Scavenger Life Episode 487: It’s All About The Work

[Ryanne]

 Check out our coffee subscriptions! ► broadporchcoffee.com Join the conversation in the forum>> Our Store Week November 1-7, 2020 Total Items
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 487: It’s All About The Work]

[old_man_marty]

My Sales Week Ending 11/7/20

 

Notes: Garage door windows black wrapped. No light leaks like old doors. Perfect photos first time. Only got one listing done. Job transition and domestic issues abound.

Total Items For Sale: 53

Profit: $48.92

Items Sold: 3

Items Listed: 1

Average Profit: $16.31

Highest Profit: TSE Orange Cashmere Sweater: $31.46

Cost of items Sold: $0

Returns: 0

$ Spent Sourcing: $0

[Retro Treasures WV]

Items in Store    1494

Items Sold           24

Total Sales          $974.00

COGS     $87.00

Total Profit         $887.00

Average profit    $36.96

Average sales price          $40.58

New Listings       2

 

Holy crazy returns week, batman!!! I had 6 return requests this week. We’ll see how many actually come back. The weirdest one was a sealed new in package video game. I bought this at walmart in clearance section so I know the original source. The buyer claims (several weeks after purchase) that when they opened it a completely different game was inside the case. I tried to write them to clarify and didn’t get a response.

 

I also had another amazing “gut feeling” thrift store run. Sometimes I will be running an errand with no intentions to go to a thrift. Then all the sudden I’ll get this irresistible urge that I MUST do a quick trip. I always listen to this unplanned urge because I always find the best stuff when this happens. True to form, I go to the toy section and find a TON of 80’s toys. The highlight was an original Voltron Castle of Lions. It is missing just a few minor parts, but will still fetch over $200. I’ve went through all of it and total list price will be over $1000! It is INCREDIBLY rare to find old toys like this anymore.

 

This week should be quite productive on the ebay front. My wife and kids started to get sick on Friday so I have to work from home this week. My wife and I will get a corona test today or tomorrow at HR’s guidance. I don’t think that is what they have, but protocol is that if anyone in household has symptoms then you can’t come to work until it is proven its not Corona.

[Jay]

It’s like we’re always chasing that high of the big treasure chest of good stuff. I definitely know that excitement when I find a pile of valuable items for cheap that nobody else sees.

Hope you guys just have the seasonal cold. You can probably hear on the recording that I’ve been dealing with a cold.

[annaesthetic23]

I love that gut feeling thrift store phenomenon! Ya gotta go for it!

[simplicio]

Morning all.

Not too much to report… I have been feeling quite burnt out and not done much scavenging, but sales this week were great. I am bidding on an auction at the end of this week and hopefully will get lots of good new inventory.

Sales: CAD$6306, 16 items, COGS: $3833, Fees: ~$851, Postage: $587 –> Gross profit: $1035

The COGS is very high because I am letting my sales this week “pay for” several large lots I got last year (from which lots there is much still left to sell).

Expenses: $0, New inventory: $40 –> Cashflow: $4827

Best sales were a flow cell for liquid chromatography for $1950 (paid about $400), and 3 valves for $1140 (probably paid like $70).

[Jay]

You obviously do very well with these industrial auctions. Its the high dollar sales I always dream about.

Do those industrial items excite you as far as the research and testing? Or is it just a widget that brings good money?

 

[simplicio]

I like a lot of them on a superficial aesthetic level, but I haven’t had occasion to research or test many in great depth. Ultimately just a part number – it’s the money that’s exciting to me I’m afraid!

[Jay]

That’s fair. You mentioned burnout so just wondering if lack of enthusiasm for those items are part of it. That being said, we all get burnt out no matter what we sell. This is why we like having the large inventory so we can “float our burnout” and still keep selling while we recharge.

[simplicio]

Oh I see how you mean! I am primarily burnt out from my day job, which has been quite stressful of late. Ebay scavenging is still fun for me. Alas the online scavenging does require a lot of time and focus which has lately been in short supply – by the time kids are in bed I am already nodding off.

