Home › Forums › Podcast Comments › Scavenger Life Episode 428: Ebay is Special
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chaoticgood.
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09/16/2019 at 3:06 pm #67831
Join the conversation in the forum>> Our Store Week September 8-14, 2019 Total Items in Store: 8549 Items Sold: 32 Gross Sales: $1,492.35 Cost
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 428: Ebay is Special] -
09/16/2019 at 3:55 pm #67834
2019-09-08 – 2019-09-14
Total Items In Store: 3276
Items Sold: 26 (25 ebay, 1 Bonanza)
Cost of Items Sold: $ 100
Total Sales: $ 1096.83
Highest Price Sold: $ Over $160 (Sony Betamax)
Average Price Sold: $ 42.19
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 48
Number of items listed: 19Gut Sales Report for the week: Another great week. It started to feel like the busy season was starting. Higher STR and ASP. Lots of questions and offers.
Challenge of the week: Storage space is starting to become an issue. It may be possible to rent space at my church or at a church close to me. I hadn’t thought about this before, but this is a good idea. I am going to try cleaning out my garage first and see how that goes, so that I take advantage of free space.
Scavenge of the week: New Dansko Clogs for under $4.
Mark S
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09/16/2019 at 4:12 pm #67835
Items in Store 1204
Items Sold 15
Total Sales $465.00
COGS $50.50
Total Profit $414.50
Average profit $27.63
Average sales price $31.00
New Listings 58The week was TERRIBLE. Going into Friday I only had 7 sales for like $125! I recovered well over the weekend, but dang that sucked.
My daughter had something she wanted to buy so she has been pressing to get into doing ebay work with me. She is doing an excellent job taking photos. She did 25 items this week for me. I pay her 50 cents an item. I wish she did her chores and homewrok with as much enthusiasm, effort, and attention to detail. Lol!
The bright side of the week is that I got alot of listings up. I want to push and do 100 listings this week.
I came across an interesting pair of jeans pulling from my death pile this weekend. It was a pair of Polo Ralph Lauren mens Jeans. I always get these as they are usually a quick $30. I noticed a model name on the inside of the pocket. The value was higher for this model, yay! Then I noticed one of the higher priced listings mentioned the jeans had selvedge seams. What? I checked in the cuff and sure enough these are Selvedge made jeans. How cool! I’ll get around $100 for them. I had no idea Ralph Lauren had done a Selvedge run of jeans.
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09/16/2019 at 4:27 pm #67838
Sept. 8 – 14
Total Items in Store: 2593
Items Sold: 16
Total Sales : $704
* Below yearly average of $941
Highest Price: $300 (Quincy Lab Gravity Convection Oven)
Average Price: $44
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $12
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $13
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 47I had an okay week of sales. The $300 lab oven really saved me. I’m really glad to get that thing out of storage too. It was huge and heavy.
Regarding your customer issue with the international INAD, I had a kind of similar issue happen to me a couple months ago. I sold one of those metal bartenders drink recipe contraptions to someone in the UK. The buyer opened an INAD saying that it wasn’t vintage. I argued with her that it was indeed vintage, that maybe her idea of the word differed from mine. That’s when she got nasty. So I called eBay and explained that the buyer was essentially lying to avoid paying for return shipping. The ebay rep just told me to refund her or pay for shipping somehow, that there were no other options for me. I didn’t know how else to fight it, so I just refunded her to avoid the headache. eBay needs to come up with some better way to deal with this because I can see how overseas buyers would easily be able to abuse the system.
We went to a few yard sales on Saturday but I didn’t find much worth mentioning. The yard sales are drying up expectedly, but the auction scene hasn’t boomed yet as it usually does during the fall season. I was really hoping to stock up my inventory for the winter months, but it doesn’t seem like it’ll happen.
