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Join the conversation in the forum>> Our Store Week September 15-21, 2019 Total Items in Store: 8557 Items Sold: 56 Gross Sales: $1,940.71 Cos
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 429: Trash Metronome] -
Woohoo, I was mentioned 2 episodes in a row! This time about the combined shipping issue. The thing is, though, that eBay sometimes DOES automatically combine shipping. And if the buyer’s already paid it can cost you extra money to ship separately if the items cannot be combined. That recently happened to me with a heavy wheel bearing and a fragile coffee mug.
But earlier this year it happened to me in a huge way. I sold 20 cases of of item. The cases were 16″ cubed and weighed 12 pounds each. One buyer purchased all 20 cases and eBay took it upon themselves to combine the all 20 cases into 1. And they charged the buyer only enough shipping for about 2 of them.
I have no clue what made the system think that was feasible. It would have cost me over $600 out of pocket to ship the buyer’s order (because that’s how much eBay UNDERcharged the buyer). The shipping amount I had set per case was correct. But eBay automatically combined the order than could not be combined and grossly undercharged the buyer. I frantically contacted eBay in a panic! It was an extremely frustrating experience.
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Another situation I had was when I was selling of bunch of brand new Westin Delta airline blankets. A single blanket would just barely fit in a flat rate legal envelope (and that was the shipping option). So one customer bought several and eBay took it upon themselves to combine shipping. Well, only one would fit in the envelope. And they weigh over a pound each. So eBay’s combining shipping meant that I had to ship them in a box and pay another $10 or so to make up the difference in price.
It turns out – in that situation – that there is a way to go into the advanced options (I can’t even remember how to find it now) and set a shipping cost for additional items. But it hidden, hard to find and not at all intuitive because the language is incredibly ambiguous. So it’s hard to know if the things you check will do what you hope they will when a sale occurs.
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Hello! Just now listening to the new podcast and wanted to add one thing regarding the new Paypal change starting on October 11th..It does not only apply to returns, but they will also not refund the transaction fee for cancellations..I am far from a complainer, but this aspect bothers me as I have been getting several cancellations recently…Great podcast as always..Long time listener here who has never commented before, maybe once years ago..Enjoy the rest of your weekend..
Kind Regards,
Rick
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@ Ricker – I really do think it’s “industry standard” not to return such fees. So I’m not too upset with PayPal. I had an electronics repair shop / retail store for nearly 20 years. I’m pretty sure the credit card processors never gave us a single fee(s) refund when we refunded money to a customer’s card. In fact, they may have charged us a transaction fee both way, I’m not sure.
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Yeah, I could pretty much care less…I haven’t moved over to managed payments as of yet, but got the invite..I need to open another bank account first..just a cost of doing business, but totally annoying when a buyer pays you, then instant sends you a message to cancel the transaction, lol…it is what it is…btw, I reside in Pinellas County, and lived in Lakeland during the 80’s..old Lake Hollingsworth was a regular walk..
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Hello all, have not listened yet, looking forward to a quiet Monday morning in the workplace to do so, going to at least slap down my numbers, which are still slack.
9/15 – 9/21/19 (no cross listing is done between platforms)
eBay store: totommyto
Total store items: 830
Number of items sold: 4
Total eBay sales (not counting s/h): $145.00
Cost of items sold: $8.50
Highest price sold: $50 Vintage very portable GPX 1986 TV, paid $2.50
Average price sold: $36.25
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $3
Number of new items listed this week: 9
Sell through rate for the week: 0.5
Number International sales: 1Etsy store oldfleatoymarket
Total store items: 666
Number of items sold: 3
Total Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $54.00
Cost of items sold: $5
Highest price sold: $24.00 – large steel hook
Average price sold: $18.00
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $3
Number of new items listed this week: 0
Sell through rate for the week: 0.5
Number International sales: 0 -
2019-09-15 – 2019-09-21
Total Items In Store: 3285 was 3276
Items Sold: 12
Cost of Items Sold: $ 40
Total Sales: $ 438.13
Highest Price Sold: $ 80 (Cabinet doors)
Average Price Sold: $ 36.51
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 348
Number of items listed: 21Gut Sales Report for the week: Good startto the week, but sales fell off the cliff at the end of the week.
