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Check out our coffee! ► broadporchcoffee.com Join the conversation in the forum>> Our Store Week March 21-27, 2021 Total Items in Store: 7568
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 507: The Professionalization of Online Selling] -
Total Items For Sale: 68 eBay (+1 on The Real Real)
Profit: $54.59
Items Sold: 3
Items Listed: 8 (Goal Achieved!)
Average Profit: $18.20
Highest Profit: $22.29 (Minnie Mouse Baby Fork)
Goal This Week: 1 Listing (Probably will get more but I need to handle a few things.)
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Great job meeting your goals!
About how long does it take for you to create a listing?
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Thanks, Retro Treasures WV (I have family in Ranson, btw). Nice job on your sales!
My listings range. I could give two answers: 30 minutes or 52 minutes
I batch things together much better now, following Anna’s model in her book. So, if I averaged all the main tasks, I’m spending between 20-30 minutes a listing. However, I track all my hours on eBay pretty much down to the minute. This year so far I have averaged 52 minutes worked for ever listing I have produced. That includes record keeping, organization, pulling out items I started to photograph because I see a stain or rip that I missed (not bought, just given to me by my family), and drive time, etc. And I am still in the stage of boxing EVERYTHING before I list it. It creates less stress when I get 2-4 sales within a few days and I’m juggling kids and work.
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It would be a shame if regulatory compliance burdens curtailed small online selling as they have done so many other more conventional industries.
OTOH, I have often wondered how much stuff is being fenced on ebay. Surely it’s not zero. Or maybe it’s more typical for ebay to be one step up the food chain, so fences are selling to ebay resellers whatever they can’t move locally very easily? IDK. I have to say I have only once or twice bought something that seemed fishy at the time. Probably we are just not selling the kind of stuff people bother to steal, on account of its being long tail.
I had a good week on ebay. Got an auction haul on Thursday, only spent $1000 but it was a decent haul.
Funniest thing was – in some of the inventory I bought, I found packing slips with my old company’s address on them. So just to recap – the company was dissolved for dumb reasons, I got severance, landed a new job right away, and then they dumped their surplus tools & inventory on an auction house, and I bought some and will make a profit on them. =) Feeling very smug.
Also finally splurged on a used generator… the texas storm gave me all the memento mori I needed to do that.
Had a great week on ebay.
Sales: CAD$5870, 21 sales, COGS: $795, Fees: ~$788, Postage: $331 –> Gross profit: $3957
Expenses: $171, New inventory: $777 –> Cashflow: $3804
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That’s right. Are you the one who was babysitting a warehouse for a year while waiting for the company to dissolve?
Did you end up in another full time job in a similar field?
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Happy Sunday
Total Items in Shop:856
Items Sold on Ebay: 7
Items Sold on FB: 1
Sales total: $274
COGS: $19
Total Sales after FVF: $220
I’ve been spending all day listing the last of my single piece sheet music. I sell it for anywhere between 17-24, so not super high dollar, but they are the easiest thing in the world to ship. I’m also in that premium store sweet spot so although having 200 listings of sheet music in a 1000 item store sucked, paying the same amount for what can be a 10,000 store is awesome. However, I think I have about 10 hours sunk into this project since January, so right now my hourly rate is only like $12 an hour for them, but now that everything’s listed I hope I can just mail a few off a month and have a bonus $50 or so that I wouldn’t otherwise have.
Re: Georgia, I’d be interested to know if the solution is just to open a PO box and have the mailing address as your contact info. I have one anyways that I ship out of, so it wouldn’t be much of a difference. Spooky though.
Double Boxing is always a win.
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Forgot to mention, I’m in step 2 of the Listperfectly experiment. After FBM sales have dropped drastically, I’m taking my stuff down and relisting it to see if I have the same boost of sales as I did when I first put everything up. I am about 300 listings up at this point with no sales, so this might be a dud. I can do it very quickly, which is nice, I usually just do about 100 listings a day while waiting for the girlfriend to make breakfast, but if it’s not actually generating money, it aint worth it.
