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Hey, we went to an auction! We spent some money, but we’ll also make a bunch back, so that’s cool. If you’re having that dreaded eBay missing photos
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 370: Auction Elves] -
Looking forward to the podcast!
I had a super slow week…but I had flu/mild pneumonia so can’t say as I minded all that much not having to pack. Hopefully things will pick up this week.
Sales: CAD$459, 4 items, COGS: $95 –> Item profit: $282
Expenditures: $214, –> After-tax cashflow: $90
Notable sales: rosetta stone cd set $0–>$300.
Haven’t scavenged very much. Did get one super fancy faucet, $150, expecting $600-800.I’d love a good auction haul about now. I haven’t found anything amazing in a while.
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simplicio,
I would advise against selling Rosetta Stone, yes people get away with it all the time, but they are very active on calling ebay with Vero complaints. They have an end user agreement that prevents selling their software.
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07/15/18 – 07/21/18
Total Items In Store: 2,407
Items Sold: 6
Cost of Items Sold: $25 (around)
Total Sales: $ 232
Highest Price Sold: $ 75 (Electricians Leather Pouch)
Average Price Sold: $ 38.67
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $
Number of Items listed this week: 2Very slow week even for this time of the year. But today has been a good day already, so things are looking up.
My process improvement for the week: I wrote a script for WL to get all of my unshipped sales and create a pick list. The pick list is automatically sent to an Excel spreadsheet with the following information: Title, Purchase Date\Time, my Bin #, my COG, Price the buyer paid, and shipping charged. Later, I am going to tie this to my container table so that it will tell me where exactly where the bin is located. Then I will have all the information I need and more to go get the items. This is just a little help right now because I’m only selling a couple of items a day if that. But it will be great for the busy season when I have to pick over 10 items at a time.
Scavenge of the week: I took my 10 year old daughter with me to an estate sale. I had been busy buying large Matchbox cars from the early 70’s. My daughter saw my interest in cars and alerted me to some really old dusty cars. I couldn’t really tell what they were because they were caked in dust. I could tell they were promo cars and 2 were from 1964 and 1 from 1963 (I could read this on the license plate). The lady only charged me $1 each, so I couldn’t go wrong with my educated guess. I had to wipe all the dust away at home to see what I had bought. To my surprise, after all the dust cleared (literally), I had a 1964 Corvette Sting Ray Promo Car in my hand! The only real issue was the front chrome bumper was missing. I am still going to ask $200 for this car. The other two cars were a 1964 Oldsmobile Cutlass and a 1963 Corvair Convertible with some issues with each of them. I will still ask $75 each for the other two cars.
Mark
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Regarding the new shipping page:
It doesn’t offer Fedex labels and doesn’t have a way for you to purchase insurance through USPS. They offer a button for switching back to the old format (for now), but nothing to make that switch permanent. And it’s a stupid modern-looking format designed to make the process look simpler for new members. I encourage everyone to click the “How do you like our new format?” link and complain about the bizarre oversights in common functionality, and suggest that they revert to the old format.
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Total Items In Store: 115 (81 listings)
Items Sold: 12
Cost of Items Sold: $11.50
Total Sales: $ 251.37
Highest Price Sold: $80 (old 1st gen iPad mini that was ours)
Average Price Sold: $20.95
Returns: 0We finally picked up our listing on eBay – mainly some blu-rays and DVDs of ours that we don’t want anymore (uploaded them to our digital library). They’ve been selling pretty well. Our cost of items sold does not include those items, or the iPad we sold, as we paid retail without the intent of selling.
Our odd story of the week is about some toys we found at Target. We like to sell vintage collectible toys, and a popular brand from the 70’s is Mego. I have fond memories playing with my Mego Batman and Robin. Originals in package can go for $300 or more. Well we were in Target this weekend and saw that Mego is back. They had a Wonder Woman and two General Zods (from Superman) for $20 ea. Before I bought them, I checked eBay to see what they’re selling for. Well, none were listed. Upon further research, I found that these were announced at the San Diego Comicon this weekend and will be for sale exclusively at Target starting July 29th. So our Target must have accidentally put them out too soon (We checked other Targets and found nothing).
Being the first person with them for sale, I wasn’t sure what to list them for. I didn’t want to put $100, and have it sell right away. How much would I be leaving on the table? Remember, mine is the only one you could buy before the 29th (there are a few more listed now). So I put $300 Best Offer. Not that I wanted $300, but that was a high enough ceiling to allow for offers to pour in. Or so I thought.
Instead, what I got were lowball offers from collectors berating me for “cheating” and “scamming” and “price gouging”. They couldn’t believe I was charging $300 for a $20 figure. I thought maybe that was a bit high and people were missing the point, so I lowered to $149.99 Best Offer, and the attacks kept coming. I decided to increase the price to $10,000 to troll them, but that just made them madder. I don’t understand why people get so upset. I see inexperienced sellers on eBay with overpriced items all the time, but I just roll my eyes and think “good luck, that’s not gonna sell”. Some of these people said they reported me to eBay for being offensive.
I put it back to $149. I suspect I won’t get a real offer until these start selling on the 29th, and sell out. Come Christmastime when they can’t be found anywhere, I’m sure I’ll make a profit. Just thought it was a funny situation to go through that fellow sellers on here would appreciate. If you want to check it out, here’s the listing: https://www.ebay.com/itm/113160378017
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I’m freaking out… can y’all PLEASE show a pic of the Ouija board?? I just want to see the design. I’m currently looking everywhere for vintage Halloween (blow molds, Beistle, etc.) and that’s one of the things I look for. The people around here do not value vintage Halloween at all so they practically give it away, but ouija boards are one thing that’s a little harder to get find. I suspect it may be the area that I live in, they get weirded out by them.
