Home › Forums › Weekly Numbers › Scavenger Life Episode 509: Everyone Doing Back Flips
- This topic has 54 replies, 21 voices, and was last updated 2 years, 11 months ago by Lauren.
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04/11/2021 at 2:51 pm #87388
Check out our coffee! ► broadporchcoffee.com Join the conversation in the forum>> Our Store Week April 4-10, 2021 Total Items in Store: 7555 I
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 509: Everyone Doing Back Flips] -
04/11/2021 at 4:27 pm #87391
@Ryanne I am 100% not certain that eBay will issue a 1099-k based on Net Earnings after their fees. In all likelihood they will send a 1099k for the gross earnings (including sales tax). I think the community is headed for a bit of a train wreck come tax time for 2021. I would strongly suggest downloading the monthly earnings reports that summarizes all fees on a quarterly basis.
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04/11/2021 at 4:33 pm #87392
You think eBay will send a 1099 and not tell us how much we paid in taxes (unless you download quarterly reports?)
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04/13/2021 at 1:30 am #87444
1099s report revenue info. I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that next year’s 1099 will be any different to this year’s 1099. We’re still going to have to document all expenses (including ebay expenses) on our tax returns.
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04/11/2021 at 4:36 pm #87393
I was also way off when talking about the first person who recorded a FOUR minute mile. (I said five minute mile). It was Roger Bannister in 1954: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bannister
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04/11/2021 at 7:23 pm #87399
- April 4 – 10
- Total Items in Store: 4,155
- Items Sold: 30
- Total Sales: $731
- * BELOW yearly average of $1,095
- Highest Price: $85 (Double Brass Student Lamp w/ Handpainted Globes)
- Average Price: $36
- Returns: 0
- Cost of Goods Sold: $24
- Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
- Number of New Items Listed this Week: 30
My sales were kinda slow this past week. Things weren’t too bad until Friday when sales just stopped. Saturday was pretty dead too. Then today (Sunday), I sold five things before noon. I wonder if it was something weird happening with the site, or if it was just coincidence.
That data recording machine that I mentioned last week is kind of working now. I got my dad to replace a couple capacitors that blew. Unfortunately, the thing is still not working as intended. I’m pretty sure it was donated to the electronics recycling center because it was faulty and this place decided to auction it off along with tons of other equipment they’ve received. Very shady! They told me that they’re having another auction just like this in a few weeks, so I’ll watch it to see if stuff sells for a lot cheaper. I wouldn’t mind paying a couple bucks for something to part out knowing it’s not working.
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04/13/2021 at 9:58 am #87450
@doublythumbs – That sucks about the item not working. I think a lot of places do that. I’m beginning to think that “Not Tested” means not working. I have several stereo components sitting in my death pile that I purchased at auctions like this. Is it something you can part out or is it too obscure? Good luck.
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04/13/2021 at 10:52 am #87456
If an item isnt working or we cant guarantee if it works, we list as “NOT Working or FOR PARTS”. Just saying “not tested” isnt enough IMHO.
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04/13/2021 at 10:56 am #87457
It’s pretty obscure based how very little information there is about it online. Just a thread about a guy selling his years ago. It’s called a Gould Recorder 6500 if you want to try. Judging by the brand and how well it was constructed, I think the thing would have cost a fortune back in the 1980s. I think I can part out some of it. The knobs and reel motor for sure. Maybe some of the electrical components that aren’t affected by the issues it’s having.
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04/13/2021 at 11:23 am #87459
Oh, so this is more like scientific equipment than stereo, right? I see some reference to Gould being used at NASA.
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04/11/2021 at 7:32 pm #87402
@Jay I think they will issue 1099s the same way Paypal did. Paypal issues their 1099’s based on gross sales. I’m pretty sure the corporate entities are required to show the gross about paid out. I am open to being wrong on this one (I hope I am) but from the limited research I did thats what it sounds like.
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04/11/2021 at 7:54 pm #87404
I guess we’ll see. It would be very weird if eBay didnt show you what you’re paid and what they took out. Especially taxes: how would you know what sales taxes were paid when you didnt pay them.
Ultimately, its all a solvable problem. But will it be easy or hard.
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04/13/2021 at 1:34 am #87445
ebay’s 1099 apparently do NOT include sales tax that was collected and remitted to the states by ebay. Source: https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/ebay-form-1099k?id=4794
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04/13/2021 at 10:49 am #87454
This is great news and as should be expected. I’d think that the 1099 from Managed payments should only include the payment we receive.
From your link, that page actually doesnt say what is included or excluded:
Your Form 1099-K includes the gross amount of all reportable payment transactions and does not include any adjustments, for example, credits, discounts, fees, refunds, or any other adjustable amounts. This means that the gross amount reported on your Form 1099-K may not be the final reportable amount on your tax return. You should consult your tax advisor for financial reconciling of this information.
What does “all reportable payment transactions” mean?
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04/13/2021 at 12:12 pm #87465
What does “all reportable payment transactions” mean?
I would take that to me payments received from customers.
