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Join the conversation in the forum>> Our Store Week March 22-28, 2020 Total Items in Store: 8162 Items Sold: 43 Gross Sales: $1650.60 Cost of
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 456: Stay Inside, Make Bread] -
3/22/20 – 3/28/20
Total Items In Store: 3306
Items Sold: 18
Cost of Items Sold: $ 50
Total Sales: $ 541.60
Highest Price Sold: $ 100 (Military Coat)
Average Price Sold: $ 30.09
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 0
Number of items listed: 21Gut Sales Report for the week: Sales very sparatic this week, but ended up ok.
Grossing about 2\3 of what I usually do in the last 3 weeks.Challenge of the week: Trying to get all my “To be listed” inventory tagged, weighed, and get dimensions. I think I will have enough for quite a while, but want it all fully ready to be listed.
Scavenge of the week: Nothing.
Mark S
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I second the no-knead bread, make it all the time. Also yes to cabbage! Last time I went to the grocery store the produce section was half empty. No potatoes or onions at all, but plenty of cabbage.
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Shops round me have got plenty of onions and potatoes, but no cabbage- plenty of calabrese (broccoli) though. Flour’s also disappeared from the supermarkets.
Sold an 8-pound $400 art book at the weekend (Owen Jone’s Grammar Of Ornament). Going to a carefully-selected post office later on, with protective screens for the staff and no queue, unlike the ones local to me. In happier times I would have delivered the book myself (buyer’s only 30 miles away).
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Antique Frog, I’ve once sold a copy of Grammar Of Ornament too! Mine went for only $170, but it was in really rough condition. None of the pages were attached to the binding and was even missing a few of them. The cover was a wreck. I’m surprised I even got that much for it. But what a neat book it was to look through. I was half tempted to just sell the individual pages in frames or something.
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Items in Store 1484
Items Sold 20
Total Sales $514.00
COGS $41.00
Total Profit $473.00
Average profit $23.65
Average sales price $25.70
New Listings 20So this weekend I did a BIG thing I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I emptied out my 14′ enclosed trailer, moved it, then built shelving throughout and put everything back in. I worked from 6:30 am until 10:30 pm. I am STILL sore and tired! Yes I’m ashamed to say I have a 14′ enclosed trailer that is full of unlisted inventory, but I’m working on it! Getting this job done was critical to convert this space to a useful area. Now I can begin to list it all and put it right back where it was as a controlled inventory.
I’ll be working from home for the foreseeable future so I’ll be getting alot of listing done. “Working from home” mostly means I’m at my computer and phone waiting for someone to send me a drawing to work on or someone to call and ask me a production question. There is ALOT of downtime. So I’m putting that time to use!
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I’m excited for you! I switched ebay rooms at the start of the year. The process of cleaning out one space and setting up a new space really got me organized and reinvigorated to tackle the unlisted inventory.
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Oh Absolutely. I NEEDED to do this. In the process, I pulled out some new in box stuff that was in there that I am listing today. Several $200 items! One of them is a lego set I bought on clearance a few years ago. A rare occurence where procastinating in a death pile is benefical – now it is worth $200!
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Hello all.
Checking in, or perhaps I’m actually back in the weekly saddle on the Podcast forum. I had announced going AWOL about a month ago as we were in the somewhat complicated process of selling our home. Well, the buyer backed out and understandably. My wife and I are actually glad for obvious reasons. We circled our wagons and we are thankful to stay in predictable and familiar surroundings, for now. My regular job continues, although it has changed. Early on with the outbreak, the job was stressful. Now my workplace is settling into a new normal.
