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Winter is mostly slow for us. Fewer people traveling to our rentals. Fewer people in our cafes. Fewer yard sales and flea markets to scavenge. But we’
[See the full post at: The Numbers: January 29 – February 4, 2023] -
01/29/23 – 02/04/23
Total Items In ebay Store: 4668 (was 4656 last week)
Total Items In Etsy Store: 595 (was 564 last week)
Total Items listed: 5,263
ebay Items Sold: 5 items for $ 269.52 Net $ 206.96
Etsy Items Sold: 9 items for $ 408.99 Net $ 318.86Total Gross Sales: $ 678.51 (including eBay\etsy fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $ 525.82 (minus shipping, and taxes)
Items Sold: 14 items
Highest Price Sold: $ 100 (Plate)
Average Price Sold: $ 37.56
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 54Number of items listed: 26 ebay, 41 Etsy
Gut Sales Report for the week: Well, this is a first. My Etsy store beat ebay hands down with only 13% of the number of the number of items listed compared to my ebay store. This is the slowest week for my ebay store in recent memory. And I was listing on ebay.
Focus for the week : Just getting listings out there.
Scavenge of the week: Picked up a nice vintage London Fog Leather Trench Coat.
Thoughts for the week: Etsy saves the week!
Mark
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Whats a successful experiment where you have the same exact inventory on both eBay+ etsy? Double your sales?
I assume there’s an increase in costs and time to manage.
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Jay,
I think it has been more than successful so far.
I only have about 1800 vintage items, so ebay will always have more inventory listed. The 1800 is only about 38% of what I have on ebay. But, I am thinking that Etsy will end up with a higher STR than my ebay store. So far, the Etsy STR is way higher.
Mark
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Dang she only sold her car for 120 bucks lol. Just going by your sales is all lol.
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Ha! I just bought a car Friday, from an African in a backstreet car lot in Coventry. I was paying him the £1500 in cash plus £100 to deliver it when a guy who’d driven one and a half hours from Bedford turned up for his appointment to see the car. He was somewhat aggrieved and looked to turn violent, so the dealer gave him £20 for the petrol he’d used, and then I re-imbursed the dealer as a goodwill gesture.
Ford Fusion, which in the UK is a pumped-up Fiesta and not a Mondeo-type thing.
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In the 1990s, you could buy a Geo Metro for a short period of time until they discontinued it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geo_Metro
Rednecks still love this car and buy them used because they got great gas mileage. There’s a huge underserved market for little compact cars that get 40+ miles a gallon.
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Lol! Never post negotiate with a scavenger!
I had the same experience several times when I fixed/sold pinball machines in the past. People think they have leverage to renegotiate over BS stuff when they drive 8+hours to buy a very used item? I don’t think so!
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Items in Store 2028
Items Sold 29
Total Sales $1,024.00
COGS $169.00
Total Profit $855.00
Average profit $29.48
Average sales price $35.31
New Listings 52
Items scavenged 3
Listing 2023 weekly Avg 22Now that was a satisfying week all around! It is nice to start to see the payoff for the work I’m putting in by getting over $1k in sales and hitting my average $35 per item sales price.
My daughter is still on board with photography. The last couple days I haven’t even had to remind her to go out and photograph.
I was worried about being able to keep up with her, but since I started listing during my lunch break again I’m WAY outpacing her. That’s a good thing though because I will always have enough drafts that I can take time off if I am busy with something else.
One little trick I have been using to encourage her to get out there early is that I told her I will cherry pick the easy to photo items if she starts slipping. I did that a few times this week and low and behold, she started getting out there so SHE could cherry pick her 5 daily items. Those cherry pick items take 20 seconds or less to photograph, like this item:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266115875623
Since I pay per item, those cherry pick items are basically made of gold!
So with all of this listing, I should be clearing out alot of space. WELL….I am in a way.