I use my own records for doing my taxes because, surprisingly, it’s almost impossible to reconcile exactly against any of ebays numbers. As long as you are not claiming your revenue is below the number totals on 1099s that you receive, there’s no reason for the IRS to question you.
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04/13/2021 at 10:51 am #87455
Right, should show the gross amount sent to our bank account. Not the taxes paid that we never touched?
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04/11/2021 at 7:34 pm #87403
@Jay as a point of example I have a few rental properties which are managed by a rental company. Even though management fees are taken before I receive payment, the 1099 from that company is for the gross rent. I can deduct the management fee but Uncle Sam whats to know my gross earnings.
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04/12/2021 at 8:02 am #87412
Morning all!
I had a good week on ebay.
Sales: CAD$3943, 18 sales, COGS: $599, Fees: ~$548, Postage: $439 –> Gross profit: $2357
Expenses: $0, New inventory: $0 –> Cashflow: $2956
Weird bug this week. Ebay sent old (~2 week old) buyer messages to me again on my phone, as if they were new. I confusedly replied to a couple of them before I cottoned on. It also seems to have re-sent messages and payment reminders to a few old buyers, who messaged me asking what I wanted, they already paid and received their items. Thankfully this only seems to have happened about 3-4 times.
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04/12/2021 at 8:14 am #87413
Also, I started implementing a full SKU system. The way I did this was to follow the procedure here.
-Used File Exchange on ebay to download a sheet with all my listings
-Added SKUs (mine look like: i00001, i00002, etc.)
-Added the same skus to my tracking sheet (this is a pain because some listing titles are not EXACTLY how I described the item in my sheet. Particularly bad for old inventory. Took several hours to reconcile ebay and my tracker and I still have a bit left to do.)
-In my tracking sheet, I now append a suffix to the SKU relating to location. So e.g., i012345-b50 refers to item 012345 in bin 50. I like this because keeping the location and SKU in the same text string makes me less worried about an excel screwup where rows get all garbled.
So now when something sells, the SKU pops up in ebay, I look it up in my tracking sheet, and I see SKU+LOCATION along with all the other stuff like COGS for that item.
Big takeaway: there are a quite a lot (maybe 50 so far) of items in my tracking sheet that are not listed on ebay. I don’t know what % of these are actually orphaned inventory versus stuff where I disposed of the item and forgot to update the tracker. But I suspect at least 50%. Will be digging into this further…
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04/12/2021 at 9:41 am #87417
I had the same thing happen earlier last week. I received a message from a buyer stating that they will pay for an item that I accepted a best offer for. The thing was, they already paid several weeks ago. I figured it must have been a glitch in the system.
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04/12/2021 at 10:00 am #87418
All these glitches are making me nervous…
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04/12/2021 at 9:34 am #87415
Items in Store 1545
Items Sold 28
Total Sales $1,254.00
COGS $122.00
Total Profit $1,132.00
Average profit $40.43
Average sales price $44.79
New Listings 46
Items scavenged 8
Sourcing Allotment 19Sales were rocking all week long and then the weekend happened. I had no sales or offers from late Friday night until 10pm on Sunday. The weird thing about it was that I had very few offers to send to buyers as well, which seems to indicate I had very low page views. I have the occasional day without sales, but that 48 hour period was abnormally quiet all around.
Yard sales were terrible this weekend. I bought 3 small things – that’s it. My Sunday Goodwill run netted another of those collapsible golf bag carrier things that I’ll sell for $300. It’s the second one I’ve got from that Goodwill. There was another reseller couple there that used the “grab anything/everything of value and then sit back in a corner and research it all” method. Good for them. I’ve done that many times. Seeing it from outside it is pretty interesting to witness. I decided not to engage them in conversation since my family was ready to go.
On Thursday I went through my old listings. In a store of 1500+ listings, I had just under 250 listings that were older than 1/1/2019. I decided to slash the prices of all the non-special commodity listings older than 1/1/2019, which was pretty much all of them. Anything truly special that old has already sold. That resulted in a few sales already, so yay!
Dodged another bullet by checking buyer feedback. Buyer messaged me about some shoes. Insulted my item, insulted my price, then asked if I take offers. I responded that they can make an offer. I got another message from them demanding that I thoroughly wash the shoes and take new pictures before they consider an offer. This was at about 10:30pm Friday night. By the time I woke up, they had sent another message upset that I had not responded to their request yet. Yep, that’s alot of red flags, time to check feedback. Sure enough, numerous negatives. I was able to piece together through their neg feedbacks and the seller responses that this is an overseas buyer who uses a shipping service out of Portland and they regularly try to extort sellers. They also apparently ask a bunch of these weird questions and try to negotiate after the sale as they had left multiple negatives stating that the seller had cancelled the sale.
I blocked the buyer and sent them this reponse:
I don’t think you’ll be happy with these shoes. You should probably buy a new pair since they are similarly priced.
BTW, they aren’t similarly priced as the buyer claimed they were in his first message. My BIN price is 1/3 of retail and is in alignment with similar solds. I have ignored all further messages from this buyer.
