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Check out our coffee! ► broadporch.coffee Join the conversation in the forum>> Our Store Week June 13-19, 2021 Total Items in Store: 7476 Item
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 519: When Do Scavengers Splurge?] -
June 13 – 19
- Total Items in Store: 4,157
- Items Sold: 20
- Total Sales: $1,117
- * ABOVE yearly average of $1,070
- Highest Price: $240 (Grim Reaper Skull & Skeleton Sake Decanter Set)
- Average Price: $56
- Returns: 1
- Cost of Goods Sold: $66
- Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $42.50
- Number of New Items Listed this Week: 41
Good for you for deciding to spurge on air conditioning! Our last house didn’t have it for the first couple years so I know how brutal summers can be. Not bad of a week over on my end thanks in part to a few higher dollar sales. I’ve been sitting on that sake set for a while waiting for the right best offer. I got plenty of lowball offers, but finally someone gave me a good price. I also sold a suitcase style record player which is still in transport. I’m really worried about a return on that one. I packaged it as well as I could, but I still feel nervous since it was over $50 to ship. Another neat sale was a lot of 10 cardboard tubes that I collected from the empty rolls of bubble wrap. $17 for something that anyone else would just have thrown away.
I had a more productive week this time around. I got back into eBay after a couple weeks off. It was nice. I’m experimenting with a 3-or-4-day work week this summer and it’s working out I think. Not that I’m being a couch potato on my off days. I’ve got so many things that I need to get accomplished with the house that it seems like a job in itself.
Another thing I did with eBay this week was purchase a new photography station desk. I found the perfect metal and wood teacher’s desk on GovDeals and won the auction for the starting bid of one dollar! I had to get help getting it in my van since it was so heavy. Getting it down to my basement was a chore! But it’s just the perfect size and will last forever. And I checked the brand online and found out they retail for almost $800.
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I had a heavy metal teachers desk for a couple years as well as my work station. Huge desktop (3’x5′), tons of drawers – it was perfect! I got rid of it last year when I restructured my office and now use a taller table with a bigger top as I prefer to stand when listing/photographing.
I do miss having all those drawers.
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I usually use the cardboard rolls from bubblewrap for packing large items where I need to fill up an empty area. Now, I thinking whether I should save and sell them? hum ….
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I found that 10 fit perfectly inside one of eBay’s 16x12x8 boxes. Any larger and I would risk the oversize box rate for shipping. They’re a slow seller, but I just fill a box as I use them.
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Another thing I did with eBay this week was purchase a new photography station desk. I found the perfect metal and wood teacher’s desk on GovDeals and won the auction for the starting bid of one dollar! I had to get help getting it in my van since it was so heavy. Getting it down to my basement was a chore! But it’s just the perfect size and will last forever. And I checked the brand online and found out they retail for almost $800.
This is awesome. We’ve purchased some cool stuff from GovDeals. Where did you pick up? In PA?
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Items in Store 1499
Items Sold 17
Total Sales $724.00
COGS $69.00
Total Profit $655.00
Average profit $38.53
Average sales price $42.59
New Listings 30
Items scavenged 3Had some good high dollar sales this week, but sales volume is still stagnant at less than 20 sales. I had another $150 sale but I had to cancel because the buyer said they couldn’t pay until July 5th.
I’m only averaging 23 sales a week this year. Last year my average was 33 sales. Still better than 2019 though, which was 22 per week. I’m also outpacing 2019 on average weekly gross sales by 11%. I think it is time I put 2020 in the rearview and stop comparing myself to it because lockdown 2020 sales were clearly a (welcome) anomaly.
Regarding promoted listings, I don’t think I’ve added any new listings to promoted listings for the last year. I checked today and only about half my store was promoted. I just went in and added everything to promoted listings and capped my PL rate at 3%. We’ll see if that creates a boost in my sales volume this week. If I don’t see a significant boost in the next few weeks I’ll bump my rates down to 1 or 2%.
