Home › Forums › Podcast Comments › Scavenger Life Episode 402: Can You Build An eBay Business On Repeat Buyers?
- This topic has 128 replies, 30 voices, and was last updated 2 years, 5 months ago by
Jay.
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AuthorPosts
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03/10/2019 at 5:17 pm #58403
Join the conversation in the forum>> Our Store Week March 3-9, 2019 Total Items in Store: 8203 Items Sold: 33 Gross Sales: $1,365.79 Cost of I
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 402: Can You Build An eBay Business On Repeat Buyers?] -
03/10/2019 at 6:45 pm #58409
Congrats on the new venture, exciting, look forward to hearing more. This week has been really slow for me as well. At least it feels that way. Most things are $20 and lower. I had my highest sale recently and have not wanted to share until I was atleast 30 days in and today is that day. I still won’t spend the money until 90 days since I don’t want any nightmares arising. But 30 days ago I heard the Cha-Thing and I was in the middle of doing something at the moment and didn’t get to look right away. Ten minutes later I looked down at an offer for $5500 for a piece of metal art of Mark Twain. I originally had it priced at $12000 so it was quite the price cut but it was one of a kind and so what did I do… just what I have learned here. I priced it high and took the offer. Four years after leaving my job and I am not looking back. All thanks to you guys. I hope all is well. Also, I am not sure if you all have had a chance to dive into web interpret. I sell a lot on the other eBay sites. It only costs 5% of the sale price and I have them just up the price of the items by 5% when they list them. I am not affiliated with them at all but it really has worked out great. Thanks again, and I look forward to hear your next investment adventure.
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03/11/2019 at 8:48 am #58424
Now that’s an item!
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03/11/2019 at 8:52 am #58426
I think I remember you posting that item here. $5500! What a sale! Good for you for pricing high and being patient. That’s all you.
Do you have any stats on Web Interpret?
–How much are you selling through service?
–Do you items automatically delist off ebay.com if they sell somewhere else?-
03/11/2019 at 10:44 am #58441
Thanks Jay! I know this is not as detailed as it could be but here is what I was able to piece together this morning. I originally jumped aboard webinterpret when it was offered by ebay just prior to Christmas. It was and still is a free service but they will only list 20% of your store for the free service. After I saw promising results the first two or so months they contacted me and asked if I would like to have my whole store listed for a 5% charge on what sells. What really sold me is the ability to change the price on only the items listed overseas by the exact percentage I was being charged. So I looked this morning at the items sold this month with their service and it was 22 items for a total of $1025.96, full disclosure this includes the shipping charges but if on average I pay $15 per item to ship which is generous since most items are first class pieces of jewelry, that would be $330, and another $50 for web interprets service and it still is not bad for doing little else. Obviously I am not taking into account the standard fees for PayPal and taxes.
1 United States 487 $22,389 USD
2 Germany 21 $1,075 USD
3 United Kingdom 19 $916 USD
4 Australia 16 $666 USD
5 Canada 6 $157 USD
6 Spain 2 $107 USD
7 Japan 1 $62 USD
8 South Korea 2 $59 USD
9 Italy 2 $52 USD
10 Sweden 1 $35 USD
This is 90 days from PayPal and includes a few of the items that were sold through the Global Shipping Program but the majority were through the webinterpret. The number after the country is the amount of items sold. Again, I think this includes shipping charges. I hope this helps.-
03/11/2019 at 10:53 am #58442
–When an item sells through Web Interpret, does it automatically end on your eBay store?
–So they charge a 5% fee, on top of the 13.5% of eBay/Paypal?-
03/11/2019 at 11:06 am #58447
Yeah it handle all the cancellations on all the 6 ebay sites it oversees including the main USA store. So when an item sells in the UK it is cancelled in Spain, Germany, Canada, USA, Australia. There are no fees to list any thing which is a huge savings since ebay sites in other countries charge a lot more to list then the USA site. But just be sure to add knives and flatware to what not to sell in the UK since it is not allowed to be shipped and perfume in france (there is a section on the website to add search words which can be used to exclude items you sell in the USA to be listed in other markets). Yes they do charge a 5% fee but only if you choose to list all your products. You can use their service for free but they will then only list 20% of your store. Which honestly worked great but seeing I was making some money I figured there was not harm in losing 5% which I was adding to the price of those items in the other markets.
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03/11/2019 at 11:27 am #58452
Sorry for all the questions, but I find their site confusing.
–when you list new items, do they automatically get sucked into Web Interpret?
–Does Web Interpret have a separate account view that shows all the items they sell for you? -
03/11/2019 at 12:31 pm #58460
No worries. Yeah, so every time I list something it is auto-listed in the 6 other sites, I think this is done over night or a few hours later but it might be determined by how much you list in a given time. I tend to do large amounts of listing in a day or two followed by two or three weeks of not listing at all. They do have an account view but their site is a bit archaic. It could use some updating but like all things I think if more people use it, it will grow and become easier to use much like eBays site. But their accounts page does for sure leave much tone admired.
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03/11/2019 at 12:34 pm #58461
Also, what I found helpful was to go to their site and locate the chat page and ask for them to call you. I personally don’t like chatting in text format when trying to be helped I find it much easier to speak to them. They called me the next day. If I remember correctly their CSR’s are located in Canada.
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03/11/2019 at 3:35 pm #58486
Two things to mention as a word of caution about Web Interpret….
It’s not compatible with the Global Shipping Program, you need to turn that off and ship directly if you want to participate in the Web interpret service.
It’s rather easy to earn an account suspension by accidental violation of the differing rules on the international ebay sites, as they will interpret anything you have listed, whether it’s ok to list on a foreign site or not. That’s a little risky and scary. I got nailed with a 3 day listing freeze for a firefighters coat that was apparently illegal to list in France. Had a buddy that got his account closed for a full month for some international Vero/branding issues selling sunglasses. Proceed with caution.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
The_SEAM_Store.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
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03/11/2019 at 5:03 pm #58508
I still have global shipping turned on, but you are right about the violations. There is a way to turn off types of listings using title words, but I see what you are saying. Not sure about the sunglasses thing since I have a few hundred listed and no issues. You do get notifications if a listing is in violation and you just change it or add the key word in your title to the list of keywords that “if they are in your title then that item won’t be listed”.
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03/12/2019 at 10:20 am #58555
Thanks for the warning on that, SEAM. I don’t use GSP but sell a high percentage foreign already (ranges 15 – 20% over time), so apparently I’m getting some kind of exposure. I often sell things that have to be listed US only (or that can be listed offering foreign shipping but are subject to prohibitions in certain countries) so I’m afraid Web Interpret would be more work than it’s worth to me.
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03/10/2019 at 8:59 pm #58415
2019-03-03 – 2019-03-09
Total Items In Store: 2808
Items Sold: 21
Cost of Items Sold: $80
Total Sales: $881
Highest Price Sold: $200 (Laser Printer Cartridges)
Average Price Sold: $41.95
# Items Listed: 45
Money Spent on New Inventory: $94Gut Sales Report for the week: Felt slow, especially in the middle of the week. But the bookends did well and boosted the total sales amount. So, I actually did pretty good despite feeling slow.
Challenge of the week: The Thrift store challenge for the year is going well. I have been named the “Shoe King” by the Thirft store.
Scavenge of the week / Sale of the week: Saturday was another amazing day for buying items. I went to a $5 bag sale and really made out. I bought a lot of things I don’t usually buy because they were so cheap. I got everything I wanted at the sale for $25 and that filled up my car pretty good. It really wasn’t a bag sale, you just grabbed whatever you wanted and then the lady gave you a ridiculously low price for everything. They just wanted all the stuff out of the condo. I love those kinds of sales! A really motivated seller basically giving away the merchandise. In these situations, I do a first pass and then buy that. They I go back for a 2nd pass in case I missed anything. I usually do miss things because I am going fast to beat the others to the low hanging fruit.