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09/16/2019 at 4:59 pm #67839
Week of 09/08-09/14
Total Items in Store: 3,368 (Up 24% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 122
Number of Items Sold: 85 (Up 31% YOY)
(Includes 5 Etsy, 13 Poshmark, 1 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether)
Weekly STR: 11% (Up 1% YOY)Total Product Sales: $2,630 (Up 26% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Up $640
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Down $89
Cost of Items Sold: $429
Cost of Labor: $105
Highest Item Sold: $175 – Chanel Flats
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Veronica wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 22-16.Clothing
# Listed: 1,920
# Sold: 56
STR: 13%
ASP: $26.67Shoes
# Listed: 881
# Sold: 20
STR: 10%
ASP: $41.34Hard Goods
# Listed: 567
# Sold: 9
STR: 7%
ASP: $34.40EBay
# Listed: 3,368
# Sold: 67
STR: 9%
ASP: $29.32Etsy
# Listed: 212
# Sold: 5
STR: 10%
ASP: $34.81Poshmark
# Listed: 912
# Sold: 13
STR: 6%
ASP: $37.77Funny that you mentioned the bug on the offer screen. I called on this same issue this week and was told the same thing, it is in fact a bug. But I called him out on a new AI feature that they are putting on this screen and it ticks me off.
When you the offer screen, the bottom left button USED to always be “Accept” and highlighted in Blue, the middle button was “Submit Counteroffer”, and the far right is “Decline”. About 2 weeks ago, I noticed that if the offer was roughtly 75% or more of the asking price, the buttons were the same as always. But if the offer is lower (whatever eBay deems as “too low”), they swap the order of the buttons to have “Submit Counteroffer” on the left and highlighted in Blue, and “Accept Offer” is in the middle.
I REALLY despise when somebody tries to do my thinking for me, and actually is changing programming to influence my decisions. DON’T DO THAT!
The Ebay Rep admitted that this was a change and it is “working as designed”, and IT phrase I abhor. I don’t care that it is working the way you want. I’m saying the design is bad, and it needs to stop.
First they change the shipping options shown to the buyer (not trusting them and changing what the seller did), now they are changing programming to manipulate seller behavior.
If they want to sell my stuff for me, by all means, come here and do my listings and photos for me. Otherwise, let me decide and keep the damn site working (which they didn’t this week and they had a sitewide issue that I ALSO had to call about).
Stay in your lane, I’ll stay in mine…
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09/17/2019 at 10:01 am #67865
eBay complicates things that should be simple, and often doesnt allow for detailed choices when its needed. Its weird.
You guys had a good week on Poshmark.
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09/17/2019 at 10:22 am #67868
Yeah, and as usual, Etsy was starting to be more active. Always the same time of year.
So far this week is doing well on PM and EB as well. Again…samee time of year…
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09/17/2019 at 10:38 am #67870
Is Etsy worth it for just the one quarter of the year its active?
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09/17/2019 at 11:06 am #67875
I think so. We drop a listing in there as much as we can, and happy when we get sales. Only $0.05/mo for a listing, and fees are only 5%. Not bad. STR on Etsy is 1%-3% during the summer, then 5%-10% in Q4. Last December the 4 week average STR was 11%-14%. Always best in Q4.
Better for you guys than us, as you have more hard goods.
But the lack of sales and available inventory is why we scaled back our SixBit from Duo to just eBay, saving $30/mo. With SixBit, we can crosspost very quickly to Poshmark, so we used that process to crosspost to Etsy, and just added “-ET” to the SKU of each item crossposted. Then I can easily manage all three platforms (eBay, Etsy, and Poshmark) and make sure we don’t have any issues.
For folks like Mike that have 600+ Etsy listings, the SixBit duo is perfect since it does the backend maintenance for you. If you guys ever get serious on Etsy, you gotta go with a SixBit to handle your backend when you get over 500+ listings crossposted.
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09/17/2019 at 2:39 pm #67883
You are spot on Troy. We are at 661 at last glance but dealing with the new Promoted Listing upgrade Etsy threw in it’s Fall updates and also with switching over to FREE SHIPPING Build Ins as you already know.
We have it almost all worked out in SixBit and will probably go live in about a week depending on Susan’s treatments.
When we go live with our bulk changes, that will bring Etsy up to almost 1,100 listings. Every item will be cross posted except for the items less than the 20 year vintage time frame [newer items in other words].