My daily driver is a minivan and I’ve sort of…been using it for storage since the summer. I buy things and they just stay in the van. I’m happy to say the van will be 100% cleaned out of unlisted inventory this week. Anything new I buy has been going to my “to be listed” shelf and getting listed within a week. I’ve also been filling this shelf with stuff from the van. Once the van is clear I will start on the main office death piles by NEATLY organizing some bins in my van for listing so I can keep working during my lunch break at my day job.
Another thing I want to do with the nice weather this week is spend some time in inventory storage identifying large listed items that have been sitting for a while unsold. I’m going to reprice them to get them moving.
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Did the guy actually bring $1700 in cash?
Nothing too special for me this week.
Week of Jan 29 – Feb 4
Total Items in Store: 1807 eBay, 32 Etsy
Items Sold: 11 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $0 + $47 Commission
Total Sales: $244.86 eBay, $0 Etsy; includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $40 Vtg Raggedy Ann Andy Executive Desk Set
Average price: $22.26
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 13-
yes he brought it all in $50 bills, then he asked if i had change! which I didn’t, so he shuffled through his wallet and came up $3 short. guy was a piece of work.
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Monthly numbers: 01/1 – 01/31
Total listings: 1480
Items sold: 49
Sales: $1,033.52
Highest price sold: $118 – Tiki Mug
Average price sold: $21.09
Cost of items sold: $92.49 / average cost: 1.89 each
Spent on new inventory: $370.00
Number of items listed: 56The Tiki Mug I sold was from a Tiki Bar in Oakland, California that burnt down in 1967. Being a rare mug It would have gone for much more but it had a chip. I thought I was doing pretty good on not buying much new inventory, but then I ended up going to a sale last weekend of paper ephemera. I was lucky to be in the first group in the door so I got some vintage Disneyland brochures and some old tool catalogs among a large number of other items that should make a nice return and be very easy to ship.
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Week of 1/29 – 2/4:
Total items in Store: 325
Items Sold: 13
Gross Sales: $208.65 (w/o eBay fees, shipping, or taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $46.34 (including consignment commissions but not the original cost of family castoffs)
Highest Price Sold: $28 plus shipping (a pair of antique heavy duty trunk drop handles)
Average Sales Price: $20.87 (not incl eBay fees, shipping, or taxes)
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0
Number of new items listed: 17 -
Total Items in Store: 535
Items Sold: 14
Gross Sales: $564.30 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $340.32 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $132
Highest Price Sold: $100 (5 new dishtowels)
Average Price Sold: $40.31
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $40
Number of items listed this week: 21Kinda dumb of that car buyer to try to renegotiate after driving all that way. Someone else might have told him to hit the road with no car. Sometimes I feel like buyers have too high of expectations for used items even though they’ve seen pictures, etc.
Ebay felt slow. I felt guilty for attending a church sale and then finding another rummage sale so I finally got back to listing on Saturday. I get the cast off in a week and a half and I am really looking forward to that. My hand gets sore if I spend a lot of time typing. I got sidetracked with helping my son do his study abroad application for Denmark. He’s got a lot going on so I was helping him get some research together. I wish I would have traveled to Europe as a young person. Now I need to really get in gear and finish my recently purchased pile. The church sale was a huge Ikea bag for $20 – I already sold an item today for more than that. Amazing price for around here. I love love church sales.
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eBay Store Week Jan. 29 – Feb. 4, 2023
Total Items in Store: 1,175
Items Sold: 17
Gross Sales: $476.89 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $196.65 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Goods Sold: $56.00
Highest Price Sold: $59.95 (UGG Boots)
Average Price Sold: $28.05
Returns:0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $80.00
Number of items listed this week: 29This was a good week for footwear. In addition to my highest selling item (UGG Boots) I sold a pair of Olukai slip-on shoes and a pair of Peloton cycling shoes.
I had picked up a vintage framed pen & ink & watercolor drawing of an Old West windmill and water tank. I had it listed for years and recently sent out an offer to a watcher. It finally sold to a buyer in Arizona.
