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Total Items in Store: 296
Items Sold: 5 (All but one were recent listings.)
Gross Sales: $422.13 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $320.33 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $95
Highest Price Sold: $101 (set of new Halloween William Sonoma plates from clearance last year)
Average Price Sold: $72
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $30
Number of items listed this week: 3People are in the mood for Halloween this year. Sadly the one store with Halloween out had clearly been picked when I got there. Had some nice sales. Also flipped that Strawberry Shortcake vintage stationery (almost free) from the dregs of the estate sale for $65. My husband jokes it’s elder abuse. 🙂 Remembering why I love Ebay. Happy Fall.
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Week of Sept 12 – 18
Total Items in Store: 1361 eBay, 39 Etsy
Items Sold: 6 eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $2 + $0 Commission
Total Sales: $235.53 eBay
Highest Price Sold: $69 Travelpro Maxlite suitcase NWT
Average price: $39
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $3
Number of items listed this week: 5Many of my sales were from recently listed items as well. My average sale price is up but number of sales are down. I went to a few yard sales this weekend, which I haven’t done much this year. Didn’t buy too much.
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Sale up a bit this week. Have spent the week focussing on postcards still. Started out the week with a $50 sale on a postcard (which I mentioned last week), and that gave me the motivation to keep plowing through the collection I acquired. Not expecting many quick sales, just loading the pipeline.
Had a rare Facebook Marketplace sale that was also my highest sale of the week for $250. I picked up a 1928 RCA Radiola radio at an estate sale a few weeks ago for $50. This was online so wasn’t able to inspect it closely. When I picked it up I quickly realised it was a beast of a radio. It must have weighed at least 50 pounds and was much larger than I imagined from the pictures. Plus it had an external speaker that was hardwired into the radio, which made it doubly difficult for shipping. I decided I didn’t want the packing hassle and thought I might as well try Facebook. I listed it a bit under market for a quick sale and it sold in a week and a half. If I’d been willing to hold onto it and ship, I probably could have gotten closer to $500, but I’m pleased with the quick flip without commission and shipping hassle. Attaching picture because I thought it was cool. Had a great sound to it.
https://imgur.com/gallery/aHuQ4QC
Had a second big sale in a French cooking encyclopedia from 1938. I bought a large lot of books just to get this one. Happy that it sold so quickly for $199.95. I paid $50 for the whole lot and have already posted several others and have many more to post.
Hit a few yard sales on Saturday. Nothing too exciting but some nice bread and butter finds.
Sales Report for: 9/18/21
Total Items in Store: 1198
Items Sold: 13
Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $867.15
Net Sales (After fees): $755.26
Cost of Items Sold: $135.11
COGS Percent 17.89%
Net Profit Margin: 71.52%
Highest Price Sold: $250.00 1928 RCA Radiola
Average Price Sold: $66.70
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $85.00
Sold via promoted listings: 8
Promoted Percentage: 61.54%
Average Days Listed: 124
Longest Listed: 460
New items listed: 41-
@lukastreasuretrove — That radio is really beautiful! Such a joy to know that it’s going to a home where it will have a new life almost 100 years after manufacture.
I love books and cooking so I have a semi-educated guess that the cookbook you sold was Larousse Gastronomique? Going strictly based off the date with my guess, if it was 1960s I probably would have guessed Art of French Cooking…
I’d love to know what other types of books were in the lot. There are so many old books that are obsolete or in terrible condition that it’s always a thrill to find books that are well cared for and valuable to the right collector. It is very satisfying to find new homes for these books where they can be appreciated just as much as the original owner loved them.
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@craig-rex – You do know your cookbooks. Yes, it was the Larousse Gastronomique. I got the books from the same auction that I got the postcards from. The person was originally from France and worked local to my area as a chef in French restaurants during their career. The lot had some amazing books. Poor pictures in the auction and they were stacked to deep, so ended up with many more books than I had expected.
