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With a little extra cash in my pocket from strong sales over the last six months, and an extra dose of pride because my spring cleaning has been going so well, I really went all-in on scavenging in the last week. All online, mostly from my usual eBay consignment card auction sellers with a bit of marketplace arbitrage (buy on one platform, sell on another) thrown in as well. I’ll have a lot of cards to sort through over the next few weeks. I’m looking forward to it. Along with my spring cleaning, this will build up my consignment inventory nicely in preparation for Q4. I’ve sold over 1000 cards through consignment every month since October, at least a 50% increase from the previous year’s stats and November through February was basically double my numbers from the year before. It was a combination of building up my inventory and learning how to best use all the selling tools available to me (auctions, promotions, live auctions, repricing). But my numbers will dip if I don’t feed the pipeline again. I saw the opportunity to get some deals this past week, maybe because people were traveling, maybe early spring is simply a good time to buy, and it was an expensive week but I think it will be worth it.
I did find a few weird items in all of the card buying. The item I’m most interested in is this lot of tickets to the 2023 Pokemon World Championships for about $36, or $12/each. I know next to nothing about Pokemon (gotta catch em all?) but sometimes I let Terapeak be my guide and I feel confident that this is going to be an easy $50 to $100 profit.
I was very happy with this deal: 40 authenticated autographed sports photos for about $120 total. My consignor charges $4 per oversized item, so I will do a little research before sending these in, limit myself to anything I’ll price at $15 and higher with a decent sell through rate. The rest will get lotted up into a flat rate box. My hope is that I can sell a flat rate box of 50 auto’d photos for about $200. I have a lot of autographed photos in death piles so that might be a spring cleaning mini-project in a few weeks.
Card deal of the week was this dual hockey jersey card of Oilers star Connor McDavid for about $20, and a single jersey McDavid card from the same set for $15. Any old McDavid jersey card sells quickly in the $20 range, and these cards are from his minor league jerseys, so I’d be shocked if they sell less than $50. I will aim for $100 and see what happens.
A little $5 scavenge: this US Open flag with an authenticated autograph of golfer Si Woo Kim. The consignment seller had two other flags signed by different golfers which I lost, each sold for over $20, so I’ll be surprised if I can’t turn a nice little $20 profit on this one.
Finally, a few oddball autographs from one of my favorite smaller sellers: a Scorpions band signed promotional card for $30 and two autographs of Atari game designer Ed Logg for about $4 each. My COGS will go up if I get these authenticated, or I’ll make less profit selling them as-is, or they’ll go in a lot of similar items where I’ll try to net $100. Regardless of how I sell, my intuition plus a dash of Terapeak research led me to add these to my autograph pile.
What did you add to your death piles this week?
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I recommend a tour round an overstuffed antiques centre to give yourself the motivation to tackle your death piles. Try and find something you want to buy, at a decent price. First your eyes start hurting, because there’s so much stock. Then you realise that there’s so much stock because the prices are too high or the stock’s boring, ugly or fake.
Did that on Wednesday at Heanor, Derbyshire. Came home with a small bag of vintage Sylko cotton reels. The IKEA store nearby has started putting up signs in the local dialect- ‘Wottyer gerrin Duck?“- so I guess this trend of localisation will be extended to the product names.
Pilacrap bookcase. Yomukkibogga mop and bucket.
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Your overstuffed antiques centre sounds like each of the privately owned thrift stores in the New Jersey town next to mine. Did I say thrift stores? I mean tax writeoffs or money laundering spots. That must be what they are. I simply can’t think of another explanation for such illogically high prices on literal junk.
I’m a big fan of Dagstorp and Knutstorp, but I have to admit your names are much better! Is the IKEA cafeteria in Derbyshire area as delicious as the one in my beloved Newark, NJ IKEA?
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Is the IKEA cafeteria in Derbyshire area as delicious as the one in my beloved Newark, NJ IKEA?
Don’t know, the cafeteria’s halfway through the maze, we didn’t stop! Left to my own devices I walk in through the exit and go straight to the junk part, but my friend’s an IKEA enthusiast, so I get the tour! Followed by a double hotdog as a reward.
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