On eBay, I have been accepting and sending lower offers than normal so my COGS profit is 7X, rather than my preferred 10X. Etsy just chugs along like normal trying to be relevant, and on occasion surprises with good sales. While organizing, cleaning, and prepping our home for the sale that didn’t happen, I have discovered some great items to sell. Many of these items were sourced, stored, and forgotten about long ago. Those shadow death piles.03/22 – 03/28/20 (no cross listing is done between platforms)
eBay store: totommyto
Total store items: 792
Number of items sold: 13
Total eBay sales (not counting s/h): $473
Cost of items sold: $68
Highest price sold: $96.50 – Steely Dan cassette set, paid $5
Average price sold: $36.40
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: 0
Number of new items listed this week: 1
Sell through rate for the week: 1.7
Number International sales: 1Etsy store oldfleatoymarket
Total store items: 617
Number of items sold: 5
Total Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $101.50
Cost of items sold: $7
Highest price sold: $28 – McGill Coin Changer, paid $3
Average price sold: $20.30
Returns: 1 – $21 bible
Money spent on new inventory: 0
Number of new items listed this week: 1
Sell through rate for the week: 0.9
Number International sales: 0 -
Enjoyed the podcast. My husband is working 100+ weeks at the hospital and living quarantined downstairs. I’m working from home and my teens are busy online with school work. So I did have a couple of mornings last week without projects to list and it was really nice. I have a lot of home organizing projects that I want to get to and stuff around the house to throw up onto Mercari. I’ll try to work those in when I get tired of sitting at the computer.
Slow Ebay sales for me even though I did some listing. I got a box done from the death piles – Easter, craft kits, and vintage party supplies. I’m going to try a box of vintage fabric next from the piles. Skipping and ended anything big or heavy that needs to go FedEx. Scheduled my first pick up at the porch and it was kind of hard to wait so long to see my item go out. I usually drop it after packing the morning after purchase.
In my Mercari FB group, some people are claiming it’s good lately and better than Posh or Ebay. I’ve been shopping on Mercari myself for items for my household and yes floating low offers (Mercari limits how lowball you can go). I did a little bit of RA this week as the retailers are finally waking up and starting sales. Not too many are doing deep enough discounts but I did pick a little bit. Also it’s a great time to watch or put searches on Brads Deals.
Again, I think Ebay is well positioned with its army of small sellers ready to ship under the current circumstances. I wish you all good sales this week!
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Good to hear from you guys, thanks for the podcast!
I believe the social distancing rules currently being pushed in the States and Canada, while they may be good enough on a population level, are a little lenient if you actually value your health. This story was interesting – a choir tried to practice distancing, one person was (asymptomatically) sick, and 45/60 got infected anyway.
We are making and using homemade masks now. Any mask is better than nothing, western public health guidance be damned. (Our N95s we are going to give to some of my wife’s fellow nurses once their health region actually allows them to be used – right now they require nurses to use less effective surgical masks for most situations.) I am at most risk, going to the post office etc. But I am fully working from home now which should help. It’s my last week of work at my “old” job!
This has weirdly been my best ever sales month on ebay. I am not buying much, just hoarding cash at this point. Taking almost any offers that come in.
Sales c/w shipping: CAD$3383, 24 sales, COGS: $436, Fees: ~$469, Postage: $508 –> Gross profit: $1971
Expenditures: $101 –> Cashflow: $2813-
I am sometimes a bit oblivious to what the things I sell actually are – if they’re NIB with a model number, and they are worth more than I paid for them, I feel no great need to dig too deeply.
I was packing an item last night which in my head I categorized as “some sort of medical filter thingies”. Wifey informed me that yep, they’re filters for ventilators.
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3/22/20 – 3/28/20
Total Items In Store: 1103
Items Sold: 41
Total Sales: $ 1,739.29
Cost of Goods Sold: $ 769.12
Highest Price Sold: $ 75 (Nike Air Diamond Turfs on Ebay)
Average Price Sold: $ 42.42
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 0
Number of items listed: 95Gut Sales Report for the week: We had an overall mediocre, but it was boosted by Saturday where we had 11 sales, and the week ended up meeting our average. It still feels like we are just being saved by these days where we have a bunch of sales all at once.
Challenge of the week: We ordered our first wholesale order of shoes from a contact on Instagram. Having never done any type of online buying like this, I’m curious to see what the quality of the shoes will be that we get. They are thrifted shoes, so I’m just hoping there aren’t too many issues with them and that we can keep sourcing like this for the meantime.