Scavenging this week was dead, which is probably a good thing for me. I need to cool off my purchasing and focus on listing. Yard sales were rained out. I went to 3 different Goodwills this week and walked out empty handed at all 3! That is unheard of for me. I did buy a whole 3 things at the salvation army store. I was able to get my office cleaned up and better organized Saturday morning during the rain.
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Retro,
“Scavenging this week was dead” – It is sometimes like that for me also. There are times that you can’t find anything. Then, there are times that everywhere you look there is a huge great deal ready to be had.
This time of year in my area, garage sales are great from around Memorial Day till about Father’s Day. I have been loading up lately. And of course there are times when buying opportunities are dead.
Buying opportunities seem to come and go. I just keep out there and always “be buying” I just go to my favorite thrift store 1-4 times a week to catch the new items. I check out the estate sales for the best ones. In the end overall, there is always more supply than I need. I am sure most of us have had the same experience.
Mark
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I find I am a cheap goat when it comes to myself, but pretty easily get sucked into spending a lot on the kids, even when they’re not really asking for it. Perennial challenge.
This week was the best single sales week on ebay I ever had. Big sale was a bunch of flame detectors for $8850, I spent about $2k on them on ebay originally.
Sales: CAD$12,805, 17 sales, COGS: $2118, Fees: ~$1665, Postage: $490 –> Gross profit: $8532
Expenses: $0, New inventory: $0 –> Cashflow: $10,650
However there are several good auctions this week and I expect I’ll blow a lot of this cash in them.
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I have a question for you. Since you sell alot of industrial equipment that may be going into some form of hazardous service, do you have an umbrella insurance policy for your business?
Worst case scenario – you sell those flame detectors, they are put into service and fail causing an incident and you get named in a lawsuit.
It’s alot different than selling used shoes.
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No, but I am in an LLC which shields personal assets from such a case. Generally if I’m not sure I cover my butt with a disclaimer like “untested, refund if found not working” which should clue buyers in that they need to confirm these things work before putting them into service.
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“No, but I am in an LLC which shields personal assets from such a case.”
In the US we can’t rely on an LLC without insurance for such protection in a scenario like that, despite it often being hyped as such here.
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Weekly sales 6/13-6/19
Random Item Store
Total items 544
Items sold 14
New items listed 37
Gross sales $464.48
Net sales $334.84Patch Store
Total items 2518
Items sold 24
New items listed 158
Gross sales $185.93
Net sales $145.55Etsy
Orders 12
Gross sales $124.75
Net sales $106.04Net sales total $586.43
Not a bad week at my current level but looking forward to listing a lot and building my stores and sales. Patch sales keep slowing down but I bet they’ll come back when it starts getting cold again. I did some thrift shopping this past week and it was reassuring to find lots of items I could sell. Don’t think I’ll run out of places to scavenge any time soon. I’m curious how big my stores will get and how quickly I’ll be able to build them once I have a lot more free time after this last week of working a job. My first goal is to get a thousand items in my random item store and three thousand patches listed. Time to get to work
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I knew that you guys had a wood burning stove for the winter, but I did not know that you didn’t have air conditioning for the summer. I don’t consider that splurging!
I found a few online auctions this week where I was able to get some reasonable prices. I think people are traveling now with the end of most schools, so the bidding didn’t get too bad.
Week of June 13-19
Total Items in Store: 1361 eBay, 44 Etsy
Items Sold: 10eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $17.43 + $39.70 Commission
Total Sales: $220.34
Highest Price Sold: $53 Sajen pendant (on commission); $38 for 2 Dansk forks
Average price: $22
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $23
Number of items listed this week: 7 -
6-14-21 to 6-19-21
Total Items in Store: 1521
Items Sold: 6
Gross Sales: 38.11
Net Sales: – 11.45
Cost of Items Sold: $ 1
Highest Price Sold: $ 10 Phillie Phanatic toy
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 0
Number of items listed this week: 0Few sales and a negative net, I think that is a first here. The negative was because my store subscription was applied this week and I shorted a day on the week so I will match the Sun- Sat week most of the others here seem to use going forward.
