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Check out our coffee! ► broadporch.coffee Join the conversation in the forum>> Our Store Week August 1-7, 2021 Total Items in Store: 7448 Item
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 524: NYC Street Scavenging] -
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Items in Store 1505
Items Sold 28
Total Sales $1,110.00
COGS $106.00
Total Profit $1,004.00
Average profit $35.86
Average sales price $39.64
New Listings 21
Items scavenged 14Broke $1000 AND all the items are paid for this time. I created listings for about 70 pair of shoes this weekend. My daughter did photos for 20 of them so far and will finish the rest this week.
I sold another big combined lot of star wars action figures to an overseas buyer. I’m up over $800 in sales on that bulk buy pipeline – it feels good! I still have over 30 listings left from it – I’ll clear well over $1k profit once it is all said and done.
We’re on baby watch this week. My wife should be giving birth at some point in the next few days as she is 40 weeks.
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Welcome back from vacation! Glad you guys were able to relax a bit.
Numbers for last 2 weeks:
Sales: CAD$6641, 17 sales, COGS: $351, Fees: ~$863, Postage: $555 –> Gross profit: $4872
Expenses: $1227, New inventory: $1804 –> Cashflow: $2192
I did have an $1800 refund, not reflected in the above numbers. It happens.
I don’t think I agree about immediate payment with best offer. At least, the best offer function would have to be made much more sophisticated before that would work. I fear this would lead to a lot of deals falling through.
I get a lot of offers conditional on a certain shipping price, or on combined shipping, or whatever. A buyer is not going to make offers on multiple items in your store if ebay forces them to pay $150 up front in shipping on 10 separate light items. OK you can refund them after, but good luck convincing them to trust you on that.
It is also currently pretty easy for buyers to cancel even if they already paid, and I doubt that’s going to change. So what would we have gained? Money *temporarily* in our bank account, and less flexibility for making a custom deal.
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I just got back from vacation in New England. As Ryanne explained, the lull in sales is a combination of different things. People are vacationing in droves and prices for hotels & AirBnBs are higher. Unemployment and incentive checks are running out. People aren’t taking available jobs as fast as the stores need them, so they have less cash. Certain shortages are causing some items to increase in price.
I chatted with the manger of a New Hampshire ski resort that runs horse rides during the summer (which is what we were doing). He explained that everyone is rushing to go on vacation. He is having problems hiring people because he can’t get long term housing rentals. All the tourists are doing the AirBnBs (guilty as charged), and people who bought second homes during the pandemic aren’t set up yet for rentals during the time they aren’t using them. He has had to raise prices. Our AirBnB as well as our hotel in CT were definitely pricy. Thankfully, my husband had enough points to get us two nights free in MA.
Anyway, I did OK for the time I was away.
Week of Aug 1 – 7
Total Items in Store: 1377 eBay, 42 Etsy
Items Sold: 11 eBay + 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $1.50 + $27 Commission
Total Sales: $154.35 eBay
Highest Price Sold: $29 for 2 Kensington ware bowls (on commission); $24 for 1920 MacFaddens Encyclopedia Physical Culture Book set with one missing book
Average price: $14.03
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0 -
Total Items in Store: 156
Items Sold: 3
Total Sales: $94.50
Highest Price Sold: $75 Melody Pena (Windstone figurines) The Wizard print
I am pretty bummed, nothing on Craigslist or Facebook sold last week – not even any inquiries! I did do listings with multiple items and little description so I might go back and relist the individual items, we will see. I do need to explore Facebook Marketplace sales with shipping; I am a bit leery of that platform, so will likely try the smaller less expensive stuff first. If I have to ship anyway I might as well do eBay with better seller protections. This week I will be having a yard sale with lots of stuff that college students might need – vacuums, furniture, microwaves, office supplies and the like. I will still do my best to start listing on eBay again, 2 weeks with no listings is impacting my sales I am sure. Lots to do, so I will get at it!
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Welcome back, Jay and Ryanne. It was great to hear about your vacation and even better to hear about the possible new helper.
I didn’t post my numbers last week with the podcast on pause, so here are two weeks worth. I hit a milestone in sales in the last week of July. There is a small caveat related to it: the last week of July was the National Sports Card Convention so my theory is a lot of card collectors/speculators who were unable to attend were on eBay. Fear of missing out and all that. Not unlike how sales were almost all last summer. With that said, my sales are even higher than they were last summer, and I’m very eager to see what happens in the fall and winter.
