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This is the week that the Summer Slowdown™ started for us. We made half as much money this week as we have been the past five months. It’s been especi
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 311: The Summer Slowdown™ is Here] -
Total Items in Store: 428/etsy, 200/ebay
Items Sold: 13 (10/etsy, 3/ebay)
Total Sales: $458.49
Highest Price Sold: $65 (blanket on etsy)
Average Price Sold: $35
Returns: 0Last week was a disaster with only 2 sales: one on ebay, one on etsy, this business is a real roller-coaster, LOL. Anyway, I am pretty pleased with this week’s sales (especially as we are getting into the summer slump.)
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Week May 14-20, 2017
Total Items in Store: 908
Items Sold: 15 (2 Amazon, 1 Bonanza)
Cost of Items Sold: $108.99 (23.02% of sales)
Total Sales: $473.48
Highest Price Sold: $100 (Temple of the Dog Concert Poster)
Average Price Sold: $31.57
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $446
Number of items listed this week: 56
Promoted listings test: 5 sales, $69.99 (14.7% of total sales), $4.23 fees (6% of sales)Steady week, but things do seem to be slowing down. Will be interesting to listen to the show tomorrow morning and see what you guys have experienced.
Two big sales of the week were on Friday after the news or Chris Cornell’s death was announced. I went to the Temple of the Dog show at Madison Square Garden and bought 2 extra posters for resale. They didn’t have a ton of interest for anything higher than purchase price ($35) since the show in November, but they both sold immediately Friday.
Picks were pretty good on Saturday. A lot of bread and butter stuff – records, silk scarves, playing cards, and decorative trinkets. My favorite finds were these three sterling silver WWII medals for Marksmanship, Sharpshooting, and Expert – picked for $2 each (basically the value of the silver) and listed together for $75. Slightly less quality but exponentially more volume than I’ve found recently. 56 listings in a weekend is pretty great for me – I usually do about 20-30 per weekend. Caught up on a bit of backlog as well, since my eBay room was starting to turn into a disaster. Also got me over 900 items for the first time in a while.
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If you ever need help identifying military patches and medals, there’s a great Facebook group that will help if you upload a picture … American Society of Military Insignia Collectors (ASMIC).
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O, thanks so much! I didn’t have any trouble identifying the ones I found this weekend, but a couple years ago I found a major cache of individual unit & regiment pins that took forever to research. Paid like $50 for the whole lot and I’ve easily made over $1000 – these are the last I have left.
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Still faithfully listening, but haven’t participated in awhile.
Week ending 5/20
Ebay:
Total Items in Store: 14,400ish
# of Items sold: 118
Total sold: $898.90
COGS: $33.00
Sold a few $25+ postcardsI started selling on Hippostcards.com It’s the old Bidstart site rebranded. It automatically syncs with my ebay listings. It’s $15 month to list and they take about 10% of the selling price when something sells.
Hippostcard.com:
Sold 20 postcards on that site for $110.40.
So I’m over $1,000 for the week.Bought approximately 2,500 postcards from my postcard source for about $.06 each.
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Week ending 5/20
Total Items in Store: 401
Items Sold: 22 (ebay) + 86 children’s books (facebook)
Total sold: $362.81 (ebay) + $204 (facebook) + $14.75 (used book store) = $581.56
COGS: $32.75Nothing really amazing sold on ebay this week. I think my highest dollar item was $30.
I put together several big lots of childrens books, and sold them on a few facebook homeschool groups. These were books my son had read and outgrown. It was a lot of work to get them all sorted and sold, but I’m glad they’re out of here. What was leftover was sold to the used book store.
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My sales on ebay dropped off too. I only sold 4 items for a grand total of $82.
I’m a part timer on ebay and while I am retired from the workplace, I think what keeps people working is the stability of a paycheque. I never would have had the guts to go full time selling without a net like you two did. It’s admirable.
Any scavengers who have recommendations for a bluetooth printer? We are RVers and need something that will work for the phone. /printer talk
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depending on your phone, you could also print over wifi if they’re both on the same network. but i guess you don’t have your own wifi network if you’re traveling. hmmm.
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Yes, thank you ryanne. Where we are now you have to go into town to get wifi (fast food restaurants, bus depot). I was looking for something that can be done over bluetooth. I been researching the Epson Expression
and it’s not that much so may order it. I bought the hp envy last year and couldn’t get it to work. Right now I get my labels for amazon at staples, and hand write labels for ebay. I could save more money in the long run with a printer.
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Total Items in Store: 366
Items Sold: 14
Cost of Items Sold: $16 used + 125 RA new
Total Sales: $430
Highest Price Sold: $52 (Two coffee mugs)
Average Price Sold: $31
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: About $80
Number of items listed this week: 8Grateful for the week of sales. I fell hard off the wagon since a realtor held a neighborhood garage sale in my neck of the woods – SO Fun! Almost all of the items I bought from one lady who was downsizing. She knew her stuff but had trouble counting the total. I felt like staying and helping her run the rest of the sale. I think she wanted to adopt me. She had vintage le creuset, dansk, pyrex, etc. I also bought a pretty warn out rug for $10 channeling Ryanne. Have no idea what it is made of or how to clean it, but it spoke to me and it’s easy to fold and ship. Now I have new piles in my workspace again from the haul. Hoping to get back to listing and need to lay off again on the shopping. Have a great week.
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RR Store Week May 14-20, 2017
Total Items in Store: 1,295
Items Sold: 39
Cost of Items Sold: $59.75
Total Sales: $1149.84
Highest Price Sold: $380 (Super Nintendo bundle)
Average Price Sold: $29.48
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $82.95
Number of items listed this week: 24Awesome week for me, and I’m pretty sure I know why. After being spooked by two weeks of low sales, I decided to try an experiment I read about on Instagram. Pretty straightforward: starting two Mondays ago, every day for a week I moved 40 old, stale items from Buy It Now to Auction. So this past week, I had auctions ending every day, which is a lot of store activity. I only sold 2 or 3 of the 40 items each day, but they add up. Plus, it was all really old listings. After the auctions ended, I relisted the unsold items using Sell Similar. So all last week, I had auctions starting, auctions ended, and Buy It Now listings going up, PLUS the brand new listings I was creating. I really think it helped drive traffic to my listings, because I sold a lot more than usual. And today has been crazy!
