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We started posting our weekly numbers on the week of October 6, 2013. Almost 10 years ago. We’re starting something new — posting our “Weekly Scavenge
[See the full post at: The Numbers: August 14-20, 2022] -
08/14/22 – 08/20/22
Total Items In Store: 4567
Items Sold: 30
Total Sales: $ 1,003.74 (no shipping included)
Highest Price Sold: $ 250 (New Leather Jacket)
Average Price Sold: $33.46
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 217
Number of items listed: 31Gut Sales Report for the week: Sales continue to be unusually strong during this time of August.
Focus for the week : Thinking of ways to grow my store faster with the amount of time I have.
Scavenge of the week: Got a pair of Mens Lululemon Pants for real cheap. These have a surprisingly high resell price.
Thoughts for the week: Picked up some great items for cheap this week. Just wish every week were this easy for picking.
Mark S
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Total Items in Store: 3757 listings for 5732 items
Items Sold: 41
Gross Sales: $2828.97 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $2029.94Cost of Items Sold: $767 ($65 mine / $702 consignors)
$Highest Price Sold: $250 Set of Henckels steak knives
Average Price Sold: $69
Returns: 3
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $45
Number of items listed this week: 72On vacation for a week!
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Items in Store 2157
Items Sold 19
Total Sales $470.00
COGS $42.00
Total Profit $428.00
Average profit $22.53
Average sales price $24.74
New Listings 37
Items scavenged LOLZ!!!
Listing 2022 weekly Avg 49My store was dead – hopefully the calm before the storm.
Scavenging was not dead this week. Not at all.
In the middle of the week we were at the mall and we just happened to step into TJ Maxx so my wife could use the restroom. As I waited with some of the kids I perused a childrens clearance rack near the restroom. It was a special “final markdown” rack and the prices were insane. Fancy dresses for $3. Complete outfits for $2. I got a bunch of stuff for my kids, then said “hmmm, I wonder what else is special clearanced in the store”. Over an hour later I walked out with 100 items for just over $600. Brand new name brand clothing for less than goodwill prices! It was crazy. That was an opportunity that simply does not come around often so I had to go all in. Once all is sold, about $2500 profit.
This Saturday I wasn’t going to go to any yard sales. My wife talked me into it since it will be the last yard sale weekend of the year for us due to other commitments for the next few weeks. I’m always disappointed in August yard sales here as they usually suck. I was pretty much correct, but there were two interesting ones.
First up, a sale that had an entire table of Victoria Secret Bras. Now I know there is a big market on ebay but 1: I never find this stuff, 2: Do I really want to sell women’s used underwear?
There were no prices and they were still laying there after 11am so I figured they were priced high. The lady said “$2 each, but I could do 2 for $3.” I said without missing a beat “Make it $1 each, I’ll just take all of them and let my wife just pick what she wants.” Ah the old
The lady was super happy to sell…all 45 of them! I can’t stop chuckling to myself that I’m a used bra salesman now. Life dreams people!!!
The last sale was a huge 3 car garage full of stuff. Initially I almost left because they had ebay prices on things at the front. Then I committed myself to find the things they missed. Twas a good idea! I made a small pile and the husband came over to talk to me. He was clearly a car guy – the back of the garage had a ton of car parts, tools, ephemera, and old car magazines. I kept shopping as we chatted. The more we talked, the lower the prices became and the more free stuff he started giving me. I got all the ephemera, manuals, and magazines for free. Brand new minivan headphones for free. I basically filled up the back of my van for $60. One of the parts alone – a 1920’s Cadillac wheel grease cap – sells for $100 consistently.
I could have gotten soooo much more, but I really don’t have the space.
Also at the sale was a really special stereo with a big “not for sale” sign on it. As I was loading I stopped to take a look at it a bit closer. Twas an amazing stereo. After I left I researched it to find out it was a Super rare $40K stereo (clairtone Project G) – just sitting in the dude’s garage for playing tunes. It was immaculate too. Not a scratch on it.