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Items in Store 1503
Items Sold 27
Total Sales $1,167.00
COGS $105.00
Total Profit $1,062.00
Average profit $39.33
Average sales price $43.22
New Listings 93
Items scavenged 15
Sourcing Allotment 28So March is typically my worst month of the year. Crappy weather, post holiday blues, empty bank accounts from paying off holidays – I assume that is why March sales suck. This year though, March ruled for my store!
March 2019 March 2020 March 2021
Items sold: 67 Items sold: 65 Items sold: 97
Sales: $1690 Sales: $1695 Sales: $3679
I worked from home some this week, which freed me up to get a bit more ebay work done than I usually can. Hopefully the extra listing pays off this week as I listed lots of big ticket items from the power wheelchair part out.
In other news, with all this extra ebay money, absurd stimulus money, plus pay increase at day job I’ve started planning a home addition. I created scale floor plans for my house in AutoCAD, and have started to design the addition.
The 2 story addition will take us from 2050 sq ft, 2.5 bath, 3 br to 3000 sq ft, 3.5 bath, 5 br. I plan to contract all the framing, roofing, plumbing/HVAC/electrical rough-ins and do all the interior and some of the exterior work myself to keep costs down.
We simply love our neighborhood and location, but our house is simply too dang small. We’ve winged it long enough since our kids are small, but that ain’t gonna fly much longer.
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Total Items in Store: 159
Items Sold: 9
Total Sales: $124.50
Highest Price Sold: $20 VHS Bloody New Year
Back to normal for me, which is just fine! Bummed I hit the 200 free item listing limit for us small fry, but not too unhappy as I had a sick dog to take care of. I will be taking pictures and prepping for my listing frenzy this Thursday. No scavenging which is also fine as I have the stuff to prep from the last 2 weeks.
I really need to spend time doing the storeroom/packing area cleaning and organizing. It is amazing how quickly things get out of control. I can’t hardly walk in my box room and the packing table is crowded with things to list. I was lucky everything that is selling is easy to pack lately!
Weather is so nice I am seeing lots more yard sales popping up, and hear tell that traffic at the antique mall is way down. I wonder if the nice weather will slow online sales as well. April is when I have my big garage sale, all the stuff I downsize from the house and store. I will do spring cleaning and pull stuff off eBay too, polish the older good listings and generally do some spring cleaning. My state opens up covid vaccinations to all next month, hope I can use some internet skills to get an appointment quickly! Then I will really start hunting again, it will be good to be back at auctions and shows again, I missed the thrill of the hunt!
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Thanks for the podcast R&J
Here are my numbers for the week:
Items Sold: 64
Total Sales: $1315.52
Cost of Items Sold: $194
Average Price Sold: $20.56
Average Cost of Item: $3.04
Highest Price Item Sold: $59.95 Panasonic DVD VCR Player Combo
Number of items listed this week: 89 worth approx. $1945
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +25%
Hats sold this week: 51 (79% of sales) worth $929 (70% of sales $)The changes to distribution of 1099s that was mentioned in this week’s podcast is applicable to the 2022 tax year so people wont see those till 2023 and many people are going to get a nasty shock. I was interested to see discussions in various places online about that. I’m surprised by the number of people saying that small sellers shouldn’t have to get 1099s, it’s not fair etc etc. I think of all the people working in minimum wage jobs that pay taxes and dont get a choice. Ultimately, if everyone paid their fair share of taxes (including the ultra rich and large corporations), taxes would be lower for all of us. Steps down from his soapbox.
We had a few garage sales around nearby this weekend and I bumped into regular garage sale (buyers) folk that I haven’t seen in the last 12 months. I feel a very gradual return towards normal in the air. The first offices in the Bay Area reopened this week including Uber.
My big sale of the weekend was some high end stereo equipment that I bought from a rich person garage sale. I paid up for it but I’m hoping the returns will be good.
I hope everyone has a fun and profitable week.
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So in regards to going down in a store subscription in April…which I plan to do as well on my cheerleader uniform store. The eBay rep I spoke to on eBay for Business told me I could do it anytime from now until the end of April and if I see the charge on my next invoice, I need to let eBay know and they will back it out.
Question: Are you going to order supplies first and then go down a level? I’m holding out until April 1st so I can do this.
