Scavenger Life Episode 518: Bad Mood Business Partner

[Ryanne]

 Check out our coffee! ► broadporchcoffee.com Join the conversation in the forum>> Our Store Week June 6-12, 2021 Total Items in Store: 7476 It
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 518: Bad Mood Business Partner]

[old_man_marty]

Total Items Listed: 76

Items Sold: 1

Items Listed: 1 (Goal Achieved!)

Profit: $17.61 Maui Jim Sunglasses w/ Rx lenses

Goal This Week: 1

[Simon]

Thanks for the podcast this week.

Here are my numbers for the week:

Total Items in Store: 4640
Items Sold: 78
Total Sales: $1810.68
Cost of Items Sold: $295
Average Price Sold: $23.21
Average Cost of Item: $3.79
Highest Price Item Sold: $89 Canon Vixia HF10A Camcorder
Number of items listed this week: 102 worth approx. $2238
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +32%
Hats sold this week: 55 (70% of sales)

Another good week for me.  No complaints.

Here’s a story about a sale that only scavengers would understand:- I have a wall-mounted bottle opener in my garage. I use it to open bottles of beer from a fridge in our garage. The bottle caps fall into a little bucket and after years and years (I don’t drink much beer) the bucket was full.  My wife suggested emptying the bucket into the trash but instead, I listed the bottle caps on ebay and sold them to someone in France.  Not a big sale (about $15 plus shipping) but I thought it was fun to turn trash into money.

Regarding the Time Away feature mentioned by your caller, I had the same issue.  I said I would be on vacation till Wednesday recently but apparently the Time Away feature interprets that to mean I’ll be shipping on Wednesday. The instructions suggest starting Time Away before you leave and ending it days after you return but I think the settings are quite misleading if you want to minimize your long handling period.

[Jay]

Great sales! 78 items is no joke. Guess people always need hats.

There’s nothing better than selling trash.

[Simon]

Yep. That’s one thing you can say about hats.  There’s a pretty steady demand.  I’ve analyzed my own sales history and I see that hat sales typically peak in April  & May but they are surprisingly consistent for the rest of the year with just a slight downward trend from June for the rest of the year.

[Lukastreasure]

@simon – Love it!  Selling your trash is awesome!

[Antique Frog]

Number of items listed: 3

Number of items sold: 0

(but I have a model steam mill engine on 10-day auction, started at 0.99 and it’s now at £122 with 53 watchers and 6 days to go, so I don’t care. It was a donation from a hoarder.)

I’ve been watching some very useful YouTube videos on Chinese porcelain, narrated by an expert from Massachusetts. A rapid run-through of pieces, each described as a ‘base’, and I was thinking “What’s that a base to?” until I realised he was talking about vases.

[Lukastreasure]

@antique-frog – Which youtube videos have you been watching?  I’ve been looking to educate myself on Chinese antiques also.  Here in the DC area there is soooo much of that and I rarely pick it up as it is so hard to tell dollar store junk from high value antiques.

[Antique Frog]

@lukastreasuretrove It’s the ones by Peter Combs (PLCombs)- he takes a specific area of Chinese porcelain (such as famille rose) and runs through a number of examples, explaining the particular features. The ones on fakes are particularly enlightening.

Yixing teapots are worth looking out for; they’re the purplish-brown or reddish earthenware little teapots that (so I gather) were used in Chop Suey restaurants in the US since time immemorial, so there might be some real finds around.

[Lukastreasure]

@antique-frog – Thanks for the tip!

[Temudgin]

6/6/21 – 6/12/21
Total Active Items (2 different stores): 356
Items Sold: 16
Gross Sales: $619.35
Highest Price Sold: $280 – consignment challenge coin from the US Naval Special Warfare Command 2-Star Admiral (in charge of the SEALS, etc.).
Returns:  0
COGS: $221.72 (including consignment commissions but not including cost of any family castoffs sold)
New Listings: 6
$ Spent on New Inventory: $0

For sure FedEx and UPS are not perfect. Another thing I learned about them is that they don’t always pick up at drop boxes unless someone has scheduled a pickup there with a service higher than Ground/Home.