Challenge of the week: Make more room for storage.
Scavenge of the week: I went to an estate sale on Sunday. It was at the end and they were trying to get rid of a lot of Mid-Century hard goods. I would bring a small box filled with great items and they would say $20. I keep this up for a while. At the end, I had spent $110 including items for my daughter. I spend $100 for items I intend to sell. The total listing price that I will list these items for is about $1800. And there are some great items. I was disappointed that they weren’t more big hitters, but with about 50 items, it all adds up.
Mark S
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I haven’t had the time to suss out my numbers in quite a while. But I do feel like tooting my horn and sharing that – because of some particularly great scavenging last week – I had four $200 ($190, $215, $210, and $225) sales Friday night. I paid $20 total for those four items.
About a week ago I found a jackpot of Xerox (some OEM and some generic) compatible “solid ink” blocks in a dumpster behind the local military recruiter. What I found is worth about $750. So far I’ve sold $117.65 worth!
I had several really slow weeks during the summer. But things turned around for the better about 2 weeks ago. And this weekend was fantastic, between eBay and Facebook sales, I did almost $1,200 since Friday. My total cost for all items sold in those three days is $30 or less.
If only it was always like this! I just need to keep that momentum going. ABL, baby! I currently have 561 eBay listings (the most I’ve ever had at once) and I’m frantically adding more as I can.
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Week Sept 15-21, 2019
Items in store: 4446 Listings for 6343 Items
Items Sold: 116 transactions for 124 Items
Gross Sales: $6258.14
Highest Price Sold: $499.99 …. Korean War Parka…but still awaiting payment, seems unlikely.
Lowest Price Sold: $2.99….Shoe Laces
Average Sale Price: $50.47
Cost of Goods Sold $378, Plus consignment payout, roughly $840
Number of new items listed this week: 138 items
$$ spent on new inventory this week $682.63
Repeat Customers: 9
International: 15%Scavenges of the week. The North Face McMurdo Parka, Golden Bear Leather Jacket, Sulka Dinner Jacket.
Still on track for a record breaking month, though I lost my lead on my $30K goal this week after a few returns were backed out of the sales. I’m optimistic as ebay usually hammers the extra ebay bucks rewards pretty hard at the end of a quarter, which will hopefully keep sales coming in.
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Podcast Comments:
Promoted listings
As you mentioned, we can now see which items are promoted in the sold listings. You can also see them before-hand when the offers come in, by going to the “listings with open offers from buyer” page and then sorting using the promoted listing quick filter (blue oval buttons). This way you can see if the listing is promoted before you start your negotiations.Combined Shipping
If a buyer would like combined shipping for multiple buy-it-now purchases, ask them to click “request total from seller” on their shopping cart page. You will then receive an email notification which will allow you to send a revised invoice with the new shipping amount. Note: I believe you have to have the “allow combined payments/shipping” option turned on in your shipping preferences to activate the “request total from seller” button on the buyers screen. -
The_SEAM_Store – You’re correct about combined shipping. Whenever a potential buyer messages me beforehand, hinting they might buy multiple items, I also suggest they just put them in their cart then request total. But of course it only works if the buyer has the foresight/foreknowledge to “request total from seller”. Once they pay there’s no way to adjust it.
You can also refund part of their shipping. But in cases where eBay takes it upon themselves to combine and undercharge the buyer, there’s no way to get the correct shipping amount. That’s why there needs to be a way to opt a given item out of combined shipping eligibility.
Some may see the potential conflict it as a fringe situation, but I’ll bet anything it’s an issue a lot more often than one might think. It’s happened to me at least 3 times in the past 6 months; it probably happens across the platform thousands of times every day.
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I also had a pretty great week, and can’t attribute it to anything special, other than doing a ton of listing.