Now the crappy part is that when I unloaded my van that evening I realized in the stupor of seeing that stereo I left a stack of things at the sale. Nothing too valuable – some newsboys hats and an old black & decker all metal drill. Doh!
I’ve only listed 4 things so far from that sale and am at $300. It’s hard to know where I’ll end up once all the ephemera is listed/sold, but likely several thousand dollars. I know there is $1000 worth of stuff without the old car ephemera.
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Also this morning I ended and relisted all of my coats. I have 47 coats listed and most of them were greater than 18 months old. Ending and relisting has some great tools now. It was really easy to bulk sell similar and I could edit titles and prices right on the bulk screen. MAJOR time saver! It took 10 minutes to edit all titles and prices. I’ll have to do that with more old items. Here’s to hoping that leads to some sales now that we are heading into coat selling season.
I still have about 75 coats I need to list over the next month. Price to sell and then blow them all out on auction in January. I want to get out of the coat business for the most part – too long tail and too much space taken up. I can put in 32 more bins in the space I dedicate to coats.
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Always good to hear your scavenging adventures. Shows that there’s no slow down on stuff being put out int the world. We haven’t had much time to scavenge and still have four bins of items to list.
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I went round a TJ Maxx (UK version) last week, a large two-floor store. They had a selection of coffee beans in Italian packaging for 12 dollars a kilo. The rest of the stuff was overpriced. Lots of high-quality Halloween crockery with skull designs, and other shelf-clogging nonsense.
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I’ve done some arbitrage at TJ Maxx before. They can have some gems in the clearance section. The best item I ever got there was a pair of Ralph Lauren streetwear graffiti jeans I paid $10 and sold for $120.
I’ve had some luck with shoes at TJ Maxx and Marshalls too.
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I didn’t go round the clothes, but I couldn’t see anything in the other sections that could be arbitraged. I gather that managers at T J Maxx don’t decide what turns up at their stores- “the store managers don’t even know what’s coming until they throw open the delivery truck doors. ”
In this store, fifteen different olive oils, ten varieties of coloured salt, some stale cakes and a random selection of 2022 diaries.
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I love reading everyone’s updates!
Summer was typically slow for me. I panicked and made some mediocre inventory purchases hoping to appeal to what little summer-buying audience there is. I think lesson learned for me is I just need to learn to survive off the fat of winter and accept that June/July are going to be less than stellar, instead of tying up money in low-margin items. Also, I think June should become my month where I do inventory counting and culling.
I’m in a downsizing phase as we prepare to move about 10 months from now, so I have started to get rid of items that have been sitting longer than a year. Part of me wants to hang onto them through Q4 “just in case” but the other part of me knows I just need to start getting ruthless. Ebay will have to significantly wind down for me by March. Hopefully once we are moved and settled (this time next year at the latest) I can put the store back up again.
My goal for the rest of this month is to list as much as possible, and make 10k gross by the end of the year (that would be a record for me). I’m actually currently on track to do that and more but don’t want to jinx myself, lol.
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I’ve been on vacation, so I am posting two weeks worth of sales. The week before was very slow as expected, but last week wasn’t so bad considering I still was on time away. I’ll be shipping lots today.
Week of Aug 7 – 13
Total Items in Store: 1657 eBay, 33 Etsy
Items Sold: 7 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $0 + $31 Commission
Total Sales: $151.37 eBay; includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $58 Sterling Iridescent Purple Stone Pendant (commission)
Average price: $21.62
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0Week of Aug 14 – 20
Total Items in Store: 1644 eBay, 33 Etsy
Items Sold: 12 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $11 + $32 Commission
Total Sales: $270.41 eBay; includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $67 Framed Print by Simon Tashimoto “3 Arrows”
Average price: $22.50
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0 -
It’s encouraging to see everyone’s sales numbers. Mine have been atrocious for a while so I’ve been wondering if there is something to all the doom and gloom about eBay this year, losing so many buyers. Instead, I guess my bad luck is just the ebb and flow. I usually don’t have a summer slowdown, and then I usually don’t get much of a boost through the holidays either. Maybe it’ll be different this year. I sold 1 item last week, for $11. I’ll spare you the details.
