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I bought a box of Cabbage Patch Kids clothing from Goodwill for $30 dollars. It took me 3-4 hours to photograph and list the 44 individual items in the collection (thank-you bulk listing). The thing I love about this CPK lot is the efficient pipeline it has set for me.
Since March when I listed I have sold 19 of the 44 items for a net profit (profit after deducting shipping / PayPal / eBay fees) of $170.00. When you deduct the initial cost of goods, I’m ahead $140.00. While I only make an average of $9.00 per item, the clothing takes up very little space in my inventory and is ridiculously easy to ship. In short, all of the sweat-equity went in up front and now I can just reap the rewards.
I have a few other “smalls” pipelines like this set-up. I keep the prices low and I pay for the shipping. They are nice little impulse buys and they keep my store moving during slow weeks.
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Absolutely! I love these small item pipelines. Quantity is the best but I’m fine with breaking large lots of misc stuff into small lots or individual listings. Templates can be used to greatly speed it up.
Last spring I went all in on brand new smart wool socks for $3 a pair. I bought over 200 pair! I only listed 67 total pair before winter hit and I have sold 65 pair. Yep, sold all of them except 2 pair of kids socks!
My gross profit after COGS and shipping on those 65 pair was $602 before ebay/paypal fees.
I still have the other 150 pair to list.
Other small pipelines I’ve formed is doll house accessory lots, legos, and thomas the train engines, and parting out board games.
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Sweet! How do you part of baord games? Do you literally sell lot of Monopoly Hotels, Monopoly Houses as separate items?
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I part out games I buy that end up not having all the parts.
desirable games that have ALOT of parts are the best ones to part out.
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I have a Pet Shop Monopoly set that I’ve parted out, but I haven’t had any sales from it yet. this was something my daughter received when she was too young to play Monopoly.
Most of my pipelines are partial sets of dishware that I part out, but those are not small items.
I was racking my brain trying to think up of something small when a set of first day covers sold. These were from a box lot that included ephemera and other items, so the amount I paid for the stack of stamp related stuff was maybe $1. I have 10 or so listings. This is not a huge pipeline, but it was the one that sold just now :).
I have my own stamp collection that I would be just as happy to sell, but I’m always buying new inventory and never have enough time to get to stuff I already own. LOL
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I’ve done this with big lots of old sewing patterns. Most don’t go for much $ but when I sell them all a lot can generate hundreds of dollars of profit.
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+1 on sewing patterns! They are super easy to list if they’re still unused in factory folds, and super easy to ship. Prices are anywhere from a few bucks to over $100.
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I have a second store where I exclusively sell low dollar <$30 items that can be sent via lettermail.
I sell mostly vintage ephemera and embroidered patches. I’ve got about 900 items listed in the store, and do about $1000/mo in gross sales on an incredibly low COGS.
I’ve got similar items that I sell through my main store as well. If the ROI is there, and worth doing, I’ll sell it.
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I am going to do this. I’ve been salting away patches, postcards, stickers, and low value military pins, badges and Distinctive Unit Insignias to put in a second store with slow shipping and no returns that will never be TRS but I won’t care.
Well, if I ever get around to it – can’t really call a big shoe box worth of stuff a death pile so it’s not a bee in my bonnet quite yet….
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Items in my “small item pipeline” that I’ve done well on are all multi-quant listings:
* single pepsi lapel pins – my boss received about 100 from our Pepsi route guy & were immediately thrown in the garbage but I fished them out. Only sell for $6 each but didn’t cost me anything.
* Mrs. Grossman stickers – I sell in lots and have made around $300 profit. A japanese buyer finally bought up the last of my listings a week ago.
* Dragonball party favor bags – brand new in original pkgs. Bought up a trash bag full from my local goodwill once they were marked 1/2 off. I’ve made over $250 profit on them so far.The only time I’ll buy small ROI items is when there are a lot of them so I can list once as a multi-quantity item. I do the work once and then ship as things sell. Easy peasy.
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I second the party supplies. I’ve been that mom overpaying for some theme that is no longer in theaters/big box stores, like How to Train your Dragon. So, I pick up party supplies if I can get multi-quantity and it’s something I think will do well. I once found a whole bunch of Harry Potter stuff and did very well with most of that.
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Patches/Badges are my favorite small item that I can buy in bulk and make good money on – things like Scout patches, local sports teams, fire/police badges, or factory wear badges always come to me in a bulk bag and they fetch good money and can ship by lettermail. Most are also usually pre-1990 so they are starting to be cool/vintage items or accessories to vintage clothing.
I never find military badges though – I think collectors pick through the bags I buy, re-donate them, and leave me the $10+ scraps.
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I have a nice pipeline of rubber stamps. Someone donated trays of them to my goodwill last year. I’m amazed at what people will pay for them. The best part is they are simple to ship because they are virtually indestructible!
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@Winchester38 Yes!