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04/12/2021 at 10:45 am #87422
Total Items For Sale: 69
Profit: $17.43 (Used Women’s Uggs Sandals)
Items Sold: 1
Items Listed: 0 (I planned on “0” due to non-eBay projects last week.)
Goal This Week: 3 Listings Promised (Working on 3 small ones and a big long tail listing with a $3-$5K asking price. Might not list the big one till next week.)
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04/12/2021 at 1:06 pm #87429
So those ugg sandals specifically, how long did it take you to list them?
Maybe we can give you some feedback to speed up your process if you go into detail about how you listed it.
I think you’d be better served to metric your time to list per item rather than a certain amount of listings. Say, dedicate 30 minutes to an hour a week to ebay. How many listings can you get done in that hour? Drive that number to a higher amount, then you can scale your store much quicker when you have more time.
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04/13/2021 at 11:00 am #87458
Thanks for your support, Retro treasures WV. I am not sure how I can use that exactly. What I was doing at a certain point in time was one listing from start to finish and I think that caused my OCD and perfectionism to really kick in. When I view things in batches, I am less likely to perfect the details and each subsequent item in that batch gets less attention because I group things by similarities, that is shirts or ties or slide carousels. I think the repetition actually has me get more accomplished. Looking over past years of data, I can see my productivity going up. Those Uggs probably took 20 minutes max as I know shoes very well by now. No cleaning needed. Very little research. Easy.
I’ll wait for any further responses to how I might improve this. Thanks, again.
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04/14/2021 at 1:31 am #87478
I also have a tendency to be a perfectionist with my listings, Marty. But in building my inventory to 2000+ items, I have learned something really important.
Many buyers never look past the title of your listing. They may or may not scroll through all of your pictures. They don’t look at the description at all. I don’t know if this is 2/3 of buyers or half of buyers or less. But it’s definitely more than a few.
That’s not to say your description shouldn’t be accurate and your photos shouldn’t be as good as possible, of course! Those perfectionist tendencies especially come in handy with an item not described case.
But cases are also rare. I sell collectibles which is one of those niches where buyers are especially picky about condition, and I sell 40+ items a week, and I can’t remember the last case a buyer opened against me, knock on wood.
So keep in mind that a few pictures and a few sentences of description might be even more than you really need to get an item sold.
Remember that you can always go back and revise after an item is listed, too.
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04/14/2021 at 2:08 pm #87484
Craig Rex, thanks for your time on this feedback. However, I feel I am optimized as much as I want to be right now. And I am very happy with the growth. I’ve purposefully re-directed my eBay efforts these past few weeks but I feel it is all justified. I’m a part-timer.
As far as times per listing, I was trying to communicate that I have actually lowered my perfectionism considerably. My 20-30 minutes a listing used to be about an hour a listing (including packaging) as recently as 2019. These times consist of things you may not recommend but it works for me.
1. I pre-package all my items at the time of listing. This tells my family that item inside is listed and is no longer fair game to household consumption.
2. Part of my photo set-up has to be set up each time. It does add some time to each listing but that is why I batch items for photography.
3. Finally, I record stats as I list and sell. At one point it was taking 5-10 minutes per item (maybe more). I now have that down to about 3 minutes. Again, my preference. It helps me ask the question, “Was that item worth my time?”
So, although I have optimized, I’m sure I’m not competing with your times. It just feels right for my situation.
I hope this gives some perspective. Thank you.
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04/12/2021 at 11:29 am #87424
4/3/21-4/9/21
Total Items In Store: 2178
Items Sold: 22
Gross Sales: $564.21
Highest Price Sold: $100 (Electrifly Reactor Plane Body)
Average Price Sold: $25.65Returns: 0 $0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $249
Number of items listed: 3- Slowest week I’ve had in quite some time. Brough my week in at only about half my weekly goal for sales.
- Made it to my favorite auction this week and listed a few items from it already. One of those items was my $100 sale.
- I had a couple of items sell this week that had been in my store since 2015. A gun cleaning kit and a pair of metal peacock wall hangings.
- At my age, I am sure learning to sell on eBay would be much safer than trying to learn to do a backflip!
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04/12/2021 at 12:59 pm #87428
I am also glad to have my 2020 taxes done. I did have to explain to my accountant that the difference between my total sales (from my spreadsheet) and my PayPay 1099 was that the 1099 included sales tax collected by eBay for multiple states. I keep track of each sale, whether it is a CA sale or out of state, the cost of goods, shipping charged, and actual shipping on a spreadsheet, this helps me a lot at tax time. Since eBay now collects all of the sales tax, it makes it easier for me to fill out my annual CA sales tax forms as I put all of my CA eBay sales as going through another reseller that collects all the sales tax and forwards it to the state.
I had one great scavenging adventure last week. At an estate sale, I picked up my usual lot of miscellaneous collectibles, including an old metal For Rent sign from the ’50s. Inline to pay, they wanted $67 for everything ($15 for the sign). A buyer behind me asked if I wanted to sell the sign as he was a Real Estate Agent, as usual in those cases, I said I would think about it and normally it stops there – I think they are trying to get me to say a price first so they can negotiate. But when he offered me $100 cash, I accepted on the spot – and since I was still in the process of paying, I got my card back from the clerk and just paid cash. Everybody was happy, even the clerk didn’t seem to mind.