[Doublythumbs]

Nov 1 – 7

• Total Items in Store: 4,015
• Items Sold: 33
• Total Sales :  $1,219
  • * ABOVE yearly average of $1,017
• Highest Price:  $250 (WWII US Military Die Stamping Kit)
• Average Price:  $37
• Returns:  0
• Cost of Goods Sold:  $75
• Costs of Goods Purchased this Week:  $190
• Number of New Items Listed this Week: 31

It was a great week on my end as well. I too think that now that the political tension is easing back a notch, that sales will begin to pick up.

I spoke last week of the online auction items that I picked up last Sunday. I got everything inventoried and I got a lot of amazing stuff, including a whole box full of Russell Wright dinnerware (thank you Steven for pointing that brand out for me). What struck me as I was loading up my van was the situation before me. This was previously a small church converted into an eBay business. There were literally hundreds of cardboard boxes filled with stuff. I overheard the auctioneer talking about the owner and how they were into eBay, and it seemed as if they just had a problem with buying too much inventory. It’s been discussed here on the podcast about the problem of buying so much inventory that it becomes a hoarding problem. This was a prime example if I’ve ever seen one. It was the second auction from this church building and there will probably be two more because it was still packed with hundreds of boxes full of who knows what.

[Retro Treasures WV]

Maybe I’m inventing this in my head, but I swear I’ve heard someone on this site either call into the podcast or post on the forum that they used an old church. This sounds very familiar.

[Retro Treasures WV]

Yep, episode 475.

[Doublythumbs]

I remember that caller. I wanted to ask him if he was the owner of that church. Judging from the way he described it, I’m almost convinced it was. Small country church in West Virginia with a section roped off full of stuff not for sale. If that caller reads this, I’d be curious to know if it was your auction.

[Kentucky Picker]

Warning: Major League Rant ahead.

Wow, this week has gotten off to an outstanding start. Got a message from eBay this morning informing me my account has been restricted for three days b/c of a Vero violation.  Yes, I had two Vero’s earlier this summer. No, I don’t sell counterfeit goods and I’m not a scammer. On the two earlier Vero’s there were plenty of other listings/solds that used the same title. I almost always use a title from a previous sold item. I didn’t fight them b/c they were low dollar items and honestly I didn’t feel like spending the time to argue it. Just not a big deal.

Boy, was I wrong.

Anyway, the offending item that earned me the restriction was a TV remote control with the title ‘Lot of 2 Spectrum Remote URC-1160BC1 With Batteries & Covers URC1160.’ Apparently Spectrum (aka Charter Communications) gets heartburn seeing ‘Spectrum’ in the title. The Vero before this most recent Vero was also a Spectrum remote. So, yes, shame on me for not checking to see if I had any other listings with ‘Spectrum’ in the title.

OK, so here’s my beef with eBay: why are there 401 current listings with ‘Spectrum remote control’ in the title? Why are there ANY listings with  ‘Spectrum’ and ‘remote control’ in the title if Spectrum just hates that? I’m not a software developer, but gee, there just might be ways to program it so any one using those terms in a title would get a warning message.

This is my litmus test in listing anything: do I see other listings that use the same model name/brand name of the item I have? If the answer is yes, that’s a pretty good indication it’s OK to list a similar item. Any reasonable person who sees hundreds of listings using ‘Spectrum remote control’ in the title would think that’s fine. I found in research that eBay has a Vero list of corporations that don’t allow their names in titles, but I also read that a corp doesn’t have to be on the list to get you Vero’ed. I get it — eBay will readily throw smaller sellers overboard to avoid litigation costs.

I understand just because that approach makes sense to me doesn’t mean eBay needs to agree. It’s their platform. But for god’s sake, eBay, could you just provide some clear guidance? The  email itself is a masterpiece of legalistic mumbo jumbo. Not one mention of how to easily avoid going astray. Left unsaid is the threat that we’ll be keeping a real close eye on you, dear esteemed Top Rated Seller.

Good luck with trying to talk to eBay. Appears they’ve shut down phone support for sellers. I just need someone to explain the rules clearly. Right now my fear is I’m going to keep running into the same situation — that is, unknowingly posting stuff that gets Vero’ed until I’m banished permanently.

I’ve been selling on eBay for 3 years, and it’s this type of lack of transparency that’s making me hate the platform.