A note on auctions, I went to my first antique/vintage auction, and it was one of the weirdest things that I’ve witnessed in a while. The lady running it eventually started running around this cramped room full of stuff SCREAMING at us about what we wanted to bid on. She kept saying, “I don’t know what you want to bid on if you don’t tell me”. And then sometimes she would refuse to let things go for a low price. She would occasionally leave the room and the auctioneer would say, “Well, since she’s gone maybe we can actually sell stuff.” Then there was a lady in the front who was super weird and would win a bid on stuff and then try to get random free stuff with it. Fun people watching for sure.
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if you look at the wikipedia page, it shows the original 1890s board on the right hand side, that’s what it looks like.
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I’ll sell anything with no shame, but there is one item that won’t come into my ebay room and that’s a Ouija Board.
Speaking of your Ouija Board, you had a cha ching at the exact moment you asked if the board was worth a bunch of money. Coincidence – I think not! At least you got a nice Ouija board that wants to make you money. 🙂
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I haven’t listened to the podcast yet, but here are my numbers
Week of July 15 – 21
* Total Items in Store: 1211
* Items Sold: 7
* Cost of Items Sold: $8.92 + $0 Commission
* Total Sales: $155.75
* Highest Price Sold: $50 Holmes Edwards Silver Plate Flatware 39 piece set
* Average Price Sold: $22.25
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $59.17
* Number of items listed this week: 29 -
Items in Store 1020
Items Sold 24
Total Sales $701.00
COGS $68.30
Total Profit $632.70
Average profit $26.36
Average sales price $29.21It feels so good to have good sales again. Hopefully that total sales number continues to trend upwards. Poppa needs a nice vacation fund!
I opened a new personal checking account because the local offices of my existing account all closed. I decided to keep the old account active though and use it exclusively for the ebay business. It’s already set up with paypal and all of my bill pay anyways. My goal with this new setup is to have ebay pay for all of my routine monthly bills (cars, house, electric, etc) through the dedicated business checking account. This provides me with the motivation to increase my weekly sales. Having a clear goal in mind definitely improves mental focus. It is also nice to see my personal checking account grow unimpeded! To date I have simply co-mingled my ebay and personal funds and used ebay just as a nice supplement. Now that I have monthly bills to pay I can’t slack off on ebay and let my sales bottom out again.
Scavenging wise I got some awesome stuff this week. I got that vintage telecopier that may be a $750+ item I’ll sell on auction. I got a nice horse saddle that I’ll list for $250. I’ve been doing great buying clothes and shoes at yard sales. The 99 cent tag sale was stacked and I loaded up on nice clothing inventory yesterday.
Have a great week everyone!
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Week of 7/15-7/21
Total Items in Store: 2,481 (Up 63% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 166 – New Record!
Number of Items Sold: 69 (Up 1% YOY)
(Includes 6 Etsy, 2 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether)
Weekly STR: 12% (Down 7% YOY)Total Product Sales: $1,826 (Up 17% YOY)
Cost of Items Sold: $337
Highest Item Sold: $75 – Burberry London Flip Cuff Casual Dress Shirt
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Troy wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 16-13 – holy moley! I won two in a row! Who knew? .eBay Clothing
# Listed: 1,599
# Sold: 47
STR: 13%
ASP: $26.52eBay Shoes
# Listed: 319
# Sold: 9
STR: 12%
ASP: $27.14eBay Hard Goods
# Listed: 563
# Sold: 7
STR: 5%
ASP: $25.83Etsy Hard Goods
# Listed: 160
# Sold: 6
STR: 17%
ASP: $34.52Welcome from Las Vegas! We got in last night, and met up with our friends that are also going to eBay Open and had a great start to the week. Plus, we brought our own blender, alcohol, and Keurig Coffee maker, so we are set up to party on the cheap!
I was really happy to see us hit a new listing record. This happened even while I was working two days at my contract gig AND doing some sourcing during the week (I was getting light). Good to know that we can crank our more listings faster and faster.
To that end, we are going to shift some focus, and have Veronica focus more time on listing hard goods when we return to get ready for Q4. So I will be taking on doing jeans and helping Veronica prep shoes so she can focus more time on hard goods.
Remember to send me any questions to try and ask the eBay folks while we are at the Open.
PS – I saw that Cyndi from AmazingTaste is going to be part of a panel here at the Open. I will tell her hi from the Trash Elves!
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Total Items in Store: 2172
Items Sold: 32 (29 Ebay, 2 Amazon, 1 Etsy)
Total Sales: $958
Highest Price Sold: $68 (Puzzle)
Returns: 3
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0Loved the picture of J and R’s truck from the auction. It always feels like we are playing Tetris when we buy too much at auctions, we have had to make multiple trips in the past as well. I get how Ryanne feels about taking care of your stuff at auctions, people steal things for sure.
I finally shut off free returns, I did the math and decided it was not worth it to me. We will see if my sales are affected. I think my selling clothes is causing more returns. I am hoping things change with ebay, it has been very frustrating to feel like they are stepping on their sellers to make their way up the amazon tree. Calling ebay has been infuriating, I just don’t have time to call ebay constantly to fix INAD cases. I hate having to jump through hoop after hoop and spending hours of my time waiting for someone to actually pick up the phone.
I have not been on the ball with listing, just trying to get things organized instead. We did put a bunch of stuff on craigslist and got some things out of our house. Hoping to get into gear again, I have had difficulty feeling motivated. We have a lot going on with our upcoming trip, building a house, and getting our son off to his new “adulting” job. As he says, lol.-
Maybe ebay should become “in alignment with industry standards” as they claim to be doing and start up a chat system for issues. That way they don’t have to waste everyone’s time with phone calls.
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July 15-21
Total Items in Store: 1574
Items Sold: 16
Total Sales : $566
* below yearly average of $728
* above 2017 total week sales of $356
Highest Price: $115 (1961 Green Coleman Gasoline Lantern Model 228E)
Average Price: $35
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $36
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 0I had a pretty average week last week in terms of sales. I was happy to sell a few largish items that have been taking up room on my shelves. Overall, I haven’t really been motivated to sit down and list. Maybe it’s because of my new 1 hour commute to and from work everyday. Or it could be all the little things that need done right after buying a house that’s taking up most of my time.