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I bought my best small item pipeline 2 years ago this month. It was at an estate sale. The lady had about 600 pieces of make up (new, still in the package) for $150. I looked up one and saw it sold for about $5. I did the math and figured there was a $3,000 potential so I bought it.
However, they told me they were all pretty much the same item, but they weren’t. Actually, there were 54 distinct items. In the past 2 years, I have made a gross profit of about $5000. I still have $3000 – $4,000 more that can be made. The range is because I make a good profit on the shipping because of the way ebay does the shipping for multiple items.
Make up has been the perfect item for me. It is small, easy to store, super easy to ship, and sells consistently. Some of the pieces have sold for $50 each. The only draw back was the sorting at the beginning and getting them all listed. I had my kids sort them (they had fun) and someone else listed them.
Don’t ask how to repeat this because I don’t know. I was just in the right place at the right time. But if I ever get this chance again, I will certainly take it again.
Mark
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+1 on the makeup Mark S! Oddly enough I just went to a church rummage sale this morning (before I read about the makeup pipeline comment) and I bought 19 NIP cosmetics for $4.00. Turns out some are discountinued colors and one Estee Lauder lipstick I have is going for nearly $50.00! Most of the others are in the $25.00 range. The couple that are just $5.00 items I’ll keep for myself. Sure wish I had bought the other box of skincare stuff for $3.00!
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Vintage Treasures,
Yes, those discontinued make up items can fetch some good money. What are you going to do if your favorite make up has been discontinued by the manufacturer? You go on ebay and find it of course. I have had some big make up sales because of this. One lady told me 1 item I had was the only make up she used and bought a couple hundred dollars worth of it from me. I think something similar has happened a couple times with the make up.
Mark
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Hi everyone. Anyone looking for smalls should contact us, we have many, lol. Stampin Up rubber stamps, pins, patches, hats,lots of goodies! We no longer list or sell on ebay. We mostly sell on Posh now.
Most of the rubber stamps are older sets and never inked. We also have lots of gently used singles too. Located in Mass. Cheers!
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So, I have “many” smalls that I could sell, but am hesitant to do so, because I just wonder if its worth the time. As an example, I have at least 1,000 sewing patterns! I would venture to say that at least 250 of those are new, in original packaging, factory folds and complete. Some are vintage, some are new(er). I also have garment labels (Gucci, and quite a few fur labels). I once sold a roll of fur labels on Etsy, but then regretted it, because I thought “hmmm, could I have sold them individually for more?” That prompted me to stop listing them and just hold on to them till I figure it out. Spoiler alert, I still have not figured that out.
I also have at least 1,000 yards of fabric which I would love to sell, but again, is it worth my time?
I used to sell plenty of fabric on Etsy, but then realized my ROI was minimal, and it was more like I was doing the buyer a favor.
Does anyone have any advice on how best to sell any of these items?
Thanks in advance for any tips.-
You sell these items just like anything. Do research and see what makes sense to you.
Some sellers make a good living selling individual postcards for $4 each. They list fast, easy to store and ship. Profit is made in mass sales.
Like you, we dont like to sell low dollar items (though we end up doing it sometimes). We’ve found big profit breaking up sets of items and selling individually. With items that seem low value, we’ll sell the entire lot.
TL;DR: Do the research.
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Daisy – in some old patterns there was a sew-in label – American Designer Original – or something like that. Later, you’d have to ask for the sew-in label, but at first it was placed in the pattern. I think they were in Vogue patterns. Anyhow, that label alone will sell for $10 on eBay.
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Daisy – I sell a lot of sewing patterns on eBay (I used to sell them on Etsy also).
The way I decide if patterns are worth the effort to list is first I look them up on the pattern sites ie: Simplicity, Vogue, Butterick, McCall’s or Kwik Sew and if the pattern is out of print then I look it up on eBay to see what it might sell for. Usually only if the pattern is out of print is it worth it to sell. Current patterns are not worth listing as JoAnn’s has sales for $1.00 a piece on current Simplicity, Butterick and McCall’s sewing patterns, so nobody wants to pay more than that for them.
I always work with my factory folded, uncut and complete patterns first as it is a big time investment to count pattern pieces on cut patterns.
Forgive me if you know all this already. I wasn’t sure if you needed help with the patterns or were just mentioning that you had a lot of them to sell. -
Was doing some personal traveling/sightseeing on Tuesday/Wednesday, and picked up a lot of 94 more embroidered souvenir patches from an antique store for $40. We’ll list them in our smaller store for 6.99-9.99 plus shipping. They’ll take a few years to sell through, but will eventually pay for our entire two day trip and then some.
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For the low selling price items, I like to combine similar/compatible items as a batch or offer quantity discounts if I have multiples. A lot of times these batches of lightweight items don’t cost any, or little, more to ship than the cost of 1. The per-item cost can be less and still make money.
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