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04/13/2021 at 10:39 am #87452
So do you think next year eBay is going to send a 1099 that includes all the taxes, shipping etc? Unless a seller keeps track of each item as you do, do you forsee eBay helping understanding expenses from profit?
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04/13/2021 at 11:35 am #87462
The 1099 is a tax form sent to the IRS. It’s usually just the gross revenue paid to the business.
When I was a self employed trucker leased to a large carrier, a 1099 would be issued for all the revenue paid to the truck. Even though thousands of dollars were deducted for fuel, permits, insurance and many other items it was never reflected on the 1099. If I needed more details, I could print out the settlement (pay) sheets for each individual week and tally up all the deductions. It was up to me to ensure the deductions were correct.
I never worked for a carrier that wanted me to truly understand the cost of running my truck. They did however, want me to understand the advantages of constantly upgrading my equipment and taking every load given to me. “If the truck is sitting, it’s not making money”
It was not uncommon for a truck grossing $150,000 to bring home about $60,000, especially if he was leasing his truck from his carrier.
I suppose, Ebay may assist us in understanding profits, but I wouldn’t rely on them. In the end, a schedule C has to be filed with all the deductions anyway.
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04/13/2021 at 1:14 pm #87468
Jay, I do not think it will be broke done on the 1099 form itself. But since the performance link that was provided in an earlier Scavenger Life episode https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance/sales has a “Taxes and government fees” column and you can customize the date period, this should serve the need for knowing how much sales tax eBay collected on your behalf.
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04/12/2021 at 2:31 pm #87430
Total Items in Store: 150
Items Sold: 8
Total Sales: $268.00
Highest Price Sold: $115 Breyer Special Run Warmblood Horse Indu
Whew, what a week. I discovered I went over my free listing allotment in March and had tons of listing fees. It was due to all my good until sold items relisting the last day of the month. I haven’t had this much listed ever before so I didn’t know it was a thing. Chose to call eBay support and got a very nice agent who listened to my story and agreed to credit the fees! Only downside was she had to credit each one individually by item number. It took the better part of a half hour, but I was very pleased at their support! It will make me rethink my listings – choosing to bundle more items, not list low dollar stuff and list as fixed price first instead of auction.
We are having our annual clear out yard sale this weekend, and it was time to delist stuff anyway, so I went through and ended items that were older or low dollar. My storeroom is still full after a year and a half of work, so I need to focus on moving stuff any way it goes. If anyone wants to come on Thursday for pre-picking just message me!I was worried as 4 items that sold last week the buyers did not pay immediately, which isn’t a good sign. 3 of them eventually did pay, but one is now in the timeframe to open an unpaid item case. Wondering what others do with these situations? I sent 1-2 invoices, with the little message window just saying thank you to each buyer. Do you ever message the buyer? If so, what do you say? I had one buyer thank me for the reminder and pay like a week late, but it seems by this point they would have paid if they intended to.
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04/12/2021 at 2:44 pm #87432
I don’t have my numbers ready yet, but I thought that I would make a few comments.
Similar to you guys, I have jars of screws, but they were given to me by my grandpa years ago. Every time I find a strange size bolt or screw in one of those jars, I think about him. He passed away over 15 years ago.
I temporarily forgot that they changed the 1000 listings from premium to basic, but eventually screwed my brain on correctly and downgraded my store.
I found that my company has two bins in the back of the building where people throw bubblewrap from incoming packages. I now have a new constant supply of packaging.
Your talk of backflips reminded me of a story I heard in college. It’s not exactly the same as backflips, but it is about positive thinking. The story takes place in the early half of the 20th century. A math student arrives to class late and sees several math problems on the board. He writes them down thinking that they are a homework assignment. He comes to professor a few days later and says that he was only able to solve two of the problems. Ends up that the problems were not an assignment, but examples of equations that were considered unsolvable. I googled the story, and what is online is a bit different from what I heard. Not sure which is correct, but it at least gives the name of the guy.
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04/12/2021 at 6:35 pm #87437
7/4/21 – 4/10/21
Total Active Items (2 different IDs): 346
Items Sold: 12
Gross Sales: $628.59
Highest Price Sold: $225 – a 1960’s Russian you-know-what brought back from the Iraq War.
Returns: 0
COGS: $49.50 (including commissions but not including cost of any family castoffs sold)
New Listings: 16
$ Spent on New Inventory: $0You mentioned in the podcast that the tax filing deadline has moved but don’t forget that the quarterly estimated tax payment deadline has not moved so your quarterlies are due the usual dates, for federal and most states (including Virginia).
Regarding the caller with the Russian buyer, there are some countries not worth shipping to. I use ShipSaver insurance for high dollar items and they have a list of destination countries for which they won’t insure packages and of course Russian Federation is one of them. Any place they won’t insure, I don’t ship to, as I figure they have the data that tells them it’s too risky.
