Scavenger Life Episode 463: The Painful Gaze Of A Boss vs The Freedom To Do What I Want

05/10/20 – 05/16/20

Total Items In Store: 3445
Items Sold: 27
Cost of Items Sold: $ 100
Total Sales: $ 1067.24
Highest Price Sold: $ 145 (Vintage Sports Equipment)
Average Price Sold: $ 39.53
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 0
Number of items listed: 17

Gut Sales Report for the week: Still feeling like the busy season. I hope this
lasts thru the Summer.

Challenge of the week: Still trying to take pictures every day.

Scavenge of the week: Nothing.

Trends of the week:

1. Golf equipment is selling.

Mark S

Thanks for the show. I listened while I hiked around the hills near my house before some unusual May rain arrived.

Before I forget, ebay does allow you to tell them you’re a reseller to avoid sales tax. You can do that by uploading a resale certificate (or whatever your state uses) here: Paying tax on eBay purchases.

Once they accept your documentation, nothing you buy on that account will have sales tax added. (With the new rules, sales tax for many states is now based on the buyer’s address alone, not the seller’s address.) You cannot pick and choose which purchases will get sales tax excluded so you’ll want to use this on your sourcing account. Strictly speaking I’m not sure that the tax-free account should be used for anything except stuff you resell. For example, I’m not sure that shipping supplies, should be purchased tax free but maybe there’s an accountant that can chime in on this topic.

My eBay Sales (No Store) Week May 10 – May 16, 2020

Total Items For Sale (No Store): 42
Items Sold: 4
Gross Sales: $406.10
Cost of Items Sold: $0
Highest Price Sold: $259.23 (Used Nikon Zoom Lens)
Average Price Sold: $102
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number Of Items Listed This Week: 6

Slower week, so I was able to list more. Still good sales for this time of the year.

Week of May 10-16
* Total Items in Store: 1360 eBay, 33 Etsy
* Items Sold: 20 eBay
* Cost of Items Sold: $23.85 + $12.91 Commission
* Total Sales: $348.51 eBay
* Highest Price Sold: $43 Large metal tool box
* Average price: $17.42
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 18

May 10 – 16
Total Items in Store: 3,970
Items Sold: 43
Total Sales : $1,019
* Above yearly average of $937
Highest Price: $85 (Vintage SICO C.R. Bridge And Signal Tracer Instrument)
Average Price: $24
Returns: 1
Cost of Goods Sold: $51
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 40

Another nice 1K+ week. That’s been my soft goal lately. It’s nice to make it there, but it’s not a big deal if I don’t. I’ve been slacking on listing this past week. Mostly because of the nice weather we’ve been having. I’ve been doing a lot of outdoor maintenance and upgrades. And maybe this week I’m going to build a nice raised garden for some vegetables this year.

Your story about the crazy lady demanding a shipping refund reminded me about my experience with crazy. I had a person wanting to buy several of my buttons, but eBay was doing the same thing as you and multiplying the shipping. Normally it would be no bid deal – I would just refund the shipping difference. And I even offered her free shipping since she was buying so many. But then it got ugly. I got sent a tirade about how I don’t have my store set up right and that I’m an amateur and don’t know what I’m doing. Well that sale got canceled really quick. Sure, I might have lost a $50+ sale, but my gut feeling told me it wasn’t worth it.

I love how nice you’ve made your building! What an improvement! I’m excited to see some before and afters of the inside too.

Congrats on the Roaster Building. Looks very cool. Nice work, you two! Love your title for the podcast – The Painful Gaze of a Boss. Sounds like the title for a short story for young adults. I got an image of 11-year-old Jay mopping a hallway that stretches forever.