All that said, I’m still a firm believer in List It and Forget It. Jay and Ryanne’s philosophy helped me to go full time, and I think it works. But because my inventory is so much smaller, I think I have to shake things up once in a while. Not to say this will work for everyone, but it helped me quite a bit.
Killer estate sales and killer deals this week. One of my best purchases was a shoe box full of vintage 1970’s Hello Kitty stuff, all unused. Like practically brand new. Got the whole box for $15. I listed a few pieces last night and I’ve already sold three small pieces for a total of $96.97. And I still have 16 pieces left to list! Keep your eyes open for vintage Sanrio; even the 90’s stuff goes for big bucks.
OK, off to pack 23 items, then watch Twin Peaks. Have a great week, everyone!
*Paul*
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I love experiments that work. The key with any experiment is to try it again and again to see if it produces the similar results. Look forward to your sales over the next months. Maybe you found a new trick?
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Hey Jay… Don’t overlook P-Tac units. These are commercial A/C and Heater Combo units. We used to install them when we did large room additions for customers. They are the type of units you see in motel-hotels. They mount low on a wall. You can get a 15,000 BTW [1.25 ton] combo unit. Enough for your whole house if I remember you are around 1,200 SF. All that is needed other than the wall mount part is a 220volt outlet run to it and a vent-drain hole out through the wall.
Even though it has a thermostat you can set it and forget it you can also just flip it on to cool things down for a short while, then click it off. The other thing is during the winter, if you come in and the wood stove is real low or off, then just click on the heater switch and it will warm up the area fast then when the wood stove gets up to speed then click it off.
P-Tac [stand for Packaged Thermal Air Conditioning]. Great for smaller houses or areas. This size will run about $800 to $1,100 plus Electrician to install. Get your current subs you are using for the house reno. to talk to you about it and or install.
Just a thought for you.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
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Nice. Yes, we’d need to cool 1200 square feet since we dont have doors in our house. A big open plan except for the bathrooms.
There really are only about four weeks where we need AC. It’s difficult to justify the expense of the unit and all the electricity. Sleeping on the porch is nice for now. I’m sure as we get older, we’ll pull the trigger on comfort.
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I grew up without AC. If it got really hot, my parents would put in a window unit in the living room and hang plastic sheeting to block off the hallways. We’d all sleep in the living room.
So you could always just install an window AC unit in your bedroom. I personally like your porch arrangement though. I also slept on the porch a lot, but it wasn’t screened in.
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Paul, you may be onto something. A few months ago, I had moved some older clothing items to auctions. Some sold, most didn’t, but we did see more activity (though we were also listing more, so that could have been it as well). I think I will try this and see how it works for a lot of my stale clothing items.
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You bet T-Satt. Imagine someone like me with a clinical disorder (PTSD and OCD) that drove a severe case of hoarding.
Mostly because of you guys over the last year I leveraged my OCD to create an “obsession” for eBay and it worked because a lot of it is related to passion.
It is a good obsession to have and a great therapy.
I managed to get rid of it all and make money. Clothing, collectibles, etc. Unused designer shoes, imagine.
Now I am really digging, things I could never imagine I would be able to make it.And I still have this forum. :0)
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I hesitated posting this because I wouldn’t want you or anyone else to think this is a trick or a way to fool eBay. I looked at it strictly as an experiment. There is no substitute for doing the work, namely listing.
In addition to the sales boost, the process of relisting (well, Sell Similar-ing) the old inventory is giving me a chance to tighten up the listings; dropping prices, fixing any errors, and deleting extraneous text. A few of these touched-up listings have already sold. I also realized that I was being somewhat precious about pricing. My store is definitely on the expensive side, but not everything needs to be top dollar, especially if it’s been up for years.
*Paul*
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I’m glad you posted this Paul. I like to read other peoples experiments and if they make sense try them myself.
Also, I sell similar every 30 days. Lately I have been seeing eBay adding a lot of new item specific fields. It can’t hurt to look at old listings and make sure you are filling in as many new item specifics as you can.
And I have found some embarrassing mistakes when I check.
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Paul, I completely second the theory that “activity” bumps up your store in general. I still run auctions often (more for newly listed, sure-thing items I am listing than for stale items, though). I have been following this method for quite a while and it never fails. When I have a few very active auctions going, there is a definite uptick in older BIN listings that sell, too.
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T-Satt, BethGreen, I’m glad you concur. While I probably won’t use them on my brand new listings, sending old listings to auction has been a great way to move out old inventory, then clean up and relist the unsold items. I’m going to continue this method and see how it goes.
*Paul*
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Store Week 5/14/17 – 5/20/17
Total items in store: 1327
Items sold: 18 (plus 2 unpaid)
Cost of items sold: $23.25
Total sales: $717.89
Highest price sold: $100 (Tie between another USFS hard hat / helmet and a vintage Rush concert tee. A pair of NIB Dr. Martens boots were a close second at $99.99)
Average price sold: $39.88
International Sales: 2
Returns: 0 (2 on the way)
Money spent on new inventory this week: $80.00I’ve had two Forest Service hard hats up for several months and suddenly they both sold in the last week or two for $100 each. Nice surprise! Sales weren’t totally amazing, but pretty good and I’m happy to be selling more items in the $100 range lately.
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Hey Ryanne can I get some shipping advice?
Can you tell me the best way to ship a belt to Peru? It sold with Priority International but I see there is no tracking?
Thanks,Liz L
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either Priority or 1st class are the only way to ship to Peru and hope for the best. they don’t guarantee any scans past US. that’s the only advice i can give. i’ve shipped to many countries in South America and about 50% never arrived, but what can i do? i just tell them it can take up to 90 days to reach them.
