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We liked this week because we were selling almost five items a day. Felt busy with lots of fun sales. A postcards, a set of sheets, men clothe’s, wome
[See the full post at: The Numbers: June 5-11, 2022] -
Total Items in Store: 271
Items Sold: 5
Gross Sales: $351.29 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $236.90 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $66
Cost of “helper” (my kid’s profit): $40
Highest Price Sold: $119 (new dress)
Average Price Sold: $55
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $25
Number of items listed this week: 11Congrats on your great week. It felt like a pretty good week for me. I look forward to doing more listing this coming week since I will have more free time. The coffee shop menu looks awesome. The prices are much lower than here so they seem very reasonable. I bet the people in your town are loving having a great place to go get quality food and hang out.
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Nice sales for you. Glad to see you have a helper!
Yes, it is tough pricing retail items these days with the ever changing inflation. We’re trying to keep our prices very reasonable and still make money. Come on over and get a salmon toast.
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Okay, I only listed 1 last week. I’m going to count that as a win, though, because at least I did something. Right now I’m focused on going through stuff to weed out the things that I don’t want to deal with listing and donate them.
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Items in Store 1898
Items Sold 28
Total Sales $840.00
COGS $87.00
Total Profit $753.00
Average profit $26.89
Average sales price $30.00
New Listings 5
Items scavenged 35
Listing 2022 weekly Avg 47Nearly identical numbers to last week. Looking at year over year for May and June, I’ve made $1000 more this year. That is phenomenal for the dead part of the year!
Last week was absurdly busy for me outside ebay. I had consultants in from the UK all week at my day job. I learned alot regarding the processes I wanted to improve, and I learned alot of great new UK slang – most not repeatable among pleasant company. Lol!
The only repeatable one is when I told them my email address, which has a period in it. They have no idea what a period is. I thought they were messing with me, but in England a period is called a “full stop” or “dot”.
Lots of long days and I was mentally wiped once it got to the weekend, so very little listing.
I did (finally) finish proof reading my wife’s novel this weekend, which I’m sure she appreciates much more than doing some listing. It only took me about a year. We also watched alot of Stranger Things 4 this past week. Good lord the episodes are TOO LONG this season!!! We keep sitting down expecting a riveting 40 minute experience, then the last half of every episode has been spent thinking “how much longer is this gonna go on?!?” We finished ep 6 last night and I checked the episode lengths of 7-9. Holy moly – Episode 9 is 2.5 HOURS!!! I think they forgot how TV shows are supposed to work.
Nothing much of note from yard sales. I did come across one that had a bunch of nice clothes my size for $1 per bag.
I did have one frustrating experience. I went to a yard sale at the end of the day – after 1pm. The tables were still mostly still full of stuff. They had a car radio that said Sony Marine. I hadn’t seen one of these before. I enquired about it and started to get a long winded story and the lady did a google search and said the dreaded words “These go for like $175.” Oh boy…
So I asked “what do you want for it”. “Uhh, you’ll have to ask my husband”…who wasn’t there. He had just pulled up across the street so I finished looking around as he slowly made his way to the house. I asked him, “What do you want for the radio?” Again got a long winded story that alluded to the fact it might be broken but “not to worry, because there was a wiring issue in the motorcycle they pulled it from so it wasn’t a radio issue”.
“Yeah ok…so what do you want for it?”
“Ohh… I don’t know. Make me an offer?”
“$10.”
“Ehhhh….oooohhhh… (In the background the wife saying again that they could do FBMP and that they go for $175) How about $50?”
I think I broke the sound barrier as I exited the yard sale.
Why put stuff out on tables for a yard sale, sit there all freaking day, then have absolutely no idea what you want for things? I don’t want a long winded story. I just want sellers to be prepared with a price. If it is fair I pay. If there is negotiating room, I make an offer. Why is this so hard for some people?