@cdils: I don’t engage slow payers. No messages. I send an unpaid item claim as soon as eBay will let me (I think it’s 48 hours) which I think gives them a little more time but allows me to get back my fees and relist the item as soon as possible. That being said, I have accommodated buyers who asked for more time to pay up front, and any time that happened, they have paid when they said they would. I used to send polite reminders to late payers who did not contact me but it never, ever, worked. All I got was crickets so I feel it is a waste of time.-
04/13/2021 at 10:45 am #87453
You mentioned in the podcast that the tax filing deadline has moved but don’t forget that the quarterly estimated tax payment deadline has not moved so your quarterlies are due the usual dates, for federal and most states (including Virginia).
Very true. Pay taxes as normal. …
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04/12/2021 at 9:31 pm #87443
Week of April 4 – 10
Total Items in Store: 1351 eBay, 44 Etsy
Items Sold: 14 eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $6.24 + $49.85 Commission
Total Sales: $278.57
Highest Price Sold: $75 Antique Royal Worcester Pitcher (on commission); $40 Reproduction art painting
Average price: $19.90
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 5Yeh, slow week for me as well.
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04/13/2021 at 1:54 am #87447
Thanks for the podcast R&J.
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 4531
Items Sold: 73
Total Sales: $1546.91
Cost of Items Sold: $253
Average Price Sold: $21.19
Average Cost of Item: $3.47
Highest Price Item Sold: $129.95 Sunfire True Sub Super Junior Passive Subwoofer
Number of items listed this week: 63
Hats sold this week: 57Sales-wise this was another solid week for me. On par with this time last year when sales were really humming so I can’t complain.
I also got my tax return completed this week. I’ve always done my own taxes. These days I do tax returns for both my kids too. I’ve used FreeTaxUSA for the last couple of years. It’s very easy to use. (I used Turbo Tax for about 25 consecutive years prior to FreeTaxUSA).
Speaking of financial things, I find it challenging to keep good business records with Ebay constantly changing things around. In the past I used Sales reports, then I used the monthly invoice and now I need to pull numbers from several places. Does anyone know where I can find my TopRatedSeller discount total these days? It used to be on the monthly invoice.
Regarding Promoted Listings (and the fact that R&J dropped it recently), ebay provides some pretty detailed stats about the effectiveness of promoted listings in terms of views and sales. Paying 1% seems like a trivial cost for more sales. 1% only equals $10 on $1000 of sales. Considering I’ll send out around 150 offers every week at 15 – 25% off my original price to try and make a sale, paying 1% for promoted listings sales seems like great deal.
I hope everyone has a great week.
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04/13/2021 at 7:58 am #87448
Last night I got 3 return requests in less than 90 minutes! All were clothing – 2 for fit and 1 vintage item for smell. I was really ticked off about the “smell” one but then I got honest with myself. I did detect musty odor when listing some (but not all, thank god) of the clothing items from that particular estate sale so it is on me. Now I’m a bit overwhelmed with the thought of having to take all of the clothing items I listed from that particular estate sale out of storage and out of their poly bags so I can sniff each one and try to remove any scents (probably by hanging everything out in the sun for awhile). It’s probably 200 to 300 items so I’m not sure how best to do it. I’ve sold 45 clothing items from this estate sale lot already and this is my first complaint. I could do it all now (nightmare) or I could do it as each item sells – remove any offending odor (if any) prior to shipping (i have two business day handling) and hope that the item doesn’t get damaged between the time it sells and the time it gets descented and shipped. Ugh
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04/15/2021 at 6:33 am #87500
That is more of an isolated picky buyer most likely. If I were you I wouldn’t worry about it unless the smell was REALLY bad. Most buyers understand that vintage clothing just has that certain vintage smell. Some buyers may even prefer that vintage smell. Now if the smell is anything like cat urine or really strong moth balls, then that is a problem for sure. Vintage smell? Not an issue. I’ve never had a single complaint and I know I’ve had vintage items with that certain vintage storage smell.
Maybe you could just edit all the listings to add a quick line in the description to say “this item is true vintage and may have a slight odor due to long term storage.”
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04/15/2021 at 1:07 pm #87506
Thanks Retro. I had my husband smell one of the pieces this morning and he agrees with you that it’s a mild vintage smell and he thinks the person was being a “Karen.”
When things like this happen, my brain immediately jumps to the worst case scenario, every single time. I have to remind myself to just take it in stride the next time I get an eBay complaint.
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04/13/2021 at 10:19 am #87451
Good show. Haven’t started reconciling my taxes yet. Based on everyone’s comments, I’m thankful eBay waited to switch me to managed payments after the new year.
I also had a REALLY slow week this past week. Lowest week since last May. No significant sales over the weekend, which was strange as that is when I usually get the bulk of my sales. Perhaps part of it was that my store was on “away” for most of the week. Good thing was that most of the items sold were very long tail and most were free to me.
Had a great yard sale run this weekend. Came across one of those that the seller just slapped prices that scream “just get this out of my house”. A Bear compound bow for $5, a vintage Dog Town skateboard for $15 plus several other low dollar items. Then hit an estate sale that was reasonably priced for a change.