Total Items in Store: 610
Items Sold: 15
Total Gross Sales includes s/h: $366
Highest Price: $64 – 2x Heavy Duty Truck Oil Filters
Lowest Price: $8.99 TV Remote Control
Average Price: $24
Cost of Goods Sold: $10
Returns: 1 – Fancy Wine Decanter $350
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: 0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 54

Gut Reaction to the Week: There’s an old David Bowie movie titled ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’. The movie of my past week would be called ‘The eBay Store That Fell to Earth’. Landed with a thud after weeks of giddy selling. To add insult I had a return last week of this really expensive wine decanter as an INAD. Ouch. I got the thing as an Amazon return. So perfectly packed I thought there was no way the person who returned it even took it out of the box. Oh well. It’s on me. Life goes on. On the plus side, the load of TV remote controls I bought for virtually nothing are selling well. They’re the only thing saving my butt lately. Things are reopening slowly here in Cincinnati but auctions are still only online. I keep checking them but haven’t seen anything interesting. Thrifts not open yet, not yard sales to speak.

Spent the week listing mounds of car owners manuals I got for $120. I’ll do OK with them, but nothing too exciting. Most are in the $10-15 range. Only messing with them since I can’t do usual sourcing.

Scavenge of the Week: A friend is closing his office so I’m helping him sell his furniture. I just started lising so no sales yet. I’ll get 40% so I’m interested to see how this stuff sellS.

Here are my numbers for the week:

Total Items in Store: 3853
Items Sold: 71
Total Sales: $1200.33
Cost of Items Sold: $128
Average Price Sold: $16.91
Average Cost of Item: $1.81
Highest Price Item Sold: $49.95 Lot of 6 – 13″ Apple Mabook Pro empty boxes
Number of items listed this week: 67 worth approx. $1019
YTD Sales: $21840
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +18%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 453
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 379
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 268.5
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.84%
Hats sold this week: 60 (84% of sales) worth $971 (80% of sales $)

Sales were steady this week. About the same as last week from a $ perspective though I’m not selling any high-value items currently. It’s been 2 months since I sourced anywhere except Ebay.

On the podcast topic, I’ve had a least a dozen full-time jobs in my career and quite a few more bosses than that. I can only think of 2 bosses that I thought were horrible. Both at the same company. Not surprisingly that was probably the worst job I ever had (during the 2008 recession so I was lucky just to keep a job). Most of my bosses have been fine. My current boss lives in another country and I only meet with her for 45 minutes every other week.

On the topic of work, I’m still trying to decide whether I should stick to my plan of retiring from my day job next month. It seems weird retiring in the current environment. My company announced that we don’t have to return to the office for the rest of the year and my work-from-home situation is very easy-going. I’m not sure what I’ll do.

I know there was quite a bit of talk on negative buyer messages. I just wanted to share that I do get them and just move on; however, last year I had a very abusive buyer that was also threatening me. Ebay was able to stop all communication (even though they had an open return), and did also block their IP address so they could not contact me from another account. Yes, they could go to a different location and do it that way, but they never did.
I was happy with ebays response and the fact that they did not take this lightly.

Total Items in Store: 298
Items Sold: 15 Ebay, 4 Mercari
Gross Sales: $770 Ebay, $67 Mercari
Cost of Items Sold: $220 Ebay, $12 Mercari plus some items ours on Mercari
Highest Price Sold: $125 (upholstery fabric, 4 yards)
Average Price Sold: $51 Ebay, $17 Mercari
Returns: 0, $5 partial to make a non-reader buyer complaint go away on chipped item sold as described
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $150-200 online RA clearance sale
Number of items listed this week: 28

Good week on Ebay for me with a lot of new, discontinued and/or hard to find items selling quickly. I have so much in the used piles and now you are saying your coffee mugs are doing well. I can’t decide what to list next. My day job is slowing and hope to hit it while covid sales are still good.

We are still locked down here as there is a federal prison in our county with a giant outbreak. I’ve been reading about transmission and I’m feeling ok to drop off at FedEx so I’ve reactivated the larger items. They even have the door propped open. One of the indy thrifts is doing curbside sales and posting on Craigslist and Insta, but it’s mostly furniture and large stuff (not that I need to source). Our personal choice is not going anywhere that isn’t necessary even though cases are very, very low in our city and we plan to continue that course of action. In terms of buying things, you can let items sit for 2-3 days and “cool off”, shop very quickly, wash your hands carefully after picking, wear a mask, and avoid touching your face. We bought disposable gloves on Ebay. Flea markets seem like a better option outside. However, I’ve seen a couple of youtubers do it and other scavengers are crowding them to look at the goodies and forgetting about social distancing. You can’t really control other people who are supposed to be protecting you.

