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I have a rather small eBay store at this point in my reselling life, less than 400 listings, and I have not been listing very consistently to start off 2025 with 20 new listings or less most weeks. Despite this lack of doing the single most important eBay selling task, my sales numbers have remained in the 20 to 30 range each week, for the most part, through a combination of really knowing my main niche of sports cards in depth and using all the selling tricks I can. I create strong listings and price them well. I send out pretty aggressive offers to watchers, 20 to 30 percent. I do end and sell similar every month or so. Last month, I did some auctions for the first time in a while, and that went well enough that I’ll do them again at the end of this month.
But this past week of sales was where my bag of tricks stopped working. It was brutal, disgusting, horrifying. Don’t look at the numbers! It’s not good.
I sold 14 items total, and were it not for a couple of repeat customers I might have had my first week with less than 10 items sold in a few years. Welcome to February y’all! But this isn’t a time of year thing. This is just a down week when you have a small store and you’re not listing enough.
These paltry numbers despite the fact that I listed pretty hard last week, with 5 or more listings every day except Sunday (which has become the one day I don’t list) and 41 new listings total over the week. At least I’m back in the swing of things!
Had I not sold this signed printing plate card of Detroit Lions star defensive end Aidan Hutchinson, my net sales would have been under $300 for the entire week. Yikes!
But I’ve always believed that how we break down the numbers matters. My sales overall this year have actually been pretty decent. My consignment sales (not on eBay) were very strong last week, so my cashflow is about the same as ever. I used my time well. I sent in a moderate sized consignment shipment and kept on organizing my clutter. A lot of my consignment business is buying in volume, pricing, repricing, shipping in volume and repeat. I got caught up with a lot of pricing that I had been slacking on, and did a lot of repricing. It felt great. My reselling business remains healthy.
Sometimes it is the little things that get you through the week. Sales may have been slow this week, but I had a pair of repeat eBay customers leaving me really personalized, kind feedback. I suppose I earned it. I try to provide really good customer service, and I think some people really respond well to that. One of the repeat customers bought two more card lots from me after leaving the feedback, as well as this signed Randy Ready full sized bat and I put together the USPS medium tube in record-sized time. I might have made $15 profit on the bat after COGS and shipping, but this buyer has spent a few hundred bucks with me in the last month mostly on card lots with no sign of slowing down. So I just need to keep cranking those out.
Also sold a smaller item from craig rex’s memorabilia pile, this baseball signed by Bob Boyd who was a Negro Leagues era player that also played for the Baltimore Orioles. Signed balls have mostly been a bust niche for me. I just haven’t found a consistent pipeline of them like I have with cards and other types of collectibles and memorabilia. But this was an OK flip, bought for $8 last January, sold for an offer of $35 this weekend, and it was listed for about two months.
What did you sell this week?
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Last week, someone asked me to combine salad plates, bowls, and mugs from the same pattern into one listing for her. I gave her the multiple item discount I had set up in those listings plus an additional 25% for a total of $120 plus shipping. Pretty good for a set that I bought in an auction for $5 or so.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/186953783416
For $51, I sold this Williams Sonoma set of tea cups and dessert plates. I had already accounted for the full COGS on that auction pickup, but I paid just a few dollars for it. I have a hard time saying whether a tea cup is valuable without looking it up.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/186171459547
I had priced this very old telephone quite high for two reasons. One is that it has two buttons on the bottom that appears to be for two lines, and none of the other ones I found online had that. In addition, I was able to determine that one of the lines did work. I would have had to rewire the output in order to test the other line, and I did not want to do that. Thing is, the name on the sale was for a Broadway play opening mid-March, and this is definitely a period piece! I paid about $6 (although all the COGS for that auction has been used up), and I sold it for $89.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/186647723082
Nice thing about prop companies is that they don’t haggle! I’ve sold for others before, but they don’t always use the show/play in the “deliver to” name. About a year or two ago, I sold something to “For All Mankind”, which is an Apple TV program. I only know that because I asked the buyer. And I’ve sold for the Roswell cable (I think) TV show to someone who posted on this forum several years ago. I’ve also sold a very old sleeping bag and a set of Tarot cards to prop companies, but I do not know where they were used.
My daughter pointed out that For All Mankind has won an Emmy, and she interviewed some local screen writers who won an Oscar for their movie. If this play wins a Tony, then we will only need a link to a Grammy for an EGOT! Well, it’s a tenuous link at best, but fun to think about 🙂
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Sharyn, Those are some nice profit margins and cool story on the old phone. How much time and energy does it take you to ship these plates and mugs to one buyer? I love weird and old kitchen stuff. But shipping it seems daunting. I suppose it’s really no different from any other breakable, though.
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Yes, the shipping is daunting, but I’ve got lots of experience on it now.
I pack up plates or bowls with bubblewrap between each item and pack them in a box or wrap with cardboard with little room for anything to move around. For mugs or things that don’t stack well, I put cardboard between each piece and again make sure that they aren’t going to move around and hit each other in the box. Then I collect all the smaller boxes and fit them together with bubblewrap between and put them in the bigger shipping box. I fill any holes in the box with packing materials. I want to make sure the individual boxes don’t bump against each other.
For that sale, I shipped in two boxes. Not that I couldn’t fit them in one box, but this was heavy, thick ceramic, and I didn’t want each box to be very heavy.
The feedback from the buyer: The items I bought were packed really well. The items looked brand new and arrived without any breakage. They were shipped and arrived on time. I appreciated the quick response I got from the seller and she gave me combined shipping and discounts on the order.