Total Listings: 225
Items Sold: 7
Gross Sales: $261.81
COGS: $47.75
Highest Price: $63.40 (NWT Pendleton 49er shirt)
ASP: $37.40
New Inventory Purchased: $0.00
New Listings: 18I’ve been growing my store aggressively since July. Normally I ramp up sourcing and listing over the summer when sales are slow, and mostly kick back and fulfill orders in fall/winter. However, this year I’m feeling like I’m in a good groove with sourcing/listing, and thinking I might try to keep it up. I sure wish there was a store level between Basic and Premium.
There was a thread recently about other forms of scavenging, with some comments about mushroom foraging. Pleased to say that my family had a successful trip this weekend hunting chanterelles. First time we’ve gone since my daughter was born. She’s now 3, and got a kick out of it. Our haul was 3 lbs of chanterelles. The fancy grocery store in our neighborhood sells them for $20/lb. We’re keeping them all for ourselves, though!
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Items in Store 1219
Items Sold 21
Total Sales $660.00
COGS $53.50
Total Profit $606.50
Average profit $28.88
Average sales price $31.43
New Listings 36I made some improvements to my photo station this past week. I changed out my white vinyl (which had gotten pretty dirty) and raised the height about a foot. Now I can photograph pants by hanging them. Photographing pants has always been a pain in the butt and I avoided it. Now it is super fast! I will still use a mannequin for any pants I want to stand out.
Always be improving.
Other than that, I’m over here trying to get stuff listed and hoping my store sales improve. My fall goal was to average $941 in gross sales a week and I’m falling behind already.
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Retro,
My vinyl is also getting dirty. What did you switch to and how do you like it? Where did you get it?
Mark
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I actually use an old table cloth that I can throw in the wash anytime it gets dirty. Also helps when I need to store the drop cloth, just fold it up and put it in a drawer.
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Brian,
Thanks for the response. If I can find a decent table cloth, I will give it a try. Is all cotton best?
Also, I am going to be in Secaucus NJ this Fri-Sun. Looks like that is real close to you. Do you have any time to meet up?
Mark
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When I get home tonight I’ll check out the material. It was pretty cheap at WalMart, so it may be synthetic material.
Let’s connect later in the week about meeting up this weekend – yes, I’m only 15 mins or so from Secaucus so maybe we could go out picking together. Not sure where you’re from, but the best thing about this area is that there are no less than 20 estate sales within a half hour radius or even the weekly Meadowlands Flea which has a wide range of seller types.
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I use bright white marine vinyl from the craft store. I actually had a huge roll of it from a bulk photography purchase a while back. I just cut off a new piece and was good as new. It lasted a LONG time before I decided to replace it.
Very durable and is easy to clean. Eventually it gets dings and stains though.
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Week September 8-21, 2019
Total Items in Store: 1011
Items Sold: 34 (1 Discogs)
Cost of Items Sold: $287.99 (25.5% of sales)
Total Sales: $1,129.29
Highest Price Sold: $139.99 (U2 Pop)
Average Price Sold: $33.21
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $492
Number of items listed this week: 20
Promoted listings test: 15 sales, $388.94 (34.4% of total sales), $18.45 fees (4.7% of sales)Hey gang! Haven’t posted for a few weeks (although I have been listening) after the Labor Day holiday, travelling for work, and other life getting in the way. Since I can’t remember the last time I posted, here are my numbers for the past 2 weeks. Good to be back!
Pretty solid numbers, on the uptick vs the summer… and I even had $500+ of sales yesterday (Sunday) which will hit next week’s post! Hopefully this is the beginning of holiday sales!
On top of the U2 Pop high sale, also sold an original Beach Boys Pet Sounds for $120, a mixed piece lot of tobacco pipes for $60 (which were all at the bottom of a box that I was going to toss out), a 1913 straight razor for $40, and a mix bag of pocket watch parts for $40 (from the same box as the pipe parts).
