (you win one stock if you join through an invitation, so both persons who sent and received the invitation end up with one stock each, can be Groupon, can be Walmart but also can be Apple, for free. So usually I open these accounts, get whatever I can get, stay for the minimum required, and transfer the stocks to my bank (I try to NEVER withdrawal these moneys).
Also, I found out Cryptocurrency faucets. In summary, you join some pools of miners and share whatever you are mining. I have “free” processing at home, i am making ~$350 per months just for having one litlle tablet and one old desktop running the software. I built my personal wallet and for now I am keeping these “earnings” like another investment portfolio.
Lastly, I make about $300/months on rewards like Bing, eBay bucks, Swagbucks. All these rewards I exchange for Amazon gift cards and get gold for free, most cases all you have to do is respond quizzes.

Long novel just to share my thoughts against any type of savings account. Even more for anything you are considering terms like one year or over

I’ve started working on my first thorough inventory in 5 years. It feels good to get rid of a lot of bad inventory, watch my inventory numbers decrease, and know the stock I keep is the stock that will move. I estimate this will take 2-3 months to do in my spare time. I am currently hovering around 11,700 listed items and would like to get down to 10,000-10,500 items with the items I delist and normal sales that will come in by November.

What I have noticed is I am finding 1-2 unlisted items per 100 items I go through. A few of these can be attributed to items previously sold that I originally couldn’t find, but many of them have just disappeared. This has previously been a huge problem with my Amazon inventory, but I didn’t think it was so bad with Ebay. I was wrong. I guess free new stock to list? =/

I’m also hoping to rearrange and free up enough space to expand up to 15,000+ items listed on Ebay without worrying about where to store it. With my current configuration, I am nearly out of space. If I have a ton of empty space available, it will be easier for me to list without worrying about where everything will go.

I have enough free space to list around while I work on this project, so I’m not too worried about listing and playing Tetris with the stock at the same time.

2019-08-04 – 2019-08-10

Total Items In Store: 3210
Items Sold: 17 (16 ebay, 1 Bonanza)
Cost of Items Sold: $50
Total Sales: $506.50
Highest Price Sold: $60 (Shoes)
Average Price Sold: $ 29.79
Money Spent on New Inventory: $60
Number of items listed: 85

Gut Sales Report for the week: Sales have started very slowly, but then picked up after I started listing a lot.

Challenge of the week: Still trying to get my shipping room in order.

Scavenge of the week: Found 4 pair of brand new with Tag Levis for $4 each at an outlet store while I was on vacation for the weekend. Also found some nice vintage Levis & Wrangler Jean jackets on vacation. So new\Vintage jeans\Levis was the story for the week.

Mark S

Interesting podcast.

As a kid, I obtained a small inheritance in the late 1970’s. My mom put it in CD’s and over the course of 10 years it doubled, which works out to just over 7% a year, which is not bad. That basically paid for my college and a bit of youthful foolish spending.

Yes, mortgage rates were in the teens. Gold and silver had a really nice run up too, before basically crashing. Inflation ran up and was really high in the 1970’s during the Carter administration and into the early 1980’s.

If I remember right, college tuition was $2500 a semester in the late 1980’s.

How times have changed.

I went through PSU on less than 10K which included tuition, room and board back in the 70s. My kids did same (they are now 25 and 27) but to the tune of more than $100K each. I am currently working on my mother’s estate and one of the things she and my father did was give ~$200K to a guy at Wells Fargo Advisors about 20 years ago. It was split between a standard investment portfolio and an IRA. When she died in April, the whole thing amounted to ~$2.6 million. They did a split of equity to fixed that was 60/40. If you aren’t saving/investing, you probably should be.

If only! There are 4 of us but one of my brothers is incapacitate / disabled so most of it is going to a supplemental needs trust for him. At least we don’t have to worry about how to take care of him. That kind of peace of mind is worth more than the $2.6 mil.

Weekly Note: I listen to a lot of Youtuber’s and Audio Books to pass the time listing or just doing anything I need for Ebay.. And by far this weeks highlight is by far Jay Singing Pink… lol

I got a negative removed.
I received my first negative and was very surprised. The buyer received a NEW in box collectible puzzle that was wrapped in plastic. To ship it I wrapped it in thick brown paper. Apparently the buyer thought the box should have been in another box and left a negative feedback saying that. I emailed her asking if there was any damage to the box but she never answered.
I looked up this buyers “feedback left for others”. She leaves 50% negatives! I contacted eBay and asked them to look into this. They asked me to send a feedback revision and if she did not respond within a week to call them back. I did this and again, no response. I called eBay a 6 days later and they removed it. The eBay rep said she did not have good feedback behavior. So in short, if you receive a negative, check out what kind of feedback they leave for others.
Itemsfromthesouth