- This topic has 3 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 2 years, 3 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
-
As the year winds down, I have been thinking a lot about how I scavenge. No matter what size your store is, we all have only so many hours each week that we can (or want to) devote to selling things online. A lot of my time is spent checking online auction listings from the same group of consignment sellers, putting the undervalued listings in bid sniper and paying 30 or 40 item invoices. It doesn’t “feel” like work, yet I grind out those hours, week in and week out. I can probably slow my grind a few more times in 2024 than I did in 2023, which makes it easier to keep grinding it out overall. Success breeds success. Mostly, my eBay business remains about finding undervalued sports cards and I can comfortably say now that I’ve added autographs and memorabilia to my knowledge base, too. But occasionally I find some other interesting items, and every so often I win them.
The week before Christmas was very good to me. I have seen this pattern over and over again the last few years — auctions can get weird around holidays. Not everything sells low, in fact many things go for peak prices or near them. But lots more items fall through the cracks. I figure there are less people right before major holidays and their buying patterns are more inconsistent.
Whatever your niche is, there are sellers running eBay auctions with poor listings. You might find some really good inventory if you start saving some searches and keep at it.
Here are my fun finds from this week:
Bryan Pittman 2005 Houston Texans pro football playbook for $25. I bought this because I thought it was a cool piece of history. Technology has changed sports in the last few decades, so most playbooks are on tablets now. Pittman was a completely insignificant player and there is very limited selling history on Terapeak of this type of playbook. I feel like the right buyer would pay $100 for this but sometimes my feelings are off-base.
This authenticated game used foul ball was hit by the current shortstop for the Atlanta Braves, Orlando Arcia. Arcia is an average player, but the Braves are a very popular team. I sell a curated 10 card lot of Braves cards every other week year-round, basically as fast as I can restock them. The seller had two of these foul balls for sale, I won one for $6.38 and lost the second which went for $10. Not sure I will make more than $20 profit, but it’s an easy listing and it will be fun to send the buyer a few freebie cards with their order. With that in mind, kind of wish I had bid a little higher on the second ball.
In the trading card world, this 105 card lot of 2023 Wild Card football numbered cards was a really nice bargain. Wild Card is an unlicensed set and this set is a pretty lame design (both heavy factors in card values), but the wholesale price for cards with an individual serial number is around $0.10. It’s a huge steal to get cards made within the last few years for such a bargain price. These are not the most popular types of cards (those would be autographs, ideally with a patch from the jersey, with a particular type of shiny card called a prizm or refractor a close second), but there is still value here. It will take me about five to ten minutes to sort through this stack once I receive it. Very likely there will be no cards worth selling individually on either platform I use (ebay and COMC), but 20 to 40 percent of the lot will be perfect for my curated team lots. I will sort the rest of the cards into new boxes for 2024, my wholesale boxes. Basically feeder boxes to fill up large flat rate boxes, organized by sport. Should allow me to make an extra $500 (or more?) each month by moving through the lower value cards much more quickly. To say nothing of what I might do with extra inventory space. Organization system for this whole endeavor is still a work in progress, but it will get there.
What did you find this week?
-
Did I buy stuff this week? Yes! Do I remember what it was? No!
I had a bunch of other stuff to do, but I did get in one Goodwill run to a Goodwill I don’t go to often. Nothing of special note – there were two $100 jackets in the Women’s section that caught my eye. Then in the men’s dept I bought 7 pair of jeans. Jeans are only $6.99 at this store and these were all high STR, $35-50 jeans. I got a couple of shoes that met my scavenging parameters too.
At the beginning of the year I almost felt like thrift store shoes was going to go away in my store. At one point this summer I had listed my entire death pile collection of shoes. That’s how few I was buying! Prices were going way up and supply was going way down. This fall the prices have went back down and supply of High STR or $50+ shoes is way up.
-
-
Mostly RA for me this week.
I did score a couple of items from people who live near the Pottery Barn outlets over on Mercari and relisted them on Ebay. One I got for $6 with free shipping! and this one for $15 https://www.ebay.com/itm/335162533304
I almost forgot that Goodwillfinds was running their 50% off clearance sale. I did buy two items but almost didn’t since their shipping is much more expensive now than I experienced before. I should make money on them but it was a close call.
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.