Then the next big step will be to [MAYBE] go with the trio version and export everything into our Shopify store.
And you are spot one, without a robust program like SixBit to handle all of the simultaneous back end data, these mass bulk updates and synchronizations across multiple platforms it would be impossible to do manually.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
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09/18/2019 at 9:50 am #67912
I’ve been prepping Etsy since July for Q4. I’ve only had 3 sales this month, but there are only 90 items listed. I’m hoping to get up to 120-150 by October 1st to try to get in sales for both Halloween & Christmas.
I have noticed that likes are going up. I tend to trend at 1-2 likes a day for my items, but I got nearly 10 yesterday.
I had items listed on Etsy last Q4, but it was a very small inventory of only 20-30 items. I’m really curious to see how it goes with a larger inventory!
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09/17/2019 at 2:54 pm #67884
Jay: Our Etsy shop did about $2,412.48 4th quarter 2018 with about 350 items listed. Now we have bumped our listings up to the 661 level and a small promoted listing budget of $1.00 per day we have done $5,122.82 as we have slowly been building the amount of items up about 100 listings per month.
Now that we are getting ready to bulk list from within SixBit about 500 more listings all at once over the next week or so AND also have built in the shipping charges to Zone 6 into all 1,200 items and going FREE SHIPPING.
We will see how the 4th quarter goes. Also going to bulk up load all the new shipping costs into our Ebay items going to also go with FREE SHIPPIING on all items in our Ebay store.
Then all of those will be exported into the Shopify Store in a month or so, again with all FREE SHIPPING. And Yes we have a chart that shows from 1 lb. up to 50 pounds and each item has a shipping charge based on it’s estimated weight [and we are very good at estimating the actual weight we will be shipping at], will be built into the price of the item.
We also have enough built into our margins to even run a 10%-20% Sale and take a small Offer on most items over $29.95.
We will see where we are at the end of March next year 2020.
mike at MDCGFA
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09/17/2019 at 3:47 pm #67886
Mike,
I would like to cross list to ETSY for the busy season. What is involved with a 500 item bulk list from ebay to Etsy using 6 Bit? How much of your time is involved?
Mark
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09/17/2019 at 5:17 pm #67891
Mark: Are you running the the “Duo” version of SixBit? For 500 items it is very beneficial to be using the Duo version so, as Troy says, that SixBit will handle everything in the background.
The biggest problem trying to do it manually is that you have to have access to your computer every minute of the day or night. If you sell one thing on Etsy then a customer looks for another item because they want two of them, then they buy the one they see on Ebay and it turns out it is your same item, you get burned by selling two of something you only have one of.
But by letting SB handle it in the Duo version, after you upload to both Ebay and Etsy, you can sit back and relax and SB will keep both stores in synch, sort of like Bonanza used to, or was supposed to but didn’t at times. 🙂
Also SB will keep your reports showing Sales to both platforms separate. Like Troy said doing it manually and you will miss something and have items still listed that you sold, even weeks or months ago, so it is worth the extra cost to pay for the Enterprise Duo version. $99.99 per month.
The process inside of SixBit is fairly easy. With the Duo version every time you go to create a new item listing, you will select one of your templates and input the data just as you would any other time or just as you would on the Ebay App itself. Title, price you paid, item specifics, weights, colors, your own SKU number and other items that Ebay doesn’t offer. Now once done, you are ready for an Ebay upload, but wait, you want that to also be posted on Etsy. If so, you will see an Etsy Tab right beside the Ebay tab. Click on that and then click on the “Propagate from Ebay” and SixBit automatically copies all of the data you put into the Ebay fields over to the Etsy fields, if they are mapped the same. Etsy uses a few less fields.
Then as troy has mentioned in the past, there are a couple of blank fields you fill in to complete the Etsy form.
Now it is time for you to select “Submit” and there is a pop up window that says Ebay or Etsy. I select Ebay first. Up it goes, then I come back and click submit again and choose Etsy and hit Submit and it goes to Etsy. Then it is residing on both platforms.