As a buyer on Mercari, I am having some issues. They used to use weight ranges, but now the sellers need to weigh the items after the last USPS rate increases. Many sellers apparently routinely get away with sending 1 pound plus items with first class labels in priority boxes but not at MY post office – they are having none of that s*it. I had several items show up with major postage due. Also had an item break this week that was poorly packed. There are some good deals to be had though.

There were 3 estate sales in my town yesterday. Typically there are 1 to 2 on weekends in non-pandemic times. I understand some things being opened but people’s houses for an estate sale can quickly become overcrowded. I’d be interested in how many people actually went. I was tempted to go but truthfully, I’ve really liked staying home the past two months without any obligation to go anywhere, so I stayed home.

All thrift stores in town sound like they are open as are the two new Amazon Return stores. I discovered those right before everything closed for the virus. They are two separately owned stores, each selling items from Amazon return pallets. 1st day everything is $5 – no matter what it is. Sometimes people find drones, LED headlights for Jeeps, entire home security camera set-ups, tents, etc. 2nd day everything is $3, next day $2, then $1, then 50 cents. Sometimes if they get a ton of clothes or books, they’ll sell it by the bag full instead of per piece. I’m in love with the place because I love the hunt. I haven’t found anything super expensive (it’s mostly cheap Chinese junk that I think get returned because the original buyer was surprised by the poor quality) but the 4 times I went, I found profitable items to flip. I can hardly wait to go again! I’m giving it another few weeks before I head back into a place like that.

The thrift stores in my aeea are still closed, as my state has the stay at home order extended to the end of the month.

I really like the idea of managed payments and how they will change billing. I never liked getting an invoice at the end of the month and trying to figure out fees. It just makes more sense to have them automatically deduct fees before the money even gets to you. I focus on net profit over sales. Lots of people like to say i sold $x but what is really important is what you take home. Especially if you sell RA items where the margins are thin.

Enjoyed the podcast as always

Items in Store 1514
Items Sold 60
Total Sales $1,701.00
COGS $183.00
Total Profit $1,518.00
Average profit $25.30
Average sales price $28.35
New Listings 51

The weekend closed out the week much slower. I was really hoping to crack $2k sales. Oh well – can’t complain! Hopefully this was just a blip and not the end of these crazy awesome numbers I’ve been getting the last 7 weeks.

Jay, you were speaking my language in regards to slacking at school and on work projects. It’s like I simply don’t care unless I have a vested interest. I also tend to work at a significantly higher efficiency when under that last minute pressure. It is a blessing and a curse.

225 items shipped out last week. Shipped 30+ items a day 6 days last week, Monday-Saturday. Saturday pick-ups are amazing! It now allows me to get my Sunday sales out on Monday instead of Tuesday, as I don’t want to overwhelm the postal people. I’ll definitely be taking advantage of it from now on.

40 items out today. In the past few weeks, a typical Monday has seen 50-60 orders ship out. It is partially down today due to the Saturday ship-out, as well as just lower sales in general this past weekend. For now, I feel like my business might have peaked last week. With more of the country opening up, a lot of their $$$ will go towards shopping in person again. That being said, a piece of ephemera I listed just now sold within 5 minutes. There are clearly still a lot of people sitting at home with nothing to do but scour Ebay, so I’ll just see this potential slow down as an opportunity to catch up on listing. There might also be people saving money for Memorial Days sales.

Looks like NYC might very slowly start to reopen in June. I don’t think we’ll get access to thrift stores again until July at the very very earliest. Considering how crowded they were pre-pandemic, I will continue to avoid them for at least the first two months they’re open, if not longer. I have enough of a backlog and new stock coming in that I’m not worried about missing out – no fomo during this pandemic. We did order a couple of times off grubhub last week, so I’m not completely avoiding other people. The drivers wore masks and just texted that they left the items outside. It is feeling safe enough to start very slowly returning back to basic normalcy like that, but I really don’t want to have fellow thrifters breathing down my neck as I’m looking at stuff. It was bad enough when they did that pre-pandemic. I’ve also seen photos of people going to flea markets wearing masks and that is definitely another experience I would skip out on if I was able to go out to one at this moment.