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That’s an interesting mention that it may not be any of our particular stores but actually just fewer people shopping on eBay. I have no idea whats up or down.
Facebook marketplace feels more like a competitor to Craigslist. Except for Etsy, I still havent seen any other site that competes with eBay is the weird, vintage items that many of us sell. And Etsy hasnt ever been a great place for sales either.
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That’s an interesting mention that it may not be any of our particular stores but actually just fewer people shopping on eBay. I have no idea whats up or down.
According to eBay’s Q2 report, performance actually exceeded estimates and 138 million active daily buyers. Though you would think if sales were up 10% they’d say that!
But I thought this part was especially interesting:
More importantly, the majority of our enthusiast buyers’ spending remains above $3,000 dollars per year, and we continue to see cross-category shopping activity. Simply put, our Focus Category strategy has put all of eBay in a stronger position today and will remain a key driver of our worldwide business.
This seems right around what I would guess based in my experiences, granting that I mostly sell collectibles in one of the Focus Categories.
eBay leadership also seems to recognize how important sellers like us are:
As mentioned in our most recent Impact report, in the US alone we support more than one million jobs, the vast majority coming from small and micro-entrepreneurs, just like so many of you selling on the platform.
I still havent seen any other site that competes with eBay is the weird, vintage items that many of us sell.
eBay’s not perfect, but it’s a great time to have an eBay business. I’m sure other platforms have strengths and weaknesses, but I wonder if sellers who dabble in FB Marketplace, Mercari, etc would do better just by putting their stuff on eBay.
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Depends on where you get your doom/gloom information from.
I find that typically the doom & gloom comes from those unwilling to embrace change and/or unwilling to accept personal accountability. I grew up in a household full of this type of person and distanced myself from that mindset as FAR as possible early on (Thanks for the indriect life lessons, family!)
I mean even for an example we talked about on here – Daily Refinement. Dude got permabanned from ebay and still had nothing but nice things to say about the platform. He could have been a doom/gloomer but he accepted his personal responsibility and still encourages people to sell on ebay because it is a great place to do business.
Now back to your example – DON”T spare us the details!!! What were your sales last summer? How much has your store grown or shrank? Is your inventory diversified? Are you actively listing? How old are your listings?
Share your store if you don’t mind. I’ll take a look at it and give contructive feedback.
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“Depends on where you get your doom/gloom information from”
Yeah, I try to avoid pure pessimism and I fully agree about taking responsibility for moving forward in the face of things you can’t do anything about. I don’t like the other platforms at all (except Craigslist for certain things but it seems to be totally dead now, in my area). EBay has been my place since 1997 and I don’t see leaving. It’s just frustrating. That global buyers on eBay are down this year is a fact, as well as that platform sales are down (eBay’s “performance” is up because it’s making more money through charging us more), and that management is concentrating their marketing and development efforts on the Focus Categories Craig Rex mentions above, which are watches, sneakers, handbags, eBay Motors Parts & Accessories, Refurbished, and trading cards. No hard feelings; it is what it is; gotta deal with it.
This year I’ve been cutting prices, sending out coupons, sending out offers to watchers (not often, because I typically only have one or two eligible listings a day to send them out on), ending and selling similar, and occasional markdown sales. I’ll confess that I am not listing consistently, but that is not a change from previous years. Last year in July and August with store numbers in the low 300’s I had three different time away periods for about 25 days total and my July and August sales were 61 items for a gross of $2,350 (not including shipping or taxes) with no price cuts, no coupons, no markdown sales. (OK, now that I’m looking at it, those two months were a little slower than the rest of the year.)