Now I will say, that I made this short and more of a quick over view. There are a few more details you will have to learn and how to set up an allocation plan and make sure it is set on both tabs before submitting and a few other things. But those can be learned from the tutorial videos, the technical guide book and also when you upgrade to the Duo version, one of the tech guys can jump on and do a remote in session and set it up for you.
Then all you do is first test doing 2 at a time to get the feel of it. Then dare to do 4 at a time. Once comfortable, you can highlight all of the listings, select submit, choose Etsy and walk away. With 500 hundred listings it will take a few hours to upload all the hptos and populate all the Etsy fields.
But you need to learn how to make the descriptions, create a standard wrapper you want to use for a template in your description area and things like that. Everything is in the manual [kind of +/-] or you can ask the tech team. As has been said before, SB and WL does have it’s learning curves and one doesn’t just walk away in a day or two and have it all down. I am still struggling somewhat with the “Batch editing” process. Not that it is bad, but SB can just do so much, and can handle so many various sorts, filters and customizable screens, it gets somewhat overwhelming unless you know coding like Troy and can make SB do what you want the way you want.
I have spent a few weeks getting SB set-up to make the transitions we wnat for the 4th quarter. It does take time.
Troy is better at it than I am and he has helped me understand some of SB. The team can take a while to get questions answered with them, but they have been great. Steve Leah, Dustin, J. Ryan, and a few others.
Good luck with it..
mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
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09/17/2019 at 8:55 pm #67900
Mike,
I don’t have Six Bit yet, but looks like I should get duo.
From what you said, it sounds like I can do a search on my ebay items that have “Vintage” in them and then send them over to etsy in bulk. But, if you do 500 and you have to manually enter information, are those 500 listed immediately on etsy or are they in limbo until you fill in the few extra fields that Etsy is looking for?
Mark
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09/18/2019 at 11:06 am #67918
@Mark: The way that SixBit works is that it is a database. You have three levels in the database: Items, Listings, and Orders. You create/import your Items into the database. At this level you have all the data for the listing in a tab for each platform. So each item has an Ebay tab and an Etsy tab.
When you import your eBay listings into SixBit Duo, it will bring over all of the data into an “Ebay” tab of the Item. From there, you can copy/paste the description to the Etsy tab of the listing, and finish populating the Tags, colors, etc. that are specific to Etsy. Some of that data will come over, and you can have the Description come over as well.
But to your point. The items will come in to the Ebay tab on the item. You will have to finish the Etsy tab of the listing.
Submission to each platform is a separate step. So once an Item is created, you submit the Item to be a Listing on a platform. The Ebay submission is a separate step from the Etsy submission. So if you create a new item, you will have to submit two times, once to eBay, once to Etsy.
It is easy and quick, but I wanted to be clear on that point. And you can have either Etsy handle relisting your items for you, or you can have SixBit do it.
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09/18/2019 at 2:11 pm #67936
Troy,
“When you import your eBay listings into SixBit Duo, it will bring over all of the data into an “Ebay” tab of the Item.”
I need clarification here. Does it put the same data in the ebay tab and also in the esty tab for each item? Or do you have to copy from the ebay tab for the item to the etsy tab for the item? If so, can you do this in bulk?
Because what I would like to do is import all my current ebay listings into SixBit Duo. Then limit the listings to those with “Vintage” in the title (about 1000 for me). Then, go to the Etsy tab for each of those items and fill in the Etsy specific information. Then submit that listing to Etsy.
Does it work like I have described? The part I am not sure about is how to get the data from the ebay tab to the Etsy tab in an easy way.
Mark
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09/18/2019 at 2:33 pm #67937
@Mark: It will only import the Ebay listings to the Ebay tab of each item. If you had Etsy listings, it would import those to the Etsy tab of that item.
So no, it won’t automatically populate both for you all at once. You will have to do things one at a time. Not an issue really, since you have to touch each one to add the Etsy specific data anyway.
But, this is how you can do what you want (or, said better, the way Veronica and I would do it).