One of the nice things about reaching a new level of eBay sales is that I have a huge backlog of unlisted inventory, and it’s not all junk. Finding good inventory to replace what had sold was one of my biggest obstacles as I grew the store from 500 to 1000 listings and then from 1000 to 2000. It’s nice to be able to invest in nicer inventory. That’s really why my sales are up so much — I’ve been listing a lot more and most of the items are better quality.
7/25/21 – 7/31/2021
Items sold: 100 (64 by best offer, 16 by seller initiated offer)
Gross sales: $4586.01 (up 62.7% from one year ago)
Net sales: $3279.41 (up 64.3% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $469.49 — Baker Mayfield autographed cracked ice rookie
Why is this card so valuable? Mayfield is the young quarterback for the Cleveland Browns, who made the playoffs last year for the first time in 18 years. This card hit on all the elements that create value in modern cards — autograph, rookie, popular design (the cracked ice foil) and low serial number. This particular card wasn’t one that you could find in packs, instead it was released on the manufacturer Panini’s website to purchase with redemption points. The value of those points dipped dramatically last year during the early part of the pandemic, so I stocked up on points then (all eBay purchases). A lot of the most valuable cards in my store were purchased for Panini points.
Lowest price sold (net): $7.97 — Mahler Symphony No. 9 DVD
8/1/2021 – 8/7/2021
Total items in store: 3062
Items sold: 72 (55 by best offer, 2 by seller initiated offer)
Gross sales: $3925.11 (up 134% from one year ago)
Net sales: $2848.81 (up 137% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $380.85 — Ryan Tannehill NFL shield patch
Cards with a unique piece of jersey in the card, like the team’s logo or NFL logo, sell for a premium. This card happens to be a popular quarterback and a very popular set (National Treasures). It sold for my full buy it now price which is always really exciting.
Lowest price sold (net): $9.81 — Lonzo Ball white pulsar prizm
This card might have been my lowest sale price of the week (in fact my only sale under $10), but a few years ago this set (Obsidian white pulsar prizms) were the most popular cards around for a brief second.
Like a lot of Panini’s most unique offerings, these particular packs were released only on their website and sold out within a few minutes. Same as the Mayfield above, these packs were also only purchasable using redemption points, the equivalent of something like $150 per pack. (Crazy I know) All of the cards in the packs have the same shiny (white pulsar) design. No autographs, no variations, no jerseys, no serial numbers. Either your pack contains good players who are worth more than what you paid, or you’re unlucky and you get skunked.
Sometimes, after you open your packs and don’t get the new hot rookie or star player worth hundreds, you might list all the cards on eBay for auction to get whatever money you can for them. That might be $20 for two packs’ worth (6 cards) because auctions are weird and unpredictable. It’s so strange to think about how many modern card buyers regularly spend hundreds of dollars on packs or boxes hoping to get lucky, and when they don’t, turn around and sell their pulls for a fraction of the original price.
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Incredible. You’ve really hit the jackpot being so knowledgeable + hard working at the right time when sports cards are so sought after.
Do you have a personal collection that you are growing and won’t sell? Or is everything for sale?
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Jay, Like a lot of us on the forums, I am not really a collector of anything. Scavenging scratches the itch for acquisition for me but I don’t feel any particular desire to keep anything. I enjoy watching sports but I’m not an ardent fan of a particular player or team which is how a lot of collectors maintain their personal collections or PCs.
So it is all for sale. Well, as fast as I can get the new inventory listed at least. Some items I price a bit higher than comparable items, but that’s strategic more than it’s any particular desire to keep them.
I’m sure that in a few years (two? five? ten?) that I will move on to a new niche and at that point maybe I’ll go through and see if there’s anything I want to keep. There are definitely some modern cards that I admire aesthetically or conceptually, and older vintage cards that are basically little pieces of history. And who knows how much higher (or lower) their values might be in a few years.
A few years ago, most of my inventory was coming from more traditional scavenging — thrift stores, library sales, flea markets — and it was always fun finding things I wanted to keep. But I’ve sold some of those keepers when there was enough profit in doing so. I think for most scavengers, everything has its price. At least for me it does.
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8/1/21 – 8/7/21
Total Active Items (2 different stores): 313
Items Sold: 6
Gross Sales: $183.56 (not incl shipping or taxes)
Highest Price Sold: $40 plus shipping – challenge coin from US Secretary of Defense William Cohen (1997 – 2001).
Returns: 0
COGS: $76 (including consignment commissions but not including cost of any family castoffs sold)
New Listings: 0
$ Spent on New Inventory: $0Mostly consignments out the door last week so COGS were high but it’s easy money and ROI is still good since they don’t cost me anything up front.