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@Sharon, I’m totally down for the packing but I want to list larger art works on Etsy and I’m not sure I will get the cost right. Plus I may have some packed. It’s just so much easier with calculated.
Williams Sonoma is usually a solid pick up. I break up all of my china by item type so I don’t have to pack a big mixed lot.
@Craig you get used to it. I have a big roll of packing foam and use large bubble. Never need to double box. A lot of people avoid plates, which I think are super easy.
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/266294969293
Pentax ME Super SLR Film Camera 28mm 2.8 Lens Case and Strap Tested & Works
Sold on offer for $80. Paid $5 at a yard sale.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/267119958432
Robert Graham Jardin RGS5053 Mens White Loafers Slip On Driving Shoes Size 11
Hoarder shoes – sold on offer for $150.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/267147599962
ASICS Beast JB Elite V2.0 Men’s Wrestling Shoes Sneakers Black Gray Size 8
47599962Sold for full price. Paid $4. I love those wrestling shoe sales!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266932019678
Homies Palermos Italian Figures You pick
I sold 10 of these figures this week. 6 to one buyer and 4 to other random buyers. $6 a pop adds up when I have like 180 of them! I love these little pipelines that are easy to ship and take up practically no space.
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@Craig I noticed obvious trends in sales when I stopped listing for a few days and started again. Also clearly seeing a preference for newly listed items. I know some sellers either don’t promote or don’t make offers on new listings, but I’m going ahead with both due to my observations. I price competitively and do that. I really should go through my old listings and reprice things but when I get motivated I like to add fresh stock instead.
My sale of the week was a bundle of two kids Christmas items from Pottery Barn Kids and discontinued new salt and pepper cellars from Target RA to a fire victim.
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Yeah Christine, as you know I’ve been doing sell similar every month or so for the last few months, and I see a bump in sales just from that. But I don’t think it’s just the sell similar effect. I also bump the promoted listings to 5%. I only promote about 25% of newly created listings (basically anything bulky or that I want to sell right now) and everything else gets promoted when I do sell similar. I don’t know if it’s the perfect formula, but it works for me and it’s pretty easy to do it like once a month.
Oh, here’s something else I’ve been meaning to ask you about your repricing. How do you have your offers set up? Do you set your minimum offers at a standard amount (like minimum 50% of buy it now price) or is it random depending on the item, price, etc?
One thing that I do which really speeds up repricing for me is that I have pricing/offer tiers which I stick with. So for example, lowest priced listings in my store are $19.99 BIN and my minimum offer that I’ll consider is $12. Next level up is $29.99 with an $18 minimum offer. Then $39.99 with 25, and so on from there. If I price an item at $29.99, the minimum is always $18 no matter what. If I reprice it down to $19.99, the minimum will be $12.
I’ve found that this really speeds up pricing decisions for me, and it also makes repricing and sell similar so much easier. I have never done auto accept because I like to negotiate, but I’m sure that would work well for some people with a large store or if they just don’t like negotiating. What’s funny is whenever I do the sell similar process, inevitably I will get offers on listings that had been sitting in my store for a month, or longer, with no offers or no offers I was happy with. But something about doing sell similar and seeing an offer come in the next day…at that point, I don’t even think about negotiating, I’m just like…yes I will take your money, thank you very much.
Sometimes our perfect buyers are just not on eBay all the time and are going to send one offer and that’s it…and their money is as good as anyone’s.
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@Craig I just kind of eyeball the solds and # of items available to set my bottom offer and always use auto decline. In the online world, I don’t like to go back and forth either as a buyer or as a seller.  Ebay is now telling the offering buyer what your bottom line is so I feel like it’s good to have that on. Generally it’s still only 15-20% off, 10% on new items I have to pay up for. Then I run sales at around 15-20% but will make deeper offers on old items if I get the chance. My only change has been pricing at 1 year terapeak market value on new listings (rather than the highest comps) and then offering deeper discounts. On my stale items though I haven’t gone back to reprice at current solds.
I promote everything right away at at least 2.5%. Depending on the actives and item desirability, I will go up to %5 if more competitive and then 9% if I think it is a potentially really long tail item, lesser known brand or clothing. I don’t adjust these % when I do sell similar.
I think my stuff in general is harder to price accurately and slower moving than your niche.
I do get to make more offers after sell similar but it was much less effective this time around than in November. So I’m wondering if I should time it again for an upswing season.
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@retro…. curious how you test the camera’s that use film? I know the obvious way is to add film, take pictures and get developed. wondering if there is a quicker and less expensive way to test.
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No need to use actual film. Put in a battery to test the meter. Make sure the shutter mechanism works on all settings, aperture control works, then check the seals on the door. Most buyers understand that they will likely have to replace the seals as I don’t do that. I have a working knowledge of SLR and DSLR cameras which helps. I got into photography 10 years or so ago. Then I got an iphone that could take excellent pictures with decent bokeh and moved on.
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thanks for the info! any brands that you like to watch out for? I feel like I see cameras at estate sales but no much knowledge on which ones sell. I’ve tried to look them up while at the sales but I seem to always grab the ones that have no real value
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Canon ae-1 is the gold standard for old slr’s.
really any camera is worth looking up. Super valuable 35mm point & shoots can look quite crappy!
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Oh and don’t forget old polaroid 600 instant cameras.
the rare color schemes are worth huge money, but any common color one is an easy $30. They’re built like tanks. Unless you see major physical damage they work. Most of the time the company who makes the film now will be who buys it from you. They buy a ton, returb them, and sell them on their website.
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