Import all your eBay listings into SixBit. This will create new Items in SixBit, with the eBay tab filled out from the import. In the QBE line of your items, you type “vintage” above the Product Description field. This will limit the listings shown to only those with vintage in the title.
From that list, click into the item. Click on the Etsy tab for that item. It should pre-populate the Item Description and many other pieces from the Ebay tab (there is a setting for this, so make sure it is on. Mike would be good for the details on that). Then finish the Etsy specific data like Tags.
Once done, submit those items to Etsy.
So, you will have to spend about 2-3 minutes on each item to get it ready for submission to Etsy. Because the two platforms have some different fields, you will always have this issue, but SixBit makes it easy.
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09/18/2019 at 6:06 pm #67938
Troy,
Thanks. I think I know what I need to do now.
I believe I have about 1000 vintage items. So, I think I will be leaving a lot of money on the table in the 4th quarter if I do not get these up on Etsy. That is a good incentive to get this done.
Mark
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09/18/2019 at 11:18 am #67919
@Mike and Mark: Love your data Mike, as usual. My two cents on some things…
Regarding duplicate sales (one on one platform, one on another). We have only had that one time, and interestingly it was Ebay and Bonanza. Other than that, we don’t stress too much. I have a daily morning routine with my coffee. I look at all the sales on Ebay and any “-PM” in the SKU is inactivated from Poshmark and any “-ET” is inactivated from Etsy (now that we are no longer Duo version).
Then I look at Poshmark and any sales are entered into SixBit (with “POSHMARK MMDDYY) as the eCommerce ID for the sale, as that tells me what platform it sold on and on what day, so 091819 for today. By entering this into SixBit, it keeps my sales reporting accurate and will remove the listing from eBay. Then I do the same for Etsy Sales, as “ETSY 091819” for a sale today. Again, this removes the item from Ebay.
I’m not convinced that you HAVE to stay on top of it that much. I have let things sit for a weekend. And if I do get a duplicate sale, the Ebay sale is the one that stays pure. They hate cancellations more than any other platform, so we keep them happy… 🙂
Now, I am absolutely going to tell you that once you cross over 500, get the Duo version and let this happen for you. I am always keeping Poshmark reconciled, and wish I could get SixBit to do it for us. But, I have a solid process that works, just takes discipline and a plan.
PS – For those that want to to it, when you are in Poshmark, go to Sales, My Posh Stats, and it lists your total number of active listings on Poshmark. I compare that to my Items in SixBit by using the QBE line in the grid (the line above the grid you can type into is Query By Example). I type -PM in the SKU field and >0 in the Uncommitted Quantity line. The totals should match. If not, I do some quick checks to find out what got missed.
I will say this: If not for SixBit, I am not sure how comfortable I would be crossposting and making sure I don’t have issues on Inventory. Plus, with the data on my computer in my database, the crossposting is very fast. You can find the right photos quickly, copy paste, etc.
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09/17/2019 at 11:09 am #67876
I subconsciously recognized that something was off with the website version of offers without knowing exactly what the problem was. Thinking back, I’ve purposely been leaving the website and going to my phone to deal with offers. I’ve seen the bug of the offer appearing to be gone as well as the buttons seeming to be in the wrong place.
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09/16/2019 at 6:07 pm #67842
Regarding the discussion on how postal services around the world come together and set their rates, Planet Money did an interesting podcast on it entitled, “The Postal Illuminati”.
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09/16/2019 at 6:36 pm #67843
Week Sept 8-14, 2019
Items in store: 4428 Listings for 6328 Items
Items Sold: 92 transactions for 99 Items
Gross Sales: $6920.01
Highest Price Sold: $350 …. Henry Poole Suit
Lowest Price Sold: $8.99….Necktie
Average Sale Price: $69.90
Cost of Goods Sold $385, Plus consignment payout, roughly $840
Number of new items listed this week: 81 items
$$ spent on new inventory this week $896
Repeat Customers: 8
International: 35%A little light on new listings this week. My wife had minor surgery which pretty much took up two days of both our time.