[simplicio]

I have been having good experiences with DHL lately. UPS cost me $4000 this year and appear unlikely to cough up, so they are definitely in the doghouse, although sometimes they’re so much cheaper that I do use them for large items because they’ll pick up. Fedex won’t pick up so forget it, might as well use the post office.

If you set up an account with DHL, even if you ship only one item, they seem motivated to improve their rates in the hopes of getting you to use them more. This has happened to me a couple times this year. It’s still not the cheapest option but it is reliable and quick and it’s not insanely expensive so it’s my new go-to for high dollar sales or if a buyer requests fast shipping.

[Jay]

oooooof. $4000. Those commercial shippers do NOT like to refund money.

[simplicio]

Morning all…

Had a fair to middling week on ebay.

Sales: CAD$2810, 15 sales, COGS: $158, Fees: ~$365, Postage: $468 –> Gross profit: $1819

Expenses: $127, New inventory: $1449 –> Cashflow: $400

I scavenged a couple things on ebay which I now can’t remember at all… also feeling moody and overstressed lately due to day job, but that should be calming down by the end of the month a little, I hope.

We decided to sell our rental property (our first house), it went on the market this weekend. I don’t regret renting it out but it no longer makes sense… 40k or so of equity tied up there making 2% or something (assuming flat housing prices) could be better employed in my business, to put it mildly. And actually, we have pulled so much money out of the ebay business this year (mostly to buy a car) that if I don’t put some back in we’re going to have a really gigantic tax bill.

[Jay]

Right now is a GREAT time to sell a house.

Assume you may have seen this: https://archive.is/MersN

“Condo developer to buy $1-billion worth of single-family houses in Canada for rentals”

 

 

[Retro Treasures WV]

Items in Store 1486
Items Sold 17
Total Sales $529.00
COGS $42.00
Total Profit $487.00
Average profit $28.65
Average sales price $31.12
New Listings 14
Items scavenged 18

I’ve already sold 6 of the star wars listings for about $160, so it is already profitable.  Pure profit pipeline from here on out! I still need to finish photographing about 25 items. I made $90 off of one single Leia figure.

Still doing yard sales on Saturdays and an occasional thrift stop, but my ebay time is still way down. I’m just so incredibly busy! Like you all talked about in the podcast, it is nice to be able to coast on all the work I’ve front loaded. It may suck to only have $500 weeks, but I’m having $500 weeks doing barely any work. Gotta keep that in perspective!

 

Regarding your X-box games, I couldn’t find your listing on ebay or bonanza to look at the titles. I can tell you that I do pretty well with video games., especially when they are complete in box with manual/inserts and the disc is in great shape.

With old xbox games, if they are discs only you did great!

If they were complete in box then you could have cherry picked the high dollar games and the lotted up the rest and made more most likely.

My guess is that you had 1 or two pretty high priced games hidden in the lot and someone took notice.

Complete in box are really easy to list/research. If you have a barcode scanner still from your amazon experiment, you can just scan the barcode. Limit comps to used and US only then sort by highest price first. You’ll see real quick this way if the game has value and if there are special features like extra inserts that drive up value. If the disc looks mint, you don’t need to test it -it always works. If it has a minor scuff here or there it still likely works perfectly and you could take the chance the buyer says it doesn’t work. If the disc is scratched all to hell, don’t bother selling it unless it is one of the highly valuable games.

You don’t need to know ANYTHING about games to do this research, but it helps to develop a bit of an eye for games to know what is likely valuable (unique titles or imports) and what is typically junk (sports games)

 

[Jay]

You’re a great model of the list it and forget it. With a full time job and a big family, making $500+ a week is awesome. The work pays off.

Nice sales on the Star Wars items!

[DarlinDils]

Total Items in Store: 164

Items Sold: 4

Total Sales: $150.49

Highest Price Sold: $95 MCM wall sconce

I have enjoyed being able to take the last few weeks (mostly) off for family stuff and still have things sell. I now have a backlog of stuff to list, so I will need to crack down and get back to work. Got my first neutral for a lot of cassettes I listed as-is, untested – buyer was unhappy some didn’t work. *sigh* I was upset at first, cruised over here to peruse the forums and decided to let it go. Just keep listing and all that.