This year, I’m in the mid-200’s for active items and my July and August sales are 27 items for $603. Total sales to date for the year are less than half of what they were last year at this time. (Well, there is a week to go before August is over but I’m not expecting for lightning to strike.) With end and sell similar, all items are less than a year, with about half older stuff and half items listed for the first time in 2022.
Here’s my store – I’d be happy for you to look at it:
https://www.ebay.com/str/thephillyb1rd
Some things I need to do definitely: List more; get stuff up. Put my death piles aside and pull out and get listed some higher dollar items that I’ve got to get a higher average selling price. I’m surely heavy on the challenge coins but they’ve always sold like hotcakes until this year, and it remains a hot category. Just not for me, at the moment.
What else?
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@Temudgin hope your sales pick up. I like your photography, which is similar to my style. Scrolled through your store and I’m wondering if your buyers might be older and possibly more conservative (cautious) during this recession time? My sales with a similar size store and long listing gaps have been slow for vintage but good for my new items. I do wonder too if Ebay has made some tweaks to the algorithm that favor regular listing and fresh listings during the past few months.
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You have some cool stuff but it is all very long tail. And if you don’t list much then many of your listings are the stuff that is VERY long tail.
in my experience no amount of sales or relisting makes the very long tail stuff sell faster. I’ve done 50% off sales on my really old listings many times and it has never sold a single item. Like J&R, you just have to have ALOT of it available for sale to achieve consistent sales. 250 is a very small store for long tail inentory.
I don’t know anything about challenge coins so couldn’t tell you why yours aren’t selling.
It seems the really valuable ones are of very special events or issued by certain individuals in quite limited amounts.it looks like challenge coin lots have a very high 90 day sell through rate (almost 100%) compared to individual coins. Individual coins looks like a very flooded market.
I’d recommend you lot them up in sets to sell them if the ones you have are only worth $10-20.my recommendation for you would be to prioritize listing items with a good 90 day sell through rate. Lot things if you have to in order to improve your STR.
Also recommend selling things that people need right now. Clothes, useful electronics or tools, or replacement parts. Price competitively to improve sell through rate.
it’s been a long time since my store was only 250 items, but back then a $300 week would have been great and I would dream of a $1000 week.
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Great tips and observations Retro, thanks! I don’t focus on STR for items; I should do so. $250 a week was my annual average year after year, then it jumped up in 2020 and 2021 but crashed way below that this year. I’ve always priced the individual challenge coins aggressively and they still sold well but I think with the slow down this year, others are dropping their prices so that’s probably part of what’s hurting me. The game does change all the time.
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Your post is full of so much great advice and wisdom, we should have a weekly thread let retro analyze your ebay store. I think this is my favorite part.
in my experience no amount of sales or relisting makes the very long tail stuff sell faster. I’ve done 50% off sales on my really old listings many times and it has never sold a single item.
Completely agree with this. it is always worth trying to end older items, cut their prices, send out offers to watchers, coupons and there are probably other tricks and tools available which I’m forgetting as I type this. Most of these things take just a few minutes (if not seconds) and every so often they lead to a sale.
But some items have 1 or 2 potential buyers max and you might need to sit on the item for a year (or more) in order for them to eventually find your listing, regardless of price or anything else. Are items like this even worth listing at all? In certain cases (rare/$$$/unique), sure, and everyone’s tolerance is going to be different based on inventory space and other factors.
But in general, it’s important to remind ourselves to (mostly) list items with a demonstrated history of sales and list consistently.
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@retro-treasures-wv gave you so much great advice already but I thought of a few things to add.1. Some of your oldest listings are at or near their first birthday. I’m pretty confident that part of the new eBay algorithm (well, “new” since the early days of the podcast) is that you want to at least “touch” those listings in some way — meaning, edit the price or title at a bare minimum. Me personally, I would probably end your oldest 50 so listings (maybe everything from the farmchair set and back?), cut the prices by $10 (or more) and sell similar. Do all 50 in one evening and you’ll have 50 “new” listings, or do 10 batches of 5 listings and you’ll have “new” listings for 10 days straight. I don’t think it matters which, and like retro said some of the items are very longtail. But worth a try.