Scavenge of the week….Deadstock M-1951 Fishtail Parka $9.97, sold this morning for $499.99
Runner Up… Peter Millar Leather Jacket, New with tags. $9.97Still on track for a record month, and should pass 2018 sales by early October.
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09/16/2019 at 7:35 pm #67845
I haven’t listened to the show yet, but I’ll post my numbers while I have a spare minute:
Total Items in Store: 3246
Items Sold: 54
Total Sales: $1359.80
Cost of Items Sold: $165
Average Price Sold: $25.18
Average Cost of Item: $3.06
Highest Price Item Sold: $289.95 Bowers & Wilkins 685 Series 1 Bookshelf Speakers (paid $60 at an estate sale)
Number of items listed this week: 50
YTD Sales: $35,800
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +10%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 424
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 257
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 178
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.66%
Hats sold this week: 42 (77% of sales) worth $686.72 (50% of sales $)I’ve been missing for a couple of weeks as I had a short vacation followed by a business trip followed by a backpacking trip. As a result I’ve done a lot less listing and had longer handling times and I had a couple of slow weeks. Things bounced back now as shown above. It was one of my best weeks of the year.
One thing I did to generate sales was bulk offers to watchers. For 3 days in a row I sent out offers to watchers on about 100 listings. Each day that generated about 10 sales which I thought was really good. I was offering 20-30% discounts depending on the age of the items.
Hope everyone has a good week!
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09/17/2019 at 10:02 am #67866
Your inventory has really grown in the past year. Is there any limit on how large you can grow before you run out of space?
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09/17/2019 at 4:58 pm #67890
That’s a good question Jay. My main storage area is getting tight I checked my numbers and see that our inventory has grown from 2700 listings to 3200 listings in 12 months. Most of those additional listings are probably hats and I can get about 60 hats to a tub so that makes it easier. We currently use a bedroom and some of my garage. I can probably find more room for storage if I try hard. We have a 4-bedroom house and my youngest is about to move to school at U.C Santa Cruz so maybe I should turn his room into the next eBay storage area :).
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09/17/2019 at 6:37 pm #67894
Would you really take their room? I think its a god idea. Storage is how a business grows.
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09/18/2019 at 1:42 pm #67934
That might be a bit mean but we did convert my daughter’s room into eBay storage when she moved out. There is still a bed in my daughters room but it’s completely surrounded by storage totes so if she shows up unexpectedly for a weekend she has to navigate my hat storage.
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09/16/2019 at 8:20 pm #67847
So, I was literally packing up Arabia of Finland coffee cups during the discussion of Arabia of Finland coffee cups.
Total Listings: 212
Items Sold: 5
Gross Sales: $146.45
COGS: $15.35
Highest Price: $50.00 (ephemera)
ASP: $29.29
New Inventory Purchased: $51.88
New Listings: 11Below average week numbers-wise, but I had some fun sales. One to a prop department, which is always neat. Then another one to a collector who was super excited and sent me a note about how she plans to display the item in her home. Then one sale to an actual celebrity! I’ve sold lots of stuff to studios and almost-famous folks like indie musicians. But this is a legit famous person – if you’re a horror movie fan you definitely know his work. I didn’t notice at first because the shipping address is a random office suite in Beverly Hills. Then I saw the name on the PayPal account and I freaked out.
I was feeling burned out at my day job and decided to take a spontaneous day off on Friday. I went on a full-day thrifting trip and came up with 11 items. Feel like I should have had a better haul, but it was nice to have a day to myself regardless. All but one of them got listed over the weekend, and one sold yesterday.
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09/17/2019 at 11:24 am #67877
Week of Sept 8 – 14
* Total Items in Store: 1486 eBay, 3 Etsy
* Items Sold: 12
* Cost of Items Sold: $14.34 + $0 Commission
* Total Sales: $221.00
* Highest Price Sold: $24 Vintage 1971 Snoopy mirror
* Average Price Sold: $18.41
* Returns: 1
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $173.70
* Number of items listed this week: 60With all the listing I did, you would think that I would have had more sales, but I had a pretty crappy week. Eight of my 12 sales were on Wed and Thurs. Weird.