It was fun to hear about your curb trash scavenging in NYC. Reminds me of seeing lots of nice German furniture in the quarters of married Army friends of mine in the ’80’s. They were guys who had been stationed in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s and they would talk about how they’d picked the stuff up off the curb out in town on trash day. They said the Germans as a rule would only buy new furniture and there was no market for used so it was just tossed out.
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8-1-21 to 8-7-21
Total Items in Store: 1622
Items Sold: 9
Gross Sales: 186.40
Net Sales: 101.98
Cost of Items Sold: $ 4
Highest Price Sold: $ 30 Maine Black Bears pin
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 0
Number of items listed this week: 25Slow but moved out some big bulky items. Also cleared inventory by taking a few bags of stuff to the local used book store. Cash and room is a win in my book. Clearing out big, hard to ship items to prepare for an upcoming move. I have tons of smalls that will take up the 30 or so ended items place in no time.
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Haven’t posted for several weeks due to vacation. Last week was my first full week with listings back to normal handling time.
I tried to use Time Away while I was gone, but it only allows for 2 weeks with your store open to sales, there is also an option to leave listings up but halt sales that allows for 30 days. I ended up using a combination of changed shipping time in my policies for the first 2 weeks, then turned on Time Away for the last two weeks and tried to change all my listings back. Unfortunately, eBay implemented new required fields in the middle of my vacation, so about 1/3 of my listings wouldn’t update.
Sales were extremely slow while I was away, averaging about $250/week. Still not bad while away on vacation.
My scavenge of the week was a vintage Case hunting knife that I picked up at an estate sale. They asked $5 for it and I have it listed for $199.95. They were asking way too much for most everything else they were selling, but still managed to find a few other good items.
Sales Report for: 8/7/21
Total Items in Store: 1087
Items Sold: 10
Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $564.71
Net Sales (After fees): $466.18
Cost of Items Sold: $35.40
COGS Percent 7.59%
Net Profit Margin: 76.28%
Highest Price Sold: $155.00 Vintage Lenci Stuff Lion
Average Price Sold: $56.47
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $172.00
Sold via promoted listings: 6
Promoted Percentage: 60.00%
Average Days Listed: 297
Longest Listed: 871
New items listed: 13 -
Hi R&J – I’m glad you’re back and creating podcasts.
I took a week off and did a trip to Oregon with my wife. My store was on Time Away (but still open). I didn’t list anything and I didn’t send out offers. As a result my sales tanked to less than 1/3rd of the previous week.
Total Items in Store: 4619
Items Sold: 22
Total Sales: $457.95
Cost of Items Sold: $58
Average Price Sold: $20.82
Average Cost of Item: $2.64
Highest Price Item Sold: $89.95 Ricoh Caplio GX100 CameraI’m back to normal scheduling this week and am listing lots of new items. I will also send out bulk offers tomorrow (on about 300 listings) so I expect this week will end up much better than last.
Jay – regarding your question about whether your drop in sales my have been related to downgrading from an Anchor store to a Premium store, I did the same downgrade around the same time as you. My sales didn’t change in a noticeable way. From eBay’s perspective there’s no real reason why their algorithm should favor one seller over another based on their store subscription. eBay makes most of its money from making sales. It will always push the items most-likely to sell and store subscriptions don’t factor into that.
Because I was on vacation, I didn’t attend eBay Open but while I’ve been listing, I started listening to the recordings which are now available on eBay. It’s worth clicking around and listening to any topics that might interest you: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHVEVK6whrNbg_vbVUhwFsproCtkCYEoU
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Jay – regarding your question about whether your drop in sales my have been related to downgrading from an Anchor store to a Premium store, I did the same downgrade around the same time as you. My sales didn’t change in a noticeable way. From eBay’s perspective there’s no real reason why their algorithm should favor one seller over another based on their store subscription. eBay makes most of its money from making sales. It will always push the items most-likely to sell and store subscriptions don’t factor into that.
Thanks for the level headed explanation. I logically understand this , but I get why sellers delve into magical thinking when sales are bad 🙂
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NC wrote:
Weekly sales 8/1 – 8/7
Random Item Store
Total items 819
Items sold 19
New items listed 95
Gross sales $597.18
Net sales $359.09Patch Store
Total items 2731
Items sold 58
New items listed 92
Gross sales $508.56
Net sales $398.30Etsy
Orders 14
Gross sales $86.80
Net sales $73.78Gross sales total $1,192.54
Net sales total $831.17Another decent week for me, I think I sold a lot of my “home run” items so this week was mostly just bread and butter stuff.