Not worried about the slow week as I did nothing Ebay except ship the 2 sales I had. “Fun” lesson learned, if you offer free shipping and ship overseas, GSP cannot be selected. So instead of shipping the combined order of 5 items to KY for 3 bucks, I had to ship to KY after choosing international mail and paying 12 bucks in postage. Hooray! Oh well, live and learn.
Hope everyone is enjoying their summer and relaxing as much as possible. Be well!
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6-13-21 to 6-19-21
Total Items in Store: 1901
Items Sold: 12
Gross Sales: $436.90
Net Sales: – $334.41
Cost of Items Sold: $33.90
Highest Price Sold: $69 – air fryerHi everyone, I have been following along but have not posted for a couple years or more. Really enjoy both the podcast and this blog. Similar to others here, and after a great year last year, my sales have really slowed down the last few weeks. Not sure if anyone else applied for covid disaster assistance but I did apply last summer and have recently been informed by the sba that I have been approved for a $96k low interest loan. This was kind of a surprise to me and really not sure I even want to accept it since I have been debt free for quite a few years now. I would be interested to hear if any others here have applied and/or received assistance. Hope everyone is staying healthy and has gotten their vaccinations. Happy scavenging and enjoy the summer!
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Hey Jimi. Glad you checked in.
a $96k loan! What are the rates? Not being a gambler myself, doesn’t make sense to borrow money you don’t need. What would you do with $96k?
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Hi Jay,
The rates are pretty good and similar to a house mortgage, 30 years 3.7%. I could certainly do a lot of things with $96k – expand my business/buy a ton of inventory, new car, boat. It is the paying back part that would be annoying. One family member advised me to take the entire amount and invest in the stock market. I welcome advice from other scavengers on this dilemma.
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30 year loan for $96,000 at 3.7% =
Monthly payment of $441.87
You’d pay a total of $63,073.80 in interest if you didn’t pay it off early.
So do you want to pay $63,073.80 in order to have access to $96k?
If you were to invest $441.87 a month in an index fund that averages 10% (what the stock market has averaged) you’d end up with $872,219.69 after 30 years.
I wouldn’t personally take the loan based on those numbers. And I wouldn’t take the loan and invest it all in stocks either. You’re not guaranteed that the market is going to go up (even though it always has in the long run) but you are guaranteed to have to pay the money back. What happens if you take the loan and then something happens to your health or some other tragedy that takes away your ability to earn an income? The loan sits there waiting to be paid off but accrues interest in the meantime. Debt-free is the way to go
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I looked at the loan that I think we’re talking about: https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/covid-19-relief-options/eidl/covid-19-eidl#section-header-0
From what I see, you can borrow up to $25k without any hassle. But anything over $25k needs collateral just like any loan. So you’d need to tie up property or your home to cover the life of the loan.
And as retro said, there may be some reporting rules on what you spent the money on that’s business related.
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Yes that is good analysis NC. I really don’t see how taking on that much debt would improve my life or help my business.
@Jay, pretty sure there must be some strings attached. I believe there is a way to have the loan forgiven but not sure all that is involved there either.
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Total Items in Store: 171
Items Sold: 8
Total Sales: $155.00
Highest Price Sold: $50 Breyer Special Run Balking Mule
I am working on cleaning out my listings, editing and relisting older stuff, and getting to list some of my recent purchases. Sold 2 ball caps already, paying for what I spent, and more 78 to go! I did notice an increase in sales once I started changing things almost daily on eBay. My only annoyance for the week was one non-paying bidder, of course for a high-dollar item.