Mark S
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03/10/2019 at 10:56 pm #58417
3/3 – 3/9/19
eBay store totommyto
Total store items: 589
Number of items sold: 8
Total eBay sales (not counting s/h): $380.50
Cost of items sold: $30
Consignment payouts $45
Highest price sold: $95 – Lot of 8 Sandra Kuck Ornaments
Average price sold: $47.56
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: 16
Number of new items listed this week: 22
Sell through rate for the week: 1.4Etsy store oldfleatoymarket
Total store items: 615
Number of items sold: 7
Total Etsy sales ( not counting s/h): $186
Cost of items sold: $16
Consignment payouts: 0
Highest price sold: $36 – Vintage lot of Auburn Rubber toy soldiers
Average price sold: $26.57
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: 10
Number of new items listed this week: 6
Sell through rate for the week: 1.1 -
03/11/2019 at 8:45 am #58423
Interesting to hear you’ve got another property! Remarkable that you have been able to bootstrap your way into being regional land barons from selling old shoes online.
Another fair to middling week.
Sales: CAD$820, 4 items, COGS: $38 –> Gross profit: $636
Expenditures: $747 –> Cashflow: -$73
Notable sales: broken SO2 gas analyzer $386.
Scavenging: pipe thawing machine for $400, should be worth $1100. A couple of fancy plumbing fixtures for about $50, should bring a few hundred.-
03/11/2019 at 11:23 am #58448
It helps we’re in an area where no one wants these properties. Each one is initially inexpensive but requires a large investment to rehab. We’re betting on the future.
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03/11/2019 at 2:59 pm #58483
I wish I understood better how to evaluate land & home prices. We live in a semi-rural area (~40 min from a large city) and when we look anywhere within 100-200km of us it doesn’t seem like there is that much of a rural discount relative to the city – maybe like 20% tops? At least to my untrained eye. Perhaps a function of the regional economy being pretty strong?
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03/11/2019 at 3:43 pm #58488
Not all rural areas are the same. If we were 200 miles outside NYC, prices would still be high. There’s lots of rural areas where people really want to be. Hence higher prices.
Basically you look for poor areas where “no one wants to be”. Many people actually do love to live in these areas, but there is little well-paid work so prices are low.
Go on Zillow, and just keep searching different areas. Warning: You probably have to be willing to live in places without Starbucks, Trader Joes and Whole Foods 🙂
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03/11/2019 at 3:06 pm #58485
I love this sentiment… I come from small town USA and unfortunately there are just too many abandoned or torn down buildings. And the only way for them to get rehab’d properly and with care is for locals like yourselves to take that initiative. Outsiders/investors coming in will only either rehab to the bare minimums, not keep the historical integrity, or tear down altogether. I love hearing your labors of love to keep them original-ish (like exposing the original brickwork on the storefront instead of the “easy” job of covering in drywall).
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03/11/2019 at 7:47 pm #58519
I just read about this cool young woman who realized that abandoned buildings were cheap in her hometown of Buffalo: https://www.instagram.com/berniceradle/
She’s running for some city position to get even more involved.She buys multi-family, mixed use buildings and rehabs them for people in a beautifully designed way: https://www.buffalovedevelopment.com/
She supposedly now has twenty employees and many apartments for rent.I think people overlook all these gorgeous properties across the US because we’re all being squished into fewer and fewer mega-cities.
Here’s an interesting site for anyone interested in becoming a “small town developer”:
http://www.incrementaldevelopment.org/events-
03/12/2019 at 9:59 am #58551
I live right across the river from Buffalo, and it’s undergone a huge transformation in the last 10-15 years. I remember picking up a real estate magazine and you could get a detached house for under $2000 – now, they are at least $15,000…still a great opportunity for someone who has the will. Downtown is actually becoming a destination – lots of neat restaurants and cultural events always going on now in Buffalo.
However, there are parts where the surrounding cities/towns (especially Niagara Falls, NY) is giving away homes to people just to get them to move there.
There is a lot of opportunity around the Great Lakes Rust Belt – there are so many areas around Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Flint, Lansing I have been to for work that have really cool buildings for next to nothing…it just takes a few successes to re-build a community.
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03/12/2019 at 12:48 pm #58565
Exactly and this is my point. If you’re willing to move to places that doesn’t have an (obvious) vibrant culture, then you get the awesome “pioneer” deals on real estate.
Most people want to live where everything is already established so they pay the retail prices for real estate.
I’ve always felt like Scavengers on this list would make very good real estate developers. Buy up buildings no one wants and fill them up with life. Just like we all do on old items we find at the end of the waste stream.
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03/11/2019 at 9:40 am #58430
Total Items in Store: 283 yikes Ebay, about 40 Mercari
Items Sold: 4 Ebay, 1 Mercari
Gross Sales: $152 Ebay, $18 Mercari
Cost of Items Sold: $25 + $7 shipping included + three items ours
Highest Price Sold: $70 Ebay, midcentury pitcher from my parents’ kitchen pitcher
Average Price Sold: $38 Ebay, $18 Mercari
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $5 late arrival church sale + RA clearance roughly $100
Number of items listed this week: 9This podcast reminded me of another video I saw on Youtube this week. There are so many things Ebay could be doing better. I feel encouraged that they seem to be coming around to listening to sellers and modernizing in a smarter and less disruptive way. Hopefully they will focus going forward on improving and simplifying the app and listing process. This is my #1 hope for improvement. I’m sure they are doing more back end work, and you always wonder if that affects sales. At least they are not glitching like they used to. There are some clues to more capable programmers on board. Remember how frustrated we all used to get when they were rolling out changes?
Again I’m grateful for the sales this week as I have many extra demands on my time this month and not much time at all for listing unfortunately. Kids’ birthdays, company, COGS bookkeeping, taxes, work on a school fundraising auction, spring break, planning my kids’ summer activities, etc. are all still ahead. My contract work is also busy. My Mercari listings are stale and I haven’t been promoting there so that’s pretty dead.
Congrats to R&J on the latest acquisition. I miss hearing more about your reno and wish you the best. Regarding the business class, LOL. It sounds like it must have been difficult to sit through some of those speakers with your valuable time. You set yourselves apart because you are very wise and work SUPER hard. Much harder and more consistently than most people are willing to if they are being honest with themselves. I’d bet on your business being very successful so long as it works in your remote lower income location.
Have a great week everyone!
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03/11/2019 at 10:16 am #58437
We learned a lot in the class, even if it was to gain perspective on what we already know.
–be very clear in what our goal is.
–know our numbers
–make sure our numbers are based in reality.Everything else is trial and error.
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03/11/2019 at 11:25 am #58450
yes i was feeling a little antsy in the class at times, but we loved our fellow classmates so much that we decided to continue meeting once a month even though the class is done (did i say that on the podcast? i forget!). it’s nice to have other people to bounce ideas and process off of that are all local to the area.
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03/11/2019 at 1:40 pm #58472
That’s cool. Glad it was worthwhile and you made some connections. There is a bit of risk involved with any business but since you have several irons in the file that should help. I’m not a corporate attorney and I avoid giving legal advice online, but make sure you look into liability issues for all of your businesses. I’d hate to see someone derail you. Look forward to seeing the photos of the new rental.
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03/11/2019 at 1:42 pm #58473
Having liability insurance plus an umbrella policy is what gives us protection.
Nothing can keep us safe from bad actors. Impossible to be 100% safe.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
Jay.
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03/11/2019 at 7:30 pm #58517
True. You might talk to a qualified attorney about using entity wrappers though. I know you like your local accountant, but really it is a legal issue. I’ve seen a lot of misinformation on the web about LLCs.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
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03/11/2019 at 9:59 am #58435
Mar 3 – 9
Total Items in Store: 2106
Items Sold: 21
Total Sales : $677
* BELOW yearly average of $909
* ABOVE 2018 total week sales of $529
Highest Price: $82 (Round Marble Top Brass and Wood Plant Stand)
Average Price: $32
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $35
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 54My numbers have been kind of sinking a little since going full time. I know it’s only been a couple of weeks but I’m not gonna lie, I’m a bit frustrated. But that’s why I saved a year’s worth of salary prior to quitting. I had a feeling it would be a rocky beginning.
So I said last week that I was going to hit the ground running. Well that didn’t pan out too well. On Wednesday I was instead hit with a freight train of a cold. I could hardly do anything all day and the next day too. I tried my best to get back into it on Friday but I was still weak. But in light of all that, I still managed to list over 50 new items. Not too shabby. This week I’ll do the best I can with my residual symptoms. I need to get better by the end of the week because I’m taking a little trip to Boca Raton, FL for a friend’s wedding. I’ll need to look and see where all the thrift stores are down there.