2. With your book listings, I have some suggestions related to specific listings. I love weird and/or old book listings! Buyer beware: this is the advice of a very amateur book selling guy with many more books in to be listed piles than books actually listed. But this guy went out the door with yesterday’s mail at least…
A. The Virginia Practice books — definitely want to put Virginia Practice (the title of the book) and the author’s names Waddell and Handford in the title. Also, how much of market is there (at any price) for five year old books where the law has likely changed? I only see one sale of this book from any year in Terapeak over the last 365 days.
B. I think the condition notes at the end of your titles, specifically the Casca paperbacks, are not needed. These condition grades in the title aren’t as common with eBay media listings as they were even a few years ago, probably because the space is completely dominated by massive secondhand media sellers where condition is an afterthought at best. Use the space in the title to add the author’s name Barry Sadler. Or maybe just lot up the pair of Casca books and list them for around $10? That seems to be the range of what they will collectively sell for (even 1st editions) and there are a lot of active listings for both, especially for Pirate #15.
C. I would donate Chapman sailing, there are a number of active listings for the 51st edition in the $10 and under range. I would probably also donate Divers Guide to Hawaii, there are none on eBay but 4 on Amazon and 2 of those are under $5.
D. The Mary Leakey monograph you have is an interesting and unique piece of history, and I love it which is why I saved it for last. Also very longtail item.
I would change up the listing’s title quite a bit as you have two very long words paleoanthropologist and monograph which I don’t think are doing much work for you in terms of finding interested buyers. In the trading cards niche, autographs are always abbreviated to auto, but booksellers tend to go with signed. So I would title the listing something like:
Mary Leakey signed Excavation of Burial Mounds in Ngorongoro Crater 1966 fossils
I really wanted to get Tanzania in there but it’s one character too long. Maybe you take out one of the of’s or in’s.
I would also double the price, or more, on the listing. You already have 4 watchers and there are a number of sold Mary Leakey signed items over $100.
I hope this was helpful to you. I loved writing it and hope others will share their stores and listings so we can keep having discussions like this. Lots of great advice this week!
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Thanks! Very helpful. You touched on some interesting things. Re the Virginia Practice books, the “Handford” is me. I continue to update it every year (Waddell has retired) and each year they send me 10 author’s copies and I’ve just hated to recycle them. I’m not actively practicing law so I have no one to give them out to. That one sale you saw was mine. You’re right about virtually no market for older ones but they could be used for a specific case to establish what the law was in a specific year or for historical research. The current version sells for $650 from the publisher. I have my 10 copies of 2022 but I’m not allowed to compete with them of course.
I like your suggestions for the Leakey monograph. That’s a family item. The estate I mention in the listing was that of my father-in-law, a geologist who spent most of his career on the African continent. We have old photos of him taken in the Saudi Arabian desert while he was out gathering ground data for creating US Geological Survey topographic maps there in the ’50’s and ’60’s. An interesting guy who unfortunately I never met.
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My numbers are skewed this week because of three sales which totaled over $1000. I have had enough slow days with one or two sales and few offers over the last few weeks that I know a slow week is a possibility, maybe even a likelihood. I haven’t been listing much either. The weather has been too nice to spend much time listing. I go through my auctions listings to find new inventory to buy, I ship out new orders and I sort my week’s purchases — a small handful will (eventually) get listed in my store and the rest I send out to sell on consignment. It’s a nice life.
I’m sure I will have a slow eBay week soon if I don’t start listing more, and there is so much to list. But there will be plenty of time for that when the weather is cooler. It’s nice to have some extra money in the meantime.