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For some reason, I thought that taxidermy animals were forbidden on eBay. I see them at auction occasionally, but never bid. Maybe they are only prohibited internationally?
I’m still waiting to get an “official” announcement from eBay that they won’t charge us, but I’m planning to downgrade from premium down to basic. Like itemsfromthesouth, I’m also looking to use my eBay supplies coupon first.
I can’t imagine that the Georgia law will prevail. It seems like such an invasion of privacy. Maybe someone will take it to the Supreme Court. If it ever affected me, I guess I would rent a PO Box, which I thought about before but never did. Maybe it will be a boon to the USPS if every reseller suddenly needs one.
Strange, but I just had five feedbacks today after a few days of quiet.
Week of March 21 – 27
Total Items in Store: 1361 eBay, 44 Etsy
Items Sold: 26 eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $31.45 + $31.50 Commission
Total Sales: $799.66
Highest Price Sold: $300 Large set of vintage Wellner (German) silver plate flatware
Average price: $30.76
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 12I had a great week, mostly due to my highest sale, plus an $80 typewriter.
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3-22-21 to 3-28-21
Total Items in Store: 1262
Items Sold: 13
Gross Sales: 249.71
Net Sales: 161.20
Cost of Items Sold: $ 4
Highest Price Sold: $ 49.94 Anime blu ray
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 52Steady sales and more listing. No complaints.
Seems like I’ve had more luck with sending out offers lately. I tend to get 3-4 sales a month from offers. This month I’ve had at least 10, if not more.
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3/21/21 – 3/27/21
Total items in store: 2275
Items sold: 58
Gross sales: $2766.48 (up 146.7% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1931.96 (up 138.3% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $132.64 — an autographed hat button rookie card of former Washington Football Team quarterback Dwayne Haskins, now on the Pittsburgh Steelers, from Panini’s expensive National Treasures set
Lowest price sold (net): $3.53 — another rookie card of Australian NBA player Joe Ingles — $8 best offer going all the way to Australia (I paid just over $1 for the card so technically it’s profit but yikes)
This week felt slow throughout, and that culminated in an extremely slow weekend this past Friday/Saturday/Sunday — typically I have 25-30 packages to bring to the post office on a Monday, but this week I only had a dozen. I’m not even a little upset about it — this last year has been so tremendous for me, but also a ton of work. This weekend had to be my first in months with less than 20 packages to do, so it almost felt like a break. I’m eager to take a true break in a month or two once I’m vaccinated and have gotten through some of my many unlisted boxes of cards.
Tracking these numbers has been so useful to me, not only to give me kind of a feel from week to week but also to help me notice trends. For example, as much as it makes me somewhat happy that I can package up a basketball card of an obscure player in New Jersey and send it in a padded yellow envelope which makes it all the way to Australia in a few short weeks, I either need to raise my shipping rate to Australia (which is already $15) or, more realistically, never take an offer below $10 on an international package.
One other note (why not) on the high priced sale. Here is my listing in case anyone’s curious what a $100+ modern football card looks like. A couple tidbits about the card, and type of card, in particular.
First is that the player on the card, Dwayne Haskins was a first-round quarterback picked a mere two years ago (so he’s quite young) but is not off to the best start to his career. In fact, he’s already been released by his original team and signed on with a new one for a much lesser contract. This was all because of his own boneheaded mistakes, the types most young people make but obviously there is a bigger microscope when you’re a pro athlete. Haskins broke Covid protocols a few times and made some incredibly poor plays. Maybe he could have gotten away with one or the other, but with both issues, the team was so frustrated that they actually released him midseason, quite rare in football and especially for young quarterbacks. Haskins is a backup on his new team, which has already said they’ll give him a chance but expect that he makes no mistakes. So he’s a young player with some potential (higher prices on his cards) but has by no means shown the most potential (so lower than same-age players who are succeeding) and probably one mistake away from being cut again (lower prices still since he’s on a short leash). In a year, the card could be worth significantly more (if Haskins has gotten a chance with his new team and is flourishing), about the same (if he hasn’t played much) or significantly less (if he has made more boneheaded mistakes and his new team parts ways with him). That’s too much volatility for my taste.