Went out Friday intending to be good and only buy if it was a sure thing, but got to an estate sale for someone who collected very nice antiques and had filled the house, garage, outbuildings and rented storage lockers. The sellers were motivated, and although the real good stuff in the house was priced high, items outside were pretty much at bulk pricing. I couldn’t resist, bought more ball caps, records, DVDs, books and piles of random stuff. Passed up a few bargains, so I will have to watch for part 2 of the sale when they get to the off site storage. I do need to up my game, there were police scanners, old radios, TVs and clocks and lots of tools that looked good but I didn’t know enough about to pull the trigger. Had to rearrange the store room again to find somewhere for the haul. I need to get on Facebook and Craigslist more to list bigger items, bulk stuff and all the fun stuff I am pulling from eBay. Add it to the list!
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6/13/21 – 6/19/21
Total Active Items (2 different stores): 346
Items Sold: 3
Gross Sales: $235
Highest Price Sold: $170 – ASM reproduction black powder revolver small parts lot.
Returns: 0
COGS: $74 (including consignment commissions but not including cost of any family castoffs sold)
New Listings: 3
$ Spent on New Inventory: $47.45Congratulations on taking the plunge for AC. We have relatives in Texas, a couple in their 80’s, who have never had AC and no interest in getting it. They do live on a creek in Hill Country in a small, stone house with good cross-ventilation and lots of shade trees but still, that’s hardcore.
As for eBay, it was a week in the doldrums with a $170 bright spot, but I was otherwise occupied with selling a house. It’s one we bought in Norfolk, Virginia while stationed there 33 years ago. We had multiple tours there and then kept it as a rental when stationed elsewhere. The kids were born there and we made good friends and liked the house and the area so we were fully intending to move back in upon retirement. That was until we got hooked on Jacksonville. The pandemic-driven sellers’ market is no secret but I didn’t realize how good it was until we put a house built in 1937 with no recent renovations on the market in an area that is on no-one’s list of best places to live on Tuesday and ratified a sales contract on Friday for $25K over the listing price with four competitive offers on the table. We have not had good experiences selling our houses before so it was a nice surprise. We’re going to have a capital gains problem, though, so now we have to try a Section 1031 tax deferred exchange and experience the joy of trying to buy something while the market is still awful for buyers.
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Super huge congrats on the house sale. Smart to sell now.
You have a year to buy another property before the capital gains tax is due? I have a feeling the real estate market will be cooling off soon.
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Thanks! For the 1031 exchange now a replacement property has to be identified within 45 days of closing and the money has to be spent within 180 days of closing. If we really have trouble finding a replacement property there is a little-known option for 1031 exchanges called a Delaware Statutory Trust or DST that is kind of like a REIT. It’s nice in that you just get a check and don’t have to worry about managing an income property but you lose control over it and have to put your faith in the DST, and pay high administrative costs for the privilege.
Now if the administration is successful in their aim of eliminating the step-up in basis in death then we’ll just suck it up and pay the taxes now rather than pass that burden on to our kids when we die, but I can’t imagine that change happening. Too many sacred cows would get gored. The 1031 itself is under threat, too.
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Hi! I am a week behind on listening to the podcast because I was on vacation last week. I have some input on “Time Away” since I just read the full policy before my trip. I did not end up using it…I just extended my handling time and here is why:
https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/selling-tools/time-away?id=5137
“Tip
Whether you choose to allow sales or pause them, delivery dates won’t be updated for Second Chance Offers, digital items, or for items with local pickup, in-store pickup, or Global Shipping Program as the shipping option. You may want to change the shipping format or the handling times on these items while on time away.”I have GSP on all my listings so it basically makes Time Away useless 🙁
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That’s a doozy, and I’m glad it was brought up before I go on vacation in a little over a week. I could change handling time, but I could also uncheck any international shipping options including GSP and then use time away.
Any thoughts on which way would be better? Or preferred?
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@bethgreen – Thanks for the timely post. I was just getting ready to look into this. Hard to believe that the Time Away doesn’t affect items with GSP. Makes is useless for most international sellers. Won’t work for me anyway, as I’m taking more than 15 days and still want sales.