Regarding repeat customers, I agree that it’s more the accidental repeat customers that are coming to our stores more than once a few times a year. Whenever I see that message in GoDaddy, I’ll investigate as well and usually the items might be generally similar (e.g. kitchen item) but there doesn’t seem to be any correlation between the buyer and my store. Though you might find it intriguing though how often I come across your items while researching my box lot finds. I can sometimes even guess correctly that it’s your store just by seeing the cover picture of the item and title. So maybe there might be something to the subconscious in our repeat buyers, like they’re more attracted to each of our particular styles of listings.
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03/11/2019 at 10:13 am #58436
Welcome to the full-time concern train 🙂
Yes, some weeks can be slow. Some months can be slow.
As full-timers, we feel those slow periods much more.What is the minimum you need to make each week/month to pay all the bills?
Once you know this number, we can really know when yo need to worry.
As long as you hit your minimum, you’re good.-
03/11/2019 at 10:59 am #58445
And I’m happy to be aboard, Jay! I did some rough estimates and my average monthly bills (mortgage + utilities) comes to about $1100. Now my partner pays half of that so that number drops to roughly $550. I still need to sign up for health insurance and I expect that to run around $600 a month for just myself (unless I find something cheaper). Add in maybe $120-$150 for food and I’ve got a bare minimum of ~$1300 a month/$325 a week needed to survive. I’ve also got to factor in taxes COGS, but for now $325 a week seems pretty easy to achieve.
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03/11/2019 at 11:24 am #58449
So $1300/month is if you shoulder all the bills? But t’s less if you factor in your partner’s salary?
One choice is doable. The second choice is already done!
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03/11/2019 at 11:37 am #58453
Your numbers sound about right when compared to the numbers we ran.
Our bare minimum is just over $800/month after taxes (that is for my wife and I) with no mortgage or health insurance.
Our upper end budget With “luxuries” – which we defined in our budget as really more premium food (fresh meats mostly), some treats, vacation fund for a week resort vacation, and basic cable TV (we are moving from an area with about 100 channels on antenna to 1!) was $1250 a month.
Our accounting didn’t include car replacement/maintenance (included gas and insurance), or any property maintenance (roof, furnace, appliances, etc go bad). We’re putting together a slush fund for that now while we are still working to help with the unexpected. We figure about $10k in a high-interest savings account will save us – but we don’t know.
We think the luxury budget is easily achievable – but we’ll see when we’re in it full time.
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03/11/2019 at 12:46 pm #58467
Thanks for sharing, Inglewood. It brings a lot of relief knowing that things aren’t quite so bad. It’s reassuring to get a good perspective from others in this business. I think my frustration came from having a skewed expectation from the busy season when I was selling $1K+ a week. I’m thankful that I have my numbers recorded. Knowing my average weekly sales gives me a good goal every week. And even though I’ve been on the lower end of the scale lately, at least I’m not so far away from my goal to warrant disaster.
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03/11/2019 at 2:34 pm #58477
One of the things we’re trying to figure out is how to ride out the rough patches by saving the extra income from the good periods. Personally, I think I’m going to need to set up a separate “float” account at the bank to put money in from the good weeks to cover off the bad ones, and if it goes over a certain amount, invest or use that as “fun money”.
The other thought we have is doing some casual labor that we like to do for a couple days a week. For example, our local Post Office has a 12-hour a week job on Wednesday and Thursday – pays well, and still would give free time if we took on something like that. They are struggling to find someone, but would be perfect to guarantee a bit of consistent money every week if we wanted to do something like that.
Just thoughts we have to sort out – we’re not full time yet, but constantly coming up with our refined game plan when it comes.
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03/11/2019 at 3:46 pm #58489
Having an emergency savings account is always smart, but I’m confused. Both you guys post low monthly expenses where even $500/week would cover. You guys both always seem to make this much this week even when you’re part time.
Am I missing something? Arent you guys already good?
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03/11/2019 at 4:08 pm #58498
The only thing you’re missing with me is I’m just overly cautious…I’m sure our sales, etc. will be overly sufficient to cover everything, just want to make sure EVERYTHING is covered to the best of my abilities. I like the comfort level in having a plan, a back-up plan, and a back-up to the back-up plan.
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03/12/2019 at 3:42 pm #58580
I agree and feel the same here. Having looked at and reminded of my minimum sales needed gives me some relief. Yes, I’ve been exceeding that amount in sales lately by double or more, but I’m also overly cautious by nature and would like to see higher numbers for more padding in my bank account. Plus, full time is new to me still so I’m a tad bit nervous.
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03/12/2019 at 4:02 pm #58581
Yep, I understand the need/desire for a safety net. It’s totally logical, especially if you’ve come from a life of expecting a guaranteed check every two weeks.
Working for yourself is like taking the red pill:
My point is that it’s smart to create a safety net for ourselves, but there’s always a danger of being so stressed at all times that we don’t enjoy the space we’ve created for ourselves. Knowing our monthly expenses and then hitting them should bring a level of earned peace.
We always “reset the clock” at the beginning of every month. We often hit our minimum needs within the first two weeks. As you said, it’ll get easier as you see that consistent sales occur as you consistently list.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
Jay.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
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03/11/2019 at 3:56 pm #58494
@Inglewood: “I think I’m going to need to set up a separate “float” account at the bank to put money in from the good weeks to cover off the bad ones, and if it goes over a certain amount, invest or use that as “fun money”.”
I’m in heaven listening to this conversation. THAT is how it is done!
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03/11/2019 at 3:54 pm #58493
“But that’s why I saved a year’s worth of salary prior to quitting. I had a feeling it would be a rocky beginning.”
Amen brother! Preach!
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03/11/2019 at 10:21 am #58438
Ryanne – how did the UK media treat you? Saw some quick blurbs in the London Telegraph and Independent on Sunday.
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03/11/2019 at 11:26 am #58451
yeah the reporter i spoke to was very cool. he was a brit in SF, so he knew my woes about SF housing prices and why we would consider moving to Rural Virginia.
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03/11/2019 at 10:40 am #58440
I cant find a good link to the article that quoted Ryanne, who just said eBay is best when they focus on small sellers selling weird stuff. When they try to compete against Amazon, they’ll lose.
But the real news is that activist investors are back and wanting eBay to sell off more of its businesses to make a quick buck. One investor even wants eBay to sell its core marketplace (us) to some private equity firm. Yikes, you can imagine how that will go. Pump and dump.
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03/11/2019 at 11:39 am #58455
this one seems to start with my quote, stuff you guys already know!
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03/11/2019 at 12:13 pm #58457
Unfortunately that Financial Review article is gated for me. (“You have reached an article available exclusively to subscribers”)
Congrats on getting in the press. I had an article published in a tech journal last week and I got a few quotes picked up in another article. That was a first for me. I don’t actively seek to get published but my company has a pretty active PR department and they pushed an internal blog post I had written.
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03/11/2019 at 10:54 am #58443
Average week, though I’d really like to move the Average week numbers a bit North! 2019 goals perhaps. Lots of things pulling on my time right now, and I don’t know that it will let up until late Spring/Summer, just in time for sales to drop off… 😀
03/03/19 – 03/09/19
Total Items In Store: 1062
Items Sold: 23
Net Sales (Total Sales – Selling Costs): $655.14
Highest Price Sold: $150 – Tod’s black leather chelsea boots
Average Price Sold: $28.48
Cost of Items Sold: $29.45 (sold a lot of items that came free to me!)
Returns/Refunds: $40, partial refund for watch needing a repair
Money Spent on New Inventory Last Week: $93.86
Number of Items listed this week: ~20RE the podcast, I imagine some focused vintage and clothes sellers have repeat customers, Sellers and Buyers who have brands in common, and Sellers that have proven to have a pipeline and accuracy/quality in listing. Looking at you, SEAM Store! The only repeat sellers I see myself having are perhaps when I have a cache of similar “family” items, or with the sea glass/pottery shards I get from my parent’s collection from time to time.
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03/11/2019 at 10:56 am #58444
If you want to see the full article, and you have a library card and your local library gives you access to PressReader, you can get the full newspapers it was in for free with your library card number.
PressReader is a good money saver – gives you free access to all the newspapers (and even magazines) that you usually have to pay for online, and you can read the newspaper they same way the printed copy is presented. It’s a completely free service from my local library – saves me a lot of money as I enjoy reading newspapers and magazines in the traditional format, and can get lots of international papers for free.