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My numbers for the week of 5/14/17:
Total Items in Store: 110
Items Sold: 10
Cost of Items Sold: $41
Total Sales: $292 + shipping
Highest Price Sold: $50 (American Girl Doll – Wellie Wishers)
Average Price Sold: $29
Returns: 0The summer slowdown came fast and hard for me the week before this past one. I only sold 4 items that week. I can’t even remember having such a slow week (it would have to have been during the summer of last year). But I’m ok with it for 3 reasons: 1. Can’t do anything about it anyways. 2. Although I do NEED to bring in a certain amount per month, my eBay income is mostly supplemental for our family. My husband has a good job so for us it’s not nearly as stressful as a full time, main breadwinner situation. 3. I have always viewed eBay as having a seasonal flow…Summer is slowest for listing (because kids are off of school, more outside work, vacation) and obviously for sales. But it is “Buying Season”! I’m in Ohio so the Garage Sale season is really only a little more than a quarter of the year. Time to stock up! I buy and stack everything in boxes, listing a bit as I go, and my hoard will last me through “Listing Season” (end of August when the kids go back to school till about March/April…if I do it right). I like buying season, but I think I like the hunkering down for the winter and listing season almost as much. So it works for me to view my business in this context.
I made some awesome buys this past week…Franklin Mint Model Cars and a HotWheels Micheal Schumacher Ferrari Model (all in cases), a vintage all leather backpack, A rare Sherman on the Mount Cookie Jar, a clay pot style bongo drum from Morocco (artist signed). Enjoying the season!
Rayanne, a few weeks ago I found my best item ever…a Herman Miller fiberglass shell chair. I could sure use some advice on how to pack/ship it. I have never dealt with such a large item before. The legs are epoxyed on so I would not want to remove them. What would you suggest? Where should I even get a box??? Also, if I end up doing local pickup, I have heard you guys collect the $ through PayPay first, which is what I have done as well. But I have also heard the argument that it’s best to do a cash deal, since there is no real proof of delivery/tracking. This is a larger dollar item so I want to make sure I’m covered. I appreciate any advice you can give. -
Week of May 14-20
* Total Items in Store: 731 (57 delisted)
* Items Sold: 13
* Cost of Items Sold: $26.61 + $29.87 Commission
* Total Sales: $450.44
* Highest Price Sold: $160 Antique Century Dictionary & Cyclopedia 10 Volumes
* Average Price Sold: $34.65
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $4
* Number of items listed this week: 17Love the little TM marks you are using in some of your write-ups!
My week was pretty decent. Certainly beefed up by the antique book set, which were published in 1899-1900. The last volume is an atlas, which I think is the star of the set. The sale price was actually $200, but shipping of about $40.50 was included. I didn’t want to include shipping, but these books had to be shipped in two boxes because the total weight was over 70 pounds. eBay doesn’t allow a flat rate over $25 for media mail, and it has no way to accommodate two boxes.
I have been anticipating the process of ending a number of my slow moving, low value items that I bought in the beginning and selling them at a flea market. I had decided to skip the original flea market two weeks ago because of bad weather in favor of this past Saturday, which showed 0% chance of rain with a high of 68F up to two days prior. I stopped looking at the predicts and was very surprised when the rain started about an hour or two after setting up. They decided to reschedule for the following day, but my husband and I just couldn’t get out of bed Sunday morning. I’m going to post photos of my stuff to a Facebook group I belong to, and then just donate the rest.
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Just heard the mention to Item Specifics and structured data. One thing we have been experiencing is a much larger amount of questions to us all the time. All of the questions are very basic. How tall is this item, what color is it, what is the over all size, does it have this, that and the other. All of which are ALL listed in the Item Specific area.
What we have come to conclude is that since 64% of our sales come from people using their cell phones they must not be seeing the Item Specifics, don’t know what it is, only see the title and habitually just go to Description. So we do a two part reply. One we politely tell them the answer to these types of questions are listed in the item specific area and we invite them to view the item specifics there and also mention that area contains many more details that may be of interest and help them make an informed decision. Then we also answer their question directly. We hope by doing this they will maybe go to item specifics and spend more time on our site, and also help “train” them to use the IS area in the future and hopefully not have to ask the sellers those basic questions that are already covered.
We have gotten replies such as, Oh thank you, we didn’t know what that was, oh, didn’t see that, can’t see that area on our phone, etc., etc.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
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Agreed. The Structured Data is hidden from buyers that just land on the item page. BUT it helps eBay refine searches so helps buyers find items that way.
We also get a lot of questions on items that is clearly stated on the listing, but the buyer just needs to drill down. We always answer politely because we want the sale.
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Ryanne:
Here is a thought about the laser printer. Just find a model that has “two” trays. Many of them do. That way when you click the print button you see a small, short meassage that says print from “tray one” or “tray Two”. Click which ever one has the paper in it or the labels in it.Just a thought….. mike at mdc galleries in atlanta
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i kind of do something like that. the brother laser printer has a front loader option, so i keep regular letter paper in the tray for invoices. and i open the front loader to do Smartpost or 1st class int’l labels. it’s easy. love my printer!!
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We have the same Brother printer as you only just a little bit newer model number. We do exactly the same. The main tray loaded with paper, 250 sht. capacity and flip open the top small flap on top and can insert 5 shts of 2 up pressure sensitive label stock in at a time. That is 10 labels at a clip if we want, but we usually just do one or two at a time as we get the packing done.
By the way, this slightly newer model doesn’t refill the exact way as your model, several more smaller parts in the way of the fill plug and also the plug is pressure fitted in real tight, so your “how to refill” the toner video did not work for us. That was about two years ago, but have only had to buy one toner cartridge in almost 3-4 years, so cheap enough. It lasts forever. We have run through maybe 4 cases of paper [approx. 20,000 shts or so] on two toner cartridges[one came with the unit then a second one at $40 +/-]. So, not too shabby.
mc at mdc in Atl.
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Hi R&J – Thanks for the podcast. Glad you guys are enjoying being home again.