Now as for that radio – I researched it after the fact. No it does NOT go for $175. A Modern Sony Marine radio with bluetooth and XM absolutely goes for $200-300. This one was old without those features and doesn’t even sell for $50 with free shipping. I did not research it at the sale but my gut said $10 was being generous on my part for an untested unit that was pulled due to issues. I was correct.
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@retro – Yes! One of my pet peeves also. I had someone do something similar a few weeks ago at one. I’ve had them doing this at Estate Sales also. There are a lot of new companies doing estate sales in my area since the pandemic and so many don’t mark anything in advance.
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no prices and the dreaded “what would you pay for it?” well, what are you asking? $100? $20? $5? I want to pay $1 or less for it…
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One of my favorite all time selling experiences was the time I was called incredibly rude for responding” What’s the most you’ll pay” when someone asked “What’s the least you’ll take”.
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I always respond with “I’m open to reasonable offers, what are you offering?” when asked “what’s the least you’ll take”. horrible question, worst form of playing chicken, who will name a price first??
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Does that ever result in a sale? In my experience the people that say that lame line rarely turn into a buyer no matter what offer I give. Now I usually respond either with my asking price or an offer 10% or less off of my asking price.
I asume it is a low effort blanket coverage style buying method which is why the response rate is low even if you send a reasonable offer.
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Week of Jun 5 – 11
Total Items in Store: 1611 eBay, 33 Etsy
Items Sold: 12 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $?? + $?? Commission – didn’t figure out for this week
Total Sales: $283.29 eBay, $0 Etsy; Includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $40 teapot
Average price: $23.60
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $10
Number of items listed this week: 12I’m in the mist of moving my data from GoDaddy to Wave, so I haven’t had time to input my COGS or calculate my commission. It wasn’t a big week anyway. Figuring out how to upload data to Wave was pretty annoying, but I’ve figured it out to some extent. My bank didn’t allow it to upload much more than a few days deposits, so I had to download/upload using a csv file and Google Sheets. Setting it up to list COGS and the transfer of all my expenses from GD has also been a pain. I have a few more categories of expenses to move over before I’m done.
I have visitors from out of town for about two weeks, so I’m relying on what I can pull from eBay, and I’ll get the other stuff in later.
I did go to two rummage sales / flea markets this weekend. At the first, I found a box of kitchen stuff and pulled five Cutco knives out of it. The lady wanted $2 a piece. My husband and I have taken a liking to Cutco, so I shipped them out today to get sharpened, and then those will be ours when they get back. I did buy some vintage housewares at the second rummage sale, which is the $10 I listed above.
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Week Ending 6/11/22
Total Items in eBay Store: 1050 Total Items in Etsy Store: 243
Items Sold eBay: 6 Items Sold Etsy: 0
Gross Sales eBay (W\O shipping and tax): $448.62
Net Sales (After fees) eBay: $375.22
Cost of Items Sold: $56.46
COGS Percent 15.05%Highest Price Sold: $350.00 Art Deco Light Shade
Average Price Sold: $74.77
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00Average Days Listed: 570
Longest Listed: 1699
New items listed: 7Nice number of sales you guys had this week. I love how it is all so random. You never know what is going to sell and it seems almost anything will sell eventually.
Had mostly low-dollar sales again this week, but my week was saved by a sale of an 1930’s Art Deco lamp shade for $350. I was originally asking $650 but with things being so slow I accepted an offer. Paid $48 for it from an auction. Also sold a nice vintage wind-up alarm clock within 2 hours of posting it for $29. I was surprised it sold so quickly as the alarm didn’t work. The other things that sold were very long tail.
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Had mostly low-dollar sales again this week, but my week was saved by a sale of an 1930’s Art Deco lamp shade for $350. I was originally asking $650 but with things being so slow I accepted an offer.
You have such an amazing eye for these types of vintage items. I don’t know what separates a $10 lamp shade from a $100 lamp shade from $350 and up, and probably never will, but I know quality when I see it. What a gorgeous piece.