Please excuse the drama. I just needed to vent and feel this community is a safe place to do it.

Rant Over.

[Retro Treasures WV]

There is a chat function that you can use on the website or the app that is vastly superior to phone support. You even get a text transcript of your messages for your records. If you haven’t used it, you should.

 

[Jay]

I hear you. VEROs are tough because they are very arbitrary. As we’ve said here before, VEROs are like speeding ticket. Everyone is speeding on the freeway, but the cop only stops random people.

I’d take the three day suspension, clean up your store and just dont sell those items again (especially since theyre low dollar).

I also assume you’re restricted from listing new items but you can still sell what you have listed?

[Sharyn]

I always thought “toile” was pronounced “twoy-lee” rhyming with doily, but dictionary.com says “twahl”. (click on the speaker symbol):

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/toile?s=t

There is a clean-out company in my town called “Do Not Throw It Away”. They will come and charge you to take stuff away, but it depends on the items you have “We price by item not by volume because your belongings have value.”. What I understand is, if you have sellable items, they will charge you less. So, if someone wants to clean out a house and doesn’t want to bother with a sale, then they will come, charge you to clean it out, and then sell the stuff.

Anyway, OK week for me. The more valuable items were on commission, so the COGS are a bit high.

Week of Nov 1 – 7
Total Items in Store: 1378 eBay, 32 Etsy
Items Sold: 14 eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $16.75 + $57.38 Commission
Total Sales: $305.38 eBay
Highest Price Sold: $66.50 for Blue Goddess Sajen sterling pendant (commission sale), $28 for vintage hot plate (non-commission)
Average price: $21.80
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 38

[annaesthetic23]

That’s an interesting business model for a clean out company… I wonder if that’s a common way of doing it, especially to give a discount if the items are valuable. Curious!

[Kentucky Picker]

Thanks, I’ll look again for it. I went to ebay.com/sellerhelp and the only chat I saw was automated.

[sonia]

I prefer the chat to the phone support. But I haven’t seen that option recently (did not look very hard for it).  I was able to call in and speak to a rep a day or two ago – so I don’t think phone support is shut off. It may just take a bit more navigating through their seller help pages before you get to a point where you can call. Actually, I didn’t call them – I got them to call me, which was even better.

 

[Kentucky Picker]

Thanks! I will keep searching for a way to get in contact with someone at eBay.

[Retro Treasures WV]

Once in the chat you request to chat with an agent.

[Daysi]

I would list my stats, but they are pretty slim. I’m small time and not that organized. Something to aspire to in 2021.

Just wanted to comment on, was it just me, or was this week’s podcast chock full of information? I never feel “uninformed” after listening, but this week was awesome. And of course, my favorite part-the laughter😁 Thanks  Jay and Ryanne.

I did have a question though. Many times when I get notified of the podcast, I am curious about the initial image you have on the YouTube version (not sure if it shows on other platforms). I always want to know about the item/s shown. Are they items you have sold that week? Things you have listed? They are just really intriguing most times.

[Ryanne]

so glad you find our weekly updates useful!

yes i use an image of something that sold. i try to use images of items we talk about, but sometimes things look cool and we didn’t mention them, so on the thumbnail they go!

[Lukastreasuretrove]

Thanks for the show.

Had a mostly quiet week last week right up till the moment the election winner was announced.  Once that happened the rest of the afternoon was flurry of orders.  Must have been a bunch of people who were sitting in front of their TVs or stuck on Facebook waiting for some resolution.

Accidentally refunded a buyer their whole purchase price when I’d intended to just return partial shipping.  I hate that you have to go into Paypal to make a partial refund. They always prefill the amount with the total.  I had already shipped the item so had little recourse.  Called eBay and they pointed me back to Paypal, then Paypal said there was no recourse except to ask the buyer to pay again.  I sent them an invoice via Paypal along with an explanation and fortunately they paid right away.  I assume the process will be different once I’m on Managed Payments.  It was a $100 sale, so happy there wasn’t a problem.  I’ve always been worried that I’d do that one day.