Part of why this card was so expensive is the set it’s from, National Treasures, which in 2019 ran over $1000 per 4 card box. This year’s National Treasures set was even more expensive and next year there are expected to be quarterbacks taken with the #1, #2, #3 and #4 picks in the draft for the first time in NFL history, and prices will go up accordingly. Despite the hefty price tag, many of the cards from these boxes are regular autographs or jersey cards which regularly sell for $20 each or less. A hat button card is one of the “nicer” and lower numbered inserts, and if the player were more successful than Haskins it would sell for multiple hundreds, potentially thousands if the player is a real star. While the Haskins card is a nice one, it’s by no means the most unique or interesting card in the set — for example, this booklet card (not my listing) with jersey swatches from about 25 rookies or this cut signature card (also not my listing) of Fred Rogers, yes the TV presenter who was everyone’s favorite neighbor.
Last, the Haskins card was actually damaged in multiple places even though it’s just a few years old. I bought it that way, from an eBay auction a few months prior when Haskins’s card values were at their lowest, right after Haskins had been released from his first team and while he was still looking for a team to take a chance on him. The most noticeable damage happened primarily because of the card’s thickness — at some point as it bounced from place to place before it ended up (temporarily) in my ownership, it developed a slight tear beneath the button inset. I disclosed that tear, along with the card’s other flaws, in multiple places in my listing and waited for the right buyer to come along who wanted the card despite its imperfections. This level of damage makes the card practically worthless to some collectors, but my experience is that not every collector is out for a card in gem perfect condition, even if a lot of people involved in the sports card bubble will focus on grading and condition. I sell a few graded cards every week, and I understand the appeal of them. But mostly I sell imperfect, ungraded modern cards that are unique or interesting in some way, and I try to make an honest listing with good pictures and package them like they are special to me since they’re certainly special to the buyer. (knock on wood) that’s worked well for me for a few years now.
I spent more time taking photos than listing this week (nice to have that luxury) but I’m looking forward to getting some listings done tomorrow or Wednesday while listening to the podcast. Happy start of the new quarter, everyone. I hope you all have a great week of sales with buyers spending all their eBay bucks in your store.
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March 21 – 27
- Total Items in Store: 4,098
- Items Sold: 40
- Total Sales: $2,560
- * WAY ABOVE yearly average of $1,095
- Highest Price: $1,050 (Lot of rare Sony SHF Cassette Tapes New Old Stock)
- Honorable Mention: $275 (The Queen’s Gambit 1st Edition Hardback Book)
- Average Price: $64
- Returns: 0
- Cost of Goods Sold: $99
- Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
- Number of New Items Listed this Week: 22
It was a fantastic week over on my end. Several hundred + dollar sales really brought up my average, plus that fantastic sale of the Sony audio cassette tapes. I struck a deal with the buyer for the whole lot of them (I originally had them for sale individually). I normally wouldn’t have done so, but the sale was too good to decline. He got a good deal considering what they’ve previously sold for, and I got a quick thousand bucks. I know I left money on the table there, but I also know it may have likely taken a year or more to sell them all individually.
Also, I took a bit less for The Queen’s Gambit book than I originally wanted, but I think the hype from the Netflix show is past its prime, plus the book was a library copy with handwriting and such. I was happy for the sale.
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Was it an ebay seller that bought your cassette tapes, I’ve sold quite a few to a dr.bo who sells single tapes. By the way, those are highly prized tapes.
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I’m not sure if they were a reseller or not. It may have been an alt account if they were since they didn’t have anything for sale on their store page. I’m really glad I did the research on those tapes. I know I probably left a few hundred dollars on the table taking the offer, but I couldn’t pass up that kind of money up front. And now I have a lot more knowledge on cassette tapes for the future.
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Doublythumbs,
As a former book flipper who misses library sales terribly, I have to tell you how impressed I am with a $275 sale on an ex-library book! Looks like you got a great price, too, with a lot of comparables (in terms of condition) in the sub-$200 range.