8/14/2022 – 8/20/2022
Total items in store: 1358 (down from 1381 last week)
Items sold: 39 (30 via best offer, 1 via seller initiated offer, 18 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $3151.47 (down 11% from one year ago)
Net sales: $2193.33 (down 10% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $80.81 (up 81% from one year ago)
Time spent searching through online auction listings for new trading cards inventory: 14 hours (up from 13 hours last week)
Highest price sold (net): $357.21 — Derwin James Panini Select green prizm auto patch rookie #1/2
I stocked up on Derwin James cards a few years ago when he suffered a season-ending injury in his second season. I didn’t really plan it that way (I rarely do), but came across listings for a few of his rarer cards and then did some research. He had been a top draft pick and the consensus was that he would be one of the best defensive safeties in football if the injury didn’t linger. Last week, James signed a record contract for a safety after a very successful 2021 season. So my hunch paid off.
The buyer also bought the same autographed green prizm patch card, #2 of 2, from me in the same order. The total sale was over $900.
These are two of the best James rookie cards available from this particular popular set because of the rarity and features of the cards. So I understand why the buyer paid up for these cards. Plus now they have a unique matching set. It’s a smart investment if you understand the card collecting world. The buyer told me they plan to grade the cards and they think James is going to win DPOY (Defensive Player of the Year). So they are following their own hunches. Just from more of a gambler’s life than a scavenger’s.
I have a few more rare James cards which I’m sure will sell in the coming weeks as the new season starts. Then it’s on to the next buy low, sell high players.
I made more money selling these two cards than I made in a week at my last day job. I try to stop and appreciate that as much as I possibly can.
Lowest price sold (net): $12.12 — Jimmy Howard 2004-05 SP Authentic Rookie Redemption #307/399
This is a much more common type of sale for me, especially in the last few months. I bought a lot containing a large quantity of this serial numbered rookie card of Jimmy Howard, longtime hockey goalie for the Detroit Red Wings. I think I paid maybe $50 for a lot of 25 or so?
I looked up the listing that I purchased in the process of writing this post — I actually paid $27 for a lot of 16 of these Jimmy Howard rookie cards. What a bargain!
There are a few large sellers who sell these bulk lots of the same card or same set. I assume part of their trading card enterprise is submitting cards in bulk for grading, and these bulk lots are rejects from that process. Every card has little flaws to its corners, edges or surfaces except for the select few PSA 10’s and much more common 9’s. You don’t want to submit a modern card which will grade an 8 or lower (though it happens) since those really don’t add any value to the card, and grading is not cheap.
But not every collector wants or needs a perfect card or a graded card. Sometimes they just want one nice rookie of the goaltender for their hometown hockey team. So I list these cards individually in my eBay store and I send them to consignment. I get my $10 to $15, they get their card, and I list the same Howard card with a different serial number as part of my listing process this week. Everyone wins.
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I really love your stories of your sales. Huge congrats on having the foresight to purchase those cards and then circumstances made them valuable a year later!
I like your idea of a “scavenge of the week” or “sale of the week” topic. I’ll ask Ryanne to create it on the forum.
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I really love your stories of your sales. Huge congrats on having the foresight to purchase those cards and then circumstances made them valuable a year later!
Thanks. The $20 card sales are a lot more repeatable and sustainable but as my sales have increased, I’ve been following my gut (knowledge base really) on these more expensive cards and the same basic rules still apply. But it’s not every week that I make $600 profit on two cards since buy-in prices have gotten so high on many players and types of cards.
I like your idea of a “scavenge of the week” or “sale of the week” topic. I’ll ask Ryanne to create it on the forum.
Very cool, and I’d be happy to create the new threads for one or both every week.
I know that it helps me to reflect on what’s sold, and why it sold, and I think a dedicated place for that discussion (which is kind of a separate thing from the weekly numbers) will help others as well.