In true scavenger style, I spotted an old Char-Broil gas grill dumped in a Sam’s Club parking lot. I circled back and harveted the 2 wheels, the 2 feet, 2 control knobs, and the piezo flame igniter – all without tools. I gotta admit, I was thinking of Jay & Ryanne as I was doing it! I cleaned them up and listed them that day. I already sold one of wheels to a buyer in Puerto Rico.
I’ve noticed I have been selling to quite a few buyers in West Virginia lately. I don’t know why, but I certainly welcome their business!
This past Saturday started out cool and breezy (for Florida) and we had too many yard sales for us to go to them all. At least two of those sales were in communities with many people selling in their drive-ways. That was my main sourcing venue for the week. I also popped into a thrift store on Tuesday and bought 8 older books including Electronics guide books published by Radio Shack back in the 1990’s.
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My numbers were propped up last week from a batch of 500 trading card auctions, and past trends continued in terms of how many listings sold (around 10%) and how the items sold (vast majority with only one bid). I can’t imagine doing these every week like a lot of big sellers in this niche do, but I hope I can continue doing them at least once a month. I cycle the unsold auctions back into the store over the course of a week (sell similar 10 each day) and I’ll hold back some for next month’s auctions. After that, if they still don’t sell, I’ll send them for consignment.
It’s a lot of shipping for a couple of days and I am really careful about setting my minimum bid price at the lowest amount I’m willing to accept. I set my minimum bids at about half my buy it now price. It’s always surprising to see items sell after months of no offers. But I believe that there are plenty of eBay users who only, or mostly, buy through auctions and are always hunting for bargains.
I ran a smaller batch of auctions, mostly football cards, to end the day after the Super Bowl. After those end, I’ll take a break from the auction game for a few weeks to build up my BIN/BO inventory again. It’s interesting having less than 500 items in my eBay store because some days nothing sells and no offers come in. I’m used to a constant churn of buy, list, sell, ship, repeat. But I’ve replaced that with consignment trading card sales, where I only handle the pricing. Anything I’ve lost in eBay week to week sales has more than been replaced by those consignment sales. Nice having two platforms to work with. Exciting to think about what other changes and innovations there might be in my future.
1/29/2023 to 2/4/2023
Total items in store: 367 BIN/BO, 60 auction, 427 total
Items sold: 60 (9 via best offer, 4 via seller initiated offer, 6 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $2805.24 (down 3% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1888.85 (down 6% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $46.75 (down 26% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $137.68— Deion Sanders, Roger Staubach and Tony Dorsett Donruss Classics Dallas Cowboys jersey card #1/1
Lowest price sold (net): $7.81— John Brzenk arm wrestling trading card 2013 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions
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So great to see that your auctions are going so well. An average of $46 for each auction sale is good!
I’ve replaced that with consignment trading card sales, where I only handle the pricing.
I dont know if you’ve spoken about the consignment. Who are you selling for? Whats the cut?
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I dont know if you’ve spoken about the consignment. Who are you selling for? Whats the cut?
Oh, this isn’t selling for anyone else on consignment, its just selling through the other site (COMC) that I started using last year. up to a consistent $750 a week in profit the last month and a half. pretty exciting to think about the opportunities that money will create if I can keep it up for another year or two!
i know some people here sell for others on consignment and it’s huge in the trading card world, almost all the sellers that I buy from are consignment sellers. Rarely say never about the future, but I don’t think I’d ever want to sell on consignment for someone else. even a friend or family member. too much potential for complications and one or both of us to end up unhappy.
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Ah! I misread. That is nice to make a steady stream of $3k a month by sending in cards to that site. Is it scalable? Can you just buy more and more and send them all in?
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Ah! I misread. That is nice to make a steady stream of $3k a month by sending in cards to that site. Is it scalable? Can you just buy more and more and send them all in?