My other grump recently was for a listing of a Little Golden Book – Little Black Sambo. There are other listings with this book for sale and sold on eBay, but my listing got pulled as being against community standards. Big bummer as it was up to $50 with several interested bidders. Now I have to find an alternate selling venue which likely will bring less money. I don’t mind eBay having policies, but they do need to be more even-handed in enforcing them.

On the bright side I have 80+ snap-back trucker caps to sell, so those should be easy to list and hopefully quick to sell. I do have to get out of the habit of listing with free shipping. Cost keeps going up and I tend to under-estimate weights. Since I am revising old listings each week I will just list with buyer shipping and when I get back to it if it didn’t sell, then add the free shipping. Trying new things seems to bump sales, so I try not to get into a rut and miss on improving my work habits.

[Simon]

Random ebay observation that doesn’t warrant it’s own thread:-  There’s finally a search function on the eBay Purchase History screen.  I think I remember Ryanne complaining about this missing feature.  It’s certainly something that has bugged me for a long time.  I can’t believe it’s taken eBay over 20 years to finally add the ability to search for a past purchase.

[Ryanne]

OMG!!!!! thank you for pointing that out, I had not seen that yet. so helpful!!!! maybe they listen to SL afterall???

[NC]

Welp, I quit my job today…

I’ve been wanting to for a long time and decided to just rip the bandaid off and put my two weeks notice in.

My boss is cool and sounded happy for me, he even asked if I’d be willing to stay on as a “consultant” so I asked him to let me know what that would look like. We’ll see.

My job was in IT and mainly desktop support, so I don’t know what I’d be consulting for lol.

 

I’m not killing it on eBay at the moment but I feel confident that I will start to once I am able to put in 8 hours a day.

I’m going to work with my dad a couple days a week remodeling houses starting out so I’ll at least have that income to lean on.

I’m looking forward to the freedom and want to thank you guys for the podcast cause I likely would’ve felt like I couldn’t transition to doing this full time and been stuck in the clutches of a desk job for the next 30 years.

[Jay]

Congrats. Assume you’ve done the numbers of your monthly burn rate and how much you to need to keep the wolves at the door.

We’re very much into “consulting” or doing short jobs for good money. The key is to define the job, time commitment, and dollar figure. The danger is the employer just wants to hire you as a regular employee without the benefits.

And if you do now work for yourself, it means putting in the work. Treat your business like a job that demands regular, consistent hours. Your eBay store will grow.

[NC]

Thanks, yeah I’m a numbers nerd and have spent a lot of time reading and learning from the financial independence bloggers. I really enjoyed the podcast you guys did with JL Collins.

With my current eBay averages and the income I’ll get working with my dad, I’ll make enough to keep the lights on. Now that I kinda HAVE to list to pay the bills, I believe I’m going to start making a lot more from eBay. And there are so many things I deal with in my job that I won’t have to think about anymore, I think I’m going to have a lot more energy and mental clarity to direct towards the business.

I will now have 3 weekdays completely open to devote to selling things vs a few hours here and there so I’m looking forward to seeing what I can do with the extra time. I felt like if I didn’t just go ahead and put in my notice, I was going to keep saying “one of these days” for the next 30 years.

Who knows, I may have just made a bad decision. At least I won’t have to think “what if” anymore and will know if this was the right thing to do or not. I guess worst-case scenario is I work with my dad more and learn a trade that fewer and fewer people are getting into these days.

I do have enough cash set aside to live on for about a year, so there’s that.

[Simon]

Congratulations on taking the leap!  As Jay has said many times over the years, being in control of your own time is an amazing feeling.  As long as you have a little self discipline to put the time into your business when necessary,  you’ll do great.

[NC]

Thanks Simon! I’ve been keeping up with your posts and it’s been motivating to see what kind of money you’re bringing in. Gives me hope that I can do the same eventually. You’ve also made me not feel crazy for having a couple hundred hats listed lol. I’ve been ramping up my hat game lately

[Lukastreasure]

@millionairedojo – Congratulations on the move.  Having jumped ship from the IT world as well, I think you’ll relish in the change.  IT support can be a thankless job and often feels like spinning your wheels.  As I’m sure you’ve seen, in scavenging, putting effort in produces tangible results that are greater than the input.  And, you don’t spend all your time solving other people’s problems.