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Have you ever had issues with counterfeit cards? I remember buying a Bo Jackson card as a kid at a card show in a plastic holder. I took it out and it was fake – not even close to being a good fake either.
My brother in law has gotten into collecting 1950’s topps and spends a TON of money on them. Prior to buying on ebay he’s bought cards at a local show and several were clearly fake even to my untrained eye. He’s had good luck on ebay buying graded cards it seems.
The fact that this is a hot category and ripe for counterfeiting keeps me from getting into it. I don’t have the time (or desire) to develop the knowledge base you have on cards.
I do see that ebay has an authentication process that protects buyers and sellers:
https://pages.ebay.com/authenticity-guarantee-tradingcards/
How has your experience been with that program?
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Have you ever had issues with counterfeit cards? I remember buying a Bo Jackson card as a kid at a card show in a plastic holder. I took it out and it was fake – not even close to being a good fake either.
There are so many combinations of printing technologies with ultra modern cards (foil, thick cardstock, acetate, die cutting) that it would be unfathomably expensive and difficult for a counterfeiter to replicate all of it. And there are new sets produced on an almost weekly basis for almost every sport so it would be logistically difficult as well.
That’s not to say there isn’t plenty of suspicious activity within trading cards, like any other collectible. There are a lot of fake and misrepresented cards from the mid-1990s, when companies first started releasing special inserts and there was a lot of consolidation of card manufacturers and companies going out of business. And there have been plenty of huge trading card sellers documented to be involved in trimming and altering cards without disclosure to increase their grades, or at least to turn a blind eye to it. But these frauds are (mostly) about making tens of thousands, not the $20 cards or even the $500 cards, and while I hate the fraudulent sales and dishonest sellers, they’re a small fraction of trading card sales.
The fact that this is a hot category and ripe for counterfeiting keeps me from getting into it. I don’t have the time (or desire) to develop the knowledge base you have on cards.
Don’t dismiss them so easily, especially since the counterfeiting really isn’t as much of a problem as you think. Cards have seen such a renaissance in the last few years that I will be surprised if they don’t start popping up at the estate sales and auctions that so many of you frequent.
The best shorthand guide I can offer is to keep an eye out for anything anything very old (1950s and earlier) or anything ultra modern (2000 to present) with a unique feature, like an autograph, memorabilia piece, serial number or interesting card design.
There are plenty of autographed cards worth $1 (or less) and plenty of old cards which aren’t worth much especially in poor condition, but in general this will give you something to go off of. And terapeak is a great resource for card sales if you type in the year of the card (found on the back), the set it’s from, the player and any identifying features (eg auto /150 would be card shorthand for an autographed card serial numbered to 150). Just make sure that you’re matching the card you have with a completed sale, not a different card or active listing.
Also, the only reputable grading companies are PSA, BGS, SGC and maybe CSG. There has been a huge increase in “graded” cards the last few years from companies with no standards or expertise in card grading, and I imagine plenty of those will escape into the wild where uneducated flippers will remember a YouTube video they watched once about cards = $$$$ and they will waste their money.
I don’t know how many of you deal in things like stamps, coins, action figures and things of that nature. I don’t have the time or desire to learn the ins and outs of those niches because I was just never interested in that kind of stuff. But I know enough to know how to ID 925 sterling silver, or the value in certain types of vintage toys. So hopefully I’ve given all of you the equivalent level of knowledge about cards!
I do see that ebay has an authentication process that protects buyers and sellers:
https://pages.ebay.com/authenticity-guarantee-tradingcards/
How has your experience been with that program?
They have rolled the program out on a somewhat limited basis so far, so it’s only cards above a certain $$ amount (it says $249 but I think it’s more like $200) and not if they have certain features. Like graded cards are not eligible. I’ve had maybe four or five sales using the program. It works a lot like Global Shipping where you send the package to an address (in Florida, not Kentucky) and then eBay gets it to the buyer from there. People in the card world are complainers in general (big part of why I hang out here), so of course they mostly hate it, but I love the program. I’ve been surprised at how quickly the package gets to the buyer even with the extra step and it eliminates the possibility of returns for “not as described,” not that those returns have ever been a problem for me anyway.
