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It was a light week of sales, since 120/180 (or 66.7%) of my store listings were up for auction (all ending tonight), but still a few good solds to talk about.
I’m just starting to develop a decent knowledge base about non-sports trading cards, and one of the most popular inserts are hand-drawn, artist-signed sketch cards. This Marvel Spiderman sketch sold the same day I listed it. $84.99 gross/$60.13 net, and I was happy with the quick sale since I picked this card up in a live auction the first week of April for $23.38 ($25 including shipping supplies and combined shipping cost). I’m really pleased with how quickly I identified this card as valuable, then got it processed, sold and shipped. I have a tendency to let things sit, and of course not everything sells right away. But this sale took just under two weeks total from the day I received it in the mail to the day it was delivered to the buyer, and that feels great. It’s a reminder to go back to basics: get stuff listed, especially if you have a good hunch that it’s special.
Speaking of things I let sit for too long, I’ve been taking a spring cleaning seriously for the first time in the history of my 10+ year old business, the last 3 of those full-time. Long overdue! I worked my way through a bin full of autographed balls and bats and pucks over the last few weeks, and sold this autographed baseball of Baltimore Orioles Yennier Cano for $47.99, which was a 20% off BIN offer to watcher which made my day when I saw it sold. $55.86 gross/$36.49 net. I paid $15 in December 2023, so this didn’t linger in the death piles as long as I might have guessed. Packing tip: baseballs fit almost perfectly in a 6x6x6 box. The Orioles are the hot young team in baseball (Cano their top reliever) and I get a few sales every week from Orioles cards and memorabilia as well as a few others popular teams (Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Braves, also a surprising number of midwest teams like Cincinnati Reds, Kansas City Royals and Pittsburgh Pirates have really passionate local collectors).
I ended my week by building a frankenbox to ship this Christian Pulisic signed framed football (soccer) photo. $90.94 gross/$66.54 net and my COGS was $20 in November 2023. Cut down a 16x12x10 box, wrapped the framed photo up nicely in bubble wrap, taped everything back together with a few scrap pieces of cardboard around the edges. Admired my work as I hauled it down to the post office this afternoon. I did a good job with it. I used to get so nervous about shipping these larger items, but shipping them has become a puzzle I like to solve. I have more signed framed and unframed photo’s to list over the next , and writing this post was a good reminder: this can be profitable! But keep it to $50 and up, and either donate the rest or set them aside for the flea market table that I’m going to do this year, I swear I mean it this time.
What did you sell this week?
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Man the orioles DESTROYED the reds in their series this weekend. They look like the real deal…or the reds just realized they actually suck.
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I can actually comment on this since I’ve gotten prospective about my card buying and selling, doing the research and trying to plan ahead, instead of seeing a card I sold (bought based on Terapeak comps) and thinking, Huh, Orioles must have won last night. It’s amazing that I was able to sell that way for so long.
First things first, it’s hard for any team to win a game, let alone win the series, when they score 0, 1 and 1 runs in each of the games! The Orioles are on an incredible heater right now with pitching. It’s not just one pitcher but almost everyone. It’s a long season and usually things even out or go back towards the middle. They won’t continue to have multiple pitchers with shutout pitching streaks. Someone will get hurt, someone else will have a few rough games and go down to the minors to get straightened out, and a few of those 2-1 wins will become 2-1 losses.
Of course, this is true for the Reds as well. Most teams are not hitting well versus the Orioles this season. But the Reds hitting has been bad, bad, bad. Batting average is not everything, but the Reds are next to last in the league in team batting average at .210 and teams who hit that poorly almost always finish in last place or close to it. The Reds did well last year and that would be disappointing. But they have a lot of young players and I think they’ll be on a general upswing over the next few seasons. Hopefully some of their top hitters get it together soon. It’s promising that the Reds are nearly even in wins and losses so far this season with the hitting as bad as it’s been.
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A sampling of solds:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266681812327
Mountain Hardwear Heavy Duty Hiking Pants Cotton Green Mens 36×32 Built In Belt
Mountain Hardwear is a BOLO clothing item. Picked this up for $5 at Goodwill
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266447341464
Danner TerraForce Hiker Men’s Size 11.5 EE Hiking Boots Leather Waterproof
Danner is a BOLO boot. Every Danner I’ve ever picked up has been big bucks.