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03/11/2019 at 11:39 am #58454
Hi all! Great show this week. I never have repeat customers except one rare makeup item that I have an international buyer for. Also, some drop shipping “customers?” aka who are shopping for “their friends.” that come back on occasion.
Ebay; 1300
Sold: 23
Amont: $890
Returns: 2 (fit and then ordered wrong item)Posh after fees (SUPER SLOW this month)
$30
Depop:
$35
Mecari (ALSO SLOW)
$50Grand TotaL:
$1005I have started running 7 day auctions to clear out old clothing inventory. I am not starting at .99 cents. I start at the lowest price I will take so mostly $5.99-$14.99. It is working. Nothing ever gets bid up, it is simply the first buyer who bids wins it.
If ebay wants to encourage/ keep auctions they need to rethink the 7 day model especially for clothing & shoe sellers. I think if you are willing to run an auction, there should be NO additional fees for short duration auctions if you have a premium store subscription.
My local auctions online run 10 – 20 day auctions. WHY? It’s part of the reason I don’t even look at the online auctions locally anymore. Is the theory the longer it runs the more eyeballs?
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03/11/2019 at 12:36 pm #58462
Yep: longer auction, more eyeballs. That’s the hypothesis.
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03/11/2019 at 12:02 pm #58456
Hi Fellow Sellers:
In regards to a niche market and repeat buyers, I have an example. 21 years ago, I started selling cheerleading uniform on ebay. Since I was the first to corner the market and have a store filled with up to 250 cheerleader uniforms, I was doing pretty well. I had about 20% of repeat sales and my store was very well known in the cheer community. As years went by, others started selling uniforms and the prices went down. Now my repeat buyers are only about 3-5%.
Several years ago, I opened another ebay store and started selling everything I thought would sell well. I don’t believe I have had any repeat buyers on this store but I will say, this store has outgrown my sales in my cheerleading uniform store.
I work a full time job and list in both stores when I can, because I can see the potential in my second store, I put in a resignation at my school job. I will be going full time eBay in June.
So, in short…unless you really have a really good niche, you cannot count on return customers as a large part of sales in your store. And if you do have that niche, others will jump on the bandwagon and sell the same thing.-
03/11/2019 at 12:39 pm #58463
Were you buying cheerleading outfits wholesale and just re-selling?
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
Jay.
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03/11/2019 at 12:51 pm #58469
Were you buying cheerleading outfits wholesale and just re-selling
I buy them in bulk and resell them one at a time. My initial idea was to buy a whole team lot and resell them as a team lot but people were asking me if they could just buy one so I had to revamp my idea and buy in bulk and sell individually which in the long run was more profitable. My ebay name is Cheerleaderuniforms and my store name is Sunshinecheering if you want to take a look.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
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03/11/2019 at 12:18 pm #58458
Thanks for the show R&J.
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 2749
Items Sold: 39
Total Sales: $1018
Cost of Items Sold: $106
Average Price Sold: $26.09
Average Cost of Item: $2.73
Highest Price Item Sold: $129.9 Lot of 18 Apple Macbook Pro empty boxes – free from my work
Number of items listed this week: 68
YTD Sales: $8257
YTD sales compared to this time last year: -8%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 375
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 205
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 105
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.42%
Number of hats sold this week: 25 (64% of sales)I added hat sales back in to my numbers since Jay asked about them last week.
I’m happy with my sales this week. I credit people spending their tax refunds for my bump but I have absolutely no evidence to support this. I noticed a similar bump in sales around this time last year.
For those that dont use GoDaddy, you could download your transactions from PayPal and sort (or use a pivot table) using the email address to look for repeat buyers. I’d imagine I probably only have a few repeats each year. (I had one this week by chance).
I hope everyone has a great week!
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03/11/2019 at 12:40 pm #58465
I love that you sold a bunch of empty laptop boxes that you got for free. That’s out style.
How did you ship them all in one box?
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03/12/2019 at 1:20 am #58540
> I love that you sold a bunch of empty laptop boxes that you got for free. How did you ship them all in one box?
I thought you’d like that. I’ve been getting the empty boxes for free from one of the guys in the IT department for a couple of years. I normally sell them individually but they dont move quickly and they’ve been filling up my garage so I lotted them up and filled a single big box full of them. It was supposed to be a lot of 9 but I accidentally put a quantity of 2 on the listing so I had to scramble to find a second lot of 9 when the buyer bought both lots.
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03/11/2019 at 12:44 pm #58466
A bit of a slow week perhaps, although it’s more likely that I was spoiled a bit by some good recent weeks. Still, it was profitable and I consistently listed. High point of the week was that both my wife and I took Friday off of work, kids were at day care, so we went out to estate sales. She was able to pick a few things that I overlooked and she is a great negotiator so we got some great deals. My favorite pulls from the sales we went to was a very old Heathkit Preamp which is in pretty solid condition for $10 and a new boxed Lord of the Rings hard cover book set for $7 – that’s for my personal collection though, although new they go for roughly $100. And I should also mention that due to Steven’s videos I knew to be on the lookout for reel to reel tapes. Was digging through an attic at the last sale and found a large wooden crate filled with tapes still in the box. Some used, some new – all in original boxes. There is probably about 70 of them. When I brought them up to the girl to determine price, I could tell she had no idea what they even were. She tossed out $20 and I took it without even countering.
Now that I’m 5-6 months into this, I definitely notice that my inventory is coming less and less from thrift stores and much more from estate sales, auctions, and liquidations. Excited for garage sale season coming soon as this area has more than you could even fit into your day.
03/03/19 – 03/09/19
Total Items In Store: 630
Items Sold: 25
Net Profits (Total Sales – Selling Costs – COGS): $492.97
Highest Price Sold: Two $75 Sales and one $70 Sale. The $75’s were a Camcorder I got out of an box lot and the other was a Kenwood Car Receiver I picked up for $12 at an estate sale. The $70 item was the most interesting and surprising. I bought a box lot of video games for $30 and it’s been selling nicely, but tucked inside was a Demo Disc that you would play at stores at a PlayStation Kiosk. Apparently, they are collectible – listed for $100 OBO and took a $70 offer.
New Inventory: $210
Returns/Refunds: $ 60 – A pair of shoes that I listed the wrong size. But the bulk of this number was a partial refund due to some damage during shipment. Sold a pair of Cast Iron Duck door stops for $125 and buyer sent a picture of a piece of the foot broken off. I offered a $50 refund and they took the offer. Thought I had packed these quite well too. -
03/11/2019 at 12:50 pm #58468
Just listened through, awesome news J&R!
I thought to share an email from a potential Etsy buyer, and a typical response from me when I receive such mail. This happened just last night:POSSIBLE ETSY BUYER: I am retired and have custody of a young boy. He was a drug exposed infant. He has issues with learning due to the drugs. I homeschool him to give him more time to learn. He needs lots of reading out loud in order to help him. I am on a very limited income. Was wondering if you would be willing to accept $15 for the Happy Hollister books? I appreciate your time in reading this.
MY RESPONSE: Hello and thank you for your interest,
Please simply purchase as it is with stated shipping.
I can refund you $2.00 within 24 hours.
I do not change prices or reserve items, seldom results in a sale.
Not much, best I can do on these books.
Sincerely,
TomNo judgement, no dialogue, just presenting politely the only deal that will work for me. I rarely hear back on these little deals, and even more rarely get the sale, which is more than OK.
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03/11/2019 at 1:27 pm #58471
Thats the way to handle it. It’s weird that people feel the need to create dramatic sob stories just to ask for a discount.
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03/11/2019 at 2:57 pm #58482
You’re nicer than I am. I just counter – no response necessary.
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03/11/2019 at 10:49 pm #58534
totommoto,
I have received messages like yours… (low income… mom is dying of cancer… for the veterans… I’m a high school teacher doing a project for the kids and can’t afford to buy one of these for everybody… yada yada yada…) I often wonder if they are sending out 100’s of messages waiting for the one bleeding heart to just say, “Let me just send this item to you for free as a gesture of goodwill…” I bet out of every 250 messages somebody does just that!
I do like how your responded!Unrelated but along those lines… Just tonight I got this message:
Hi I think I may return this I like the pattern but the fabric is really rough and scratchy. -XXXX
Ugh, are you fishing for a partial refund?