Scavenge of the week: Still no Inventory locally, but 100 shoes coming in this week from an online wholesale order. Fingers Crossed!
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March 22 – 28
Total Items in Store: 3,890
Items Sold: 39
Total Sales : $1,112
* Above yearly average of $966
Highest Price: $135 (Set of 8 Fred Press MCM Glass Tumblers Atomic Sun & Moon)
Average Price: $29
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $51
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 63Strong numbers last week. I’m just waiting for the dive in sales that might or might not come. Though alternatively, with the stimulus check that’s being given out in a few weeks, we might see a small spike in profits. As the general population who are stuck inside for weeks on end receive that extra boost in money, a lot of them will likely shop online as a cure for boredom.
My big takeaway from this whole pandemic is how lucky Steph and I have been. We both sell on eBay full time. We both have more than plenty of back-logged inventory to last us months. Our finances are in relatively good order. And we live away from the city so there’s less of a chance that we’ll get sick. We’re still practicing social distancing of course, but it’s just a little more easy where we’re at. And to top it off, we’re still making plenty of money with eBay. We’re really counting our blessings this time.
Maybe some of you might remember a couple of years back I posted about our basement getting flooded. We have since moved to a nice house, but I’ve learned that it happened again to that place a couple of days ago. The same exact thing occurred – the creek next to it got jammed up and overflowed. The basements of all the houses on the street were full of water. I don’t know the full extent of the damage, but if it was anything like what we went through then they’re having a really bad time. I’m so glad we got out of there when we did.
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Thanks for the podcast. It’s great to have a few normal routines like listening to the show.
My numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 3815
Items Sold: 52
Total Sales: $1037.91
Cost of Items Sold: $300
Average Price Sold: $19.96
Average Cost of Item: $5.78
Highest Price Item Sold: $85 MEMOREX MB2186A micro cassette recorder -new
Number of items listed this week: 89 worth approx. $2038
YTD Sales: $12434
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +10%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 441
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 154
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 45
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.36%Sales were good last week. They are very sporadic as someone else said. Sending Offers to Watchers really jump-starts my sales each week. The response to offers last week was back up to normal levels.
I’ve been cranking through my piles of unlisted stuff and sourcing through eBay. I miss garage sales and estate sales but I think I’ll be able to make it though OK. I’ve been working from home (on my day job) for a couple of weeks now and have at least a few more weeks to go. It’s great not having to commute. I’m still watching the stock market nervously. I expect we’ll see it tumble again before it really improves. There’s too much bad news that still needs to come (from company financial results). I’m not sure if it’s going to be sensible for me to retire in June if our retirement account balances are way down from where they were. We’ll see.
Hope everyone has a healthy and profitable week.
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Items in Store 14,866
Total orders – 101
Total items sold (including multiples) – 133
Total Sales $2,522.48
COGS ~$14
Highest sold – Mecca 70s set – $100Good week but seems to have slowed since this past Saturday, so we’re just getting ready for this pandemic to finally start impacting our sales. I have a few repeat buyers that I haven’t heard from at all this month, I’m not sure if it’s due to them cutting back on spending or if it’s because they’re sick. One of me and my wife’s favorite customers is an older lady and she’s one of the ones I haven’t heard from, so I hope she’s doing well.
The meccano was my highest cog item, at $10. It’s been up on my shelf for about 2 years now and I ended up taking a third of what I was asking for it, just to get it out the door. They’re also conveniently the only customer who hasn’t paid yet, so there’s that lol. The rest of the sales were the free magazines and small pins, vacuum tubes, records, and old toy accessories that I usually a few cents for a piece.
I would like Ebay to help out smaller sellers more, but I would be lying if I didn’t say I was super grateful for the 50,000 free listings. Just the savings on the listings over my first 10,000 will save me around $250 a month.
Thanks for keeping the podcast going during all this and hope everyone has a great week.