I went to an auction on Friday. They were selling a large collection of antique and vintage radios. They would first sell the ones with left bids and ones that people would pick out, then they sold everything left on the table. I ended up buying one of those table lots. It included about 50 radios for $138 including premium. That’s less than $3 a radio.
I haven’t had a chance to test them, but many are marked and at least half of them work. About 10 are Zenith Transatlantic multi-band, 11 are Zenith clock radios including about 4 flip clocks, several bakelite older radios, and so on.
I’m so packed to the gills with unlisted merchandise right now, so I need to stop shopping.
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09/17/2019 at 6:37 pm #67895
Great score at the auction. Just research each radio. Rare vintage radios sell well even if they dont work. Guys buy them to fix. Its a hobby.
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09/17/2019 at 9:47 pm #67902
Yes! One of the radios is just a section – definitely a donor parts radio. It will be listed as well!
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09/17/2019 at 1:45 pm #67882
I heard Jay mutter “the Seven Sisters” in your discussion. Actually in that immediate area of Mass is the Five College Consortium, which is something different. A little known fact (well, ok, maybe just an urban legend) is that each the five main Scooby Doo cartoon characters represents one of the five colleges. Daphne is Mt Holyoke, Velma is Smith, Fred is Amherst, Shaggy is Hampshire, and Scooby is UMASS Amherst. Which to me is hilarious, if you know the characters and the colleges because the stereotypes are pretty appropriate (though not very PC, sorry). (My daughter attends UMASS Amherst.)
I think you did very well with that transferware plate. It’s the Monarch of the Glen pattern in the Sylvan series by William Brownfield & Son, Cobridge, Staffordshire. I would have listed it at maybe half what you sold it at, given the color and condition and antique china being a declining market, and taken half again of that, if offered. Brownfield was one of the larger Staffordshire potteries. The visible “kite” mark simply dates Brownfield’s patent registration for the design of that tableware series which in this case is June 10, 1875.The marks which would have included the series, pattern, and maker have been worn off. The embossed marks are the mold code and date of manufacture.
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09/17/2019 at 6:35 pm #67892
You’re correct. Seven sisters is a group of colleges in a larger area here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sisters_(colleges)
Didnt know about the Scooby Doo story.Im very glad to know we did well on that plate.
Super interesting that you know its ID and history.
We were afraid it was worth thousands and we undersold it.
How did you know the pattern?-
09/17/2019 at 8:45 pm #67899
I didn’t recognize the pattern off the top of my head. There were like 1,500 Staffordshire potters in the 18th and 19th Centuries and each potter could have many patterns. I was curious about the lack of maker’s mark or logo, and given the high price you got for it I thought maybe you did have something unusual. I did know that the diamond kite was the British patent registry mark and that it provided the exact date of registration. So I went here https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/registered-designs-1839-1991/ to decode the date of registration and then here https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C3086 to search by class number and date to find that William Brownfield & Son’s tableware pattern registration #292500 was the only ceramic registration on June 10, 1875. There are no photos (though apparently you can pay the archive to provide a copy of the actual record) but once I got the maker and number it only took a few focused google searches to pinpoint the pattern. The Sylvan series had a number of different wildlife design patterns with a hunting theme. It came in full color (which was really impressive), and monochrome in at least blue and the brown you had, and I think black.
Here’s what the complete markings would have looked like before they wore off (though it is possible it was never completely marked):
There are many beautiful patterns but eventually only museums and a smattering of hardcore collectors will be interested in this stuff. The collectors are aging out and there’s little nostalgia for it. There is more interest in it in the UK of course but it’s waning.
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09/17/2019 at 9:41 pm #67901
Wow! This very much helps us in future listings. I do wonder if items like these will continue to be collected or if these collectors will just die out.
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09/17/2019 at 9:58 pm #67903
i’m very impressed that you knew all this (and knew where to look for additional info). i just went with my gut, priced high with make offer and did well. i just loved the image first and foremost, so i went from there. i’ll keep an eye out for more now even though i also agree that china in some cases is declining. it still sells for me, maybe not at the year 2000 prices though.