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03/11/2019 at 1:10 pm #58470
Items in Store 1045
Items Sold 22
Total Sales $580.56
COGS $55.50
Total Profit $525.06
Average profit $23.87
Average sales price $26.39
New Listings 11I had a $100 sale that is not included in my numbers because I don’t think the person will pay. This is a big electronic item with an issue and the buyer has zero feedback. I sent them a message that I will not ship until they confirm they have read the description and understand the issue. I just sent them another message this morning that if I do not hear from them by tomorrow morning I will cancel the order.
That thread last week that had people talking about their sourcing requirements to meet their sales needs really has got me thinking more about better fleshing out my full time plan. My average profit over the last 7 months has been $29.50 (I left off one week that had a $2500 item that would have skewed my numbers.) Based on that average, if I wanted to make $100,000 gross profit after COGS then I would need to sell about 3400 items a year. That means I have to SOURCE at least 3400 items a year just to maintain my store. That is sourcing 66 items a week on average. That is a number I can easily meet with my current sources.
I currently have enough inventory on hand to boost my store up to about 3000 items before I needed to start this scavenging process to maintain. Yes, I have a serious death pile by design. I will not need to source for about 3-4 months if I go full time at 20 items per day listing. I would have no costs during this time and would dedicate 100% of my time to listing and building up my store. I have everything I need.
So once I clear the backlog and settle into a full time groove it comes down to this:
Buy 10 items a day, list 10 items a day, sell 10 items a day, ship 10 items a day. Collect Profit!
A plan even an underpants gnome could get behind!I pre-research all my items and I have a pretty high turnover rate. My store has averaged about 1050 items over the last year and I have sold 900 items in that time frame. My store currently has 338 items that are over 16 months old. Now that they’ve fixed the listing page I’m starting to lower the prices on these items. I’m hesitant to lower too much because I do sell these items for full price, so I’m just bringing the BIN down to be in alignment with the market.
Anyways, have a great week everyone!
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03/11/2019 at 4:03 pm #58497
Excellent way to think Retro! This is why I hammer on ASP and STR. They provide a window into a possible future, and what it takes to get there (how many items do I have to Sell, therefore List, therefore Buy each week).
Nothing is linear, and their will probably be degradation in STR as your store grows in size, but it shows what is possible…
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03/11/2019 at 1:55 pm #58475
Week March 3-9, 2019
Items Sold: 101 Transactions for 109 Items
Gross Sales: $7197
Highest Price Sold: $550, 1850s Thomas Kelly Lithograph
Lowest Price Sold: $4.99 (Pair of Shoe laces)
Average Price Sold: $66.03
Cost of Goods Sold $452
Number of items listed this week: 76 ListingsAmazon
Items Sold 4
Gross Sales $87.79
Cost of Good Sold $8Repeat customers: I typically see about 10% of my weekly sales from repeat buyers (8-12 customers per week), according to godaddy. Not enough to live on, but it certainly helps.
I put “thank you” business cards in every package that goes out, and have for years. A few years back I had a set printed with a QR code on the back linked to an eBay promo for 10% off any purchase. I sent out 5000 of them and never saw a single sale from it……but that might just be because people don’t scan QR codes.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
The_SEAM_Store.
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03/11/2019 at 5:19 pm #58510
Another note on the returning customers. You can also see some limited data on new/returning customers on the “reports” tab of your paypal page, and can sort by 7, 30, 60, 90 and Current Year.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
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03/11/2019 at 2:40 pm #58478
Week March 3-9, 2019
Total Items in Store: 1033
Items Sold: 18
Cost of Items Sold: $211 (25.3% of sales)
Total Sales: $832.60
Highest Price Sold: $227.49 (Vintage 1962 Barbie)
Average Price Sold: $46.26
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $270
Number of items listed this week: 29
Promoted listings test: 9 sales, $528.62 (63.5% of total sales), $29.07 fees (5.5% of sales)I thought this was going to be one of my worst weeks ever – going into Thursday, I only had 2 sales totaling $68. Starting Thursday night through Saturday night, sales started rolling in – not only volume but also quality. Anyone keeping score at home, I had approx the same number of sales last week but because I didn’t have any high dollar sales my avg price sold was only $25. Nearly double this week and a much more appropriate week of sales. Unfortunately, with several higher dollar sales, my COGS were much higher than I like to play.
Got a good number of items listed this weekend, bad news is that they continue to all be records. I need to pause on buying more cause now my store is nearing 60% records… but how can I when I find a great collection including high dollar sealed originals like these?!?!?! For those of you asking who would pay this much for a record, even sealed, I just sold Def Leppard Hysteria sealed this morning for $110! I love records, have recently started collecting myself as a mid life crisis, but don’t want to turn into a record shop exclusively.
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03/11/2019 at 2:45 pm #58479
the 1989 me driving to meet friends at Chilis at the multiplex on a Friday night:
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
Jay.
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03/11/2019 at 2:55 pm #58480
Totally. Cruisin’ for babes. Sittin’ on the hood of your Mazda RX-7. Aplines blastin’ Def Leppard, Skid Row, Motley Cru, Scorpions, Poison. Acid washed jean jacket with the collar up.
#SWOON
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03/11/2019 at 3:52 pm #58491
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03/11/2019 at 4:01 pm #58496
I had an ’87 Corolla SR5 Coupe in college in the early 00’s that had the flip up headlights. I know it wasn’t true in reality, but those flip up headlights sure made me FEEL cool.
Best $400 I ever spent.
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03/11/2019 at 4:13 pm #58499
@Brian: “Def Leppard, Skid Row, Motley Cru, Scorpions, Poison. Acid washed jean jacket with the collar up.”
Yep! Right in my wheelhouse! Especially the Hysteria album.
1973 Pontiac Ventura, 350 V8, but no radio. Used my portable boombox in the passenger seat to play tapes, and Hysteria was the first one I purchased. Never went crusin’ though (not in my small hick town! Folks would hang out at the 7-11), just never had the time. Between school, baseball, and work, I was always just driving from one place to another. Though…we used to steal an hour here or there and feed quarters into the video games at the Truck Stop…the only place in town to pay them…
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03/11/2019 at 4:24 pm #58500
Sweet ride! Way better than my Ford Escort – but back then, just having a car was cool, but having a ride like that Pontiac American Muscle was next level.
Back at home we used to do the dumbest thing – instead of just hanging in a parking lot to meet up pre-cell phones, we would drive in a circle around the strip of fast food places and everyone knew where to go… drive in to the KFC parking lot, weave into Burger King, then McDonalds, then Dairy Queen, loop around and do it again. Dumb as hell, but the only way to find every one.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
Brian Treasures from Grandmas.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
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03/11/2019 at 4:49 pm #58507
I would have loved an Escort…I was in High School in the mid-90s. My ride was a 1984 Dodge Full-Size Van that was customized. Nothing scares fathers more than a greasy teen with long hair, a teen beard, and a Anthrax T-Shirt picking up their daughter with a van that had a bed in the back! The only thing the van was missing was an airbrushed painting on the side of a scantily clad woman in a metallic bikini carrying a laser beam gun with a wolf beside her and an eagle on her shoulder. Probably would have had the airbrushing done if I had the money!
I remember I had a Sony Discman with a cassette adapter for music into a crappy aftermarket (AudioVox?) stereo – the CD would skip almost every 10-20 seconds on a good road, unusable on a bumpy road, and the speakers would cut-out if the bass was too loud. I couldn’t get any good radio stations as someone broke off the antenna at school to whip some other kid with it in an after school melee.
The craziest thing about the van is that I sold it for scrap…then a couple years later my brother moved 3 hours away to a small town, and the van was there parked in front of the pizza place we were going to! Took some photos and said a final goodbye…
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03/11/2019 at 8:23 pm #58526
ANTHRAX!!! my brother’s favorite band of all time next to Iron Maiden. so many Anthrax shirts, wish i still had them all.
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03/12/2019 at 10:18 am #58554
If I only kept all my Anthrax, Iron Maiden, Slayer, White Zombie, Megadeth, etc. shirts from the 80’s and 90’s I could get some good money for them today – however, they were WELL worn.
I still crank up my “Stomp 442” or “Sound of White Noise” Anthrax CD’s a couple days a week at work.