Sales Report for: 4/10/21
Total Items in Store: 1142
Items Sold: 10
Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $318.55
Net Sales (After fees): $256.60
Cost of Items Sold: $6.76
COGS Percent 2.63%
Net Profit Margin: 78.43%
Highest Price Sold: $125.00 Vintage Silver Cigarette Case
Average Price Sold: $31.86
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $127.00
Sold via promoted listings: 5
Promoted Percentage: 50.00%
Average Days Listed: 509
Longest Listed: 1150
New items listed: 1-
04/15/2021 at 6:38 am #87501
Do yourself a favor and figure it out now, especially if you use godaddy bookkeeping. Don’t put it off until the end of the year.
It has been a real pain for me. I had to gather every scrap of data ebay has and use Vlookup formulas in excel to reconcile all my data. On top of that, I found many gaps in the data godaddy has. There were several hours of panic where I thought I wouldn’t have enough data to finish my COGS for the last 5 months of the year since godaddy no longer includes the item description or item number.
Also a major annoyance, all ebay reports do not have the date formatted in an excel friendly way so you can’t sort by date. I have not found a way to make them function as a date rather than text yet. If anyone has figured this out, I’d greatly appreciate any tips!
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04/15/2021 at 8:42 am #87503
@retro-treasures-wv – Sounds like good advice. Am wondering whether I will need to leave GoDaddy behind like J&R.
Which reports are you running that have dates included? One of my eBay annoyances is that they don’t include date posted or date sold in most of their reports.
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04/15/2021 at 10:57 am #87504
Have you all ever looked at EasyAuctionsTracker? They do have a free trial (and a ridiculous bargain in my opinion at $50 a year if you buy it) though eBay only gives it data going back two months so if you try it now you’ll have to enter January sales manually. It’s computer-based Excel. It retrieves about 34 data points for each sale (but alas not posted date but they do have blank columns you could use to enter that) on one worksheet then has separate worksheets for the P&Ls and other reports it generates. Doing my Schedule C for the last couple years I’ve had it takes 10 minutes. The few times I’ve needed support it was great (and free). The only disadvantage is that anything not on your eBay accounts (it can draw data from up to 5 accounts) you have to enter manually and I don’t believe there is any way to add in sales off the platform, like Craigslist and the like, so you’d need a separate spreadsheet for that.
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04/13/2021 at 4:02 pm #87471
Thought this was interesting, not because I sell luxury watches on ebay, but because it again demonstrates that when ebay actually focuses on a particular category, it can do things we might not have expected. (And hopefully draw buyers who might also buy some of our stuff LOL):
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04/13/2021 at 4:22 pm #87472
2 weeks of numbers here as I had the store shut down from Sat until Wednesday.
3-29-21 to 4-11-21
Total Items in Store: 1354
Items Sold: 14
Gross Sales: 438.42
Net Sales: 305.56
Cost of Items Sold: $ 20
Highest Price Sold: $ 99.99 Used Chromebook laptop
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $8.02
Number of items listed this week: 92Slow 2 weeks for me. I too had no weekend sales, I thought it was because I had on time away (but I was allowing purchases). But it sounds like it happened to lots of folks.
I pushed to list a bunch more before I went on time away. I aim to list 50 items a week. Had some of those extra items sell which is always nice. My husband and I are clearing out some old electronics we discovered/decided we were done with. We tend to keep everything until we are sure we don’t need it any more (any one need a smaller flat screen tv? – we have 3) 🙂 Feels good to list them and hopefully move them along to new homes.
I have 1 non delivered item that might wind up being a refund. Opened a case with the USPS and heard back but no details yet. Only $15 but I will wait the full amount of time and hope that it winds up being delivered.
Extra thank you to the “What is this thing” forum friends. That Fish pin I asked about sold almost as soon as I listed it. Now I know to pay attention to real fish pins when scavenging. 🙂
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04/13/2021 at 11:45 pm #87475
Dropping this link- It’s how to find reports from Ebay instead of the emails. I’m sure they’ll be useful come tax time.
https://www.ebay.com/sh/fin/report/statement?ru=email
Sales 4/4-4/10
Sales on Ebay: 2
Sales on FB: No clue because I’m locked out of marketplace. I had 4 pending sales from today on back that hadn’t shipped yet.
COGS: $2
Net profit: $28, before fees.
This week has sucked. I didnt sell a single thing on ebay from 4/3-4/9. I hadn’t put things up in over a week, and facebook was doing okay, but (I started another thread on this) I tripped the fraud/spam alert on FB and my marketplace is locked out. Don’t list more than 100 items a day! I was around the 130 mark when it crashed on me. Now I have 4 people that had pending orders that I don’t know if I can fulfill, Im just stuck. This is also an eyeopener that I need to have a backup system for my listings, because the thought of ebay blocking me out too and losing 850+ listings is crazy.
On a more positive note, I did some retail arbitrage and scored 90 units of winter wear for a buck each. Comps are coming in at 15-20 a pop, and they mail in a polymailer, so that will bee about $1500 profit. I only need to sell 6 to break even, so thats cool.