The coolest in the lot was a 2 volume set travel guide “Les Curiosites de Paris” published in 1742. There were quite a few other cookbooks and antiquarian-type books, but most are classic of French literature. It is all in French so time consuming for me to completely understand what I have. Fortunately, Cecile is a native French speaker and I can bug her when I get stuck.
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@lukastreasuretrove — Amazing backstory to those books, and very cool that your research on them can become a collaborative process with your partner as well. I can almost imagine the dishes that came out of the chef’s kitchen as a result of their culinary education and passion and training. I’m looking forward to reading all about other sales you make from this lot in the future.
PS – If you or anyone else ever come across Nathan Myrvhold’s 40 pound, 2500 page 2011 cookbook set Modernist Cuisine, it’s an easy $400 for the full set. So pick it up…just make sure to lift with your legs when you do!
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Weekly sales 9/12 – 9/18
Random Item Store
Total items 1086
Items sold 32
New items listed 70
Gross sales $741.60
Net sales $492.54Patch Store
Total items 3359
Items sold 51
New items listed 140
Gross sales $385.78
Net sales $296.88Etsy
Orders 30
Gross sales $306.20
Net sales $260.27Gross sales total $1,433.58
Net sales total $1,049.69Another decent week and hopefully sales will only go up from here for the rest of the year.
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Store still closed.
I was able to go home from hospital 5 days ago. It was a scary transition as I really don’t think I was fully ready. Had a couple scares where my oxygen saturation got real low and I couldn’t breath. Who knew going to the bathroom could be the most terrifying aspect of life? Well I can say that now!Anyways, I’m getting stronger and more mobile every day. I’ll still be on oxygen for a long time, but I have a real long hose that lets me get around the house. I hope to open back up my eBay store in a week or two with my daughter doing the work under my supervision.
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Welcome home @retro-treasures-wv !!
We are all eagerly looking forward to your store reopening, and posting your numbers, but one of the many great things about eBay is that it can always wait. Keep resting and recuperating and know that we’re all rooting for you.
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9/12/21 – 9/18/21
Total Active Items (2 different stores): 350
Items Sold: 4
Gross Sales: $110.31 (not incl shipping or taxes)
Highest Price Sold: $41 plus shipping – Partial press kit from the 1979 24 Hr Pepsi Challenge Race at Daytona.
Returns: 0
COGS: $8.27 (including consignment commissions but not including original cost of any family castoffs sold)
New Listings: 22
$ Spent on New Inventory: $0A very slow week. Some conspiracy theories were making the rounds of YouTube from people who said that when they sent an offer, the prospective buyer received an error message that the seller does not ship to their location when they tried to buy on the offer. Don’t know if it’s true but I have had zero purchases from my offers out for a couple weeks. That persisted until this Sunday, when I sold 4 items that almost doubled my gross from all of last week. So hopefully things are back to normal, if there really was an issue.
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Total Items in Store: 146
Items Listed: 12
Items Sold: 5
Total Sales: $71.50
Highest Price Sold: $19.50 vintage Goodyear keychain measuring tape
I am getting back in the swing of listing, even if sales aren’t back to where I would like. My only gripe this week was for TWO items eBay charged the seller less than it cost me to ship. Dimensions and weight were correct in the listing, both were listed recently, and I don’t think there was a rate increase this week so I am just plain grumpy. Luckily I have been right on the mark with my estimates recently so no losses due to my own cluelessness.
Not sure how to tag someone – but for Lucastreasuretrove – there is a FB group called We Love Vintage Cookbooks (two actually – one for information, one for buying and selling), might be a good place to join especially if you have a bunch of unexceptional books that you wouldn’t want to list on eBay.