Sadly, I haven’t kept up the metal look…gave up my shirts, torn jeans, and my hair. I remember it was when I was 18 I cut my hair, got frosted tips, shaved my beard off, and went to work at the hardware store I was working at. Nobody recognized me (I looked like a boy band guy – in fact I use to get made fun of for looking like Rich from LFO). Before I couldn’t get a girl to go out with me, then that very day one of the girls I worked with asked me out – it was really weird as girls started paying attention to me…guess the metal look wasn’t popular with the ladies in the late 90’s!
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03/11/2019 at 8:30 pm #58528
i learned to drive in my mom’s 1990 Dodge Ram conversion van (with bed in back!) the thing was a beast! she let me drive it to school on my 17th birthday as a treat.
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03/12/2019 at 10:09 am #58553
Take the raised roof off, and make the paint solid red, and you have the van I had…even the windows look the same.
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03/11/2019 at 8:22 pm #58525
omg i was about to say i was crusin in my 1988 ford escort hatchback!! at the Cumberland Farms and CVS!! (yeah Boston!) [wish i had these rimz tho]
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03/12/2019 at 7:24 am #58543
I had an 89 Escort hatch back my senior year of HS and 1st year of college, but I totaled it near the end of freshman college year.
It was blacked out with black hubcaps and full window tint and had a sweet aftermarket bumper when I got it. Pretty cool car. It’s funny, just thinking about it while writing this I swear I can smell the distinct smells of that car.
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03/11/2019 at 4:32 pm #58503
I wanna play too….
EDIT: Wait….how do you add the pics again? lol

Our ’68 Camaro. When my wife was a kid, this was their daily driver. Please ignore the oil spots on the driveway, the mail truck has destroyed it…..but on the bright side if they keep it up, the whole thing will be black soon.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
The_SEAM_Store.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
The_SEAM_Store.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
The_SEAM_Store.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
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03/11/2019 at 5:17 pm #58509
It’s really not fair that she had a 68 Camero to drive to school. Keep up with it and that thing will run forever (and wake up the neighbors in doing so as it rolls down the street).
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03/12/2019 at 9:35 am #58546
This was my first car. ’72 Chevy C10 Shortbed “Fish Truck”

I really want this truck back, and someday I may track down the owner to try an buy it. I still haven’t completely forgiven my dad for selling it when I wasn’t around. It needed a new motor, and back then you could score a crate motor for about $500.He sold it for $250, gasp. SMH
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
The_SEAM_Store.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
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03/11/2019 at 8:06 pm #58522
I’m a little late to the game here. Currently catching up on my emails and the forum.
I did not have a car during high school or college, but my first was a 1987 Ford Mustang GT (V8) with T-tops.
Of course, nowadays, I drive a Toyota Sienna minivan.
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03/11/2019 at 10:51 pm #58535
+1 for the minivan 🙂
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03/12/2019 at 10:45 am #58558
Nice selection of albums there, BTFG. Someone will pay that much for Candy O? Lord. I was living in Mass when that album came out and it was every other song on the radio for what seemed like eons. I can still hear the whole album in my head and I never actually owned it.
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03/12/2019 at 1:35 pm #58574
The Cars have picked up in popularity again since being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last year. Back in 2016, you couldn’t get $5 for a Cars album… now I can’t keep them in stock. Just like anything else we sell, music is cyclical too.
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03/11/2019 at 3:47 pm #58490
Week of 03/03-03/09
Total Items in Store: 2,900 (Up 54% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 70
Number of Items Sold: 94 (Up 12% YOY)
(Includes 0 Etsy, 0 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether, 4 Poshmark)
Weekly STR: 14% (Down 5% YOY)Total Product Sales: $2,296 (Up 4% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Up $263
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Down $177
Cost of Items Sold: $427
Cost of Labor: $0
Highest Item Sold: $65 – Merrell Tundra Boots
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Veronica wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 6-4.Clothing
# Listed: 1,744
# Sold: 68
STR: 17%
ASP: $21.87Shoes
# Listed: 590
# Sold: 20
STR: 15%
ASP: $33.61Hard Goods
# Listed: 566
# Sold: 6
STR: 4%
ASP: $22.81EBay
# Listed: 2,900
# Sold: 90
STR: 13%
ASP: $23.95Etsy
# Listed: 222
# Sold: 0
STR: 0%
ASP: $0Poshmark
# Listed: 558
# Sold: 4
STR: 3%
ASP: $35.25Still a good sales volume this week, but ASP is definitely down. While I had been selling 12-13 suits/sport coats per week over the past few weeks, that dropped in half this week. Plus, Poshmark slowed as well (less sharing and crossposting this past week…related?). Also, more short sleeve shirts, shorts, etc., so lower ASP is expected.
Veronica will be back tomorrow (she has had a great time with her mom and sister in Phoenix) to a new printing setup. I purchased a refurbished Zebra 450 Thermal Printer. LOVE IT. Uses 4×6 rolls (the deal came with 4 rolls of 250). No more taping over the address on labels (in fact, it is a no-no), prints very fast, and on the next purchase of labels, I will upgrade to fanfold labels so that we only change labels every 2000 uses (fanfold is where it is at!).
Also moved our PayPal email to our business email so that we can each access this from our phones, and Veronica can more easily see things when I’m gone this summer. One nice tip: just add the new email to your PayPal business account, and PayPal will funnel all the emails to the correct account. Priceless!
This was part of moving ALL of our business items to the business email – eBay, PayPal, Etsy, Bonanza, Truegether, ShipRush, Poshmark, banks, credit cards, etc. You really don’t realize how many places have your email until you make a change…
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03/11/2019 at 4:29 pm #58502
You’re store is basically my model. My numbers work out to basically what you already do: get to 2500-3000 items as quickly impossible and then maintain at 75-100 sales a week.
I have a couple other interests as well as a contracting engineering gig that I am fleshing out currently to create other income streams.It looks like your average profit was right at $20 this past week.
The model I presented in this post was based on my last years numbers.
In reality, I think my Average profit will be $20 an item, which would have me averaging out around 100 sales a week. I like to have a good mix of items and don’t shy away from $10-15 profit items as long as they sell pretty quick.The benefit of me only being part time right now is that I can experiment a lot because there is no pressure. This past week I’ve been experimenting with my mannequins and thinking of how I can incorporate them and maintain most of my efficiency. I’ve been using my male and female lower half mannequins more recently and I just started experimenting with my full body female mannequin. My lighting setup is not optimized for use with mannequins other than the upper torso. I plan to add a second photo station for use with the larger mannequins.
My theory is that a mannequin doesn’t really help with the higher end items – they pretty much sell themselves. I think having a well modeled mannequin will help me on the low end with STR and ASP. The first three pair of pants I listed with the lower half mannequins sold quickly. Some Michael Kors slacks that I think would have sat a while and sold for $5 less if I just photographed it flat. The other was a mens Under Armour pair of sweats, and finally a pair of motocross pants. All three sold within days at the high end of the market price range.
Here’s a few examples of ones I just listed this weekend:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/264231474970
https://www.ebay.com/itm/264231471934
https://www.ebay.com/itm/264229486848Again my lighting does not work well. The station is not tall enough and the lights are too close. I make it work for now though.
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03/11/2019 at 10:53 pm #58536
Retro, Your women’s jeans photos look good!
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03/12/2019 at 7:35 am #58544
Thanks! My full size mannequin needs to eat a few cheeseburgers though. She don’t have much ‘junk in the trunk’. Lol!
The full size mannequin is a size 0/1. The lower half womens mannequin I also have is more like a size 6-8. I’m hoping that one day the plus size store will go out of business at the mall so I can score one of their full figure mannequins, that way I have all my bases covered.
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03/11/2019 at 3:58 pm #58495
Had Ebay cancel a sale this week. Buyer bought and paid for item, by next AM sale was canceled and Ebay sent a note saying the buyer was no longer a member of Ebay. Pretty sure Ebay banned the person from Ebay for violating policies or something Thought that was kind of interesting, and if my theory is right, glad i did not have to deal with the guy. That was a first for me.
3/3/19-3/9/19
Total listings in store (beginning of week): 505
Items sold: 14
30 day sell through (rate): 11.88%
Gross Sales: $725.78
Cost Paid for Items sold: $ $143.64
Shipping Cost: $187.9
Ebay Fee’s: 62.39
Paypal Fees: 22.19
Total Costs: $416.12
Net Profit: $309.66
Profit % Rev: 43% -
03/11/2019 at 5:25 pm #58511
Guys! It’s JEN-E-SEE. “Genesee-ing is Believing!” No? Anyone?