I have been fiddling with lower offer settings as well. I’m starting to think that auto decline offers below 50% of asking price is the right setting for low $$ ($25 and under) and high $$ (for me, it’s $150 and up) items. This avoids the lowballers, but decent offers still get through.
I always think about things like this when sellers talk about how slow their sales are. No doubt, things are slow right now and probably will be for a while. But we have so many options now to engage with interested buyers, tweak prices and promote our listings. It is hard to do those things when there’s no immediate boost in sales, but things won’t be slow forever.
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@Craig – Not sure how good my eye is, but even a blind dog occasionally finds a bone, right. 🙂
I used to have auto-decline on for offers below 50% also, then I read someplace, possibly here on SL, that having auto-decline shuts down a potential conversation that could lead to a sale. The vast majority of my counter offers go on deaf ears anyway, but every once and a while that low-baller is just fishing and will snatch up my 25% off counter offer. Perhaps they would have made another higher offer anyway, but you never know. You have a much larger store than I do, so I can imagine that shutting down some of the noise could be helpful. As a smaller seller I hate to miss any sale. And recently, with things being so slow, I’ve even taken a few offers below 50%.
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The vast majority of my counter offers go on deaf ears anyway, but every once and a while that low-baller is just fishing and will snatch up my 25% off counter offer. Perhaps they would have made another higher offer anyway, but you never know. You have a much larger store than I do, so I can imagine that shutting down some of the noise could be helpful.
I’ve found that regardless of offer settings, there are some eBay users whose negotiation tactic is the message “what’s your lowest price.” Usually, if they send an offer before their message, the offers are less than 50% of my buy it now price and sometimes as low as 10%. I don’t ever reply to these messages and I really wish eBay offered the ability to filter them into a spam folder based on message content. Same goes for users trying to get us to sell off eBay. But the auto decline setting is better than nothing.
I have taken a few offers at or below 50% recently as well. Usually it is stuff that has been in my inventory for a year or longer, and my initial price was probably a bit too high.
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I sold a pair of shoes for less than half price last week. I had them priced at 90. Buyer sent me an offer of $40 and included a message that explained that Danner had put the brand new version of the same shoe on blow out clearance at $50.
I checked their website and it was true. I happily accepted their offer.
on the flipside, this evening I got an offer on a rare cassette well below half price that I declined. Then a message from the bidder saying “what‘s the least you’ll take.”
I replied by saying “an offer less than half price does not get you in the ballpark to engage in negotiation. Asking “what’s the least you’ll take”will never result in the “least” offer. Keep these facts in mind for your next negotiation.
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This was a slower week than usual for me on eBay, but that’s to be expected this time of year. There will be weeks where the buyers just aren’t buying no matter how many offers you send or new listings you create.
But there are other elements to this life beyond your net sales. I continued to purge and organize my listed trading card inventory and boxes of bulk cards to sell on consignment. I have cleared 3/4 of one of my 4 shelf units over the last few months. I am getting some old death pile items listed, and my consignment sales have become a nice, secondary income stream which has settled around $2000 profit per month for the last two months. It will be interesting to see if that remains steady or improves. I have been sending 90% of the new inventory I purchase through online auctions directly to consignment, and I expect that to continue going forward.
Changing my process flow for new inventory has freed me up to think more about how I want to spend my time and what other changes I can make. I have some other ideas for the next few months and beyond, and I really enjoy seeing them through from concept to actually affecting my business and day to day life. It makes this exciting even on slow weeks.
For now, I have returned to one of my earliest scavenging loves, library sales. I have hit four different sales in the last five weeks and spent about $200 total (probably less) to bring home dozens of interesting books, magazines, CDs and DVDs. It’s been a few years since I’ve regularly listed these sorts of items and it will be a fun project for the next rainy weekend(s) or when the weather gets colder.