Do any of you guys follow Daily Refinement on Youtube? I’ve been watching some of his videos and thinking about his method. This was an interesting podcast episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=wRU9Vg8iET Daily Refinement and Technsports both have 25,000 item stores and they only sell clothes. They say that their way is the easier way (vs selling random stuff) because they have mastered the categories they sell in and can list super fast cause all they have to do is “sell similar” and change the photos title and some item specifics. They can also ship super fast cause they use the same size packages for everything.
I’m tempted to try niching down to a specific thing in my random item store and seeing how it goes. It won’t be clothes, maybe hats or something small that’s easy to store and ship and I can find a lot of. It’s hard to argue with
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Daily Refinement and Technsports both have 25,000 item stores and they only sell clothes. They say that their way is the easier way (vs selling random stuff) because they have mastered the categories they sell in and can list super fast cause all they have to do is “sell similar” and change the photos title and some item specifics. They can also ship super fast cause they use the same size packages for everything.
Absolutely this would be easier. They’re basically Amazon sellers where they sell a handful of sku’s that they replenish.
Now the big question is how much they pay for consistent inventory. They gross $1000/day, but how much do they net? How many employees and how much is their payroll?
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Not sure what happened with my post submission but thanks for posting it Jay. Here’s the video I was referring to. Looks like that link in my original post is broken.
These guys seem pretty transparent although they do have a patreon subscription group with mentoring. Supposedly Dailyrefinement’s average cost of good is $4 and I think technsports is somewhere around $5.
It sounds like technsports started out in a similar way as scavengers do and just kept building up his operation with the profits instead of taking the money out and investing it elsewhere. He said in one video that now he pays people to bring him a thousand pieces of clothing every week and pays $3-$5 a piece for them. I wouldn’t mind just being a shopper for him lol. I think they each have 2-3 employees.
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I watch Daily Refinement when I have time, and he’s a great believer in having a system. For a while, I think he was selling only shoes (mostly new from retail arbitrage) but I think now he’s selling only used clothing (and maybe only mens?)….but his main emphasis is on having time saving systems in place. There are multiple advantages to selling in a niche like this: you can develop deeper knowledge about what to source (since you are concentrating on just one area), you can develop a process to photo and inventory and list , you don’t need a huge diversity of shipping supplies on hand, and so forth. My impression is, a lot of what he sells is bread and butter stuff, most of it isn’t high end or real vintage, but he knows which brands to buy and how much well, how little) to pay, and….he has ready access to sources for this kind of stuff.
Better half and I, like most scavengers, source yard sales, etc, and there’s no real consistency in what we find, so we are opportunists….if we can resell it for a decent profit, we are likely to buy it. But like NC, I do see the attraction in what Chris is doing….by simplifying his sourcing, he’s simplifying his process and that makes it possible to list and sell in quantity.
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Yeah, I think you have to be reasonable about the niche you decide on. It has to be something you can find a lot of consistently for cheap. I feel like if you’re resourceful enough, you can find a good source for just about any category you want to sell in though. Clothes are obviously the easiest thing to find a ton of consistently.
I can’t decide if I want to keep selling random stuff and have my patch store be my niched category, or if I want to focus on patches and one other niche. I know I can make a living selling just patches if I can build the store up to a certain point but that’s going to take a while even if it was all I focused on.
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I think you have to be reasonable about the niche you decide on. It has to be something you can find a lot of consistently for cheap. I feel like if you’re resourceful enough, you can find a good source for just about any category you want to sell in though. Clothes are obviously the easiest thing to find a ton of consistently.
I’m always curious if “consistent sellers” have the staying power because the consistency would equal boredom to us. Selling baseball cars, or patches, or postcards can be exiting because there’s a whole world within that niche. Just selling sweat pants or dress shirts would be pretty dull because it’s a very limited field. But if you can set up a system where that’s fun, then its all good.
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Just selling sweat pants or dress shirts would be pretty dull because it’s a very limited field. But if you can set up a system where that’s fun, then its all good.
Both of these things are really key to maintaining an eBay store over a number of years versus the people who post crazy numbers for a month or two and then disappear for five years.
#1: You need a system for everything: scavenging, photos, pricing, listing, shipping, inventory
Without systems in place, the actual process of having an eBay store will become cumbersome in some way. Whether that’s overwhelming death piles, or not finding items in your inventory, or not shipping on time, or other problems. My systems are not perfect (not even close) but I don’t find any parts of the process stressful, even the weird buyers who message me with lowball offers. I just ignore ’em.