[NC]

Thanks, yeah IT support is tough. And corporate life doesn’t appeal to me at all. I am looking forward to not having to check in with anyone about anything and like you said, seeing more results by putting in more effort with eBay is much more rewarding than working harder at a job and hoping the right people see your efforts and respond positively.

[ChristineR]

Hey Jay! I sure hope you have a better week this week.  I need to order more coffee.  You guys are victims of your own success.  Kind of normal to get a little burned out.  Perhaps you can raise coffee and food prices a bit in the future.  $4 is a little less than here but everything here costs more.  Grab and go food is actually a bargain at Starbucks, even compared to IHOP or Subway.

No need to post numbers, sales are awful.  I saw on next door that the local thrifts are so full they are refusing donations.  Lots of sales are starting but I still have plenty of stuff to list and a lot of day job work.  I’m hoping when I get back to listing in earnest, EBay mobile will be as easy as Mercari.

We have two awesome newish resale stores.  They are so nicely curated that I think these guys must be getting an in on estate sales.  I did see a pair of brass figurines I passed on at the thrift.  They wanted $120 and the price was 2@$3.99. I guess I should have bought those.

Have a great week.

[Robb_]

Handling time (not time away/ vacation mode) can still be changed for up to 30 days.

[Sharyn]

Thanks for the podcast. I will be heading out with my son to Virginia to catch the Autotrain at the beginning of July. I’m working out my plans, but I want to leave a day early and spend one night in Luray so that I can grab breakfast and coffee at your shop (and probably do the caverns). I’d love to meet up, even for five minutes, as I have a small gift for the two of you.

Not crazy about the Autotrain, but I will picking up lots of free stuff at my parents’ house and will need my car. We’ve agreed that they will no longer be the unlimited repository for their downsizing friends’ unwanted items going forward.

eBay is very slow, which is good for vacation planning purposes.

Week of June 6 – 12
Total Items in Store: 1361 eBay, 44 Etsy
Items Sold: 7 eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $12 + $3.75 Commission
Total Sales: $104.35
Highest Price Sold: $30.56 Vintage set of hot rollers
Average price: $14.91
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 8

[Doublythumbs]

June 6 – 12

• Total Items in Store:  4,165
• Items Sold:  23
• Total Sales:  $519
• * BELOW yearly average of $1,067
• Highest Price:  $130 (MCM Gold Three Pierced Cone Light Pole Tree Floor Lamp)
• Average Price:  $28
• Returns:  0
• Cost of Goods Sold:  $27
• Costs of Goods Purchased this Week:  $103
• Number of New Items Listed this Week:  16

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted here.  I’ve been keeping eBay on the back burner and taking care of several projects that I’ve been neglecting. I built a sidewalk around my garden, removed the carpet in our backroom and replaced it with laminate, and some other home improvement things. I also hit a deer with my car, so I’ve been dealing with that. eBay’s been pretty slow anyways. I’ve averaged about $640 in sales over the last three weeks.

We’ve been hitting the yard sales pretty hard in our area. Last weekend, I scored a few goodies, including a vintage Pittsburgh Penguins Starter jacket that sells for around $100, and a high-end electric deli weight scale that I think I just might keep for the business.

I decided to treat eBay kind of casual over the summer. I’ll try to list 50 or so items this week to make up for the last couple of weeks, but I think I want to actually enjoy the summer rather than spend it down in my basement office like I felt I did last year. So maybe I’ll work every other day instead of constantly. It’ll be like an experiment.

[Retro Treasures WV]

In the past I’ve listed on ebay…everywhere! At one time I turned my trunk into a mini photoshoot area so I could photograph at my kids soccer practice.

You don’t have to work in your basement. Bring a tub of items out to your porch and research while enjoying the outdoors. Maybe break up your day by doing 30-60 minutes of intense work 3-4 times a day spread out across the day.

 

I’ve had to learn to work in 15-30 minute intense bursts in order to get things done. I’d rather work at max intensity for 30 minutes and then relax for 90 minutes rather than leisurely work for 2 hours.

 

There’s actually a method to the madness:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

[gargolfer]

Retro…I used to do the same thing, listing out of the back of my Trailblazer.  My son and I would drive to his baseball practice around an hour away.  We would hit a couple thrift stores on the way and I would list items during his practices.