Speaking of taking a lot of time, I spent most of the afternoon on Saturday disassembling a refrigerator with a blown compressor that was here when we moved in. Normally I would have just hauled it away, but something compelled me to look up Sub Zero refrigerator parts on eBay. They sell for a lot of money! $40, $60, even some things for over $100. I stripped everything! Shelves, knobs, hinges, timers, grates and grills. I bet I could make over a thousand bucks from everything.
I’m glad you mentioned the new label pages. I HATE IT! It just seems so unnecessary when the classic page worked just fine. There’s so much white space. I hate having to scroll down and click more options every time I want to choose Priority instead of Parcel. The label sizes are different now so when I print, the little “Cut Along Line” goes over to the other label. The little buttons where you can adjust your lbs, oz, and dimensions will allow you to go below zero into the negatives for some reason. I’ve been writing to them using the feedback button everytime I’m annoyed by something, but I have a feeling they don’t really read those. Kind of like the complaint box that feeds into a shredder. But the good news is it’s showing the correct prices now. I’ve been comparing everytime I’ve sold something and they must have fixed that bug.
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I did my shipping this morning and did not notice a change to the shipping page, looked and acted like it always does.
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I think they’re rolling it out to sellers a little at a time. I was among the first to have the honor of being allowed to test it without being asked to opt in. Steph still has the classic version for now.
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I have the new version, but have the option to switch to the old version (link in the top right corner). Only thing that I’ve noticed to be a problem is that the only insurance option on the new page is ShipCover, no USPS insurance. If I need USPS insurance, I just flip over to the old page. No harm.
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7/22 – 7/28/18
eBay store totommyto
Total store items: 605
Number of items sold: 7
eBay sales (not counting s/h): $423
Cost of items sold: $7
Consignment payouts: $98
Highest price sold: $225 – 1:18 scale Diecast car model
Average price sold: $60.42
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: 0
Number of items listed this week: 24Etsy store Oldfleatoymarket
Total store items: 527
Number of items sold: 12
Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $289
Cost of items sold: $48
Consignment payouts: $4
Highest price sold: $60 – 4 vintage boxed Gerber steak knives
Average price sold: $24.08
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $2
Number of items listed this week: 2Etsy sales were much healthier than usual, especially since I feel the sold prices were slightly higher than what I believe I could get on eBay. Some of the sold items I simply would not have listed on eBay at all.
I paid $25 on the sold set of vintage Gerber knives. Research showed the knives topping out around $50 sold on eBay, yet I picked up $60 on Etsy Shortly after listing. $25 was too much to pay for resale, but being a Gerber guy from waaaay back, I could not resist the buy and happy for the fast flip to recoup the $25 spent, and grab some profit. -
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Heads up on the new Evaluated Payments system. We got the message on this a couple of days ago, and then eBay call us directly to talk more about it. I have some time planned with them this week to talk more in depth.
Two big items came from our phone conversation. First, as Mike said, you HAVE to list direct through the Seller Hub for it to work. I get why, as with any implementations, they have to ensure that they control the environment as much as possible. This will probably be a deal breaker for us. I will try to find out when they will add the SixBit and WonderLister platforms.
Second, when you go to the new Managed Payments…people that want to pay via PayPal cannot buy from you. They can buy through credit card, just not through PayPal. I don’t know how many people that cuts out of the mix, but will try to get more info. Plus, I will try to find out more on why and how long it will be when PayPal is allowed back in (are we talking weeks or months).
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The big question is have for eBay is this: how they plan to get millions of eBay customers to switch over to the new payment system.
Its easy enough to get sellers to turn on a new payment system. The bigger challenge is getting customers to connect a new payment system to a credit card and/or bank account.
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Getting the buyers side will be easy. Just put in your credit card and you are done.
Why they are pulling PayPal at the same time is a little wonky to me, but I have been through enough implementations to understand what I don’t know…the techie side.
But I CAN say from the business side (where I was) that it is not helpful to sellers.
My hope is that they tell me that like 95% of buyers use credit cards anyway, just credit cards through PayPal. If so, then that side of the transition would be ok. Not missing out on a lot of buyers.
But having to list through Seller Hub is a hard stop for us. Even Veronica doesn’t want to go back.
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Do you believe that this is really to make it easier for buyers/sellers?
or is this just their play to get a bigger piece of the transaction cost by cutting out Paypal?
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A little of both.
It will be easier for a new buyer to just log into eBay and put in their credit card, just like with you on every other site on the Internet. Gone are the days of needing PayPal to make things faster.
They will be lowering the fees that we pay to get our money processed online. The rates are going to drop, plus there will no longer be a $.30 per transaction fee like PayPal charges.
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Thats the other question: what will the fees be?
I guess if they actually lower the fee from 3.5% + 30-cents, then a lot of sellers will be surprisingly happy. My skepticism says they’d lower the rate temporarily till they got everyone on board. Cant see them leaving money on the table long term.
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For us right now, PayPal is a 2.9% fee plus $.30 per transaction.
Don’t quote me, but on the phone conversation with eBay they said they would remove the $.30 per transaction fee, and the new rates would be around 2.7%. Not sure that’s final, and things may change before implementing, but they did say they plan to have lower fees for online transaction processing. Overall, a small net win for sellers
And having buyers just be able to add their credit card number to eBay, like every other site, will be easier than forcing them to have a PayPal account.
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Thanks, T-Satt – those are both questions I’m interested in hearing more about (and anything about the new payment system, really). When I did the survey on this, they noted something along the lines of some/the majority Buyers use credit cards for their purchase, so I’m not sure how it would impact sales. I kinda hate having yet another platform tied to my bank account tho. First World Fears…
Seemingly now-standard sales #s last week. Of my death pile stuff, I’ve pretty well stuck under my desk what seems like lower dollar stuff, and am focusing on just the higher dollar potential items…I’ve got less than 100 items for listing within my current store, so just trying to be a bit strategic right now, and in the lead up to Q4.