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03/11/2019 at 7:45 pm #58518
I knew someone here would know this beer!
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03/11/2019 at 8:27 pm #58527
Don Draper did NOT write that commercial.
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03/12/2019 at 9:52 am #58549
Genesee is the beer I always get when I cross the border to Buffalo, NY – 30 pack of cans is $13.50. A case of beer in Canada (24) is over $40…everyone calls it “Genny” around Western New York.
From time to time I see cans of Genesee and Genny Cream Ale at the liquor stores here in Ontario, but they are over $3 a can.
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03/11/2019 at 7:59 pm #58521
My Store Week March 3-9, 2019
Total Items in Store: 1058
Items Sold: 23
Gross Sales: $547.22 ($70 of which I am waiting for.. I hope it comes.)
Cost of Items Sold: $70.18
Highest Price Sold: $100 (Lot of WWF Action Figures)
Average Price Sold: $23.80
Returns: 2 (and 2 unpaid)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $8.37
Number of items listed this week: 14Haven’t listened to the podcast yet and am looking forward to some quiet evening time to do so… It has been VERY busy with kids school, sports and other home activities, I have had very limited time to dig into a deep listing session like I really want to do… My store number is slowly going down because I’m not keeping up with the sales. Every time I list something… I immediately sell something!
As far as repeats go; I very rarely have repeat customers! The only repeat customer was when I bought a collection of local Oktoberfest mugs at a garage sale and sold one to my son’s pediatrician, who collects them. I left him a personalized note and then He bought another one… and those were all great sales to sell $3 mugs for almost $50…
Hope everyone has a good week! -
03/11/2019 at 9:08 pm #58530
Love hearing about everyone’s high school rides! My Dad hooked me up with my first car, a ’77 Olds Starfire, flat black on the outside with a red interior – super hot! The high beams were a button on the floor that you pushed on and off with your foot. It was super sporty, and while we planned to put a new, bigger engine in it, it died suddenly and never moved from my Dad’s yard until, ahem, several vehicles were removed years later. Sigh. He then got me into a Honda Civic, and taught me to drive stick with it. Not as cool, save the manual trans. What I really wanted before I could drive were those super cool flip-up headlights; my Civic was a later model. 🙁
Jay, thanks for sharing the links to the gal doing great work in Buffalo. I love smaller towns, and even the possibilities that medium sized towns hold (I’ve lived in Louisville KY on more than one occasion and love it) and would like to leave this area, though my partner’s family job will keep him here, amongst other things. It’s a hot, sprawling suburban mess with no sense of place. So I will armchair through you, and her in Buffalo. I’m tempted to attend her talk in Petersburg, as I’d love to see/hear what might be happening there. They have so much great old architecture in that town…
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03/11/2019 at 9:19 pm #58531
I recall that your beehive died off last year. Since you already had the infrastructure, I assume all you needed were new bees. Do you buy those online or do you have to find someone local? Someone I used to work with retired to become a bee keeper. He is the president of his local bee association, and he sells bees to local companies and other beehive owners.
Week of Mar 3 – 9
* Total Items in Store: 1345 eBay, 3 Mercari, 3 Etsy
* Items Sold: 16 eBay
* Cost of Items Sold: $13.55 + $4 Commission
* Total Sales: $346.99
* Highest Price Sold: $89 Rams Head Skull Sculpture
* Average Price Sold: $21.69
* Returns: 2
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $108.09
* Number of items listed this week: 18Things to do list: No progress this week
So, here’s a story: My brother-in-law is an insurance salesperson and has an office in Pittsburgh. He decided to move his office a few blocks to save in rent. He saw an ad, I think Craig’s List, for a red chair that he wanted for the new office. He met the guy at a storage unit with all sorts of high end furniture and other items. Ends up it’s a situation where someone stopped paying for rent, and the guy is just trying to get his rent money back. My brother-in-law buys everything for $250. The red chair is a Shaumburg recliner that sells for $3000 on Wayfair. There’s a beautiful Howard Miller desk, a NWT fireman’s hat, a bronze statue, and so on. GODDAMN BEGINNER’S LUCK!
And … this week he’s going to check out a second storage unit this guy needs to vacate. Ugh.
He plans to sell stuff mostly on Craig’s List because he doesn’t want to ship stuff. I’ve offered to help him sell on eBay if he decides to go that way. I believe that they decided to keep the Howard Miller desk.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
Sharyn.
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03/11/2019 at 10:56 pm #58537
Sharyn, I can’t believe your brother got a storage unit full of that stuff on his first go-around. Keep us posted – it’s quite entertaining!
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03/12/2019 at 9:05 am #58545
Yep I bought a “nuc” of new bees in the Fall. They moved right in. It’s still coldish here, but I did see a couple of them flying around. I hope they survived the winter.
Your brother-in-law did get lucky. he may be chasing that high for the rest of his life now 🙂 Rarely do we find such scores again and again.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
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03/12/2019 at 9:49 am #58548
Last week my grad school son was home for his last ever spring break. We had a great time biking, craft beering and just talking. He relayed a conversation that would interest this group. He was with a bunch of friends and they were talking about buying and someone says, “No on buys on Ebay anymore.”
Being a good son he pointed out that his mom sold on Ebay. Then added that electronics(not my area) are often a good buy. Pointed out that he had bought his last computer on Ebay. Probably didn’t point out that I had done the ground work showing that Ebay was a better deal than A. Hmmmm -
03/12/2019 at 10:04 am #58552
I am actually more of a consistent repeat buyer on eBay than seller. I buy consistently from a few sellers. Mostly because I can resell their items.
I do not have a repeat client base on eBay but I have a pretty strong client base on my comc account and when I do autograph signings. I have a growing list of buyers for signings where they can get a better rate than the public due to our buying power. I make a little and they save a little.
I have built most of those relationships on Instagram, Facebook, and face to face shows.
It’s been great because it’s opened a lot of interesting opportunities that I never would have expected to happen.
Like hanging out with Hulk Hogan or going to dinners Pete Rose.
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03/12/2019 at 12:45 pm #58564
You sold 2700 items in November 2018?
That’s more than 90 items a day.
Assume they’re all baseball cards, but who does all that packing and shipping?-
03/12/2019 at 1:13 pm #58569
I ran a couple of big sales. The way this site works is I send the cards to them directly. I pay 30 cents for them to picture and list each card and then 10% on cashing money from the site.
They ship etc. I could save money doing it myself but the opportunity cost of me spending all that time shipping would be impossible.
This is my site for comc. Which is all cards.
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03/12/2019 at 1:16 pm #58570
Makes a lot of sense. So for each card it’s:
–$.30 to list
–10% to shipping company
–$13.5% for ebay/paypal–Does the company list on eBay for you, or their own site?
–Whats your average sale on each card?-
03/12/2019 at 6:45 pm #58583
The company cross lists on ebay, amazon, and their website. If it sells on ebay or amazon it is subject to their fees. If it sells on the site only the 10% fee. I basically pay a little extra for the company to store, list, picture, and ship the cards. In my opinion well worth the fee they charge.
You have to know what you’re doing in terms of sending in the proper cards etc. If you send in a bunch of worthless undesirable cards it’s not worth it. As far as average price per card it’s not very high. It’s more of a volume business where I am making high profit margin on low dollar cards.
I bought over a million cards last year for around $3K making my average price per card under 1 cent. Add the 30 cent fee to send in the card my total cost per card is 31 cents. I am selling a lot of cards between $1-$5 (last year was $3.19 average sale price) with an average purchase price of around 40 cents. Then I have some higher dollar cards mixed in but that is only about 20% of my sales.
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03/12/2019 at 7:52 pm #58585
1 million cards!!!!!!!!
–How do you price so many individual cards? (just pull the good ones and same price on all others?)
–How do you research them all? (do you just eyeball them based on knowledge?)
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03/12/2019 at 2:11 pm #58578
Would you recommend this site for baseball card novices to sell off a collection. I have a collection of my Dad’s, so I think the cards would be from the 40’s or 50’s. But while I can look up the player’s name on eBay to look at solds, I don’t know how to grade and am not really interested in getting up to speed in this area.