Week Ending 11/7/20
Total Items in Store: 1247
Items Sold: 17
Gross Sales: $885.98
Net Sales (after fees, shipping, etc.) $647.90
Cost of Items Sold: $49.71
COGS Percent 7.67%
Highest Price Sold: $100.00 Pre-Columbian Vase
Average Price Sold: $38.11
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Sold via promoted listings: 15
Promoted Percentage: 88.24%
Average Days Listed: 322
Longest Listed: 1598
New items listed: 22

[Temudgin]

I had an APO package the week before last that eBay labels couldn’t handle and was able to use Shippo to print a label. Military mail (APO/FPO) must use a customs form but is paid for at US rates and travels within the military mail system once it gets to one of the export processing centers. USPS international service suspensions due to the pandemic do not normally affect military mail. But sometimes there are size and weight restrictions added by local commanders and any host country restrictions on certain types of items generally apply.

11/01/20 – 11/07/20
Total Active Items (3 different IDs): 349
Items Sold: 7
Gross Sales not incl shipping: $161
Highest Price Sold: $54.89 minus $4.57 free shipping – 2000 US Sacagawea Dollar $25 Mint Roll ($25 at the bank in 2000).
Returns:  0
New Listings: 10
$ Spent on New Inventory: $0

[Jay]

That’s good to know. For some reason I thought the US military allowed anything and everything to be shipped to bases since they’re treated like “US soil”.

[Pikapop]

Guys, I’m coming off a 12 day-hot streak this week with 1 sale and 2 returns.

 

ETA: Thanks to everyone willing to ship APO/FPO; eBay glitching aside, a lot of sellers and large commercial chains weren’t always willing to ship. It has changed a bit in the last 5 years but I’m always surprised at the number of companies who won’t ship or who don’t have their address boxes appropriately able to receive that kind of address. We get stationed abroad occasionally so as a buyer I’m always grateful.

[Jay]

Things should pick up. Always be listing 🙂

[Simon]

Thanks for the show R&J.

Here are my numbers for last week:
Total Items in Store: 4215
Items Sold: 47
Total Sales: $878.69
Cost of Items Sold: $138
Average Price Sold: $18.7
Average Cost of Item: $2.96
Highest Price Item Sold: $44.95 Dragonball Z Infinite World Playstation 2 PS2
Number of items listed this week: 75
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 302
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 90

I’m glad you guys had a better week.  I had a pretty quiet week though I noticed that the same thing happened this time last year.

Comments on podcast things:
– I’m still seeing the “This listing hasn’t had any sales in at least 16 months.” note on my active items.
– To find the sold price on a best offer you can use Terrapeak or you can try this site: http://www.slabwatch.com/     If you want to get really geeky, you can open a sold listing that sold for a best offer, view the page source and find the “taxExclusivePrice” which is the price the item sold for. It’s in the HTML but not visible on the page.
– Regarding the Apple Watch that was returned but not really,  I’m hearing that kind of scam a bit recently.  I wonder if this is related to those mystery packages showing up around the country.  My theory is that the scammy buyer opens a return where they have to pay for shipping,  and sends a package containing a random item back to the sellers neighborhood but not to the seller.  Ebay can see that a package was delivered to the sellers zip code and assumes the buyer shipped back to the seller.  The post office can hopefully see where the package was delivered.  I’m not sure how you could prove what the post office tells you though.

Another random topic: With those automatic offers, if you started using them on dozens or hundreds of items, I could see an issue when you wanted to put your store on vacation because there could be open offers out there in the wild that you wont know about so things could sell while you’re starting a vacation.

I hope everyone has a good week!

[annaesthetic23]

Oh man, I hadn’t thought about the open offers/time away/vacation scenario… in the past it seems like having offers open was one of the reasons extra copies of business policies would be created, before Time Away, when you just had to change the handling time in business policies.  I wonder how that will work in this case, because I assume the handling time from the time the offer was sent still applies. Really good question. I’m going to be in a Time Away situation for about a week starting tomorrow (in fact, I’ve already turned it on), so maybe I’ll have some insight about this question next week!

[MyCottage]

Simon, Thanks for the tip about Slabwatch! Do you use the Slabwatch Browser Extension, or just the site itself?

Also, it used to be we could see a buyer’s purchase history on ebay, but they took that ability away some time ago. I’ve been hearing rumors that there’s a way to do it again (probably not through ebay itself). Anyone know anything about that?