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 1749
Items Sold: 37
Total Sales: $1050
Cost of Items Sold: $98.24
Average Price Sold: $28.39
Average Cost of Item: $2.66
Highest Price Item Sold: $185 HP-55 scientific calculator
Number of items listed this week: 53
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 231
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 88
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 40
Sell-through rate (for the week): 2.12%
# of Hats Sold: 23 (62% of sales)I had a very good week. There were days with no cha-chings but then I had a few busy days and I got rid of some of my higher-priced items.
My biggest sale was the HP calculator that I bought at a yard sale for $1. I listed it for $250. I got a $100 offer and haggled him up to $185. That was a super-lucky find.
I also sold $200 worth of architectural magazines and computer manuals (several different sales) that I bought at a hoarders estate sale a month or two ago.
It’s Monday morning. I wish I was sitting at home listing junk on eBay instead of heading into work but it’s not to be. For now I’m stuck with a high-paying job that I don’t enjoy. There are worst problems to have. Just a few more years of this and I hope to be free of the 9-5 world….
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You continue to have consistent sales even though it’s a part time gig for you. Incredible how many hats you sell each week.
Our hat sales have really dropped off. I think this might be a good example of creating our own competition. That’s okay. Plenty of stuff to sell!
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Hey Jay –
Just like spinachetr has his postcards, hats are definitely my area of expertise now. We sold 23 hats this week but, putting that in perspective, we have just over 1300 hats listed on eBay currently. If I didn’t have a large quantity of low cost hats available to me in the beginning, I probably wouldn’t have developed the knowledge I needed to make it a viable business.That said, you and Ryanne are definitely my mentors. I still remember in the beginning when I read your manifesto. I would never have considered this scale if it wasn’t for you guys recommending getting to 500 listings quickly.
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Summer, seasonality and intertwined activities
Hello friends, as I mentioned last week, I am facing some issues related to defect caused during my time traveling, I am taking the opportunity to make radical revision.
The first one is related to the listings, I am revising each one of them for weight, shipping options, item availability, pricing strategy.
I have several listings that come with checked option for the listing plus larger images. Even when I bulk change or change individually they come back as checked as well. I will try calling eBay since this might be still impacting my cost.
Also, my main scale was broken by the cable guy … so I took the opportunity to buy a new one (all my asset expenses are written off since my eBay store is under a corporation, so for my acquiring almost anything for the company writes off as much as anything COGS related).
The next step is related to my storage, I need to reorganize it since this is a mini inventory. I need to buy some extra shelves like the ones I decided to use. These types of assets are also written off in another asset line.
Lastly, thnx to the lessons from Jay and Ryanne, I have managed to beat my hoarding (some of you will possibly remember, one of the consequences of my cancer was a PTSD and consequent OCD that exposed my hoarding).
I dumped or sold whatever. Now I am still finding very nice stuff like vintage electronics I am putting up for sale, this will give me room for the business related expenses.I will make some comments about my rental house in the Shampoo and Booze forum
Cheers
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5/14 – 5/20
Total Items in store: 359
Items sold: 5
Cost of items sold: approx. $6
Total Sales: $63.64
Highest price sold: $19.49 Brittney Spears concert program
Average price sold: $12.78
Int’l sales: 0
Returns:0
Number of items listed this week: 0
Amazon disbursement – $0Full time ebay goal – was March 2018; now – ????
Ebay to Amazon – 26 sales – $2,929 , COGS – $1,289, fees – $388, profit – $1,252
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First time poster, but have listened from the beginning! Love your podcast! Here are my stats:
5/14-5/20
Items in store 1687
Sold 30
Cost of items sold $67.77
Total Sales $764.01 $33.24 Truegether
Highest sale $80.00 Vintage Fabric
Average $25.46
$ on new inventory $38.70
# listed 37
Returns 0
Bought a trunk of vintage fabric and one bolt sold out in 2 days. Did my research, but not sure why it was so popular, but who cares! Cha-ching! -
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Total Items in Store: 694
Items Sold: 13
Cost of Items Sold: $53
Total Sales: $356
Profit: $303
Highest Price Sold: $50 Reebok Zigtech mens shoes
Average Sales Price: $27.38
Average Profit: $23.29Sales are trending up, but I still have days with no sales.
A quick story about listing with kids for you no kids folks:
I was working on listing some pants last night. My 4 year old son was “helping” me. I was ironing a pair of pants and he disappeared for a minute, two at most. He comes back in and was getting ready to touch the pants as well as my brand new white photo backdrop. I happened to look over and his hand was all red. He stopped just shy of my stuff and I asked him what he did. He had found some paint…
So I told him to wash his hands as I retraced his steps…it was pretty much like walking in on a murder scene. I found a toy he was painting under my work table. Paint all over the tile, paint “footsteps” through the room on the CARPET, and the dumped out paint bottle in the kitchen nook all over a fabric seat chair, the floor, and the wood ledge of the window. Did I mention this was CHERRY RED acrylic paint?So I spent the next hour scrubbing everything and shampooing the carpet. Good times…
So, when will J&R be having kids so they can run a new ebay experiment such as this? 🙂
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Freelancing
My main activity would be my Consulting/Freelancing business and not my eBay store (in terms of income specifically).
However I experience some of what Jay comments on the podcast this week.Even though I usually have a lot of independence on the what and how, at the end of the day you get a lot more involved beyond the actual hrs of the contract, making it very difficult for other activities (for example I am writing this from the client’s office, not comfortable at all, but it gets to a point where I need refresh and variation).
It is likely this contract will be extended, very good pay and I have now other benefits (they are paying 50% of my health insurance for the whole family for example).
Catch 22
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We still like doing contract work because its a fun challenge to solve problems and well-paid. But when we’re in the middle of it, we always question why we keep doing it. At the end of the day, we’re always working for someone else and making their ideas happen. I dont like the feeling of being left with nothing other than some money.