Finally, I do envy all the scavengers living on the east coast. Every single free shipping item I sell has gone to an east coast/midwest state this month, and even for my FB Marketplace listings all interested buyers are out there. I sold some large fragile pottery to Minnesota and was so happy to find a buyer that understands the weight/size/distance cost to ship. Usually I get a grumpy ‘you charge too much for shipping’ message like I do it on purpose. Not sure where all the west coast buyers are lately, hope they start shopping soon!
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Not sure how to tag someone – but for Lucastreasuretrove –
On the side underneath your display name and location, you will see an @+name. I believe that’s the username you registered with which is why it’s different than the display name. Copy and paste the @name and you can tag someone. like this: @cdils
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@cdils – Thanks for the suggestion on the Facebook group. I’ve been utilizing Facebook groups for research on other things, but hadn’t thought to check for that. There does seem to be a group for everything there now.
For me, I always feel a little sheepish using those facebook groups for research, or any affinity group for that matter. I see so many sellers being rude in them and not doing their own research first, just a “what’s this worth?” or “is this anything?” without contributing to the discussion. They can be very handy, though. I have an old miner’s lantern that I couldn’t find any information on and I posted on a UK-based group. It turned out to be fairly rare and they generously gave me so much information on the lantern that wasn’t available anywhere else. I’ve had the lantern sitting on my desk for a few months now unposted because I feel a little guilty just taking their info and using it to drive up the price of the lantern. Feel like I need to wait a respectful amount of time before posting as I know many of these groups watch eBay carefully for listings for their items. I probably worry about it a bit too much. 🙂
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I was fortunate to have an extremely good week of sales last week. It was fueled in part by an end and relist batch which I timed to coincide with last week’s eBay bucks promo. I had a particularly strong sales day last Friday, three days after the end and relist batch. Details about my end and relist process, and some data, in the linked thread.
9/12/2021 – 9/18/2021
Total items in store: 3358
Items sold: 69
Gross sales: $3604.51 (up 66% from one year ago)
Net sales: $2492.00 (up 66% from one year ago)
Lowest price sold (net): $9.17 — Clyde Beck autograph — Beck is an obscure Chicago Cubs infielder from the 1920s, and this card was sold to one of my repeat buyers who buys a few Chicago Cubs autographs from me every few months, usually after a 10% to 15% offer. I need to make a super VIP coupon for 25% or more off to send to buyers like this.
Highest price sold (net): $291.17 — Mason Greenwood Panini white sparkle prizm
Why such an expensive card?
1. Greenwood is one of the best soccer (football) players in the world and he plays for one of the most popular clubs in England, Manchester United (Man U).
2. Panini’s white sparkle cards are only sold on their website through in sealed packs which you purchase via their points program.
The sale of sealed packs and boxes has changed dramatically over the last year as speculators and “hustle” flippers have descended on cards. Sealed boxes sold directly on manufacturer’s websites sell out basically right away now, even as box prices have increased dramatically. For a while even the cheap “retail” boxes sold at stores like Walmart and Target would sell out quickly as well, despite the fact that those boxes and packs are much less likely than more expensive “hobby” boxes to contain the desirable cards (autographs, rare inserts and rookies, etc). This price increase has trickled into Panini’s Rewards Points program as well.
Prices for Panini points have more than doubled since last year, and every week when Panini adds new items to their Rewards site to purchase via points, the site is flooded with more traffic than it can handle. It’s not all real people though, it’s mostly bots, and everything (even the items that are overpriced) sells out in minutes. It’s become a happy/sad weekly ritual where I refresh furiously at the time of the new drop, add the items I want to my cart within a few seconds…then click to the checkout screen to add my credit card info and see that those items are already sold out. No human could click that fast. It’s bots, and it would frustrate me if I was the type to let this wonderful scavenging life frustrate me.
Once every few weeks I am lucky enough to purchase a card or two. Usually it’s when Panini changes the time that they drop the new Rewards items, or something is more valuable than it appears on the surface. Can’t bot knowledge, not yet anyway.