#2: The process needs to be fun for you, however you define fun
Jay, I think you and Ryanne have demonstrated this very well with the way you divided up the tasks between each of you. For example, Ryanne handling the packaging and shipping. Not everyone is a shipping nerd and that’s fine as long as you’re not working solo! I personally find the process of packaging and shipping to be very cathartic, but I sell mostly modern trading cards and other collectibles so I have my shipping process basically down to a science. I think it would be much more stressful if I had to package oddball oversized items and double box and all the things that many of you do every week.
I really enjoy searching eBay auctions for new inventory so I devote a lot of time to that, possibly equal to the amount of time I spend listing and organizing inventory for much of the last year, though I’ve been backing off lately since I already have a ton of to be listed inventory. I try to set aside specific chunks of time for taking photos, and only on certain days, since that’s the most tedious and unfulfilling part of the process for me.
As a whole, the entire process is enjoyable. It doesn’t feel like work most of the time and I think that’s one of the keys to sustaining an eBay store over the long haul.
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There is so much wisdom in this post. Craig, you’ve really shown how focusing on a niche (baseball cards) can be extremely profitable. Plus from your history, it sounds like you really enjoy learning about the players, history of cards, and why buyers get excited about certain ones. That’s the positive feedback loop needed to keep going.
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Oh yeah I hate selling clothing personally and would go get a job if it was the only thing I could sell lol.
I’m just obsessing about my processes right now since I just went full time and am buying way more stuff than I used to. Since I’m a one man operation, I’m trying to optimize and it seems like narrowing down the amount of categories I sell in would help simplify the way I list, ship and store the items. Like you said, I would need to find the category fun though.
Maybe just focusing on smaller stuff would make the process easier. I do enjoy the treasure hunt
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You’re asking the right questions, especially since you’re an owner operator. Getting a system that you can do each day is key.
My point is to just remember to surround yourself with things you enjoy. A process can be super efficient and profitable, but if you hate what you’re selling, then burnout is inevitable.
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On the flip side, if you branch out you will get better at aspects of reselling that you would never improve at staying within your comfort zone.
Shipping nerds are forged in the fire of necessity. Once you panic at the thought of shipping a weird bulky item enough times, it is no longer a major thing.
Broad knowledge first, specialization last is my philosophy.
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Shipping nerds are forged in the fire of necessity. Once you panic at the thought of shipping a weird bulky item enough times, it is no longer a major thing.
This is a great way of looking at the shipping process. I don’t sell or ship large or bulky or odd items, since I have a niche of mostly small items and I live in an apartment so storage space is limited. But I’m confident from listening to the podcast for the last few years and reading the forums religiously that I could learn how to package and ship those types of items. It would be slow going at the beginning but eventually you learn the best way that works for you so those steps become a part of the process.
The ability to expand and change is one of the biggest keys to making an eBay store work over the long term. The podcast touches on this very frequently, like how different selling clothes was ten years ago compared to now. But if you have the right processes in place, you can sell almost anything on eBay which is the ultimate beauty of the platform.
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NC, Yes, and I think that’s why he focuses more on bread and butter clothing….a lot easier to find a consistent supply than focusing on rare concert T shirts for example. And he probably gets buyers buying more than one at a time, and also probably gets repeat buyers.
Just within the last few months I’ve noticed in our free Classifieds/Ad weekly, someone seeking to buy “hat collections”….years ago, that might have been for antique ladies hats, but this is someone looking to score snapbacks etc. That is probably another good niche.
If we were more focused on flea markets rather than yard sales, I’d definitely consider paper stuff…..I have some knowledge in that area, and many times it can be sourced pretty reasonably. But better half isn’t big on fleas and so forth, and our local yard sales and thrifts don’t usually have a lot of good paper stuff….(although I recently paid a few bucks for a deed from the 1770s at a local thrift, so, once in a while…but couldn’t do paper consistently with those sources)
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According to eBay a place called Dumbo is an “iconic neighborhood”. I think they meant “ironic neighborhood”. Luxury handbags and other luxury items are now an “alternative asset class”. That’s probably why Bernie Madoff had 250 pairs of unworn luxury shoes.
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Slow Sales? One reason… I’m mind boggled at all the similar items selling below on the Ebay listing page, many at dirt cheap prices. Yep, we pay fees before and after and still Ebay has to plaster our pages with other seller’s listings. This is old news but still bugs me. Thanks for all your shows Scavenger Life!!!
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