[Simon]

@mycottage – I have only used Slabwatch via the website.  I don’t need that information often enough to bother installing a browser extension. (I hadn’t actually noticed that one existed before you mentioned it.)  Typical I sort sold listings using price-sold and that gives me a fair idea of the approximate best-offer sales price. I can’t answer your other question about buyer purchase history.

[Lukastreasuretrove]

Regarding the actual sold price, PicClick also used to supply this but it quit working some time ago, even though they still showed sold items the best offer price wasn’t correct.  Within the last two weeks they removed sold lookup altogether.  I emailed them to see what was up and they explained that eBay took issue with it and they aren’t allowed to show solds any longer.  Kinda sucks as their interface is so much easier that eBays normal search or the Terapeak lookup.

Also, note that Worthpoint doesn’t show actual sold price on offers either.  Really brings its value into question if you can’t trust the prices.  I know I really bid up a painting I bought a few years ago based on its sold price there.  I subsequently sold the painting on eBay for best offer but the buyer never paid.  Now, that painting shows on Worthpoint as a sale at that price.

Really wish eBay would step up their game with Terapeak.  They purchased the company then gutted the product and only provide a fraction of the earlier functionality.  I’d be happy to pony up a premium to get accurate prices, a good and helpful search interface, and 3 – 5 years of history.

[annaesthetic23]

Another great episode, and just in time! I agree that it was chock-full of information. It is totally all about the work in my store this week, to be sure! Thanks to everyone who ordered a copy of my book this past week, too! I was (and still am) so excited to send them out to you!

It’s been wild, guys. On the eBay front, a couple of major things happened this past week. The first is that I helped a friend clean out a 10×20 storage unit she had rented to basically just store an entire household of stuff leftover from an estate sale she happened upon by pure serendipity. Her plan was to get around to selling it, because she could tell it was valuable and the people running the sale were all too happy to let her have it all for free in exchange for her cleaning it out. However, that was a couple of months ago. Right after that happened, she kind of realized that while she had great instincts, she didn’t really have a plan to actually move the items, and she got kind of overwhelmed.

So we have partnered to get all of this stuff sold! It’s basically a major consignment operation, but I wish you guys could see this stuff! It turns out, this was no ordinary estate sale! It was that of an antiques collector and artist who had SO MUCH COOL STUFF packed to the gills in her house. Some of it had not seen the light of day outside of her attic since the early 80s. And the clean out itself was quite unorganized, so everything is just thrown together in boxes. Every single box is like a fun treasure chest, and I’ve certainly got my work cut out for me organizing and culling the inventory. I had no idea when I agreed to help her move everything what percentage of the stuff would make good inventory, but I lucked out. In the first two boxes I found 60 things to list and there must be at least 6 months of inventory to list still to be sorted. We got everything out of her unit on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I’ve been continuing to wrangle/sort the inventory on my own every day since. I’ve made a tiny dent. It’s bananas.

In summary, I get 6+ months of free inventory (of course, I’ll pay out her chunk of the profit each month as it sells, but I don’t have to cashflow anything additional if I don’t want to), it’s mostly awesome vintage stuff (so many goo gaws, holy cow), and she gets to not deal with monthly storage unit expense or reinvent the wheel to create a system to sell the items. I just plug them into my process and off we go!

Fortunately, with a broad stroke of sorting while cleaning out her 10×20 unit, we were able to get a bunch of stuff that was ultimately trash, donatable, or larger furniture that she wanted to sell via Facebook Marketplace separated from the rest of the stuff. This lead me to go ahead and take the plunge of renting my own storage unit, which I had been teetering on the edge of doing already. So now, I’m the proud renter of a shiny new 10×10 unit 5 minutes from my house for a great price, and all those treasure boxes are piled up halfway to the ceiling. I actually love the sorting/culling/logging/researching part of things, and fortunately, I have an awesome helper still doing photos for me every week, so my weeks are going to look a lot like sorting/organizing the unit and then listing her drafts for the next few months. I am really grateful I can keep getting stuff listed at a decent pace with her help! I think this whole project will probably interfere with my goal of getting to a “full” 10k item store by the end of the year, but so far it seems a worthy detour. I guess we’ll see!