Seems like everyone here posts amazing numbers, wow!
As far as the painful gaze of a boss, great title btw, the last boss i had, like 15 years ago, was a real nut. It was for a concrete company in CT, we did mostly pool surrounds and decorative work with grout to make blue stone looking finishes. Money was good but the work, his aptitude, and hours were total hell. As it is seasonal work he expected us to work a minimum of 60 hours a week and usually ended up over 70 hours per week all summer long. Didn’t matter how fast you worked, he would always be working faster than you, but then again he was was usually high on some uplifting substance. Not quite sure how he managed to keep a business together…
Anyway, sales here were pretty slow this week. Sold another cycling uniform for $40, a crossbow scope for $190 and another lot of ten cigarette cases with built in lighter for $80.
Situation here is still serious, not a mandatory lock down, but people are encouraged to stay home. Most nonessential stores still closed, limit one person per car if you go to out, have to wear masks even when inside your car, many towns still blocked off including all beaches, and dry law was extended another 15 days!!!
Happy hunting all!

Morning all, had a good long weekend and another good week on ebay. We cleaned out our shed and I can finally work in it instead of tripping over bins. And I built some square foot gardens & potato planter buckets.

Sales c/w shipping: CAD$3432, 21 sales, COGS: $254, Fees: ~$473, Postage: $555 –> Gross profit: $2150
Expenditures: $516 –> Cashflow: $2404
Finally going to get some scavenging in this coming week. My favourite source has opened up again.

Jay:

I wasn’t in your school when you were in the 5th grade so I don’t know if the religious leader, who was a supervisor of yours was a mean guy or not. I do find it interesting that you seem to think that all 5th graders who are hired to perform a job would be allowed or able to perform the janitorial duties w/o supervision.

It has been my experience that kids in grade school aren’t necessarily known for having a string work ethic or always acting responsible. I also realize that some people are going to say children in the 5th grade shouldn’t be working.

I have a very different view of what you described. I think it would be good for 5th or 6th graders to perform some work, get paid for it and learn some basic skills concerning what it means to earn money. I am rather surprised that you would deem it unusual or unacceptable for an adult to keep rather close watch on a 5th grader who is performing a job at a school. That seems very appropriate to me.

In a previous career, I worked with many high school aged people. Some of them were excellent workers. Some were horrible, most were somewhere in between.

If a supervisor of 5th graders performing a job is an evil task master, taking out his frustrations on a kid then that’s inappropriate. If a supervisor is just keeping an eye on a kid performing janitorial duties then I fail to see where the problem lies.

Something I should have asked when I posted my numbers… Has anyone else had a decent uptick in international sales. 8 of my 71 orders went international. I’ve switched from GSP (and direct shipment) to EBay Standard Delivery for smaller/inexpensive items like hats and I seem to be getting lots of sales. I presume there are plenty of bored overseas shoppers too but the percentage of international sales is higher than I would have expected.

Jay, I am from NH, lived in different parts of the US during my time there. I studied Spanish in high school and lived in Colorado so i spoke Spanish almost daily while I lived there. Later living in CT the fact that I was fluent in Spanish, and had a valid drivers license, when I went to work for a concrete company I was almost immediately made the foreman. All the other employees were Mexican and Guatemalan…
I decided to leave the US about 15 years ago for a change of scenery and looking for new opportunities. I had heard about this city I live in now and real estate opportunities were easily had when I got here. There were no lack of $30,000 dollar houses that with maybe another 20k put in to them for remodeling became 150k houses. I am a hands on guy, doing a fair bit of the work myself and have guys for the work I would rather not do. Keep in mind that probably 95% of deals here are done with cash on the table, that’s buying and selling… The market has tightened up here quite a bit since I have been here but there are still plenty of things to do if you have the cash.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by scott2.