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Week of May 14-20
* Total Items in Store: +/- 250
* Items Sold: 23
* Cost of Items Sold: $117
* Total Sales: 1127.32
* Highest Price Sold: $166 bracelet lot
* Average Price Sold: $49.00
* Returns: $100 (photo glass breakage)A super-great week thanks to that jewelry haul mentioned elsewhere. Of my 23 items sold, 20 were Sobral pieces. I’ve still got a bit left. I’d love to find more, because my shop would have been DOA without it! In other news, I picked up a small box of postcards at a local auction for $25 (I put them up early and paid the ‘penalty,’ but I didn’t want to stick around all day waiting for the table to come up.) — I was after some interesting looking cards from the turn of the (last) century. I forwarded photos of the cards to a NYC auction house for review, and they’re interested in putting them in an upcoming auction (estimate $700-1000.) I’m debating it — I’m a bit wary of auctions after some friends had a super-bad experience with a famous house.
Going to listen to the podcast now!
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@Habnab can you upload pictures/scans of the postcards you sent to the auction house? I’d be interested in seeing what type of cards they are estimating to bring $700-$1000. John
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@spinachetr, Hi John. The cards are 9 of the 12 from Gisbert Combaz’s “Element” series. I don’t have an imgur account, but here’s a link to a blog post that shows several of the cards.
I have a ton of other cards from the box lot, but these were really the ones that caught my eye as interesting. I don’t know much about cards, and had never seen these before, but they made my spidey sense tingle.
I have some of the other cards listed but they’re barely getting any peeks. I have some of the Tuck’s Kings/Queens of England, some cards from the Paris Exposition, and some St. John cards of women dressed in national costume (or as representations of different countries; I can’t remember exactly right now.) There are other cards in the box as well. All the cards have heavy mucilage staining on the backs but pretty decent fronts.
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(just a note: you can upload photos to Imgur without an account. Just click “upload”. This is what makes it so useful.)
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Habnab, now that I have seen what Sobral looks like I think I have a piece of it, but it is a pendant on a gold chain and isn’t signed. Could it be Sobral???
And PS, here is a great find of jewelry. My husband found the article:
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/05/22/costume-jewelry-bought-in-london-turns-out-to-be-real-and-really-valuable.html-
Linda, I’m only familiar with the pieces that I’ve found; I can tell you that some of my necklaces are discs on gold chains with large lobster-claw clasps, but I think Google will be your go-to for the right answer! Also, the signatures can be hard to find. Kate
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So I was just listening while taking photos this morning and I thought I would share phase one of my inventory revamp. I sell tons of items but the majority of what I sell is jewelry. Every morning for 2.5 years I would come down stairs and I would have to go through my jewelry to find the pieces that sold. This was fine when all the items fit in 34 plastic separated arts and crafts boxes. But for the last year I had amassed so much that they where located in the boxes and 18 1 gallon ziplock bags. It was taking me over an hour every morning to find them since it was not organized. I had been told I needed a better way for some time but I am kind of hard headed. Finally I bought 6, 12 gallon bins. One is full of necklaces, another brooches, then bracelets, the rings. The last two are in the basement with sunglasses and action figures. I keep the jewelry upstairs since it is the vast majority of what sells and I can find the items while the kids eat breakfast and then I can head down to the dungeon during nap time. Finally after my oldest son gets home from school I can go to the post office. Not the best system but far and away better then mixed bags. Instead of over and hour it takes about 15 minutes and that is mainly because the necklace bin is almost full. I was able to fit them in an armoir we picked up off craigslist a few years ago before we finally made the leap to ditch the bubble back tv (only about 10 years after everyone else. Here are a few pictures. http://imgur.com/a/DI6dA
http://imgur.com/a/DI6dA-
Cool. I remember when you started buying those big lots of jewelry, and finding some really expensive pieces. Looks like you’ve gone all in!
Just curious: could you sub-divide the inventory even more? Instead of all necklaces, maybe “gold necklaces”, “Silver necklaces”, “Chains”….
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Yeah Jay, but around my area all the goodwills are now sending their jewelry to a warehouse and putting it online. I actually have since then switched focus to more porcelain plates, flatware, and sunglasses. I was thinking about breaking it down further but since I won’t be filling it as fast anymore and the armor is only so big it made since to stop there for now. But if the necklace bin fills, you are right I will have to do that. On the note of the gold and silver, it is weird, gold is such a hard sale. I sell so much more funky brooches and costume jewelry like Chico’s then gold. People seem very reluctant to buy gold which doesn’t make much sense since it can’t be a money thing. I just sold a Blondie poster for 425 to someone in the UK. Maybe there is just so much competition in the jewelry arena. Any who, I have a question that I have been meaning to ask, Since you both live in VA have you ever thought of metal detecting your property for relics. Talk about cheap inventory. Plus, it is similar to thrift store hunting, I just find less metal detecting but it is quite addicting especially if you were to find a CS buckle. But back to the sunglasses and eyeglasses, the vintage ones are like an untapped market around here. I sell a few every week and some go for great money and they sell here for $1.99, I remember you sold the square Dennis Hoppers a while back, not sure if you are still buying them.
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Supposedly, eBay is going to do a better job of helping eBay sellers combat fraudulent buyers in the Fall update.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/may/21/ebay-accused-failing-sellers-buyers-manipulate-system-protection-
Just my 2 cents: Selling can be emotional. That is, if you allow it to be. Being small time sellers, even one fraudulent attempt can hit the pocket books. But I do agree with eBay that the vast majority are honest, or are only dishonest for a little money, i.e. trying to dodge the restocking fees. I can honestly say that I have only had a handful of cases where something fishy was going on and none of those have I lost. Well maybe 2 of those which is why I no longer buy tape, cd players, or electronics for that matter. I just don;t want any hassle. But for the most part, those few “scammers” are easily absorbed by the fact that I have NO one I have to answer to. I would, and do look forward to the inclusion of the pilot program to everyone. But the article seemed to paint eBay in a worse light then I think most sane, emotionally distancing individuals would. It is true that eBay can not see what we are sending and if they just took one side over the other then it could become overrun with this but roles reversed. And if we think about it, the most important thing is buyer confidence. If we lose that then we stand to lose more then a few bucks on a single listing. Nuff said, but thanks for sharing.