Only went to one random sale this week because it was convenient while I was running errands, found this awesome pile of WWII era photos of Hawaii – hoping most of them having hula girls help them sell for top dollar. Also, while cleaning out a “death box” of random things from lots, put this mixed lot of playing cards together that hopefully sells.
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I sourced for 4 days last week! The last time I put that much effort into reselling was over 2 years ago! It was fun to act more of the part of a f/t reseller. Even though I am a f/t reseller, I’ve gotten busy with outside projects, working through the backlog and gotten lazy with sourcing online. It was weird, tiring and expensive to get back out there, but I am happy for the exercise and good stock!
I’ve found that when you think you’re at 100% capacity for unlisted stock, there’s always room to add a few more boxes! I’ve listed 60 items sourced this weekend, and another 40 items found during the week. Still a lot to go before I clear through all of it. I am trying to stay on top of it at least. Of the 60 items listed this weekend, 7 have watchers and 1 has a bid.
I’ve gotten my etsy store up to 110 listings. 2 items sold this week. Yay! I have enough items to get up to 150 active listings by q4, if I find the time.
My main ebay store was down a bit this past week. While I normally sell 50-75 items per week, I was down to 40 this week. This is a natural slow time for my niche, so I don’t mind. It will give me more time to source and list for q4 & q1 2020.
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Good to hear your update. You’re like us with a huge inventory which lets you go on “autopilot” and still sell.
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It’s still bizarre to me that sourcing has become more of a novelty than a necessity, but I’ll take it. There are too many interesting things to do in the world than to sit around and concentrate solely on buying and selling.
My current stock level is up to 12,200 items for the main ebay store. While I couldn’t source in thrifts and elsewhere this summer due to other work, I was able to maintain a high level of consistent inventory levels due to the backlog and online sourcing. When I had free time, I would list around my other tasks. If I didn’t have free time, yay autopilot. Ebay just became a way to calm down around real work. Now that the other work has slowed down, I’m still carrying that restfulness. Older stock is selling. Newer stock is selling. Ebay is working as it should be.
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Podcast comment:
For storing art, I have one suggestion. With all the auctions I do, online or live, I end up with a few bins without lids. I took one of them for small to medium size framed art. I fit them in lengthwise and leave an inch or so of space at the end. That way, I can flip through them and find the one that sold. If you had larger bins or boxes, you could do it for the slightly larger art as well.
Sorry, I don’t have any suggestions for large or unframed art.
I had another slow week, but Sunday through today has started out strong. I am hopeful.
Week of Sept 15 – 21
* Total Items in Store: 1486 eBay, 3 Etsy
* Items Sold: 12
* Cost of Items Sold: $15.50 + $0 Commission
* Total Sales: $235.58
* Highest Price Sold: $60 Vintage Members Only leather coat
* Average Price Sold: $19.63
* Returns: 1
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 20 -
Thanks for the podcast R&J.
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 3248
Items Sold: 41
Total Sales: $871.92
Cost of Items Sold: $116
Average Price Sold: $21.27
Average Cost of Item: $2.84
Highest Price Item Sold: $104.95 Traktor Kontrol F1 – DJ Remix Controller
Number of items listed this week: 43
YTD Sales: $36672
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +9%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 412
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 242
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 157
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.26%
Hats sold this week: 28 (68% of sales) worth $481.59 (55% of sales $)A pretty unremarkable week. Sales were solid but I sold a lot of hats so my total sales figure was pretty typical for this time of year.
Ryan from Ralli Roots (YouTube) got to do a Q&A session with someone from eBay about the changes to Promoted Listings. It was pretty informative. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_F1dYoDU9I ) The main takeaway is that if your item appears as a promoted listing, it wont appear lower on the page. So previously your listing might appear twice. Now it will only appear once. That was a concern for many people. (Especially when people started freaking out about ad-blockers blocking promoted listings). You an check your impressions dashboard in the seller hub to see if there is any substantial change for your store.
Hope everyone sells lots of trash this week.