[mscellaneous]

6-7-21 to 6-13-21
Total Items in Store: 15
Items Sold: 26
Gross Sales: 851.13
Net Sales: 699.62
Cost of Items Sold: $ 10
Highest Price Sold: $ 45.00 1988 American Eagle Silver Dollar
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 8
Number of items listed this week: 20

Sold almost all the coins I had listed this week. And I was able to batch up shipments to save on that. Win-Win.

Going to take it easy this week. I have to take pictures of a ton of stuff and I’m slammed at my day job so Ebay will just have to roll on without me.

Thanks for sharing about having a rough week. I get that way sometimes too. Almost always it is something on my mind that I need to reason out and decide on a course of action.

[gargolfer]

6/5/21-6/11/21

Total Items In Store: 2322
Items Sold: 33
Gross Sales: $913.74
Highest Price Sold: $150 (Lot of 300 45 RPM Records)
Average Price Sold: $27.69

Returns:  0 $0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $70
Number of items listed: 30

 

• It was a weird week on the sales front. Started off slow like many of the past weeks, then starting on Tuesday my sales shot back up to normal.  Only 5 items sold Sat/Sun/Mon, but 28 items for the week and I got back up close to the $1K level I like to be at.
• I am still part of eBay Expressions. They asked me to join a couple of months ago and every few weeks I get a small survey to fill out about selling on eBay.  This week was questions about selling in the home and garden category.  I don’t think I’ve had the opportunity to improve anything, as I have not had any issues relating to any of the surveys I’ve done so far.

Scavenge of the Week:  I got a new in the sealed box Strawberry Shortcake recipe box from 1981 at an auction in a box lot.  The highest price sold I found was for $65 and it was new with the box, but not sealed.  I threw it up for $150 and within hours got offers of $100, $100 and $135.  One of the $100 offers ended up buying it for the $150 asking price after I let them all know that I had multiple offers and was going to take whoever came back with the highest one.

[Lukastreasure]

Good show.  Definitely know those “bad mood” moments.  Sounds like discussions Cecile and I have.

I’ve been busy last week with what I’d term scavenger-adjacent activity.  Got an astronomical bid for replacing my deteriorating privacy fence and decided I’d do it myself.  My fence it built on top of a short concrete wall, so bids came in between $5000 and $6000 due to the complicated nature expected.  A few even begged off on the job due to the complexity.  So, I spent $2100 and about 40 hours last week doing it myself.  Wow, that was a lot of work. Fortunately, a good friend volunteered to help out or I’d still be at it.  I wasn’t able to do much with eBay, but I figure I “made” at least $3000 doing it myself which is way more than my average eBay week.

Had a rare INAD return request recently that was finally closed by eBay last week.  Buyer decided to mail it themselves rather than use the label eBay provided.  Package seems to have gotten lost and since they didn’t use the eBay label eBay closed the case in my favor.

About average sales for this time of year for me.  My largest sale of $174.95 was for an antique straight razor that appeared to have never been used and was in its original box.  This came in a box of ephemera that I picked up for about $10 a few years ago.

Another nice sale was a vintage skateboard deck for $149.95.  I bought the skateboard several weeks ago at a yard sale for $15.  I took the trucks off since they were worn and sold just the deck.  Already sold a spare set of springs for the trucks for $20, so free to me.

Sales Report for: 6/12/21
Total Items in Store: 1135
Items Sold: 11
Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $524.41
Net Sales (After fees): $424.22
Cost of Items Sold: $37.15
COGS Percent 8.76%
Net Profit Margin: 73.81%
Highest Price Sold: $174.95 Antique Straight Razor
Average Price Sold: $47.67
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Sold via promoted listings: 4
Promoted Percentage: 36.36%
Average Days Listed: 418
Longest Listed: 1492
New items listed: 9

 

[Jay]

You’re better man than me building that fence. That’s a no-joke project.