I looked at their pricing for selling and it looks as if the 30 cent rate is the cheapest and that higher rates are if you want them to process your cards faster than 2 months–is this right? And is the cost to have them grade and research an extra 30 cents? From reading through their explanation, it looks like I would have to set prices and deal with buyers–will they recommend a price range?
Thanks for any information. I’ve been avoiding dealing with this card collection on ebay since I haven’t felt enthusiastic about learning baseball cards but maybe this would be a better alternative.
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03/12/2019 at 6:56 pm #58584
It is a possible solution. Just make sure the cards you send in are worth sending. You can look up similar cards on the site. If you want to price the card over $50 then do the 2 week option. If it’s under $50 then do the cheap option.
They will picture, provide a description, store, ship, and cross list on ebay/amazon. All you have to do is price the card which is easy to do.
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03/12/2019 at 8:06 pm #58588
I am still going through them! It’s very time consuming and a lot of work but I made a nice chunk of change doing it.
I am going through them one by one because even though at face value the card is worthless if it’s the only card on the site it sells for a premium. I can get through about 5k cards in a week or (8 hours).
After it’s all said and done I should make around $30k on the deal.
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03/12/2019 at 10:37 am #58556
Great podcast, and very interesting posts from everyone this week. I’ve been selling on eBay since 1997 and my repeat buyers have usually been all at once, not over time. One buyer buys like 5 items at once then I don’t hear from them again, or they’ll buy one item then another item a week or two later, then that’s it.
So if it’s about cars, I have to chime in. Here’s the first of many high school cars for me, bought in 1971 or so (actually I was still in junior high):
It’s a 1965 Plymouth Belvedere, bought in running condition for $125. (The picture was after I did the body work.) I wasn’t old enough to drive but I was already running with an older hot rod crowd on weekends (when I didn’t have band gigs) and had seen this car on one of our junk yard parts runs. I tried to buy it on the spot but the guy wouldn’t take my money and said I had to bring my mother to OK the deal. I talked her into it, saying it was just to fix up so it would be ready when I got my license. I had to promise not to drive it. She was working and going to school so she wasn’t around to notice my frequent “test drives”. She never checked the mileage.I did quickly up my game with the cars so I was not stuck with a hooptie for all of high school. Though as a practice I did usually have at least one as a backup.
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03/12/2019 at 7:55 pm #58586
That car is pure steel.
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03/12/2019 at 8:44 pm #58589
Mar 3- Mar 9 2019
Total items in store: Etsy 444 // Ebay 827 (unique items, not crossposted)
Items Sold: Etsy 13 // Ebay 17
Cost of items Sold: Etsy $38.19 // Ebay $32.91
Total Sales: Etsy $187.33 // Ebay $229.83 ((Total = $417.16))
Highest Price Sold: $40 White House Black Market Blazer Vest NWT
Average Price Sold: $13.91
Returns: 0, But I sent a partial refund for an issue that was my fault (I found a stain on a sweater before mailing)
Number of items listed this week: 61 (at $998.63)Trying to get back in the habit of posting my numbers every week. 🙂 Also working on making youtube videos. Trying that out for the month. It has been keeping me on task (ironically?) so far.
I haven’t had a chance to listen to the podcast yet… but I can only remember having one repeat buyer on ebay. Etsy is a different story however, I frequently have repeat buyers there. I feel like the Etsy experience is quite different for buyers compared to ebay and is more shop-centric.
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03/13/2019 at 4:47 pm #58604
Listening to the podcast late this week and have to comment that I have a weird niche that is almost exclusively repeat customers. I am selling vintage negatives taken by a gay professional photographer in the 1940s and early 1950s. I have about 6 customers that buy 90% of my stock. I notify them when I put up new material and I answer questions from them in detail. I routinely put their purchases in special wrapping and upgrade shipping to priority when they spend >$100. Since I started selling these materials, these customers have been 70% of my sales.
I could easily take this part of my business off of eBay, but the value of being on the platform is greater then the extra 10% I might be able to get.
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03/14/2019 at 9:20 am #58620
Wow! In all seriousness, that is one of my dream niches. I will sometimes stumble on snapshots from that time period with similar material, but never a huge cache of them that I can steadily list through. So cool.
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03/14/2019 at 9:24 am #58621
–how many negatives did you find?
–where dis you find them?
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03/14/2019 at 7:15 am #58617
Good morning and congratulations on the new property! Our week was mixed, started out strong and now no sales in the last couple days. Anyway, a quick comment on Thank You’s. I have been putting one in each item since the very first thing we sold. It is just a note pad with the store name and I just write Thank You unless there was some epic interaction with the buyer. I have a theory that it adds some civility to the transaction that leads to better interaction if there is a problem and perhaps lets the buyer not be so nit picky if that is their inclination. I do get feedback that mentions the note, always in a positive way so for me it is worth writing them up. Have a great week!
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03/14/2019 at 10:33 am #58626
Sorry. I have a hypothesis not a theory. 🤣
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03/14/2019 at 10:36 am #58628
My scientist father would approve.
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03/15/2019 at 12:09 pm #58688
Sorry for the lapse. I got busy with something and neglected to check up on the forum.
I found the negatives at an estate sale. The house was so packed full of material that new items were being discovered as other things were pulled out. In this case, I found an old suitcase that was of stuff. I opened it and found various media sleeves and containers. After paying $10 for the suitcase – (fully disclosed contents to the overwhelmed seller) I took it home and there were approximately 700 negatives, 240 slides and ~100 photo prints as well as 4 canisters of 8 mm gay stag films. The negatives were all original material and the rest was mail order materials from the golden age of beefcake photography in the 50s and early 60s. My average price on the slides was $25, and the prints ~$45 and the negatives have been going for ~$100 each, )though I have been selecting the best material to put up, so I expect it will drop to $50/negative once I have only men wearing clothes).
This was a once in a lifetime find. I think if the family had found that suitcase, they would have thrown it in the trash. It was only because it remained hidden until I found it that I was able to scavenge it. At the time I picked it up, I was not certain of the value of the material inside. When I started selling some of the negatives and slides, I chose to use auctions to determine the highest prices I could expect. When one of the best negatives sold for $125 (may have been more) from an opening bid of $15, I decided to stick everything up around that price and that is where my six buyers appear to be comfortable.
Also near that suitcase was a box of vintage gay romance novels (pulp fiction). Someone that saw me with the “box of porn”, pointed it out to me. For $10, I picked up around 40 books that sold for $30 to $70 each. This was my version of Jay and Ryanne’s box of ICP hats.
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03/15/2019 at 12:47 pm #58693
Yes, I put up a new series of 10 – 20 negatives about once per week. I don’t want anyone to miss out because they don’t get paid until next week…. LOL
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03/15/2019 at 12:50 pm #58694
They need their weekly beefcakes!
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03/15/2019 at 12:52 pm #58695
I just put up a new series of 20 photographic negatives. It has been really fascinating to research the models. Nine out of ten remain unknown or can be identified, but have no public life, but this guy was a professional wrestler in Denver and is famous for training another professional wrestler who moved to Minneapolis and became famous.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/192857755244 -
03/15/2019 at 1:09 pm #58696
With regard to selling things in lots vs. singly, I think Terminal99 had a video about a large kknife collection that he bought for a few thousand dollars. He talked about the fact that the seller left a lot of money on the table because he wanted the quick $s and did not want the hassle of making each individual sale. There are things that make sense to lot up and sell in big chunks (I found a big box full of military surplus fire fuel for instance that I am selling in lots of 30 because that is how many fit in a priority padded envelope). I always want to sell things at the highest price the market will bear. For these photos, selling them singly gets me the highest possible price.
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03/15/2019 at 1:41 pm #58699
This is why we like to scavenge at auctions. Since humans love to find patterns, the auction houses often sell large lots of similar items. Often just selling one of two of the items pays for the entire pile.
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03/15/2019 at 1:39 pm #58698
One alternative I considered was the possibility of making prints from these photos and selling those on eBay. A friend I made in researching this topic does this with his uncle’s work.
The problem with that is that I don’t have model releases which I believe would be required to truly have the right to sell reproductions of these images. Along those same lines, I considered putting together a DVD or CD of images and selling that for $50-$100/each. I have not done that again because without model releases, I am not sure I have the right to sell images.
Anyway, that is my brain dump about selling photos of people. If this was a cache of original train photos or airplanes or boats, I would probably investigate whether there is a market for a CD or DVD.
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