I watched and enjoyed the Queen’s Gambit show, but never would have guessed there would be such a market for the book it was based on, even a first edition. But chess is a very niche subject and prices on niche things (especially limited things like a first edition or first printing) can always surprise you.
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@craig-rex Yeah, I was really excited to accept that offer. First editions were getting $400 when the show first came out on Netflix, but with those kinds of hypes you’ve gotta jump on the trend quick to make the most profit.
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March was an average month for me. I spent quite a lot of time combining two separate storage locations into one bigger location. I’ve been saving quite a lot of stuff and junk ever since I was a teenager, now that most of it is in one location, I plan to try doing a few MaxSold online auctions to clear out some of the clutter.
March 2021
Total listings: 1229
Items sold: 55
Sales: $1179.70
Highest price sold: $95 – 1862-1874 Chinese Painted Plate
Average price sold: $21.45
Cost of items sold: $146.13 / Average cost: 3.65 each
Spent on new inventory: $3.99 (Tiki mug from Goodwill)
Number of items listed: 52From eBay Performance Page:
Gross Sales: $1,651.96 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $1,069.09 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes) -
I don’t usually post my numbers but I just finished my best month ever. I hope each month is more profitable than the last (not an easy feat since my sales tend to drop after March each year)
March 2021
Total listings as of today: 1,359 (459 are cross posted to Poshmark)
Items sold: 178 (148 on eBay; 30 on Poshmark)
Sales: $6,407.17
Highest price sold: $184 Johnny Was Dress
Highest profitable item sold: $129.99 a Hitler book I bought for $1
Average price sold: $36
Cost of items sold: $1,266.56 / Average cost: $7.12 each
Approximate new listings in March: 202 (eBay only – not counting Posh since those are crossposted)
I normally don’t break $200 in sales on Poshmark but thanks to an epic clothing haul, I currently have a lot of higher end labels which do better over on Posh. I had $1,613 in sales on Posh in March. Ebay will always be my #1 platform but I like Poshmark for clothing because I get higher prices and returns are only allowed if the buyer was misled about the item condition. -
3/21/21 – 3/27/21 Total Active Items (2 different IDs): 342 Items Sold: 17 Gross Sales: $298 Highest Price Sold: $44 – 1980s vintage Mola from Panama (distinctive indigenous multi-layer cloth art). Returns: 0 (but two refunds before shipping: the first a challenge coin that I could not find and the second an immediate cancellation after paying, for buying the wrong item, supposedly). COGS: $61 (including commissions but not including cost of any family castoffs sold) New Listings: 12 $ Spent on New Inventory: $9.45
I do lament the professionalization of eBay. There are more barriers to entry every year, which means fewer and fewer snipe-able goodies from clueless new sellers. Some are still trying though – I was just looking at an item what was listed for local pickup but said “I DO SHIP” in the title where the seller couldn’t figure out eBay shipping (or any of the other myriad online options out there, either). And yes, when I win an item from someone like that, I do ask them to be sure and pack well. Sometimes they ignore me, like the last two items I bought. One was a lot with glass in it that broke due to poor packing, and another lot of multiple items came thrown a 9×11 manila envelope that miraculously arrived intact.
Awesome stuffed wolf and I love that it was a dump find. “Scavengers” yes, but “treasure hunters” even better, and that was treasure.
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Probably 80% of the messages I get from buyers are about packaging, and the content of most feedback comments is about packaging. The last complaint I had, which was in a positive feedback comment, was about a book that had been damaged- I had just shoved it into a padded envelope and the envelope had partly been torn. Mea culpa.
A friend bought an electric guitar off an eBay newbie a couple of years back. It arrived damaged, wrapped in a folded-over piece of cardboard. I haven’t bought anything from a private seller on eBay since the last century- that was a Rolleiflex that arrived with the packing sellotaped to the camera.
You know what would really make a difference- IKEA-style packaging that’s secure but impossible to re-use without a four-page manual on reassembly.
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Interesting that you mention Ikea packaging. Saturday I received in the mail from Ikea a 12x12x12 box which was full of brown packing paper. What was it? It was two of Ikea’s iconic shopping bags, which were folded and should have shipped in a polymailer. I guess they wanted to make sure they arrived undamaged. 🙂
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