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Also, I live in a pretty small town, we have 7 confirmed cases. My buddies step mom went in Tuesday with symptoms, she was put on a ventilator and was moved to dialysis yesterday because her kidneys were failing. Today she passed away. This thing hits quick and isn’t a joke. I hope everyone stays safe, follows commons sense, and doesn’t underestimate the gravity of the situation.
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Jay and Ryanne, I now know you’re actually Zen masters disguised as scavengers. Who else could possibly come up with a koan “Stay inside. Make bread.” Direct action that creates good karma and creates calmness. Such a comfort to listen to you two in times like these.
3/22/20 – 3/28/20
Total Items In Store: 516
Items Sold: 11
Total Sales: $275
Cost of Items Sold: $20
Highest Price Sold: $50 – Infant Optics DXR-5 Portable Video Baby Monitor & Camera w/ Charger
Average Price Sold: $25
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 0
Number of items listed: 15Gut Sales Report for the week: Just a slow week for sales. I’m fine with it. I thought my sales would implode, and that hasn’t happened.
Scavenge of the week: Found several garbage bags full of clothes while trolling alleys. I’m not really a clothes seller but since they looked clean and folded etc, I took a chance and tossed them in the car. Nearly all of it turned out to be pretty worn. Only listed a pair of shoes and a few t-shirts. I’m hopeful about finding decent stuff in the alleys. People have more time to go through their stuff for spring cleaning, and they know GW isn’t open. That’s my theory, anwyay.
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You can also use this site http://parcelsapp.com/en/tracking with the esus tracking #s. I had the same issue with DHL not showing correct tracking, I haven’t with this site. And I just wanted to say, be careful with Paypal working capital payment delays. Although they will delay the % deducted from sales, they still require the 90 day payment requirement to be met. So in a way, it’s similar to the issues you guys had with Ebay delaying account fees, both options are really just kicking the ball down the road a bit. Sorry to keep posting new replies, editing my post has caused issues in the past. Anyways, thanks again.
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Hello Trash Elves
Sorry I haven’t been around much this year. Things have been really hectic since my wife started grad school in January, but please know that I have still been listening to the weekly podcasts as always.
I don’t have my numbers to report today, though I can say sales have been roughly 35% of what they normally are. Ooof. I suppose I grossly overestimated the need for neckties in the apocalypse….though they do make great toilet paper in a pinch.
I finally brought on someone to help me a couple days a week with photos, and it has been absolutely amazing! Well…was amazing until the ‘stay at home’ order. I can’t wait until this all blows over so I can get him back over here.
Before the university closed, I was keeping with my plan to thrift all day on Mondays down in the city. While Monday is pretty much the worst day to thrift, it was still soooo much better than the rural thrifting locally. I was able to focus on being very selective in my purchases and also get everything I found listed each week. It did take several weeks to get to the point where I could drive and source all day without getting a headache from my back issues. I don’t know how I used to do my 16-18 hour sourcing days every week. As my wife’s 99 year old grandfather always says “Don’t get old”…..wish I had listened.
I too, got the garden in early this year. I covered half of my raised beds and one of my hoop houses with plastic and seeded a cool weather crop of Broccoli, Kohlrabi, Cabbage, Kale, Spinach, Beets, Carrots and an assortment of 20 or so loose leaf lettuces. The rest will go in around Mother’s Day as usual.
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I’m happy to say that I’m officially joining the quarantine club. Today was the last day of my March challenge of bringing in the mail daily by foot. I’m done. I’ve seen an increasing number of sick people out on the streets where I live and now I just want to stay in my house for the next month or so. I’ve just scheduled my first porch pick-up of a few items for tomorrow to see how it goes.
