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Love the clock face-lifts in the last “ what sold” video from Steve Schultz. Got me to thinking about what everyone else polishes up a bit before selling. I have fixed paint by numbers, needle points and wind chimes. I’m working on a 3 tier chinese bell wind chime right now while I wait for some bread to finish baking. What does everyone else fix up before selling?
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I started off not doing any repairs, but now I tend to fix whatever I can before selling it. I’ve glued Christmas ornaments, sewn on buttons, whipstitched seams. I even considered doing snapback repairs at one point, but with the drop in the selling price of caps, I figured it wasn’t worth it.
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Team no repair here as well. The time and resources invested in refurbing something research, labor, parts, on top of the normal eBay overhead leaves slim margins. Of course, I do basic things like wipe down, clean smudges, etc. I don’t have time to sit down and watch a 15-minute video about how to fix this speaker and then try and try and try for the whole afternoon. Unless it was a hobby type of situation.
There’s definitely a market for parts/broken goods. I’ll let the speaker refurbisher buy it and fix and sell it. After all, everybody is making money. When you start chasing those marginal returns the value diminishes exponentially. Ex. As the repair occupies time energy you could have been doing other things. The more time it takes the less return you’ll get. This is especially true for items which are hard to refurb such as specialty antique/vintage items. Sometimes it even diminishes the value/authenticity.
There’s a simple analysis you can do. Rework v. Sell as is. Ignore sunk costs. Quantify time to refurb in dollars and cost to refurb. Minus cost from revenue. Multiply by units. = revenue.
Ex. I have six shoes which are broken I can sell them as is for 20 dollars. 20*6=120. Or I can rework them at a price of 3 dollars a shoe for a resale of 30 dollars. $3*6 units=18 $30*6 units=180 $180-$18= $162.
The clear winner is to refurb. That’s just a simple example. Now factor in time to do research tools parts etc too many variables. If it was a repeatable process over the long term across hundreds of units I can see the draw.
Sorry, I forgot to add one more important aspect. Do you trust your work? are you going to offer a warranty? so on and so forth.
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For me, fixing is fun and quite rewarding especially when you can significantly increase the value.
Vintage stereo equipment in particular is almost worthless, in most cases if it doesn’t work but quite valuable when repaired. So sourcing is inexpensive.It’s really not a time waste if you like repairing or refurbishing and item, sure you could be listing more items but I enjoy the work and reap the rewards. You get better at it the more you do it, I now know the best resources for parts for the items I’ll tinker with and I still like learning how.
If you’re not handy in that way then sell it cheap and move on. Remember there’s no one right way. Some people like to sell volume, others higher priced items. Do with your time as you like, that’s kind of the motto around here.
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Some weeks I feel like fixing things up, others I don’t. I have a box of nice vintage stereo equipment to go through, and some vintage video game consoles. All of them are pretty worthless as-is, but when I fix them up, they easily fetch a few hundred $. So for me, I’m not selling an item as much as I’m selling my time and repair work to get something working again.
To me, working on vintage electronics is a puzzle that you have no clue what you are getting into – it’s enjoyable to me. Sometimes it takes a few minutes to get something working properly, others I spend hours fussing around before I get frustrated and gut it for parts…the fun part is you never know if you have something easy or something hard to repair.
I also delve into parts/components if I can’t fix something – sometimes the parts are worth more than the whole working item. It’s almost “unfixing” an item when you get into parts.
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Someone dug an oil painting out of an outhouse and gave it to me. It was covered in soot- I paid £380 to have it cleaned and the frame regilded. After several attempts to sell it (provenance was that it came from a stately home whose contents had been dispersed in the 1930s) it went for auction, where it fetched £150! I’d have been better off leaving it dirty.
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I’ll do quick fixes if the item has value.
– gluing back shoes that have good value.
– magic eraser vintage toys or electronics.
– cleaning up leaky battery compartments.If an item is high dollar and needs significant repair, I tend to just list as-is. Typically high dollar electronics or mechanical devices have a very specific customer in mind – either a person who is well versed in repair with all the knowledge tools and parts, or an end user who wants a perfect restored piece.
If you try to shoehorn yourself in between those two typical customers you will likely alienate both. If you do a shoddy repair then you are likely to get an INAD.
Sometimes it is best to accept your role in the supply chain and sell to the professional repair person, unless you are willing to invest more time and money than it is worth for a one-off repair.
Occasionally I’ll try out a repair or three in a new genre just to test my interest. I learned real quick that I don’t want to do radio/stereo repair other than VERY basic fixes and cleanup.
I’ll still occasionally take on an arcade/pinball to do, but it is very rare now. Maybe one a year at most. Several of them I’ve changed my mind and just sold unrepaired and still made a nice profit.
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I fall into Steve’s camp. I enjoy fixing things and will often pull apart an old piece of electronics or camera equipment to see whether it’s something I can fix. Not up to Steve’s level of expertise, but I’m often surprised how easy it can be to fix something. Then there are also the items that quickly get over my head. I enjoy it so much, though, that I had to commit myself to only working on items like this after I’ve put a full day of listing in. Otherwise, a whole day can get eaten up troubleshooting.
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I wash dishes, polish silver plate, dust off art and other vintage items, and so on. I’ve washed clothes at one time, but now I do it only in certain situations. Today, I cleaned up some dolls with porcelain faces, and I hand washed their clothes. Normally, I wouldn’t, but they were really dirty!
I like the idea of repairing electronics, but the issue is that I will just work on easy to list items and never get to the items I want to repair. I have three vintage bar lights that I have made incremental progress on, but they aren’t yet fixed. I believe that I will greatly increase their value by doing this, but I am beginning to wonder whether it is worth it or not. In August, it will be two years from the original purchase!
I do fix lamps. They are easy to repair, and the parts aren’t expensive. A friend recently gave me four non-working lamps, and I will rewire them. Not a big deal.
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I find that the extra time I put into fixing up or improving items doesn’t pay off for me. (I’m not including easy cleaning in that statement. I don’t have any experience selling dirty items, I always clean my stuff).
I enjoy doing something other than just listing and sourcing which is why I try to add value occasionally with “extras”. If I was dependent on my on-line income I wouldn’t do this – it just doesn’t pay off for me and I’d be better off monetarily if I spent the time listing instead.
I attempt to differentiate my items from identical listings by adding something that I’ve created: doll clothes with dolls for instance. This never pays off time wise but I enjoy doing it. I guess I think at least my item will sell before the identical ones because of the “extras”.
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I’ve been sewing since I was a child (not doll clothes-“my” clothes), so I never mind clothing repairs when I find something that needs it. Although I do have a death pile of clothing to be listed (I’m working through that slowly), I prefer to sell anything but clothing. Clothing for me is super easy, but I dislike the returns and Lord help you if they rattle off a slew of reasons why the item did not fit/work! I really do not want to hear the excuses!
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