From what I can tell, the bot dorks only about making their initial investment back and a few bucks profit as fast as possible. There is no concept of long-tail and little to no interest in doing research on anything. That’s how I purchased this Greenwood card initially.
I was shut out from purchasing any white sparkle packs on the day of release, but kept a search open in the weeks after, and found a sneaker flipper who had 5 packs listed at auction for maybe the initial cost plus an extra $30 profit. At minimum bid price, the sneakerhead might have even lost $5 on their pack listing, depending on what they paid to get the packs shipped from Panini to their stupid bot house and what they would pay shipping the packs to the lucky buyer.
Most of these types of modern, limited edition sealed pack auctions get a handful of bidders and 10+ bids. This one ended in the middle of the day and I was the high bidder at minimum bid price.
I was very surprised when the sneaker flipper bot nerd shipped the packs to me with adequate protection so they weren’t all banged up in the mail. It took them over two weeks to ship the darned things, which is probably horrifying to most of you reading this, but honestly I was thrilled that they managed to ship the packs at all.
I considered reselling the sealed packs. But my initial buy-in price for the packs was so low, especially considering the short history of premium soccer cards. Soccer, along with a few other niche sports like WNBA and F1 racing, saw a nice bump in prices over the last year as they started to receive the same premium card treatment (and high sealed box prices) that baseball, football, basketball and hockey cards have seen for the last 20 years.
With that in mind, I figured it would be very hard to lose any money if I opened my packs and maybe I’d get lucky and hit one of the best players’ cards. And that’s what happened!
Now the Greenwood white sparkle card is on its way to Australia, where the buyer is one of the biggest card breakers around. I’m sure he’ll sell the card for more next week or next year or in ten years since Greenwood is a mere 19 years old with a long career ahead. I know enough to buy and sell hundreds of cards every week, but I don’t really know enough to know whether Greenwood is the next star or a flash in the pan. So I always prefer to sell now, especially when the prices creep above $100 for one card that didn’t cost me that much.
I love sales like this, but I also really enjoy that I will sell many more white sparkle cards of lesser players for $15 or $25 or $40 over the next few months and years. Those are my favorite and most reliable sales even though the $100+ sales add up much faster. Regardless of high or low sales price, who knows where these cards will end up if all the best card packs end up in the hands of all the horrible bot monsters. I will keep doing what I can to make sure we never find out what that awful nightmare will be like.
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@craig-rex – Always a fascinating story with your posts. Appreciate that you so openly share your knowledge.
Regarding the dishes, I have a few handwritten menus that the chef used for special occasions at the restaurant they worked at. I’ll be posting them to sell, also. The restaurant is a local favorite, L’Auberge Chez Francois.
I’ll keep an eye out for the Modernist Cuisine. Thanks
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My week was broken up by a weekend swap meet where I did $2988.00 for a one-day sale. My cost of goods for that was just under $400.00
However, my eBay sales are down with just over $2644.00 Sept 1-19. I only have 78 items listed. I also have two mall spaces I keep running. My average sale price month to date is $196.60 as I had one sale at $1045.00 at auction for a rare Coleman lantern. My cost on that was $150.00. Just tonight I sold a roll of film from a WWII Aircraft machine gun camera for $100.00 and kept the camera. I intend to focus on listing more each day. I don’t really have much merchandise under $25.00. In August, three of my sales alone totaled $10,600.00. Not sure how to show where I’m located but I’m outside of Tacoma looking at the sun setting on the waters of Puget Sound out my living room window.
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@5853ne10 – Great sale on that Coleman lantern. I pick those up any time I see them, but haven’t come across one like that before (I just had to look it up).
You’re living in the spot. I lived in that area back in my 20’s and still miss it to this day. Often think of moving back once my kids are grown and out of the house. Prices have gone through the roof since I left though.
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In August, three of my sales alone totaled $10,600.00.
–what kind of items are selling for such high prices?
–Where (generally) are you finding all these items that sell for so high?