I guess this is Lauren and her Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week
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04/14/2021 at 2:10 am #87479
Sorry to hear about your difficult week. That sounds pretty terrible.
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04/14/2021 at 1:21 am #87477
4/4/21 – 4/10/21
Total items in store: 2204
Items sold: 41
Gross sales: $2877.04 (up 76.8% from one year ago)
Net sales: $2066.36 (up 74.2% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $368.17 — 6 commemorative patch cards from the Horrors of War set
Lowest price sold (net): $7.76 — 1 of the 4 metal printing plates (used in the printing process of the card) of race car driver Brett Bodine
Loved the podcast this week. On the subject of unbreakable records, the story of long jumper Bob Beamon comes to mind. Obviously you can Google the details but this video provides a great summary.
Skip to 1:32 for Bob Beamon and his section of the video lasts about ten minutes. But I give my highest recommendation to the video creator, Jon Bois, who makes esoteric videos about sports that are both funny and well researched. This particular video is about the history of athletes named Bob (Bob Beamon among them) and touches on both famous and not-so-famous athletes.
It was such a thrill to wake up this past Tuesday to the $400+ sale of patch cards which are currently en route all the way to Germany. Horrors of War is an iconic trading card set from the 1930s and about ten years ago, one of the larger non sports card manufacturers did a reboot of the set. Like almost every other modern card set, the set was about the cool inserts, among them cut signatures of military generals, cards with pieces of uniforms from WW2 and earlier, and the commemorative patch cards (e.g. 25th infantry) like the ones that went to my buyer in Germany. I actually have a saved search for this set because it’s so collectible. I won a number of auctions for these patch cards last year, paying $20-$30 each for them, and have sold one or two a month in the $70-$90 range since listing them. But this was the first time I sold so many to one buyer.
My most profitable sale this week, like many baseball card sellers, was an autograph of new Detroit Tigers outfielder Akil Baddoo. I had purchased an autograph card of his at auction last year for $1.52 and until this past week, the card sat unlisted in one of my many ‘junk’ or ‘commons’ boxes. Two years ago, Baddoo was in class A (three rungs from the majors — AA and AAA are the next steps in competition) and didn’t even perform very well at that level. And there were no minor leagues last year because of the pandemic. But he was drafted to the Tigers this year, who are terrible, and after performing well in spring training, Baddoo got a chance to play in some games at the start of this season. And boy, did his career ever get off to a Hollywood beginning.
First game: home run on the first pitch of his first at-bat
Second game: two hits including a grand slam home run
Third game: single in the ninth inning to win the game
His team is still terrible, but if you are a Tigers fan or even a baseball fan, it is hard not to be charmed by his parents dancing in the stands every time he gets a hit and all the fans getting excited every time he comes up to the plate. So his card prices have risen dramatically. I dug out my autograph this week and listed it for $149.99 and within an hour it had sold for $140.
The wildest part is that this isn’t even one of his rarest or most desired autographed cards! The card I sold was manufactured by Panini, who does not have a license with MLB. His most desirable Topps cards, specifically the most popular set Bowman Chrome, have been selling in the hundreds and even thousands depending on desirability (basically design and rarity).
In all likelihood, this is the peak frenzy for Baddoo cards, and in a few months time prices will drop dramatically. Pitchers will figure out Baddoo’s weaknesses and some of his hits will travel into the other team’s gloves instead of over the fence. A new hot player will take the league by storm and collectors/speculators/whoever is paying these crazy prices will move on to someone else. This happens every year in every sport.
I actually sold another Baddoo autograph last year, a blue Bowman Chrome, for $17.85. At the time, I was happy with the $10 or whatever it was in profit. That same card is currently selling in the $300 range. That’s the best example of the sports card bubble for you. In a nutshell: these weird outlier sale values where speculators and “investors” buy cards based on an individual performance or series of games. I’m not sure I fully understand their motivations, but I’m happy to sell to these buyers a handful of times every week.
I’ll take the profits from my one sale and reinvest them in much safer bets. Bubble aside, most card values — the best players, the most desirable sets and designs — are much more stable and predictable. There are always new sets coming out and there are obvious patterns in the types of cards which retain value and those that don’t. Often I find my best deals based on a seller who does an auction instead of buy it now or doesn’t create the best listing.
But Baddoo hit another home run tonight, so maybe those buying his cards this week will get the last laugh. I wouldn’t bet on it, but I never would have guessed that my little $1.52 purchase last fall would have netted me over $100 profit, either.
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04/15/2021 at 8:00 am #87502
Your baseball card stories blow my mind every week! Thank you for sharing.
Who are these people paying that kind of money for a nobody infielder on a crappy team who happens to get hot for a bit? Is this a weird bubble or has card sales been this way for a while? Why do dealers still bother with card shows if ebay is so incredibly lucrative, or is Covid the reason why ebay card selling has exploded?
I still fondly remember the Nomar Garciaparra and Derek Jeter trading card frenzy in the 90’s, but they were both incredible talents at the time and the rookie card mania made sense.