Also, I went into Manhattan yesterday and it was scary how much it has changed from even a few couple of weeks ago. Even at that time, there were still a couple of food carts, a guy selling t-shirts, some touts out. A lot of food take-out places were open. Now, nothing. Nearly empty sidewalks. Quiet streets other than people who have to commute in and residents of the neighborhood walking their dogs. Hardly any car or bus traffic. Cabs driving slowly next to the few people walking on the streets, looking for any fares. ALL of the food take-out places, delis, business casual type eateries I passed by were closed. It was weird. I thought at least a few of those places would be open for take-out or delivery, but nope. The only place I saw open was a Duane Reade. I think there was also 1 Starbucks open, but a few others I passed by were closed.
Back to reselling – I think I might actually be stuck with working on mainly my backlog for the next month or so. Online sourcing has been poor over the past week. I do have a lot left to list from one of the last auctions I picked up from, as well as an estate sale I went to a few months ago. I’ve also stocked up a bit from online sourcing over the past month, so I’m not worried if I have to skip out completely on buying new stock for awhile. Still, it will be interesting when it gets to the point that I’m mainly working just from the backlog.
I opened up 2 “new” boxes of backlog that were both acquired in 2011. Just got out a few stacks of items to add into the mix of the more current items I am still working through. At this point, I’m just confused as to why I didn’t list the items at the time. If I bought them now, I would have gotten them listed within the week. Easy items to research, list, dupe. I don’t know what I was thinking back in 2011. I also found some interesting ephemera that I am looking forward to listing and have no idea where I bought it from and why I didn’t just list it at the time? Good stuff! I think the next few months of working through the backlog will consist of a lot of “what were you thinking?!” admonishments at my younger self.
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Almasty,
Yea, it is really funny sometimes. This is happening to me also.
I think it is because 8 years ago or so I was just starting out and didn’t always know what I was looking at. Now, I look at it and can determine exactly what to do with the item and also how good it is.
We just need to be nice to our younger selfs who didn’t know any better, lol.
Mark
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Last night, I was thinking about those 50,000 free listings and realized that this would be a good time to end older listings and re-start them (sell similar). Normally, you would have higher costs in a month if a listing just renewed, and then you end it and restart it. With the free listings, though, the fees are waived. I did 200 listings, and I might do another 200 later on. Something for everyone to think about.
The auctions around me are also going to online formats. The first is not offering box lots, and the pickup information is not well communicated. So, I will skip. The second one will be starting up soon, and I’ll have to see how it goes.
My sales picked up from last week, and they are continuing to stay lively.
Week of March 22 – 28
* Total Items in Store: 1432 eBay, 37 Etsy
* Items Sold: 20 eBay
* Cost of Items Sold: $44.10 + $87.60 Commission
* Total Sales: $552.50 eBay
* Highest Price Sold: $89 Sajen Sterling pendant, $85 Sajen Sterling pendant (both are commissions)
* Average Price Sold: $27.63
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 20 -
It was good to hear from you. You guys remain to sound just a couple weeks behind us here in North Jersey. To be sure, I don’t imagine it can get quite this extreme in a rural area. But I expect it is going to hit Northern Virginia as hard as it is hitting New Jersey. It took a few weeks to get to today: each little town has scores confirmed sick, and more dead every few days.
I would warn everyone to completely disregard the official numbers, and if you are in an area where there aren’t many confirmed cases, assume that it is all around you and act accordingly. The tests are in extreme short supply and very hard to get. I have been myself sick with most of the Covid symptoms, including fever, and have still not been able to get a test without respiratory distress. My girlfriend, a hospital nurse, has also had symptoms but unable to get tested, and not able to home-isolate for longer than 3 days. The virus is already everywhere; it just takes a little while for it to show.
Here is the most recent case list for my county. This happened in 2 weeks. Bear in mind: towns like Nutley, Bloomfield, Montclair are only about 5-20 miles long in any direction.
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Numbers for March. 2020. eBay store: steve-list
Total Listings: 1127
Items sold: 65
Gross Sales: $1,423.55
Cost of Items sold: $224.33
Highest Price Sold: $110 – Church’s Mens Shoes from England
Average Price Sold: $21.90 – Average Cost: $3.45
Spent on new inventory: $30.00
Number of items listed: 79This was one of my better months in the past year or so. My cost of goods was kind of high due to a 24 book mystery series (Lovejoy) that I’ve been reading over the past few months that I finally finished and sold on eBay. The books cost me around $72 and I basically sold them as a lot for what I paid for them.