07/15/18 – 07/21/18
Total Items In Store: 908
Items Sold: 18
Total Sales: $642.21
Cost of Items Sold: $38.35
Highest Price Sold: $90 – 3x Johnson Bros English Transferware Cup & Saucer Sets
Average Price Sold: $35.68
Returns/Refunds: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $56.63
Number of Items listed this week: ~29 -
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Two things:
1. Jay, I would suggest maybe that you should add a permanent topic in the main menu here on your website called something like: “eBay System Issues” where we can go straight to that and chat as a community for anything major that comes up (like the photo issue). Otherwise, I seem to be hunting through the meta tags and other forum subjects to stumble onto postings regarding IT bugs and glitches.2. Getting a discount for the photo issue. I’ve called twice and posted once up to the eBay for Business FB page and have not been able to get any discount whatsoever from eBay. I’m one person with 32 items that have only 1 photo. Each time, I asked nicely for the discount. Each time, I was told that there is “none being offered at this time”, so I would like to know how many of us are being denied the discount vs how many are getting it. It seems discriminatory.
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Ill consider a new topic specifically for eBay glitches. Uo till a month or two ago, eBay glitches were actually pretty rare.
We havent had time to ask for a discount yet, but my hunch is that they were giving discounts early to calm people, but now the word has gotten out so they dont want to lose too much money!
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My Store Week July 15-21, 2018
Total Items in Store: 1080
Items Sold: 10
Total Sales: $215.18
Cost of Items Sold: $8.69
Promoted Listing Sales: 3
Ad Fees for Promoted Listings: $7.38
Highest Price Sold: $40 (Worn Out Birkenstocks)
ASP: $21.58
STR: 4.0%
Returns: 1 (Hasn’t Shipped Yet – I hope it doesn’t!)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $23.55
Number of items listed this week: 25Really looking forward to listening to the podcast, and hearing about this Ouija Board! No way I would bring one of those into my home – although I know they are worth a lot of money. Interesting story, I was in a Salvation Army buying some shoes with my kids this past week and we ran in 10 minutes until closing time just to quickly check inventory. The worker was trying to close and shoo everyone out and made an announcement “Get out now, or you will be locked in for the night…” I was standing next to him, so I jokingly said, “Well, it would probably be fun to be locked in here for the night…” and he said emphatically, “NO, no… it wouldn’t at all….” And I asked him why not? He went on to say that the Salvation Army was haunted and that there were ghosts in the building. I asked him how did he know that? He explained that the local ghosthunting club had brought in their equipment and recorded high EVP activity throughout and especially “near the back door” where the donations are stored. “Lots of dead people’s stuff there…” he said. So, that just got me thinking about one of my “creepy dolls” that has been listed for a few years in my basement and am hoping that thing sells someday, LOL!!!
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ebaymom, I just listed a bunch of creepy “haunted” dolls yesterday. Some of them can really bring in a lot of money, but you’ve gotta attach a story behind it. I was too lazy to make something up, so I just said I found them in my attic and they creep me out so I’m selling them.
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Sometimes if I buy stuff at an estate sale or find it in a curb pile of what is obviously an estate cleanout, I keep it in the garage in case there is any bad juju attached to it. I guess the guy at the Salvation Army has confirmed my suspicious lol. My husband always laughs at this, but you never know!
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Hi Ryanne & Jay… Thanks for the podcast
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 2459
Items Sold: 32
Total Sales: $997
Cost of Items Sold: $139
Average Price Sold: $31.15
Average Cost of Item: $4.35
Highest Price Item Sold: $199.5 Apple Macintosh Keyboard Mouse Keypad M0110 M0100 M0120
Number of items listed this week: 72
YTD Sales: $24981
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +19%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 321
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 178
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 96
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.3%
# of Hats Sold: 21 (65% of sales)I had another good week. My garage/estate sale purchases have been making a big difference the last few weeks.
My high-priced sale of the week was an old set of Apple keyboard/keypad/mouse that I found in a dusty box at an estate sale on Saturday. I bought a pile of stuff and probably paid just a few dollars for the Apple stuff. I listed it Saturday night and it sold on Sunday morning. I would never have priced it that high except that there was a similar sale in the last few months.
I haven’t seen that new shipping page yet. I wonder what the justification for changing that is. Maybe they are simplifying it on the backend (while doing a UI upgrade). We forget that eBay has been building their site for 20 years. It wasn’t designed the way it is now. Rather, it grew bit by bit with things tacked on here and there and it probably has a lot of horrible legacy hacks, work-arounds and ugliness. Even websites that are only 5 years old will have a lot of technical debt that makes them extremely hard to maintain. The last 4 companies that I’ve worked for over the last 10 years have been battling the issues with maintain their original legacy site. Most of the technology that tech companies build with today, didn’t exist 10 years ago.
I’ve looked at Ouija boards before as I heard that have value but I’ve only ever seen recent ones that dont seem to do much better than your average board game. I’d definitely buy one if it was the kind that had value. I’m not superstitious at all. On a related note, I sold a deck of tarot cards today. I always buy them when I see them. They see to bring good money (for a deck of cards).
Hope everyone has a good week!
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I had another good week. My garage/estate sale purchases have been making a big difference the last few weeks.
Looks like you’ve really grown into selling yard sale stuff. Old Apple Mac stuff always sells well. You may be able to find a lot it in your area.
I haven’t seen that new shipping page yet. I wonder what the justification for changing that is. Maybe they are simplifying it on the backend (while doing a UI upgrade). We forget that eBay has been building their site for 20 years. It wasn’t designed the way it is now. Rather, it grew bit by bit with things tacked on here and there and it probably has a lot of horrible legacy hacks, work-arounds and ugliness. Even websites that are only 5 years old will have a lot of technical debt that makes them extremely hard to maintain.
This is my guess as well. Always nice to update code, but they should be careful of changing UI.
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Looks like you’ve really grown into selling yard sale stuff. Old Apple Mac stuff always sells well. You may be able to find a lot it in your area.