Sold this on a sent offer of $80. Bought at a yard sale for a couple bucks.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266415258104
Bose Solo 5 TV Sound System Sound bar 418775 with Remote & Power Adapter
Sold for $80 on sent offer. Picked up at a yard sale last summer for $10. This took ALOT longer to sell than I thought it would.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266556646471
Dickies Men’s Bib Overall 42X32 Hickory Stripe Pants NWT
There can be good money in bib overalls. I’ve sold some over the years for $100+. I picked these up at Goodwill NWT for $9.
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It’s interesting that all your big clothing sales this week were Goodwill finds and yard sales. Anything from the hoarder haul? Or just nothing particularly big?
I have been thinking a little bit lately about what happens with items like your Bose sound bar that take a lot longer to sell than we think they will or than they “should.” I can say that I’ve seen this happen as well, and it’s often with an item that has watchers (like your Bose) and there are a few other similar items available. Not sure if it is buyers waiting for the “best” discount or what’s going on.
I’ve noticed this happen also as I’ve been doing the spring cleaning with my cards business. I’ve been making these large boxes with about 50 graded cards in them. An interested buyer would need to have a deep wallet (I price them at $400 and listen to offers over $250) and do their research to recognize the value of the cards. This is not really an item which has exact competition, like a box of sealed cards from the 2024 xyz set which has a barcode, but I’m curating them so that they have value to a flipper who works differently than I do. I have sold 5 or 6 of these boxes in the last few months, which is enough to know that the next one sell eventually. Sometimes these lots get 15 watchers in the first day and sell at full price. Sometimes I sit on them for a few weeks and negotiate the buyer (which can feel like pulling teeth) up to $290 or $310.
Maybe I do have a theory. Your Bose sound bar listing was competing with all other Bose sound bar 5’s as well as similar brands across eBay, Amazon, etc. The ideal buyer for my graded card flat rates is also considering spending their $300 on single cards, other lots, sealed boxes or packs, case breaks or live auctions.
So maybe it’s harder to close the deal on items that have such this high level of competition compared to the random one-off: the hickory stripe pants in your exact (weird) size, the specific card that’s only sold on eBay three times in the last two years. Those are the items which are more likely to sell at full-price the day they’re listed, or sell randomly whenever your perfect buyer finally comes across the listing or has enough fun money in their budget that week.
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This was an exciting sale because I found a whole bunch of these for a dollar. Two were caught up in the ebay glitch photo deletion and I never bothered to fix them, just marked them down. On one of the recent days I did the daily sell similar, I fixed, upped the price a bit and sold. MOVE IT OUT good riddance.
Sold these curtain panels we discussed a while back for $67. Paid pennies at a rummage sale.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/335364515753 Find of the week and sale of the week at $150. I found another that is unwrapped but seems full, so I listed that on Mercari. Can we still list open perfumes as collectibles on Ebay? I forget. Paid $18 each. The old ladies had these tucked in their mother’s day display full of a bunch of other junk such as faux flowers and cheap ceramics.
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Your links don’t work. You need the links that just have ebay.com and the item number
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/334913104189
https://www.ebay.com/itm/335236717916
Oops sorry about the bad links.
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I think they changed the rules not long ago so I’m sure there are a lot of people are still selling open perfumes. Here is the official rule:
“What is the policy?- Listings for used cosmetics, sponges, or applicators are not allowed. This includes products such as skin moisturizers, sunscreens, perfumes, lipsticks, fingernail polishes, eye and facial makeup preparations, shampoos, permanent waves, hair colors, toothpastes, and deodorants
- Cosmetics, colognes, perfumes, and lotions must come in the original container…”
Apparently open box is ok. That is probably what I have, though the bottle is white and not clear, so hard to prove. I can tell by shaking it that it’s almost full and made a video of that. Hopefully Google will pick it up on Mercari.
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Can we still list open perfumes as collectibles on Ebay? I forget.
I don’t know about perfumes at all, really, but looks like it! All of the opened listings (as opposed to “never opened”) that I checked have the equivalent of a condition note in the description: some language like, we cannot guarantee the fragrance.
I had an epiphany while I was writing this and searched full instead of opened and got a lot more results which, as far as I can tell, confirm that you can sell perfume whether the bottle is full, empty or anywhere in between.
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It has been a while since I did the research, but I have been selling perfume as a collectable. I think mine have been unopened or mostly full.
All perfume should be shipped with Ground Advantage and the package needs to be marked with a hazard symbol. Initially, I copied the symbol from somewhere on the web and printed it many times on a sticker sheet and cut out the symbol each time something sold.
More recently, I bought the following product:
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