A lot of the income stream I’ve developed from using COMC was from the backlog I accumulated over the last few years of buying and selling on eBay. For the first half of last year, I was sending in at least one medium flat rate box every week. There were only so many cards I could list on eBay, but it was easy to keep buying, especially since card prices are so volatile and so many large eBay sellers rely on auctions and inefficient lot listings to keep inventory moving. Plus I don’t have kids or any other big expenses and I’m frugal in basically every other area of my life. I still a few monster boxes (3000+) of random cards but it’s a lot less than I had.
Some of the cards I send in to COMC sell in hours or even minutes, others take weeks or months until the right buyer or event comes along, others I need to keep slashing the price or they will sit forever. Pricing can get competitive when another seller has a copy of the same card, but not every seller has the mentality of race to the bottom. Some COMC sellers have really wacky high prices which I don’t understand, but not everyone is as focused on selling as scavengers are.
COMC cross-posts a lot of cards to eBay, so some of the money from my COMC sales is actually from eBay buyers! I pay $1 submission fee to COMC (more on certain types of cards) when each card posts to my account, so that’s how they make their money. Plus a cut of every sale. I didn’t get consistently profitable with COMC until late last year but now it’s really going well. A lot of the cards that I sent in early last year, I wouldn’t send in today, but it was all a learning experience. I can run sales on COMC’s site as well. So sometimes there are good buying opportunities, then I either reprice the cards on COMC or I get them shipped to me and sell on eBay. It’s kind of amazing how this has transformed my business in so many different ways — buying less, buying using COMC credit instead of money from my bank account, a much more curated eBay store, less clutter. But it’s been a year of solid work to get to this point. It takes a while for a plan to come together.
Right now, my plan through this summer is to send a box to COMC maybe every other week (mostly new eBay purchases, but now I’m really picky about only buying the best deals), keep repricing what’s already in my port and buy on the site when I find the occasional good deal. I have sold at least 500 cards a month from my COMC port every month since last February, so I know this works and I have enough inventory to last me a while even if I stop buying or if I decide to run a big sale for any number of reasons.
It is interesting to think about the different opportunities that open up once you scale up. Definitely reminds me of what happened for you and Ryanne once you added Airbnb to your income stream and then once you added a second rental. The National card show is in Chicago this year, and I will go just to get a 30% discount on COMC submission fees. If I bring 1000 cards, that will be $300 less in fees by dropping them off! I went to the national last year when it was in Atlantic City, it was huge and overwhelming and a little too loud and busy for me. And honestly I prefer to buy from behind a computer screen. But this will be an excuse to explore a new city which should be a lot of fun. I could probably put my eBay store on vacation for the length of the trip and even cover the costs by running a sale on COMC.
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@Craig-Rex It’s amazing watching your stores transformation. Glad that the changes you are making are paying off. Must be especially gratifying to offload much of the work to COMC. Nothing can replace time and nothing is more valuable.
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Thanks, I wouldn’t have been able to make this transformation without years of learning from the podcast and this community. It’s such a tremendous source of support and I learn so much from all of you. I have been thinking a lot the last few months about sell through rates and trying to create new eBay listings which are priced to sell quickly. It’s always rewarding when a new listing sells within a day or two.
It’s funny what you wrote about the value of time. I’ve gotten a huge lesson in that over the last few months as one of my family members (my grandfather) has been in poor health. If I were juggling eBay with another job or two as I did for years, I wouldn’t have much time to be there and would constantly be stressed and overwhelmed by any new information or updates on his condition. Even a 1000+ listing eBay store can be very time-consuming if it’s your main source of income or if you’re one person handling everything or most of it, and I was up to 3000+ listings at my pandemic peak.
But the extra income stream from COMC has provided me with a lot more time, some of which I’ve used to show up for my family. It’s given me a lot of solace and peace in a difficult time and often showing up is a huge part of helping out. I have a lot of family members who work a lot or have responsibilities (childcare, elder caretaking) which mean they aren’t able to be present as often and when they are, a lot of that stress and fatigue comes to the surface. I feel those things sometimes because I live a few hours’ drive from most of my family, and all the driving is tiring, but it’s gratifying to see the benefits of an eBay business show up in other areas of life.