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04/15/2021 at 11:21 pm #87514
Who are these people paying that kind of money for a nobody infielder on a crappy team who happens to get hot for a bit? Is this a weird bubble or has card sales been this way for a while?
Card sales have really been about speculation in one form or another since card companies changed things up in the late 90s and made cards about inserts and autographs and rarity (or perceived rarity) rather than completing a set. Plus companies have been coming up with new innovations for 20+ years now, and printing quality is greatly improved too. I don’t have any sentimental attachment to any of the cards I buy and sell, but I can see how someone might. A lot of modern cards are really neat looking, shiny and colorful. There are other sets, like Topps Heritage and Topps Allen & Ginter, which use designs of the sets from 50 years ago but using modern players and all the modern innovations (autographs, foil, numbering, jerseys, etc). So there is really a variety of different types of cards coming out every year.
So I can see how if the nobody infielder on your favorite team goes on a hot streak, someone might pay $20 or $40 for one of their autographed rookies especially if the card design is nice. Or an impulsive purchase if the player wins the game with a home run or something. There is that nostalgia factor. Those types of sales happen with some regularity. In fact, I had one this morning. Long-time NBA player LaMarcus Aldridge announced a sudden retirement due to a heart condition and I sold one of his cards at full price this morning almost immediately after the announcement.
Of course, full price on that card was $149.99, not $20 or $40. Is that all the bubble? I don’t know. I mean, it is fairly easy to buy an autograph of LaMarcus Aldridge for $20 or $10 or even less. But the one I sold this morning was a limited edition, stamped 1/1, the only one in that color from that specific set. Does that make that card “worth” $149.99? Well, the card hadn’t sold for the last year, so probably not. But it sold today, so maybe I had it priced right after all.
The prices of star player cards, especially their most premium rookies and autographs, have done nothing but increase over the last twenty years. Many to a dramatic extent. So I think a lot of these buyers are really speculators — the same types who play daily fantasy sports or buy and sell Gamestop stocks — and for many, buying cards is a form of gambling and obviously not everyone who gambles will end up a winner.
Why do dealers still bother with card shows if ebay is so incredibly lucrative, or is Covid the reason why ebay card selling has exploded?
I’m sure there are some dealers who only do shows but there are a lot fewer card shows, and card shops, than there used to be years ago. There are a few really large (think mega-mart size) card shops and a few card shows here and there. A big National card show every year in non-pandemic times. But most sales of single cards happens on eBay and through case breaks. I think that I might have posted this article about the sports card boom before, but in case I haven’t:
I’m confident that Covid has brought more people into buying cards but the basic principles behind the card bubble (prices rising and falling based on performance, speculators, higher quality sets and manufactured rarity) were present long before Covid. And Ebay is really the perfect marketplace for any sort of collector or seller of collectibles.
There is still plenty of untapped buying potential, too, as companies are just beginning to experiment with high-end cards for women’s basketball, golf, tennis and soccer. And most of those new sets have been very successful! So I would be surprised if the bubble completely bursts anytime soon.
Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t advocate buying up cards of any backup infielder who hits a few home runs. Those people are spending $100 today for cards that will probably be worth half that in six months and $20 or less in five years. But lots of people spend that kind of money on treasure that they donate to a thrift store or sell at a garage sale for a fraction of what it’s worth. So it makes sense there would be that same level of inefficiency with cards, or other collectibles, as well.
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04/15/2021 at 11:26 am #87505
“Your baseball card stories blow my mind every week! Thank you for sharing.”
I agree with Retro. Being a militaria guy I noticed those Horrors of War cards with the fabric and patch pieces. I’ve had some pretty close to worthless damaged old uniforms and ratty patches I would have been happy to cut up and put pieces of them in fancy cases to sell for $80. That was genius. Congrats to you for those sales! I love a good snipe on a poorly listed auction, too. They’re still out there.
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04/15/2021 at 10:14 pm #87512
Does anyone know what happened with ghalys.com?
At the beginning of 2021 I bought this bubble wrap and paid $17.72 – a great deal:
BUBBLE WRAP® 100 ft x 24″- Large Bubble 1/2″- perforated every 12″ Core included
Today I went to buy the exact same bubble wrap and now they want $25.90. What? That is not a deal. I can get it for about the same price locally. Plus locally, they will divide it up into smaller pieces for me which is a great help. I think I am done with ghalys.com. Does anyone know of a supplier with a price for this bubble wrap closer to $17.72?
Mark
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04/16/2021 at 6:10 pm #87517
If you have sam’s club, they sell 240 ft for 12 bucks, but it may go down to 9 sometimes on sale. My girlfriend works there, so I get a free membership, but I bet if you find a few other things to buy in bulk it’d be worth the purchase for a membership. I also get my kraft paper for shipping there and its like 30 bucks for 700 ft of tough paper. I haven’t had anything break in months between using the two.
EDIT: I can’t read, it looks like you want 24″. I’m talking about 12″, but I’ll leave this up in case anyones looking to source it and can use the info. Good luck!
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