Business Sense / Selling Madness?

[bingodate]

Long story long:
I purchased 2000 vintage beer cans this week at an online auction. Before anyone asks… they are all empty. In fact the auctioneer turned out to be a County Sheriff as well.

Now I know nothing about cans and in fact, didn’t even realize they were collectable. After research, realized that several cans in the auction photos, were rare and had significant value. I won the auction with a bid of $23.00

I now have 10 large boxes, with 200 cans in each box. I have gone through about half the inventory. About 7 of the cans have previously sold on Ebay for between $100 and $250 each. I know there are more beer cans with high value in the other unopened boxes.

I am guestimating that a quarter of my haul are worth listing individually. I can sell many of these for at least $10 or more, each.

My gut feeling is to batch the remainder and sell in lots of 100. (Or 50)…. I have to do the math with postage and packing costs.

That said….

Looking at sellers that specialize in this field. Some seem to sell every low value can they have for $1.85 +shipping. and sell regularly (i have seen several of my cans listed in this way). Other sellers are getting $3-$5 for the same cans. No rhyme or reason that i can see for the disparity.

Ryanne, you always suggest list high and accept offers…. You also suggest taking large quantity items such as crockery, breaking them up and selling individually.

With research, photos, listings, storage, packaging, shipping, customer service, etc where is the perceived sweet spot?

Does anyone have a minimum profit they are prepared to work towards? (On individual listings)

Does batching the larger quantities of lower value cans make more economic sense?

What would you do?

[MyCottage]

bingodate,

I’d guess—just a guess— that the low dollar cans are profitable because buyers will tend to buy more than one at a time (if the seller has enough listed)…kind of like sports card and coin sellers do…

[almasty]

I think a lot of it depends on time, storage space, listing ability, packing patience, how much you already have to list, etc,. Considering that you can just list those 7 cans and make a huge profit off the lot, you could even throw out the other 1,993 cans and it wouldn’t make a dent in money earned.

Some questions to think about: do you have an anchor store to support an additional 2,000 listings? How much inventory do you have to process besides the up to 2,000 cans? Do you have the appropriate shipping boxes for that many cans? Even for multi-quantity purchase?

Are there any cans left that are worth $20-100 individually? Even listing those and lotting the cheapies will still leave a great profit.

[Jay]

Like Almasty says, “it depends”. Do you want to list 2000 individual cans? Is it worth $5 (before fees) to photo and list a beer can?

I’d sell the valuable ones. Any cans under $20, group up the best you can so you can make at least $20. Or even sell a box of 200 low value cans for a large sum to another collector or seller to resell.

Its all a puzzle that really only you can answer depending on your circumstances and enthusiasm for beer cans 🙂

[Temudgin]

Great score! My personal minimum is generally about $20 to sell an item but goes up from there depending on how hard something is to ship and whether it’s in a high drama category like electronics. That’s in my main store, where I maintain TRS status with 2 day shipping, free returns, etc.

I do have a second store that will never be TRS due to long handling time, no real tracking for many items, and no returns, where I sell postcards, patches, stickers, lower value coins and pins, etc. that are very easy to list and ship and COGs in the pennies (usually) where my minimum is $2.99 plus shipping. Though I have fun with the second store, I probably would not bother with it if I was trying to do eBay for a living.

All the variables mentioned by everyone above come into play for your cans. Start with listing the best of them and work your way down. The point at which you get sick of them may determine where the individual sale price cutoff is. I would add that I have had success in the past with local sale on Craigslist after I’ve cherry picked the best of a lot of collectibles and I’m down to a large remaining quantity of individually low dollar items. That avoids the packing and shipping issues with a larger lot.

[Old Dad]

I’ve never sold anything remotely like this, but the thought that comes to mind when you mention selling them in lots is that dimensional weight shipping charges are likely to come into play.

That and the need to pack in rigid enough boxes to avoid crushing the cans seems to make shipping a bigger issue than for most small items.

Also, if you ship internationally these could run afoul of customs regulations in many countries I think.

If I didn’t get sick of listing so many of these I would for sure get sick of the smell if they haven’t been at least rinsed and dried, lol.

[bingodate]

Wow! What great responses! And certain aspects I had not thought of!

Thankfully, the cans do not smell! Most of them are from the 70’s and 80’s… Some are much older.

I had not thought of international sales, and will probably not include in global shipping.

Packaging individually is not too much of an issue. The valuable ones will probably go double boxed and insured. Others can be packaged like mugs. (I think).

Cherry picking is definitely my best option. Bulk selling the remainder… Or using craigslist/Facebook.

No I definitely do not want to list 2000 cans individually. At my current rate, that would take 6 months to list (I work fulltime). I do not have an anchor store, and think i would be wasting money in investing in one for the ROI on my current inventory.

I can see the sports card / coin analogy…. Never thought of it that way…. and definitely not my cup of tea.

[Author]

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