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Week of 5/14-5/20
Total Items in Store: 1,486
Items Sold: 57
Number of Items Listed This Week: 58
Total Sales: $1,468.75
Cost of Items Sold: $237.13
Highest Item Sold: $80 – Cake by Petunia Pickle Bottom Society Pink & Brown Diaper Bag
Competition: Highest Priced Items: Veronica wins this week expanding her lead for the year 12-7.
Competition: Highest Total Sales: Troy leads the year $16k to $12.4kSales slumped again last week, but started to pick up on Saturday, continuing into Monday. As the “Feed the Beast” process goes, again it was true: Starting on Friday 5/12, we did very little eBay work, as we were getting our garden at the house prepped and planted, and we took over two garden plots at our Community Garden site (since when my parents moved to Montana, we lost our large garden area at their house). We spent 5/12 – 5/16 with no new listings. Add to that, I was working on a contract job from 5/2-5/11. So for basically 2 weeks, we had very little listing activity. Last week was a very slow week, and the first time we had seen consecutive days where sales were less than $200 since early February. We started listing seriously again on 5/17…and we started getting sales coming in again on Saturday. We have consistently seen that when we stop listing new items, we see a drop in sales. When we list every day, we get consistent sales. This happens more on the clothing side, so I’m sure that the best match from Cassini sees when we are listing and selling, and so our items are shown more often.
Just have to always “Feed the Beast”!
We agree with the lifestyle conversation. I gave up the $120k/year career for this lifestyle, and I can’t go back. The money was great, but I hated the life. Even when I do the contract jobs and I have to go into the office for 2-3 days straight…I realize I couldn’t live that life again…
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Week May 14-20
Items in Store: 253
Sold: 6
Total sales: $148
Highest sale: $52 Yakima Mako Saddles
Average sale: $19
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: 0
Items listed this week: 28No money spent on inventory but received more stock from widows in my community. Got a call last night that another batch is coming in this week. Thank goodness spring is nearly over! I’ve got my piles organized, so when the clearout is finished, I can list like crazy for the summer and be ready when they start the Fall cleaning phase. LOL
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May 14 – 20
Total Items in Store: 725
Items Sold: 6
Total Sales (Gross Profit): $150
Net Profit: $96 (oh voy!)
Highest Price: $60 (New Hargrave 10″ Forged Steel C-Clamp)
Average Price: $25
Returns: 0
Cost of Items Sold: $23
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $60Yikes! This is starting to get depressing. But is some minor relief to know that others are feeling the summer slump too (though I wish everyone could have $2-3K weeks all year round!) I’ve been in kind of a slump personally too. I just can’t find the time or the energy to list. There just always seems to be house work or job work or other matters that need my attention, so I’m just left with a few hours a week for doing the eBay thang. My hope is as soon as my busy season at work is done (about mid June), I’ll have way more time to dedicate to this second income of mine.
I did just finish another round of photographing things to list. I’ve got some higher dollar items coming up that I think will help with my weekly profits. -
May 14-20 2017
• Total Items in Store: 764
• Items Sold: 18 eBay 1 Bonanza
• International 2 GSP
• Total Sales $1022
• Highest Price $130 Prince Matchabelli Cologne
• Average Price Sold: $54
• Returns: 1 Ray Bans claims they are Rx lenses
• Cost of Items Sold: $47
• Cost of items purchased this week $100 -
Dropping in to post my numbers for last week. 🙂 Looking forward to listening to the show on my next drive.
May 14-20 2017
Total items in store: Etsy 329 // Ebay 312 (Items not cross-posted. I list different types of things on Etsy and Ebay)
Items Sold: Etsy 7 // Ebay 13
Cost of items Sold: Etsy $14.92 // Ebay $77.12
Total Sales: Etsy $66.95 // Ebay $394.88
Highest Price Sold: New with Tags Eileen Fisher Silk Dress $120
Average Price Sold: $23.09
Returns: 0
Number of items listed this week: 50 (Listed at $1139) -
Oddly enough my low point was last week with few sales only amounting to the mid $300’s, while this week I sold my typical amout of sales totaling in the mid 800’s–mostly thanks to an unexpected $300 sale of some dishes I purchased for around $25. So glad to have a decent week since this is the time of year that I have piles of inventory. I have been listing a lot more. I am about maxed out on storage with nearly 1400 listings, and many to go! Don’t know where it will all go. Guess I will take the time to try Paul’s selling strategy. But I’ve enjoyed listing all the new inventory. I sort it into piles by type and each one is kind of like Christmas. 😊
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Returns after case closed- The buyer can open a PayPal dispute case. PayPal will still require ( or force) a refund up to 180 days later if the buyer can show tracking that the item was delivered regardless of what Ebay decides. PayPal’s response- if the buyer does not want it they can return it.
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Are you asking a question or stating a fact?
Yes, if a buyer does not want an item, the seller must always accept a return. I would want this assurance when I buy an item.
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Air Conditioning- Sleeping porch sounds absolutely wonderful! If you have an open concept home and want a cheaper a/c alternative, consider a split A/C (and secondary heat option too) wall mount system. Our brand is Daikin, it cools the entire approx 1600sq/ft first floor when doors are open. The dehumidifier works almost as well for cooling as the a/c without the fan sound. We love it.
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Pretty good week! The one before was horrific, mind you.
Sales: CAD$658, 3 items
COGS: $79
Profit net of fees: $476
Notable items: Dansk flatware 4 settings $60–>$320, RFID reader $6–>$200
Hourly: 6 hrs worked, $79/hr
Listed: 10 items (125 in store)
Expenses (incl. supplies & sourcing): $153
Cashflow: +$505Scavenge of the week: Laboratory pipette plugger, $30. There is a sold for $1700, but lots of competition at the moment way lower than that. I think I will have to hold it for a while.
Jay & Ryanne, have you ever tried a “swamp” AC (the evaporative kind)? Just curious because AC seems to come up on your podcast quite a bit and that is one way to do it cheap. It wouldn’t work here but I know they use them in the southern states.