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I’m a digger, I have people who know what I buy and they look for me, I have a reputation for paying up. I do attend some big swap meets and buy there. The key is to become an expert in something that has promise and not just a generalist. I’m not a philosopher nor a collector so I don’t allow myself to become too attached to what I buy. I do buy everything from steam locomotives and steam engines to axes, neon signs and recently bought 600 back issues of Sports Illustrated including the very first year. I paid less than $100.00 and just sold three of the issues for over $480.00. I do have a deep knowledge of auto-related items especially vintage parts and have the resources to prepare them. Read and learn about something and become an expert. Then, you’ll see those things for sale when others overlook them.
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Another slow week for us in both selling and listing. Just haven’t been feeling it lately so a bit more relaxing and playing with our new dog and less sourcing and listing but will be getting back to it soon! @cdils we had a customer who got that exact message you are referring to. They messaged demanding to know why I would not ship to them, I told them it was probably a glitch and they went on to purchase the item.
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Thanks for the info @craig-rex – Learn something new every day!
@lukastreasuretrove – as a collector and member of several specialty FB groups myself I love to help others learn about rarities, even resellers. One motivation is to get these rarities into collections and keep them out of the trash. I have saved, or helped others save many cool items that people were going to throw away or give to a kid to play with. I don’t mind at all if the person I give information to then lists it, most of the time I’d like a link to the auction to see who it goes to (or bid on it!). I cheer when others find good stuff – it isn’t just good for them making money reselling the item, but good for the hobby to have those items in collections. In my opinion we need more active collectors in our hobbies or they dry up (Avon, much of California Pottery), and we need great finds to drive enthusiasm for older collectors to keep them interested.It is an interesting time we live in – I think more knowledge is being lost than gained sometimes. Many of the old hobby-run web pages are disappearing into the ether, books are out of vogue (although they keep knowledge available much longer than the average web page), and the sheer volume of non-information is drowning the real great sites to 10+ pages down the search. I understand many collectors now are mainly curators of decorations (can’t count the number of times I see someone with a killer piece displayed that knows nothing about it other than it looks cool), and it frustrates me that this can ripple down the collecting hobby so newbies get taken advantage of since they not only don’t know what is real, they cant’t even find out how to determine new/old, vintage/reproduction. I am rambling now, so I need to go get the kids off my lawn dagnabit!
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@cdils – I hope most of the collectors groups have your attitude. I can understand their frustration and am embarrassed when I see other sellers taking advantage. Common threads are about inconsiderate sellers mining them for info, uninformed sellers incorrectly identifying items, and how ebayers are jacking up the prices and ruining it for everyone.
One of the glass groups I belong to seems to take your attitude, that educating sellers keeps new inventory out there and at least it gets described properly.
I try to be extra respectful. I see myself as a collector. I enjoy the pieces that come through my hands, learn about them, then pass them in so someone else can enjoy them, too. Just without the normal 50 years in a curio cabinet between flips.
Thanks for the input.
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I understand many collectors now are mainly curators of decorations (can’t count the number of times I see someone with a killer piece displayed that knows nothing about it other than it looks cool),
This is a very true statement. I’d say we fall into that category. I don’t have any inclination to collect, but enjoy finding cool pieces that add visual beauty to a room.
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Our Store Week September 12-18, 2021
Total Items in Store: 529
Items Sold: 5
Gross Sales: $234.82 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $153.81(minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $12
Highest Price Sold: $55 (vintage Christmas Tree Rotating Light)
Average Price Sold: $46.96
Returns: 1 tapestry hanger and hanging I saw was broken when I took pictures and meant to pull before it went live and forgot to do:( Going to relist without the hanger and hope to recoup that shipping cost both ways.
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $48
Number of items listed this week: 2Slow week, ran a sale, increased promotion amount, ended and relisted some, ended and sold similar on a few, trying anything! Hope to step up listing this week.
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