5/9/20-5/15/20
Total Items In Store: 1992
Items Sold: 49
Gross Sales: $1030
Highest Price Sold: $130 (BioComfort Pedio foot massager)
Average Price Sold: $21.04
Returns: 1 $10
Money Spent on New Inventory: $211
Number of items listed: 1

• Pretty steady sales all week. Average price sold was low this week as I had a lot of low dollar items sell.
• Flatware has been selling very well for me through this shutdown. I’ve done very well over the years buying sets for cheap and breaking them up into small lots. Pattern research is time consuming at times, but the profit is well worth it.
• Visited family in Nebraska this weekend. Life is quite a bit different there than here in Illinois right now. Spent the morning Saturday going to garage sales and did fairly well.
• Also found an online auction while I was there and picked up a nice chunk of inventory to work with this week to get my listing count back up. Part of the auction was a bunch of lots of farm trucker hats that were part of a collection. I was able to win 12 of the lots for about 150 hats. Averaged less than $1 a piece on them.
• I’m just over a year now doing full time Ebay after leaving the Company I was with for 28 years. It still feels very strange to me to just do whatever I want on any given day.

* Total Items in Store: 2805
* Items Sold: 90 ebay, 2 Posh, 3 FB, 3 Mercari
* Cost of Items Sold: $23.85 + $12.91 Commission
* Total Sales: $2082 eBay, $57 Posh, $108 FB, $54 Mercari
* Highest Price Sold: $220 Coach purse
* Average price: $23.48
* Selling costs: $706
* Returns: 1 for $45
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $75 women’s clothing from FB
* Number of items listed this week: 40

Goodwill opened here last week, but the local thrifts are closed. I do see an estate auction scheduled for May 30th, but the normal auctions I attend are still closed.

I’ve started auditing my oldest inventory totes and purging items not worth selling. I also found several that aren’t listed, so that is how I plan to source this week. I only went through 4 of the 40 older totes. I know anything newer is pretty accurate(since my wife started helping)

I’ve been saying for years now that I am unemployable. I’ve been running my own business now for most of my adult life and cannot imagine having to deal with a boss ever again. Ebay is something that my wife Erika has fun with and it does not cause us any stress compared to employees and contractors. The few issues we have pale in comparison to anything we have experienced over the last 15 years. I am able to be a lot more picky about accepting other jobs, so we are not making more money, just enjoying the work we do a lot more. I think that’s what got me hooked on your podcast and these forums. We only get 1 life. Why waste it grinding at something you don’t enjoy? Using ebay to fund other investments and keep life fresh is what it’s all about for us. That being said, we do treat ebay like a job for the most part…on our time, when we want to. It is easy to self motivate for me after years of scrambling to maintain contract standings in our other world.

Hey everybody! First time poster, long time listener. I’m a little late to the party, but I’m so pumped to share my numbers on the forum for the first time! Woo hoo!

May 10-16
Total Items In Store: 4521
Items Sold: 39
Gross Sales (including shipping): $1044.32
Cost of Items Sold: $33.29
Highest Price Sold: $201.40 (Vintage Italian Wooden Valet)
Average Price Sold: $26.77
Returns: 0
Sourcing Cost: $12

This is a pretty dang good week for me; I’ve got the anything-goes good fortune working in tandem with building my inventory pretty intensively this month. I’ll do my best to post weekly. I love watching everyone’s progress; it’s high time I joined in!

Welcome. I wish I had your numbers. Good job.

Quite inspirational. I have been digging in and asking myself what I need to give up… what I need to do to go further… thanks for the reminder that it is possible.

You guys made the Southern Split roast sounds so good that I ordered a 2-pound bag. I was very impressed by how quickly it shipped and even more impressed by the incredible taste. It was AMAZING.

I told my sister that I would mail her a bag, but when I just went to buy it it now is charging $6 for shipping instead of being free and also it says your SL10 code is no longer valid. So now instead of $27 it’s going to cost $36 which is a huge bummer.

Do you know if that is how it’s going to stay from now on?