Whew! Thanks if you made it through that whole story with me. It’s been a very high energy week around here haha! I am also very glad that the national stress level/sales correlation seems to have moved back in a more favorable direction for sellers; I definitely noticed that, even in all this storage unit chaos! Okay, numbers time:

November 1-7, 2020
Number of Active Listings: 7720
Items Sold: 54
Gross Sales (including shipping): $1117.58
Cost of Items Sold: $40.88
Highest Price: $70.31 (A vintage orange punch bowl with 12 cups and clips… this thing was a beast! I had gotten it for free over 3 years ago and can’t believe it finally sold!)
Average Price: $20.69 (my all-time average is more like $27, so this was kind of a bummer haha!)
Returns: 0

Time for a second cup of Sumatran – here’s to a week of holiday-level sales for all of us! Cheers!

 

[gargolfer]

10/31/20-11/6/20

Total Items In Store: 2090
Items Sold: 32
Gross Sales: $717
Highest Price Sold: $70 (New Corning Spice of Life Menu-Ette Set)
Average Price Sold: $22.40

Returns:  1 $60
Money Spent on New Inventory: $26
Number of items listed: 11

 

• Another pretty poor week in sales. Sales really started to pick up at the end of the week, though.  Hoping the end of the election puts people in a buying mood.
• The weather has been beautiful here, so I didn’t list much this week. Spent most of the week working outside before the northern Illinois weather catches up to us.
• Hit a small estate auction this week that was poorly attended. I got about a half truckload of stuff for $26.  Quite a few box lots with single items that will sell for enough to pay for the entire auction.

[Sharpp]

There is exactly ONE tape dispenser that professionals should be using: the 3M Scotch H180. Nothing else that I’ve tried has even come close!

[Simon]

I thought the caller was asking about a desk tape dispenser.  I have one like this which holds 2″ tape and regular small tape and a place for scissors.  I use it every day (in addition to a tape gun for sealing boxes): https://www.amazon.com/Officemate-Weighted-Dispenser-Recycled-96660/dp/B07CT3WGX6

[mscellaneous]

I thought I would add my 2 cents in about the missing offer accepted prices and even the lack of buyers screens names in bidding situations. It might have to do with the combination of GDPR and Ebay realizing the value in their data.

GDPR are the rules adopted by most? EU countries regarding its citizen’s digital privacy. I’m in IT and the nightmare of figuring out what to do with existing data and future data for EU customers is never ending. The protections offered in the GDPR are wide and sort of vague in some ways. But companies have had to jump to try to make saved data compliant however possible and show that future data will be collected according to the person’s wishes.

The other big factor could simply be Ebay seeing the goldmine data wise that 2 decades of exact purchases records with dates, names, prices, catagorization, etc. is. Why share that when they can sell it.

[Jay]

These are probably good reasons. But eBay has been so valuable to sellers because you could see “solds” and what the market is. The more they hide that info, the more difficult it is to sell. I hate Etsy because sold history is hidden.

[OldNorth]

Week of Nov 1 – 7
Total Items in Store: 174
Items Sold: 8
Cost of Items Sold: $46
Total Sales: $166.93
Highest Price Sold: $49.99 (Nikon lens)
Average price: $20.86
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 30

Couldn’t live up to last weeks sales, but that wasn’t a surprise.    I think my favorite sale this week was a parted out nerf gun.  I actually sold it a couple weeks ago as a functioning gun and then realized it was broken before I shipped it (thankfully), so I ended up cancelling that order.  Instead of junking it, I decided I would dismantle it and sell it as a parts lot instead.  It sold this week and I got more money for it than I did as a functioning gun.  🙂  Probably not really worth the time, but it’s fun messing around with Nerf and it rescued an otherwise bad buy.

[Antique Frog]

The other big factor could simply be Ebay seeing the goldmine data wise that 2 decades of exact purchases records with dates, names, prices, catagorization, etc. is.

There’ll be a few months worth of Beanie Baby “values” in there. 🙂  And this year’s sales of Swiss cheese plants and rare begonias.

Is your cheese plant worth a small fortune?

 

[Antique Frog]

Maybe eBay will use the database for training neural networks.

[Author]

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