I really enjoy garage and estate sales year-round but at this time of year, in my area, garage sales are abundant which increases the odds of finding something decent. Value-wise, my garage sales hauls account for a bigger piece of my overall sales at this time of year. By volume, hats still account for more sales. On an average Saturday I’ll probably visit 10 to 15 sales before I start to run out of enthusiasm. In the Bay Area there are only a couple of remaining auction houses that I know of and those cater to the fine art, fancy jewelry and antiques crowd which doesn’t interest me at all.
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I’ve been on the new shipping label page for a few weeks and have not noticed a great difference until today. Today for the first time my SKU (custom label) appeared on my label page without me having to cut and paste it. FYI also a couple of days ago the SKU started showing up on the mobile app. eBay seems to have the crappiest feature rollouts of any website, but they are genuinely trying to improve things.
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Week July 16-22, 2018
Total Items in Store: 738
Items Sold: 16
Cost of Items Sold: $32
Total Sales: $632.68 (not including shipping)
Highest Price Sold: $90 Vintage Coffee Maker
Average Price Sold: $39.54
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $417
Number of items listed this week: 142Haven’t listened to the podcast yet, but I will while listing after I get home from work tonight. Excited to hear about your auction experience. Other than earning an income, it is my favorite part of the job.
I was able to hit my listing goal for the week and the auction I attended was great and I was able to surpass my inventory goal as well. Felt like a soft sales week with mostly low dollar items but the numbers turned out to be acceptable for where I am at in regard to listed inventory. Same goals as last week for me, though I may have other obligations for the weekend which would prevent me from hitting an auction.
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RR Store Week July 15-21, 2018
Total Items in Store: 1605
Items Sold: 16
Cost of Items Sold: $25.87
Total Sales: $337.06
Highest Price Sold: $60 (sewing pattern design book)
Average Price Sold: $21.07
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $22
Number of items listed this week: 29I spent almost the whole week at my parent’s house helping them pack, so I expected my numbers to be low, but damn. I think this is the worst week I’ve had since I went full time! I get today to list, but the rest of the week I’m at my folk’s place. And strangely, I’ve made almost $300 just yesterday and today. Just gotta keep listing.
Some of the estate sales I go to are super organized with prices on everything. Some are crazy digger sales where the people running the sale staged very little. Most are somewhere in between. I still go to plenty of sales where I get to dig through boxes in the garage, drawers in the kitchen, etc. Most estate sales are most concerned with the big ticket items, so when I come up with a box full of random little junk, I usually get a good price. I’ve hauled boxes of nothing but paper ephemera out and been thanked by the sellers, who now don’t have to deal with boxes of “trash”. And yes, knowing the people who run the sales is a huge advantage. Doesn’t cost anything to be friendly, and it may even save you some money at checkout.
Paul
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Echoing some of the discussion about estate sales – they’re my personal preference over thrift stores, auctions, yard sales, flea markets, etc. I’ll still go to other sources, but estate sales are my first choice/go to. Perhaps that’s because they’re so plentiful in the NYC area – no less than 20 within a 30 mile radius of me at any given time? But also I really like seeing things “in-situ”. Grandma loved cats and there are hairballs over everything; Grandpa was in the Army division that invaded Normandy and he took this souvenir; Uncle Harry really loved trains and kept them in perfect condition; Mom was in the Beatles fan club and has a huge box full of original memorabilia. Certainly you can find these things elsewhere, but I’ve found that estate sales are the perfect place to find collections, to understand the person that owned them, and sometimes get a really personal story.
Week July 15-21, 2018
Total Items in Store: 939
Items Sold: 13
Cost of Items Sold: $71 (16.3% of sales)
Total Sales: $436.89
Highest Price Sold: $99.99 (1/4oz Vintage Tiffany Perfume https://www.ebay.com/itm/192578385718)
Average Price Sold: $33.61
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $250
Number of items listed this week: 44
Promoted listings test: 2 sales, $29.98 (6.9% of total sales), $1.98 fees (6.6% of sales)Standard week. Had 2 sales for $180 total that really saved the week. The Tiffany perfume was a nice score, paid $10. The other larger sale was a Foo Fighters t-shirt from the show last week in NYC – paid $25 for it at the show, sold it for $75, profit paid for my ticket 🙂 #scavengerlife
I focused on listing this weekend and it paid off. Emptied my death box that was about to over flow. Got 44 listings up, well above my normal week.
Birthday trip is ending up being in Seattle & Portland this coming Thurs-next Weds. Wanted to do Scandinavia, but probably need 10+ days and my wife couldn’t get that many days off from work. Flying to Seattle, AirBnb, rented a car and then driving down to Portland to another AirBnb. I’ve never been to the PacNW, so looking forward to experiencing that.
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Brian,
I am with you on estate sales! Did you see my post at the top for my “Scavenge of the week”? That was a bit atypical, but deals like those abound at the estate sales. I checked for this weekend within 30 miles of me and there are 58 estate sales! No lack of them around here.
I like to review the estate sales and go only to the ones I think are the best for what I am looking for. This always seems to work for me. I usually pick the vintage ones and usually find the vintage stuff that most everyone overlooks.
I think the estate people are overwhelmed with the volume of items to sell. Because of that, I think they research the obvious expensive items and then “wing it” on the other items. The problem is that there experience is limited and they often overlook gems.
I also like garage sales and rummage sales.
I like auctions, but I have had such little time lately that I have avoided them because of the time commitment.
Mark
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I have to echo Jay’s experience with estate sales, but I think, for me, it has somewhat to do with my personal life. During the weekend, I’m usually spending time with the kids and husband, going to an event, running errands, etc. During the week is when I have the time to do sourcing, so auctions are what I really like. Online auctions with a weekend pickup is also doable.
Most of the estate sale companies in my area know the value of items and are trying to get the most for their customer. I usually try to go the last day when they might be more willing to make a deal or having a half price day. However, occasionally, I find one less organized or more motivated. Two weeks ago, I bought two vintage manual typewriters, one for $5 and one for $3. I can’t get those prices even at auctions!