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Retro,
I think you should re-consider getting out of coats. I just bought 6 coats worth nearly $800. I also don’t like the space they take, but now days I only buy the higher end and leave the cheaper ones. It helps to have a double clothing rack like the one below – saves a ton of space! Go for the $100+ ones and get a double clothing rack.
Mark
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I have dedicated sealed wardrobes for coats. They’re just too long tail, too seasonal, and take up too much space for the income they bring. I assessed all my inventory back in march and assigned a value per sq ft rating to every type of item as well as a storage efficiency value.
(forgive the fact that the forum butchered my spacing formatting.)
Coats have a high ASP, but storage efficiency was terrible at 38% and my profit/sq ft in even the best case scenario was less than $90 and only around $50/sq ft in reality.
Combine that with the fact I don’t sell coats for 7 months out of the year and it’s not great all around.
While coats have an abysmal $50/sq ft rating, shoes are $250/sq ft, clothing is $325/sq ft, and small misc is over $400/sq ft.
In the space I store my coats I could put over $20,000 worth of inventory in small miscellaneous items, games/media, and clothing or shoes. My average storage efficiency on those items is 51%. If I improve that efficiency with more efficient shelving and bins or with file cabinets, I could fit $30000+ worth of inventory in that space.
Now don’t get me wrong – I’ll still keep my eye out for the big bucks coats. They’ll just go in storage with my normal clothes (possibly in vaccum sealed bags) at that point and be priced to sell.
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While coats have an abysmal $50/sq ft rating, shoes are $250/sq ft, clothing is $325/sq ft, and small misc is over $400/sq ft.
This is so far outside my niche but I love the discussion and it’s such an interesting way to think about inventory! I can see the rationale behind the discrepancy between $$/sq ft in coats versus small misc items, but it’s amazing to me how high clothing is. Without you running the numbers, I would have guessed clothing would be closer to coats in value per sq ft. But I guess clothing is not nearly as bulky. And you are probably selling clothes closer to 12 months a year, versus coats where at least 4 months out of the year there is very little interest in anyone buying coats at all.
I dream about running into one of those big bucks coats at the thrift stores in my small town. Just to say I sold one once. I think that is one of the signs you know you’re a scavenger when…
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@temudgin Your Crystal Palace postcard;
“Real Photo postcard of the 1911 Festival of Empire in the grounds of the Crystal Palace. Temporary structures have been erected on the terraces of the Palace for exhibitors. The photo has been taken from the Palace, looking over Crystal Palace Park towards South Norwood and the Addington Hills. A very rare postcard.”
I don’t know about the pricing- the UK postcard market seems to have quietened down since the last century. Postage rate to the UK is quoted as $2.62 first class letter.
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“Your Crystal Palace postcard”
Thanks, I’ll add that to the description. It is priced a bit high but I’m taking offers on it, it gives me room to put it on sale, etc. It’s one of the few things in my store that has any views so someone is finding it interesting. The $2.62 is what it costs me in stamps to send it to the UK in a semi-rigid envelope. There’s no tracking, but I don’t sell enough to get Top Rated Seller status in foreign markets anyway and my TRS for the US market is unaffected by shipping that way so I don’t worry about it. Royal Mail have been reliable – knock on wood I’ve never had to refund. Of course, they have been delivering mail for significantly longer than the US has been a country so one would hope they’re good at it by now.
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I thought the price was okay- I used to get around 20 to 30 dollars for an RP, but the market in the UK seems to have died. $2.62 is cheap! Royal Mail quote £2.55 for a 60 gram letter, £4.20 for anything over half a centimetre in thickness.
Royal Mail are on strike today (Friday).
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