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May 14-20, 2017
Total items in store 1290
Sold 37
COGS 52.50
Total Sales 953.64
Highest price sold, shoes 39.99
Average price per sale 25.77
International Sales 0
Returns – 0
Spent on new merchandise 20.00
New Listings 820 tunic sales 594.80
17 other sales 358.84Tunic sales carried me again this week. The tunics have been an awesome boost to my sales. Jay is right on about finding an item to resell for only 1.00 that you can flip for 30.00. Keep your eyes open because you never know when you may find that item you can buy cheap, get a fast turn over and sell for a good profit.
Ryanne, so I called ebay about the belt I sold to Peru. I asked what kind of seller protection was available for me as a seller and for the buyer? No seller or buyer protection when there is no tracking. But the rep stated I could cancel the transaction select “problem with shipping address” with no defect on my account. So I sent the buyer a message stating there was no ebay protection on the transaction and that it could take up to 90 days to receive the item if it arrived. I offered to to cancel the transaction. The buyer promptly replied and stated “I agree with you cancel the transaction”. That felt so good (end of stressful moment).
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Thanks Kate. When you first mentioned the price, the first cards that came to mind were ones by Alphonse Mucha, and here your cards are by a contemporary of his. Very nice cards. I’ve never even heard of this artist before. I get that tingle too when I find cards that I just know by looking at them they are special. And even if I knew very little about postcards, I would have picked these up.
The auction house’s estimate seems fair looking at current/closed ebay auctions and a worthpoint search. You might do better with them listed individually with high BIN prices on ebay.
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Someone returned a blouse to me without notifying me, or even putting a note in the package. I just found it in the mail. I’m wondering what to do. Don’t really want to contact her with no plan.
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Does anybody know of Facebook groups where someone with vintage (back to 1950’s) Hawaiian fabric can sell. I came across some fabric scraps and old muumuus at a yard sale this weekend, and they have tons more but really want to get higher prices than at a yard sale. They know what they’ve got and I don’t blame them. They sold me 8 muumuus at $5 each, and $80 of fabric, a scorching deal, as we hit it off because my family is from Hawaii and they’ve spent many summers there.
They were getting a lot of garage sailing people thinking this was too high, and I’d really like to help them get more on the bigger more expensive pieces and get them to true collectors that know what this stuff is. Any suggestions??? THANKS!
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You can try the Stashbuster Destash Sale Group for some ideas. They’re all sewists and they have some fabulous fabric offered.
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Linda, I got a jacket back with a note to please refund to their credit card. I wrote to her via eBay asking her to please open a return case. All my sales are via PayPal, so I have no way to refund her credit card, and now the return time is up. I don’t know what to do either, but I don’t feel comfortable relisting until it’s resolved!
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IF you can find the sale in your paypal account you can refund that way. Sometimes that isn’t possible though because the person may have used a “guest account”.
That happened to me once. I tried to refund via paypal and a message that said something like “this buyers credit/debit card is not set up for refunds” the buyer had to contact paypal directly to fix the situation.
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R&J – forgot to congratulate you guys on selling those lamps! Not sure if you remember, but about 18-24 months ago I called in because I found the same lamps at an estate sale and they had your listing taped to them… the estate sale had them marked at $1500 with your listing as reference that they were worth $2500. 🙂
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Haha, that reminds me of this time I went into a thrift store and found a set of scarce books that I had happened to find, price and list on Ebay only a few weeks before stumbling upon this second set in the thrift store. I was the only seller at the time to really have any of them listed online, either on Ebay or Amazon, so I priced them moderately high for what they were due to relative scarcity at the time.
So, as you can imagine, I was very excited to find dupes of the same set and sit on them until my originally listed ones sold. Only problem: they were priced at my listing prices on Ebay! They actually wrote on an index card above the whole stack: “as listed on Ebay, $25 per book, scarce!” It’s really weird to be defeated by your own pricing in the midst of the hunt.
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Flim Store Week May 14-20, 2017
Total Items in Store: 844
Items Sold: 34
Cost of Items Sold: $218.6
Total Sales: $1,344.20
Highest Price Sold: $139 dress
Average Price Sold: $39.53
Returns: 2Got back from a weekend in Houston for my friend’s wedding. I added time before and after to allot for sourcing. Man, I’m so happy I don’t have to drive everywhere to shop! I realized all my trips on the subway and buses allow me take mini mental breaks. (Also, after 10 years of living in the city, my highway driving skills are kinda crappy :D)
My totals were higher than I thought. I was away Thurs-Mon and felt like sales were trickling in. Clearing out old inventory with auctions. My friends and I are hosting the country yard sale this Saturday. Anyone in lower NY state – we’ll be in Downsville!
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I haven’t been thinking about getting a job, but maybe a side job for the summer – or maybe volunteering at the local museum to get out and socialize. The wedding was interesting bc I was catching up with people I hadn’t seen in a while, or introducing myself to people. Pretty soon I found myself explaining my job and “lo-heads” to a large circle of people 😛
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Coincidence?
I finished revising all my 600 items. Also, finally had my shipping label issue addressed after 1 year.
Several things are selling, never had this movement since july last year.Also, my contract client’s office is in the same building as a medical facility, bringing loads of odd shaped boxes, been amazing because I am getting like 3-5 of each of these really odd dimension we always need once in a blue moon. Super difficult to beat my introversion (my big barrier to avoid garage sales and similar)
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Listening to the podcast as I write this. I have also hit the summer slump, but in reality it is coming at a really good time for me. My dad is still in the nursing home, but today I took him to an assisted living place and he moves there next week. I am up to my neck in his stuff. I still haven’t decided whether to go with an online auction, estate sale or just do the sale myself.
Here’s a couple of questions I will throw out to the forum at large-my parents lived in Japan, Sri Lanka and Brazil. They have some pretty unusual items that are worth a fair amount of money and I’m trying to decide the best venue to get top dollar for them. One example are wood block prints by Paul Jacoulet worth anywhere from $500 to $2,800.