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Sharyn, Mark, Brian and others: Speaking of the Estate Sales topic. Yes we too do the Estate Sales. Most post online and show lots of photos. Then we go on the last day to get the lowest prices. But we are usually so disappointed that so much of the nicer stuff we saw in the photos is gone. sure, there are things left behind, but also some fairly junky or made in China stuff. Great prices but much less selection.
So question on ya’lls procedures. Do any of you go on the first day [usually huge crowds or waiting lines], or late in the second day [usually no lines or waiting], create the “piles” of items you want and then haggle and bargain hard? We have done this before with varied success. If the dealer sellers know us, then usually yes. But then we have just as many, that tell us, we can only do usually 10-15% off on the second day and stick to it. Even if I create a pile of stuff they don’t budge as much as the 50% to 75% we can usually get on the last day. But here is what I tell Susan sometimes, 75% off of junk is still junk.
So what are your methods for working your way through the full price, less price, lowest pricing tiers that come on the aging of days vs. the selection and quality of items that start to diminish the moment the doors open?
Mike at MDC Galleries
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MDC Galleries asked:
Do any of you go on the first day [usually huge crowds or waiting lines], or late in the second day [usually no lines or waiting], create the “piles” of items you want and then haggle and bargain hard?
My wife and I frequently go on Fridays as we’re usually too busy with kids on the weekends. We live in the DC Metro area and there are always multiple going on. Like others, mostly we find overpriced stuff, but there always seems to be nuggets to mine for a good price. Obviously valuable stuff is priced to the moon, but as I learn more I find I am gaining niche knowledge areas that the pricers don’t have, and we’re still able to find bargains. And, we have a few favorite Estate Sale companies that keep to prices reasonable even on the first day, usually outside of the high $ neighborhoods where the primary interest is in emptying the house for sale rather than making a mint off the stuff. We try to never pay more than 25% of what an item could be sold for and usually come out way below. We don’t really have a sweet spot and are pretty opportunistic. Sometimes, if there is something great that is really overpriced, we may try and squeeze in a return visit on Sundays to clean up, but that is rare.
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Mike,
For me, it depends on the particular estate sale and who is running it.
I know several of the estate sale companies have really good prices. For those, I go as close to the start of the sale as possible so that I get the good stuff for $1 – $3 each on average.
Then there are the estate sales where some of the prices are reasonable and others are not. In that case, I go to the sale when I can. The first time in, I buy the reasonable items. I make not of what I wanted, but wasn’t willing to buy at their price. Then I wait to see if they have a sale or go back on the last day and barter.
Then, there are the estate sale companies that have prices so high, even their 50% off will not work for me. I just avoid these estate sale companies all together – they are just a waste of time. Sure, you may find a few things, but that has an opportunity cost – it takes away time from other great sales just around the corner that I could go to. Hey, with 58 different sales around me in a weekend, I can afford to be picky.
Mark
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Mike,
I’m like you – in general, I don’t see reasonable prices at the estate sales around me even on the last day. I’m also a bit shy about negotiating except for a few dollars here and there.
If I go to one, I usually go on the last day. Usually, I’m going to yard sales and an estate sale is in the area. Every once in a while, I end up at an estate sale that is either not run by professionals or the seller needs to clear out the house ASAP. Occasionally, I get that one item that was overlooked by the pricers.
I go to too many auctions where I get boxes of stuff for $5 – $10, and I just can’t bring myself to buy and sell at a lower ROI.
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Yepp we do aucions also or the Estate Sales usually last day. That is why I was asking about startegies for going earlier to the ES but yet trying to get that last day discount in advance. we usualy buy in pretty large qunaitiy when we hit the right sale, so thought if we hit a day earlier and pulled out 50-75 or 100 items could we swing the 75% early.
We hit an auction this weekend. Sort of a favotite haunting ground and found tons of smalls. Bought single items, then later they went to tray lots, then finally to selling the whole table. We made 37 separate buys that filled 8 of our carryall bags and contained 337 individuals pieces [some of course are sets of things] for $583 [that included 13% buyers premium]. We estimate on a quick ball park that we will list most of this for a Total of about $4k to $6k after we do some research. That is why I have not been doing any SL posting or replies this week so far. Way too much to haul in, unpack, spread out and start the tagging-SKUing process. Just now beggining the weigh, measure, tag and Photograph process.
But Auctions and Estate Sales seem to be our better and more main stays for sourcing.
We know several pro estate sellers who know us as well and let us just bag up everything we find as we find it. They know I keep a running list of everything in our bags and the marked price, then I just show them my list and say, I’ll offer $X amount, which is usually 75% less ofF the list I have and most of the time they are good with it. They know we have spent thousands with them and they trust us. I was just curious if any of you guys were successful doing something similiar only doing it earlier in the sale days before they are willing to take “just dump it prices”.
We know a couple of the sellers we are frineds with, have several buyers who can only come the last two hours of the Sale and they negotiate to buy everything that is left at $.10 on the dollar [90 percent off]. But the caveat is that they have to take everything that is left, basically clean out the whole house, trash and all and they have 2 to 3 hours to get it done. We make sure with those Dealer-Sellers we get there about mid day, 4 or 5 hours before the clean out buyers swoop in.
One dealer seller even orders a 20 yard dumpster for the last day. And when they unload the whole remaining contents to those clean out buyers, it includes the use of the dumpster to throw away what those buyers don’t want. Sort of free labor for those buyers. Neat idea if the goal is to have a totally clean house after the sale ends.
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I forgot to mention that one of the 58 sales this weekend in my area is for the Estate of Melissa Gilbert. She is moving to NYC I have heard.
My wife and I are Little House fans, so this will be a fun estate sale to go to.