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GSP is messed up anyways, so I don’t know if it really matters. Ebay does not give you a “ship by” date on your awaiting shipment page for GSP items. Last time I used time away I had 2 international sales but I created the label within my handling time as the sales came late in the week I was away.
I checked all of my international shipments for the last 90 days and I’ve created the label within my handling time for all of them, so I can’t say whether you get a ding or not for them.
Hopefully a few other people here that has used time away can check their tracking upload defects and see if they’ve actually been given a defect for the GSP sales during time away.
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I see another problem with the implementation of time way. In the past, when I changed my handling time, I was able to set an away message that displayed at the top of my listings to alert users of extended handling times. That no longer seems to be an option. Now you are referred to “Time Away”, which doesn’t work with extended handling times. I normally email all my buyers soon after their purchase to alert them, but I can see this leading to more misunderstandings.
One step forward, two steps back…
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Congratulations on the new AC. Surprised that you have gone so long without it. Right after I graduated from college I lived in a house without air conditioning in Florida. I recall trying to sleep in the summer heat with the fan on hi pointed right at me. That’s no fun. A great splurge!
Slow week in sales again, but had one welcome large sale that helped a lot. I sold an antique Chinese guardian lion for $395.95. I purchased this one a few years ago at an auction for $35. This one was a bit unique because it was actually a ceramic roof tile finial that had a cool patina from sitting out in the weather for decades. I had originally posted it for $995 but recently retook pictures for it and lowered the price. Shipping to Chile.
Speaking of what do scavengers splurge on, we leave on Saturday for a month’s vacation in Europe. Lots of nail biting leading up to this week with all the travel restrictions and changes. Until last Friday I was still forbidden as an American from traveling to Belgium. Biden’s trip to the EU turned the tide. Looking forward to getting away. Will of course leave the store open and increase the handling times as per usual.
Sales Report for: 6/19/21
Total Items in Store: 1133
Items Sold: 8
Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $657.85
Net Sales (After fees): $561.93
Cost of Items Sold: $45.05
COGS Percent 8.02%
Net Profit Margin: 78.57%
Highest Price Sold: $395.95 Antique Guardian Lion
Average Price Sold: $82.23
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Sold via promoted listings: 4
Promoted Percentage: 50.00%
Average Days Listed: 438
Longest Listed: 1208
New items listed: 8-
How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’re seen Paree?
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@antique-frog – Ha. That’s got to be the bleakest travel video ever. I’ll be sharing that with the in-laws for sure.
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6/12/21-6/18/21
Total Items In Store: 2310
Items Sold: 43
Gross Sales: $1698.12
Highest Price Sold: $250 – 2 items (ABB Motor and The Lost World DVD’s 3 Seasons)
Average Price Sold: $39.49Returns: 0 $0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $303
Number of items listed: 23- Sorry to hear your sales were so slow this week. I had a great week in sales. Definitely helped that I had 2 items that sold for $250 each. Even without them I would have been over the $1K goal.
- Maybe it’s been mentioned before and I missed it, but I found a tab in the drop down on my sold items to print a coupon to add to the package when you ship it. I’m not doing it, but I thought it was interesting and I hadn’t noticed it before.
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We made it all the way from Gilbert Arizona to the coffee shop and it was awesome. Even better than you guys described. The coffee was amazing, the staff was fabulous, the shop was so cozy. We loved the pay phone in the shop. Sorry to have missed everyone. Luray was so wonderful. Got the newspaper and there was an article in the paper. Took a photo but can’t figure out how to share it with the group. I wanted to personally say to you both thanks as you have been an inspiration in my life. You have changed my life in such a great and positive way. Someday we will come back and hope to stay longer.
pk
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Yes were driving all the way. Down in Raleigh, North Carolina now looking at possibly moving out of the Hot weather and checking out different areas of the US. Would love to see the roasting shop someday. My wife loves your coffee and we will be ordering more once our latest order is done. Keep up the great work in all your business endeavors. You both are truly inspirational and have changed our lives (Two adults and our two young boys (9 and 12) who now are starting to sell on eBay).
pk
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