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09/18/2019 at 10:32 am #67914
Dredging up a memory of something I read years ago, the transfers used by British potters declined in artistic quality after copyright restrictions on copying artworks came in. Can’t remember the year, but I think it was about 1845. After that the potters had to use in-house designers. And then there’s “flow blue”… is that still a thing?
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09/18/2019 at 10:58 am #67917
Thanks; when I started picking about 47 years ago in Philadelphia it was solidly in real antiques so I usually know more or less what I’m looking at if something’s really old. (It took a move to California years later – where it was all about MCM and real antiques were a tough sell – to broaden my horizons.) But, what’s important is a good eye and your fresh look at that plate with no preconceived notions is what made it a great sale.
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09/17/2019 at 3:45 pm #67885
I had a crummy week – after last week’s big return, I had another $2300 refund on an envelope printer which was working when I sent it out but must have sustained some shipping damage, although I packaged it to death.
However I had a good sale to somewhat offset that and it looks like September should be just breakeven rather than a loss month.
I regret nothing! I think my bets were +EV, just outta luck.
Sales: CAD$2416, 8 sales, COGS: $428 –> Item profit: $1624
Expenditures: $3086 (including return) –> Cashflow: $-1033
Notable sales: last week picked up 110 notebook battery packs for $250, sold 20 of them now for $1200. So this is looking like a really good pick.Went all in on a local auction today, we’ll see what it brings. Looks like I lost out on most lots, which is maybe not so bad considering my cashflow’s in the dumps now.
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09/17/2019 at 7:15 pm #67897
Quiet week! Doing what I can. Great Podcast, thank you!
9/08– 9/14/19 (no cross listing is done between platforms)
eBay store: totommyto
Total store items: 827
Number of items sold: 6
Total eBay sales (not counting s/h): $143.50
Cost of items sold: $16
Highest price sold: $70 – Lot of old fish net buoys – paid $10
Average price sold: $24.92
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $7
Number of new items listed this week: 25
Sell through rate for the week: 0.7
Number International sales: 0Etsy store oldfleatoymarket
Total store items: 669
Number of items sold: 5
Total Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $95.65
Cost of items sold: $5
Highest price sold: $21.25 – vintage mini tool set – paid $1.00
Average price sold: $19.13
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $11
Number of new items listed this week: 17
Sell through rate for the week: 0.8
Number International sales: 0 -
09/17/2019 at 11:53 pm #67905
My store is still small enough to do the numbers on a monthly bases, but I’ll get bigger with time!
Numbers for August:
Ended the month with 533 listings.
Items sold: 44
Items listed: 68
Gross sales: $1,054.32
Net profit: $731.32
Average profit $17.98You can see every item I sold and more details like where I found the items and what each one sold for in this blog post I wrote each month.
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09/20/2019 at 8:56 am #68011
I had an okay week. I got another ‘free’ 500 listings from eBay that expired yesterday, so I was a little more motivated to list.
Listings: 40 between eBay and Poshmark, some cross posted
Poshmark sales: $10 fairy furniture (free scavenge) and $15 Under Armor hoodie (listed Saturday, bought week prior for $3)
Ebay: $22 and $29 autographed books (part of the $1 carful of books)
My goal was 4 sales or $100, so I’m glad I met my goals!
Approx 165 listings each in Poshmark and eBay.Other notable occurrences were a low, low offer on a print cartridge. I’m going to give it another month before accepting less than $100, based on comps.
And last night I thought I had a jeans sale on Poshmark, but there was a problem with payment. It’s a bummer, but I’m glad I don’t have to tell people their card was declined.
Poshmark has promos for dropping prices (like lowering shipping costs), so I have a mental list of items that I am going to reduce once that rolls around. I really want to get some of this inventory moving.No shopping, although the thrift store has 50% off this Saturday, and my kid needs new pants.
I did scavenge in our trash. My husband was throwing out some fishing supplies, and I grabbed a couple of things. (Shhh!) I’m going to look up comps. It’s probably trash, but maybe there is a treasure.
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