Mark
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Total sales $40
Best sale J Crew pants for $20
Average sale $8 Holding my nose, but glad of the sales
Since spring my family has been dealing with some major medical issues. But now I’m starting to get back into listing-and I want to keep growing. I have a basic store 250 items-BIN 250 “free” auctions per month. I’m eyeing the next lever store, the premium level
So at what point should I move up? Basic is $22 a month, premium is $60. Each BIN over 250 costs me 25cents I think I break even at 402 I already have 370. If I do move up does it make any difference when I move? Should I do this on the first of the month if I do pull the trigger? Thanks-
Marie: I have a schedule below that shows when it makes the best financial sense to move up a level. There are other factors with free auction listings, shipping supply discounts, and promoted listing credits that would lower these levels, but everyone’s tastes are different, so I left that out of the equation for now.
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Total Items in Store: 1562
Items Sold: 13
Cost of Items Sold: $58.59
Total Sales: $704.95
Highest Price Sold: $335 (Ferragamo men’s shoes)
Average Price Sold: $54.23
Returns: none
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 11Seemed like another slow week but really not bad thanks to a couple of higher dollar sales. Enjoyed the podcast. I have not found any good auctions near me yet but I can see their sourcing potential. I have used the new shipping page a few times and so far am not impressed. Looking forward to hearing about ebay Las Vegas happenings. Happy scavenging and selling everyone.
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Long time since I posted but this summer has been OK as far as sales go, I still like thrift stores, I found a print for $9 a couple of weeks ago and took a $450 offer on it, this was a Goodwill btw, so stuff is still out there to be discovered.
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Anyone else just get this note from eBay?
“We made a technical error during a recent update that caused many sellers to lose images associated with their Good Til Cancelled listings. We cannot, unfortunately, retrieve many of the lost images. If re-uploading images is feasible for you, we encourage you to do so.
We know this has been extremely frustrating.
Sellers make up the backbone of eBay, and we’re committed to helping your business grow. To set you up for future success, we’re crediting you back for insertion fees on the impacted listings and providing you with 200 zero insertion fees to use until July 28, 2018.”
Seems like a bit too little and such a tight time frame – 4 days? And what about those with stores that already get those listings for free anyway?
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I just got the same message. Wow, 200 listings for 4 days only. That totally makes up for 8 hours of my time fixing their mistake and who knows how many potentially missed sales… Come on, eBay! This is just insulting.
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I mean, I appreciate the gesture, but this email reads like a half-hearted non-appology. How am I going to use 200 new listings by the end of the week? Ain’t nobody got time for that! I wonder how much I’ll be refunded in insertion fees? I think I had around 250 affected listings.
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If you are well over 1000 listings, then you will use those 200 credits automatically as things relist over the next 4 days + new listings. It’ll be the equivalent of a $50 credit.
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Is the 200 free listings that big a deal? I guess it depends on the status of your store.
We have an anchor subscription with 10k listings a month. Since we’re at about 7k listings, we never hit our quota. So 200 free listings is useless. We’d have to have 10,200 listings to take advantage.
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I was on the phone with ebay last night about the issue. I had opened an SR case and was calling for an update. The ebay rep was clueless and asked me questions totally unrelated. It soundedlike I was talking to a teenager who didn’t have a clue and didnt care. 35 min later (trying to explain the issue most of that time), they said there was no resolution. They put in a request to waive my subsscription fee for this month.
They really need to train the support people better. It feels like ebay is falling apart before my eyes. My vote is for ebay to hire T-Satt for 1-2 months for $50k to help get a better process in place for support and status.com. I think that would do it!
Mark
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lol Jay!
That is funny Jay, but there is a nugget of truth here.
Ebay needs people working for them that have an ebay store and know what is important for sellers. As the article I read said Ebay just moves around bits, Amazon actually moves physical inventory. I think the selling experience becomes very abstract for ebay. I think that is why they can say to us, “oh, just load the missing photos and you are good”. They don’t even understand what that really means to a seller who just lost thousands of photos which they may or may not have to upload.
They do need someone like T-Satt in a leadership role who knows the business and can do process improvement.
I think ebay should read these two books: “Good to Great” by Jim Collins and “Raving Fans” by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles. Then, make it mandatory for everyone in the company to read them and the execs to implement the content. A Company I worked for in the past did that, and it was great experience. It really brings the company together for a common goal.These are classic business books and they would really help ebay to absorb the material and make it part of the culture.
Mark
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Wow! Thanks for the vote of confidence!
PS – lots of folks at EBay Open know of you guys at ScavengerLife. Even had drinks with Tim Chapman (Mr Customer Service) tonight. Cyndi from Amazing Taste says hi. And Ryan and Alli from Ralli Roots are as nice in person as they are on YouTube.
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I read an article by the New York Times titled, “Why Amazon should buy ebay”. You can google it for a good read.
I think Amazon could fix the issues ebay is having, but That may be a tougher pill to shallow. They would probably make ebay just like Amazon, but only with used items. Maybe worse. So, maybe we should count our blessings with ebay and overlook the small stuff.
Mark
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Slow week, but that’s okay because I had other stuff pop up. The new shipping page popped up for me last week. So far it’s been okay. I’m still getting the option to go back to the old page. As long as it works okay, I will try and stick with the new version. Got the offer today for 200 free listings because of the picture glitch. I plan to list like crazy and take advantage of those and diminish the death piles!
eBay July 14-21
Total sales. $106.69
Items in store. 1,043
# sold. 12
Avg. sale. $8.89
Returns. 0 (finally!)
COGS. $6.08
$ spent on new. $19.38
# listed. 19
Highest sale. $30 wooden art reproduction jigsaw puzzle -
I like a variety of different places to source – thrift stores, estate sales, online auctions, rummage sales, etc,. I used to hit up yard sales when I had a bike and cargo trailer and did well, but I haven’t had that setup in years. Without a vehicle, it is impossible to hop from sale to sale.
I’ve never been to an in person auction, but they sound fun. I like the idea that you can get snacks and make money simultaneously. Like a bidding alamo drafthouse. When I do online auctions, I have to frantically refresh to see if time has been extended. It almost seems more relaxed in person. Still, if I find a good online auction, I’m in.