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yep, the changes to Promoted Listings was clearly announced in the Fall Seller UpdateL
https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/seller-updates/2019-fall/growth-tools.html“Removal of duplicated promoted and non-promoted listings in search
Starting in September 2019, we’ll no longer show duplicate promoted and non-promoted listings on the search results page. If you are using Promoted Listings, only one of your listings, either promoted or non-promoted will appear in a given set of search results, giving buyers a cleaner, more relevant search experience. We will select which listing to display, based on factors such as listing quality, relevancy to the buyer’s search, and ad rate.”Simon, since you are a backend developer (I think), do you see any issues with Ad Blockers and Promoted Listings? I’m so confused by all the hub bub.
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No. I’m currently in project management rather than being a engineer. (I used to be an engineer but it’s been a while.). I see there’s a whole dedicated thread on the P.L topic so I’ll just stay out of that other than to say that I thought that I had assumed that once the recently-announced changes went into affect, eBay would always show a P.L over an organic search but doing some of my own tests has not shown that to be true. When I do a very specific search which only returns a single listing … my listing. I don’t see it appearing as a sponsored listing which is good.
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Sept. 15-21
Total Items in Store: 2615
Items Sold: 24
Total Sales : $644
* Below yearly average of $934
Highest Price: $80 (Vintage Walz Lens Hood for Leitz Leica Summicron Lens)
Average Price: $27
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $26
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $388
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 44I have some good numbers to report this week considering the time of year. Sales were fairly consistent with a bunch of lower priced items. I made enough to let me sleep soundly at night and that’s fine with me. My listing number was lower than my goal because we spent extra time scavenging. We went to a weird auction on Wednesday. There was a lot of good stuff but the bidding was going high, at least at the beginning. But we managed to get a bunch of cool stuff. My scavenge of the day was a giant box of old radio and television Photofax service manuals. They’re each just little 4 page or more pamphlets, but they’re going for $10 a piece on eBay and I’ve got hundreds. I also bought a parts bin full of old capacitors. I don’t know exactly what I’ve got, but if you look up vintage capacitor under Solds, certain ones can go for hundreds of dollars!
Regarding the storage of artwork, our solution is to hang them around the house. We have a lot of empty wall space so it made sense to use the pictures until they sell. When one does sell, it just gets replaced with another piece of art from a little stack in my storage. It’s like a rotating art gallery.
I have a feeling I won’t get a lot done this week. We just adopted our first kitty cat yesterday and we’re working to get her used to the house. That and we’re going to auctions on Thursday and Saturday. It’s funny how worried I was that the auction scene was drying up around here. Now it’s exploding.
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Nothing is more fun than a new kitten IMHO!
I like the ideas of hanging art for sale in your house. But honestly, you guys obviously dont have enough art if it can all hang on your walls 🙂
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I’d love to find more art, especially original stuff. But I wasn’t exaggerating when I said we have a lot of wall space. We bought a 5500 sq ft house last year and are starting to fill it up with eBay items for sale including lamps, rugs and furniture. Now with a cat, we have to be extra mindful of her scratching.
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Week of 09/15-09/21
Total Items in Store: 3,338 (Up 24% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 112
Number of Items Sold: 105 (Up 18% YOY)
(Includes 3 Etsy, 17 Poshmark, 3 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether)
Weekly STR: 13% (Down 1% YOY)Total Product Sales: $3,289 (Up 41% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Up $420
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Up $529
Cost of Items Sold: $549
Cost of Labor: $240
Highest Item Sold: $225 – Hugo Boss Tuxedo
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Troy wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 22-17.Clothing
# Listed: 1,890
# Sold: 65
STR: 15%
ASP: $32.19Shoes
# Listed: 875
# Sold: 28
STR: 14%
ASP: $33.02Hard Goods
# Listed: 573
# Sold: 12
STR: 9%
ASP: $22.67EBay
# Listed: 3,338
# Sold: 85
STR: 11%
ASP: $29.83Etsy
# Listed: 212
# Sold: 3
STR: 6%
ASP: $26.56Poshmark
# Listed: 901
# Sold: 17
STR: 8%
ASP: $39.65Not much to really report, except staying busy and trying to work as much as possible. Our photographer is on vacation this week, so I’m going to be back to taking my own photographs this week. I know, “cry me a river”, but it will be interesting to see how my numbers look doing it all this week…
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Regarding the situation of ad blockers blocking 2% or so of promoted listings:
I’m ignorant of the backend workings, so my point may be silly. But I don’t get why eBay would have promoted listings appear to ad blockers as “ads”. Why wouldn’t they call them up as normal listings, but with the addition of text saying “sponsored listing”? Are they retrieving them from some sort of “ad server” (I don’t know the correct terminology) rather than their own system? What’s the deal?