The other question is about slides. They have tons of slides from the above mentioned places. That’s one of the things I’m thinking about keeping and listing, but not sure of the best way to go about listing them. Any advice appreciated.
Oh-on top of slow sales, my mail carrier has stopped scanning my packages so I lost my top rated status. Called eBay and they basically said they have to go by the scans and perhaps I need to find a new shipping service. Perhaps I need to go to the post office and explain eBay says I should shift my business elsewhere.
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Selling stuff is just a choice. If an item has a known value, why not sell it on eBay? You could find an auction house that specializes in what you have, but I honestly think its more trouble than its worth.
How to sell slides:
https://www.scavengerlife.com/2013/11/ebay-scavengers-episode-70-selling.htmlIf you’re having issues with your postal carrier not scanning your packages, dont call eBay. Call USPS. Talk to your local post master first, and if that doesnt work, make a formal complaint at 1 (800) 275-8777.
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I joined this wonderful community in January 2016. There are three things that caught my attention from the beginning: mugs, (baseball) hats and slides. Been building my knowledge and educating myself.
Hats, specially vintage sports related have already built a good part of my bread and butter. Even though other no sports related I have missed a lot more than succeeded, I found really great stuff, mostly NFL and Super Bowl related I buy for $1-$3 and sell for ~$30.Mugs I still need to develop more.
But slides have been a nice ride. This was the first recommendation I took in a reply from Ryanned to a colleague (thank you Ryanne) when she was talking about good light for pictures and how to post slides.
I purchase the slide scanner back then for very cheap, brand new at Amazon. Using for the first time this weekend to list the slides I’ve been acquiring.
I am amazed, it is like magic. I had some slides from my childhood from caves, those explores’ caves speleologists love to explore, when I scanned and look the result it was incredible.
Just to close, selling on eBay for me is a passion, super fun since I can align many things together. Now listing slides first time added up a lot to the fun because being able to see the slides in digital image format is a fantastic way to spend time in itself.
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I could sell dads stuff myself, but space & time are working against me. I don’t have room to store his stuff and we need to get his house on the market asap. Basic he really needs the $$. His new place costs more than he gets in a month and his savings will only last so long. I’m not sure list it and forget it is something we have time to do. Plus I’m so busy herding his ducks into place I barely have time to work on my eBay backlog, let alone adding his stuff to my listings. Getting old in America is not all it’s cracked up to be!
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How much is the average price of your bread and butter?
Jay mentions quite often about his bread and butter, and this week he also mentioned the fact they try not to focus on ~$20 items.
I wonder what is the average price of Jay/Ryanne’s bread and butter?
For me everything is vintage/collectibles with few exceptions. Exceptions are usually things from my former hoard I am selling or something quite extraordinary I find (like some cheap designer shoes).
At the end of the day my bread and butter is composed by figurines, porcelain, Wedgwood Jasperware, however they are around $15-$30.
Wonder if you guys can have things priced higher
Thnx for your help
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We aim for $30 for bread and butter items, but we often miss the mark. We find items we think will sell better. but they sell for $15 (then we don’t buy again).
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Thank you Jay.
There are some things I need to do: one of them is to risk a bit on pricing, there is a percentage of things I can go higher and I am missing some good opportunities.
The other thing is differentiate my bread and butter, meaning my store is a bread and butter store at the end.
I think I am too comfortable grabbing cheap that sells for cheap.For example, I went to Goodwill with my wife today for some personal stuff and took the opportunity to scavenge for sure. Upon leaving the nice and sweet sound of eBay sales. It was a vintage pilsner pair still in original box.
I find those items (not sure how I can call similar since they are always unique but I think you guys can have a sense of vintage semi rare collectible that people like to use when they have special interest like beer and barbeque).
So even though I find these goodies I do not necessarily buy them.
This would give me volume and also bread and butter higher average price.
Cheers
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From one of the Facebook groups I belong to:
“I got an email today from eBay saying that all of my listings that are over a year old were going to be deleted. And, then they did it… out of 1060 listings in my store, they deleted 420!”
There were others that commented saying the same happened other sellers they knew of. This would really change everything for List it and Forget it model sellers, like I know many are in this group. Has anyone here had this happen?-
not sure if it’s the same person but–
https://www.scavengerlife.com/forums/topic/ebay-canceling-listings-that-are-over-1-year-old-
Nope, not the same person. But the same email from eBay (received on the day of the listings being ended, no prior notice). There was a second person on a different group with the same story as well. And a couple commenters saying it happened to them, too. Happened yesterday (Friday).
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I spoke with a seller who received this email and had listings removed. All he did was relist them. I guess eBay is encouraging sellers to look over older listings, but there’s no barrier to just put them up again.
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So no big deal, then? Just a matter of tweaking/updating older listings. She was upset because (for one) she paid those listing fees on the ended items, and had to pay again to put them back up. I guess that would not be a big deal if it only happened once. But if they are rolling this out as a regular thing, seems a little off to collect the listing fees and not provide the service.
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I’m i total agreement with you. It shouldn’t matter to eBay how long a listing is up as long as I pay the fees. I don’t know their long game or policy on this.
But even though they say do not relist till “you’ve updated and improved the listings”, I see no way for them to monitor this. My friend just relisted his listings as if they were new.
I guess if this is a new policy, then the habit of relistings items as new now has real credence. Just seems like a dumb hoop to jump through. Its all the same old listings, just with an updated item number.
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Jay I wonder if this is because eBay has been adding a lot of new item specifics lately (last few months). I do ’30 day listings’ and ‘sell similar’. As I was adding new items I was noticing new item specifics so when I re-list my ended items I’ve been going in and adding the new information. Just a theory.
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Good point. Maybe eBay’s goal is to get seller’s to add more item specifics. But if they don’t highlight the specifics they think are missing, then seller’s will just relist the same listings without changes.
The only difference between items being automatically relisted with GTC versus 30 day listings’ and ‘sell similar’ is that the latter gets a new eBay ID number. Other than this, its the same old listing. Same title. Same photo. Same info.
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