Estate sales are hit & miss. I like looking at the pictures of the sale to see if anything looks good in my specialty. If not, I pass. I go to maybe a dozen estate sales a year, but that has to be a really good year. Otherwise, maybe 1 every few months.
Thrift stores are fun because it’s ??? Also, they’re pretty much everywhere, so it’s fun to poke around for a few minutes and savor the a/c during this miserably hot summer.
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A big thank you for posting the link to the photo scan. I was on vacation when the picture fiasco happened and wasn’t even aware of it until I was going through the forum on my return. I was just starting to go through my listings to see if I was affected this morning when I saw the mention fo the scan in weeks podcast post. About 48 of my 614 listings had lost all but their main photo. Thank goodness I save my photos and am able to pull them again. Of course, its still very time consuming to guess what I named them and add them back. Called eBay and they have put me in a queue with support for a call back with no ETA. Seems every listing that was renewing on the 23 or 24 of the month was affected. Can’t imagine the hassle that is causing some of the larger stores.
Best,
Mike
Luka’s Treasure Trove-
Guess I’m not getting a call back from ebay on my photo issue. Just got an email from this with this:
Hello Michael,
Thank you for contacting eBay. We always love to hear from our customers! This email is in response to your inquiry regarding images that had been deleted from your listings. Unfortunately, due to a site issue, images have been deleted and are unable to be recovered. You must edit each listings in order to add the missing photos back onto the listings. We do apologize for any inconvenience. Have a great day!
Thanks,
eBay
Seems a bit weak for a response to such a significant issue. Guess I’ll be calling back to complain.
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I have the mid level store and I am maxed out on my listings, so 200 listings is a big deal for me. Part of the reason I have death piles is because I’m trying not to grow too much bigger than my thousand listings. When things pick up in the fall, I might change my mind about that, but things are too slow right now. I wish eBay had a level in between 1000 listings and the anchor store. That’s a huge leap and I don’t have time or space to get that big.
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I am holding off to post my weekly and do a July report!
I’ve made a decision I need to buy a BUNCH OF STUFF at once. Went thrifting at 4 stores, 4 hours, and got about 12 items. Even if I did this daily I would only have 360 items at end of month. Estate sale season has been good to me, and I seem to do good bulk buys at those. I have reached out Craigslist people asking for bulk items as well. Comfort zone be damned.
Anecdotal annoyances: I bought a NWT designer gown (buy high, sell very higher) at a ritzy thrift. Did comps in the store, and it looked good. Got to car, and instead of looking fast at eBay, I looked via Google shopping. OMG, that darn dress was like 99% off on the retail site, lower than the thrift store price. I went back into return it which was a whole ordeal, but I was happy I did. I told them too, which I am sure nobody cares. Esp when they tell me ” we research our things.” Anyway, same ole story 🙂
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I found a good article about e-commerce free returns. They think it is a ticking time bomb.
Mark
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I’m too lazy to do a sales report every week like you guys, but I just wanted to share that I sold a sleeveless acid washed jean jacket to the costume department of the Goldbergs TV show last week. I couldn’t believe it but a Google search of address showed as Sony studios so confirmed. Didn’t Jay and Ryanne sell a rotary phone to the Goldbergs? Seems they very much shop on eBay. I’d love to see it on the show but I don’t really watch TV. If anybody spots it let me know?
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After discovering I had about 100 items with lost photos and spending about 10 hours to fix them, I called eBay. After being on hold for only 17 minuets I got a sales rep. I first asked if the problem about the photos had been fixed and she said it had been. Then I made several complaints about how I never heard about the image problem from eBay and I only found out about it from discussion boards and other sellers. I told her that that is very inconsiderate of eBay and that it indicates that eBay dosen’t much care about their sellers. She mentioned that many other sellers had made the same comment and that eBay was listening. I then stated that I read that many sellers were getting a 1 month refund on store fees as compensation. She said that eBay wasn’t doing that and that she couldn’t authorized a refund. I asked to speak to a manager. After a manager came on and asked what I wanted, I explained it all again. I had to wait about 2 or 3 minuets and then she came back and said I would be issued a refund. I received it on Tuesday. I also received the eBay “Sorry” email with the free 200 listings which is almost useless to me. Sorry about the long post, but just one more note.
For estate sales I normally only go late in the day or on the last day, mainly to avoid the mad rush of the crowds earlier in the day. I will only go early and stand in line if I see an item in the photos that I just have to have or I know I’ll make a killing on. Going late in the sale, I almost always find great treasures that others have passed on, many times it has been items I’ve learned about hear on SL.
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For those that are interested, I posted all of the information from eBay Open on the “eBay Open 2018” thread. This included answering questions that other Trash Elves sent to us as well as information we received while we were there.
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Yep, right here: https://www.scavengerlife.com/forums/topic/ebay-open-2018/
We really appreciate you keeping us informed on the event. I think this is the first time someone has done this.
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Just had to share with you about the estate sale I went to yesterday. I went there last because I didn’t think it was in the best location-boy was I wrong! This house was 5 levels of stuff! It looked like the family had just walked out the door and said get rid of it all. The main level was the kitchen and living area. Downstairs was a rec room that was as big as my house, which led to a one car garage. Down a couple more stairs and I was in a two car garage which had a loft room on the right side for tools. Up one level from the living area we’re adjoining bedrooms with a shared bath. Down the hall and around the corner was the master bedroom with his and her bathrooms, an entire wall of closets all overlooked by a balcony of more closets. When I found the stairs to get up to the balcony closets, it took me to a storage room with enough holiday decorations to start a store. In the other direction from the balcony closets was a stairway to a study (again almost as big as my living room and kitchen combined. Full wall of books, multiple computers and tons more stuff. Every room was stuffed. I spent 2 hours there and could have stayed longer! Of course I had been to 6-7 sales and was low on cash. The art on the walls could have filled my car. Tomorrow is the last day and if any of you are close enough to drive to the Dayton area, I highly recommend the trip, even if it’s just to see the house.
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