[craig rex]

6/6/21 – 6/12/21

Total items in store: 2601

Items sold: 70

Gross sales: $2863.53 (up 55.4% from one year ago)

Net sales: $2029.87 (up 60.9% from one year ago)

Highest price sold (net): $295.07 — autograph rookie card of Donovan Mitchell, who is the star player on the Utah Jazz (one of the teams in the NBA playoffs which are happening right now)

Lowest price sold (net): $8.56 — college jersey card of excellent quarterback and not-so-excellent person Michael Vick

Loved the podcast this week. Already looking forward to hearing tales of your July travels! It sounds like your trip will be restorative for both of you. It’s so important to take that time away, after all, scavenging gives us the opportunity to do so when so many others (certainly my whole family) don’t get that same luxury.

My sales numbers over the last 31 days are up almost 20% from last month which is no surprise at all. I’m well aware how many packages are going out every day! I remember thinking last year that there was no way my sales were ever going to be higher than they were at that time. But I was obviously wrong.

Make no mistake, it’s not because sports cards are any ‘hotter’ than they were 3 or 6 or 12 months ago. If anything, the market is starting to cool down somewhat, especially among the flippers who may have gotten introduced to cards during the ‘bubble’ and are starting to recognize that selling them is not as easy as some other things. You need that knowledge base of what’s valuable and what’s not, and that takes trial and error. It certainly has for me.

I have been very disciplined over the last few weeks about spending a good chunk of time on listing almost every day. Some days it has been listing cards or autographed items that I paid $1 to $5 for and would take a $10 or $15 offer without a second thought. Other days it’s more expensive items and most days it’s a mix. That’s really all it has taken to increase my sales. I am fortunate to have listened to this podcast for so long, since that allowed me to recognize over the last year that I could keep buying and growing this inventory and it would pay off down the road. My guess is that payoff is happening somewhat for me now, though a summer slowdown wouldn’t surprise me at all.

I had 2300 listings in my store at the beginning of May and I’m at 2600 tonight even though I sell 40+ items a week. This is the most inventory growth I’ve had over a six week period. I’m not sure I can list at this same level over the next six weeks, but I’ve streamlined a lot of my listing processes and have all that unlisted inventory,  So who knows? If it’s a rainy summer or sales slow down a bit, maybe I can hit 2900 or even the big 3000 by the end of July.

A few tips, maybe: I took extra care in the last week to add eBay’s required item specifics to all of my new listings, as well as revising most of my old listings to include them. I’ve also run a few fairly sizable markdown sales (25% to 30%) on hundreds of older inventory items over the last few weeks. I suspect all of these factors helped my sales. This is all anecdotal evidence about one particular niche, so take from it what you will.

The main lesson, as always, is probably the most simple one from the scavenger manifesto: if your items are priced well and interested buyers can find them in search, they will sell. Some will take a day or less and others will take a year or more, so no point in getting hung up on any one sale or non-sale. Just keep listing!

[Steve List]

Hi Jay & Ryanne.  I haven’t listened to the podcast yet but will do so later today.  I was wondering, I haven’t received any email reminder notifications about the weekly podcast or the Wednesday What Sold Videos for the past week or so.  Just wondering if there was a problem with my email address or something.

So far, my sales have been slow for June, but I haven’t been listing much either so that may have something to do with it.  I did notice that eBay changed the used books category.  Now it is Books and Magazines with a lot fewer subcategories under it.  The item specifics have increased,  I missed the old days when you just created the title, added pictures, price, shipping, and hit list.

As to thrift stores getting too many donations, when I was at my local Goodwill, I overheard the workers talking about stopping donations for the day because they didn’t have enough workers to put the stuff out on the floor.  When I checked the shelves, many were empty and most of them only had about a third of the space filled with items.  There seems to be a shortage of people around here (S.F. Bay Area) that want to work retail or service jobs, which I fully understand.

 

[Ryanne]

Yes, email notifications have been ended by Feedburner, which was free for the last 15 years. I switched our mailing list to Mail Chimp, but they limit how many emails you can send out per week or month for free. Then you need to upgrade for a per month fee. I’m looking into another free service at the moment. If anyone knows a free newsletter service that will send RSS updates, let me know!

[Steve List]

Thanks for the explanation, I appreciate it.  At least the “Notify me of follow-up replies via email” is working great, I’ll just have to remember to check each week for new episodes, or now that I think of it, I should subscribe on YouTube to get notifications.

Have a Great Weekend

 

[Author]

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