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I work in the ad industry, so know just enough about the codes needed to be dangerous. Any “ad”, whether it be internal to your own site, third party served like the ones on this page, etc all need to have “tags” to count impressions, clicks, and a variety of other things in order to 1) be served, 2) be served to the correct person at the right time, 3) and of course to calculate charges.
So even something as simple as putting that “sponsored” label on a listing, needs to have a server tag somewhere in the code.
I just did a super basic scan of the code of a search result page, and while I don’t understand what most of the code is doing, there is a line item that includes “Sponsored” and “item has tag” in a command. That’s likely what an ad blocker would look for.
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Wow, it’s hard to read the forum this morning as it’s all compressed into one huge column of text.
I looked up the metronome thing, it’s pretty cool! Made more sense when I realized they must be coupled together by being e.g., all on one light sliding surface.
I had a good week on ebay but more horrible returns. Seems like I’m getting all the year’s returns in one month. This time on a nice projector lens I sold for $500.
Sales: CAD$1685, 11 items, COGS: $295 –> Item profit: $1124
Expenditures (incl returns): $1384 –> Cashflow: $36
Notable sales: best sale was $600 for 3 rolls of glass cloth tape.I spend $450 at an auction and got tons of stuff, which I just finished listing:
-Lathe parts including a nice chuck I’m hoping brings $500 or so. The rest of the parts are marginal but I listed them anyway.
-Two big boxes of roller bearings. I paid $11 for this lot and already sold ~10% of it for $300.
-A huge lot of cleaning solution dispensers for $3. I really regret this lot as I didn’t realize how gigantic they were, not to mention sticky and disgusting. I’ll get rid of them if no interest within a few months, trying to move them locally pretty cheap.
-Super heavy counterbore sleeving tool for $50. I don’t know yet whether this was a genius or idiot buy. Probably idiot.
-Gas valves, 6 for $75. These are heavy and annoying but each should bring $200-300 or so… EVENTUALLY. -
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I’ve taken a bit of a listing vacation this week, as I am getting ready for a trip AND sales picked up.
Sales: 10 or 11 (waiting on a $10 payment on one), 4 Ebay, 7 Poshmark, 1 (the first) on Mercari
Total $: $200 before fees and some shipping
Cost of Goods: Most was from lots, so individual cost of goods was $1 or less. My retail arbitrage of some Nightmare Before Xmas figurine has been a bit of a pain. I keep getting offers, but only one sale so far. I’ll hold out for my high, high prices of $14+ shipping (listed at $17).
Highlights: Some of my vintage jewelry FINALLY sold on Poshmark. I’d been having doubts, but three pieces when this week. It’s probably about half of my store/closet. Another funny item was a back pillow that I accidentally put on auction (rather than BIN). No bids on the slightly lower price, so I relisted when the auction was up, and it sold within a week.
Most of these sales are the result of offers. I’ve got too much inventory for my space, and I am hungry for sales, so I’m gladly taking reasonable offers.
Sourcing: Not much, but I did get some Marvel toys (probably a bust) and a music box during a trip to the thrift store with my daughter. It has comps of $80-130, so it’s probably a good find, if I can get it listed next week. We also cleaned out our coat closet at home! About 5 coats to list, two to the trash and four to the thrift store.
Listing: I got three coats listed, but I’m in order fulfillment and trip-planning mode now.
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