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Week Ending 2/4/23
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $568.25
Net Sales: $497.92 (eBay $129.33 / Etsy $368.59)
Total Items Sold 12 (eBay 6/Etsy 6)
Total Items: eBay – 1116 / Etsy: 405
Cost of Items Sold: $52.92
Highest Price Sold: $249.95 Antique Carriage Clock
Average Price Sold: $47.35
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Average Days Listed: 246
Longest Listed: 1383
New items listed: 24
New Listings Value $950.85Late to the game again this week. I had my numbers completed early, but then the week got in the way. Below average week of sales, but better than same week last year. Thankful for the one large sale of the antique carriage clock to push things up. The clock was broken, but seemed rare as it was made by a company that mainly made clockworks for other manufacturers. Sold on Etsy.
Like Mark, I had better sales on Etsy this week than on eBay. This was the second time that Etsy beat out eBay.
Christmas keeps selling. Several of my sales this week were of old vintage Christmas ornaments. I expect this to fall off soon as people pack up their trees finally, but Christmas sells all year round. I joined a vintage Christmas group on Facebook and those die hards are always on the hunt.
Beat my listing goal for the week, but came up slightly shy of the $1000 face value goal.
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It has been a busy life week but eBay has been very slow for us. We’ll see how numbers are tomorrow.
Random side note: we’re starting to see houses in our area that were purchased during the pandemic go back on the market. Just a trickle now and prices are still high but I think it’s going to pick up. Lots of buyers remorse from investors thinking starting an Airbnb would be easy. (Hint: its not and no rental is guaranteed income)
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It has been a busy life week but eBay has been very slow for us. We’ll see how numbers are tomorrow.
If there is one thing I have learned from reading these forums the last few years, it is that “busy life week” and “slow eBay week” appear in the same sentence quite a lot. Of course, that flexibility is one of the biggest perks to our lives. I have a lot of family who are very blue-collar and just work, work, work, and they are always very tired.
Just a trickle now and prices are still high but I think it’s going to pick up. Lots of buyers remorse from investors thinking starting an Airbnb would be easy. (Hint: its not and no rental is guaranteed income)
I’m skeptical of US housing prices ever becoming affordable for anyone below upper-middle class in my lifetime, more likely that large landlords keep buying up properties and offering less for more, but I really hope I am wrong.
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Well said. Our inventory is large enough where we should be able to coast for a while, but eBay does seem to like daily activity.
I have friends who work in the trades (construction, plumbing, electric, hvac). They easily make six figures but likely work 60 hours a week. Some drive three hours a day to where the big money jobs are. Its all a trade off.
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I have an engineer coworker who graduated college a year and a half ago. He is paid very well for this area, but can’t find a reasonably priced house.
Even junkers are $250k now around here!-
Houses are almost twice as much in our area. We just need to build more housing across the country. Everyone is competing against fewer homes/apartments.
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In my town, and in other towns around me in NJ, many defunct shopping centers or industrial areas are being torn down and rebuilt as multi-use housing and retail. A Wonderbread manufacturing plant, that has stood unused for 20 years or so, will be apartments, an ice skating rink, municipal facilities, and stores. Another shopping center has been torn down, and another is slated to be torn down (although there are viable stores there).
My concern is that in five years there will be too much housing and a vast additional number of kids in the schools. I’m thinking it will pull down the house prices due to an over abundance, but maybe only rentals because there isn’t a similar increase in building single family homes.
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My concern is that in five years there will be too much housing and a vast additional number of kids in the schools. I’m thinking it will pull down the house prices due to an over abundance,
This is the point to be fair. It’s crazy that little crap houses are selling for as much as they are. In my rural area, rundown houses are selling for $250k. That’s nuts!
Obviously this is great for current home owners since the value of their homes keeps going up, but its not good for society. Home prices are so high because the demand is high. When the demand is high, there needs to be more supply.
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