Not much scavenging in March, mainly due to the shelter in place but I did make it to one estate sale early in the month. Great find of a bunch of old car brochures and a catch of slides and 8mm films that I have yet to go through.
I’ve been staying home with the exception of trips to the post office and grocery store, and occasionally a take out place. A lot of stuff is sold out but the local corner mom and pop stores around my house all still have TP.
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Jay or Ryanne – The link for “Post your What Sold video in the forum>>” is missing from Steve’s latest What Sold video. Could you add that in? I wanted to post my sales for the week 🙂
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I am having an issue understanding a rather basic selling issue. My questions concerns how eBay, Pay Pal and Go Daddy Bookkeeping work. I have been using GDB for years now, so it probably seems odd that I can’t figure this out myself, but maybe someone an help me out.
I have GDB set up to pull in my ebay and Pay Pal transactions. When I list an item or sell an item I see insertion fees (normally $0.00 because I have a store) and Final Value fees (> $0.00) in GDB. I also see a charge in GDB for my monthly store subscription.
I had a credit card set up in Ebay to pay my monthly invoice. Today, I changed it today to have Pay Pal pay the invoice. Then, I thought, will these charges show up in GDB twice? Once on an individual fee basis and once as a monthly invoice total?
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I’ve had a bit of an eBay “moral dilemma” crop up this week and would love feedback from the Forum. I’ve read and seen a lot lately about sellers across various platforms hoarding and price gouging people for various needed items. I know eBay and Amazon discourage this practice (as well they should) and will remove listings that are seen as price gouging. This week, I was researching some items to list on eBay and found several items that I feel are clear examples of price gouging (generic store brand grocery and over-the-counter cold medicines listed for approximately 10x what they normally sell for). My dilemma is this: Should I report these listings to eBay as price gouging, or mind my own business? My personal thought is that these listings should be reported, because they are clear attempts by greedy sellers to make a profit on needed items during a global pandemic. I think this sucks and makes people generally distrustful of resellers and the platforms we use, all because of a few greedy folks. My husband thinks it is best to leave it alone. I’d appreciate the opinions of fellow resellers. If there is a better Forum place to post this, let me know. Thanks!
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I agree that you should report listings with obvious price gouging. There is a link in the listing and it takes just a few seconds. eBay has stated that they will be warning or taking down listings with these issues. They have software that automatically searches out those types of items, but it doesn’t catch everything.
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I don’t know, I’ve been buying certain grocery items on Ebay that have been out of stock in my area for months. I’ve also been checking walmart, amazon, other sites for them and they are completely unavailable or very high priced. Way above 10x markup for a lot of grocery items on Amazon, if available at all. Ebay has been sort of saving me for some items, and I don’t mind paying a 10x markup because I’m happy to get the items at all. I understand there are also fees and other things to consider when getting an item off of Ebay that would not matter at a grocery store or big box store. 10x markup is nothing.
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I’m a little late to the party this week. Here are my numbers for the week:
Week Ending 03/28/2020
Total Items in Store: 1159
Items Sold: 15
Gross Sales: $933.40
Gross wo Shipping $737.15
Cost of Items Sold: $123.86
COGS Percent 16.80%
Highest Price Sold: $149.95 (Pair of Gorham reticulated vases)
Average Price Sold: $45.47
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Sold via promoted listings: 9
Promoted Percentage: 60.00%
Average Days Listed: 259
Longest Listed: 1373
New items listed: 6Felt good about the week and had a few nice sales. COGs were a little higher than I like as I paid up on the Gorham vases, buying 3 of them for $75. Sold all three for $230 (total) to same buyer the day I posted them. Originally thought we had antiques that were worth much more, but was happy to find that these reproductions also sell well.
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