I have two Too Good To Go pickups scheduled this evening from local businesses (one bakery and one deli) and will report back tomorrow with the goods. I spent a lot of time cooking this weekend (another benefit of this life), but I don’t have any scavenging plans for this week and Too Good To Go kind of scratches that itch for me.
6/5/2022 – 6/11/2022
Total items in store: 2128 (up from 2118 last week)
Items sold: 41 (30 via best offer, 4 via seller initiated offer, 20 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $1901.38 (down 37% from one year ago)
Net sales: 1298.60 (down 39% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $46.38 (up 7% from one year ago)
Time spent searching through online auction listings for new trading cards inventory: 13 hours (down from 13.5 hours last week)
Highest price sold (net): $82.94 — Malik Monk Panini Instant autograph rookie #2/5
This card was part of a large sale to one buyer last Saturday and Sunday, 20+ items which totaled nearly $1000 (gross) and $500 (net). I rarely get these types of high roller buyers, more often it’s 2 or 3 $20 items in one purchase, but build up your inventory enough and sometimes the unexpected will happen. Very exciting and nerve-wracking. I couldn’t resist checking the tracking all week long.
It will be interesting to see if the buyer returns to my store again. I really went the extra mile with packaging and adding some bonus freebies that I thought they’d enjoy based on which cards they purchased. I’d love to know their story, especially what their card budget is and which cards are “investments” versus their collection. Some buyers love to share this information, and it feeds my own enthusiasm for buying and selling all these cards.
Lowest price sold (net): $11.03 — Jamal Agnew Panini Contenders rookie ticket autograph
These are always my favorite kinds of sales — $1.63 into $11.03. An autographed rookie card of the Jacksonville Jaguars return specialist and backup wide receiver, plucked from one auction out of 20,000 listed every week by one of the biggest card sellers.
Sometimes card values go up and down for logical reasons, usually the player improves or becomes more popular. But these types of sales aren’t like that. This was knowing why something has value (the player is not a star performer but a fan favorite and only has cards in a few sets), and just wait for the right buyer (no surprise, located in Florida). Bargains like this are always out there. Our job is to go and find them.
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I have two Too Good To Go pickups scheduled this evening from local businesses (one bakery and one deli) and will report back tomorrow with the goods.
Bakery will likely be day olds (which isnt bad!). One bagel place gave us a whole grocery bag of bagels which we ate for the week. Interested in what the deli gives.
Because there’s a community for everything, you can see what other people are getting on TGTG: https://www.reddit.com/r/toogoodtogo/
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Bakery was actually a “bread and pizza bakery” and gave a huge box of sicilian pizza slices, at least 15 total.
Deli was a whole italian hoagie with lettuce and tomato and mayo, a pint of rice pudding and a few prepackaged items (snack cake, beef jerky).
Not bad for $12 total! I will keep updating as I try different places.
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I’ve been very interested in Too Good To Go since Jay mentioned it.
@craig-rex – I’m interested in knowing what is available in South Jersey.I’ve been so busy that I’ve only looked at what was offered in my area (Central Jersey). Closest to me is a pizza place, but my daughter is very picky with pizza. There is an organic vegetable store that I’d love to try out at some time and what I think is a bubble tea place, but I haven’t research it yet.
Some day I will have the time to buy something, and I’ll report when I post. It might take a few weeks, though.
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I would have loved to see an organic vegetable store in my choices! A lot of bakeries and chain bagel shops in South Jersey’s Too Good to Go, at least for now. I usually cook at home and eat pretty healthy so this was a splurge.
I was able to make reservation for my pickups the same day, but in the future I will look at my options the day before. Just looking through the Too Good to Go reddit that @Jay linked, the best deals sell out in minutes. No surprise since you get a good amount of food for $3 to $7 and depending on what you get, you may be able to freeze some of it.
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Craig Rex, by any chance did you hear about the 13 year old kid that purchased a box of Panini Prizm Football cards and found a card that he sold for $100,000.00? Here is a link to the story on Kovels: https://www.kovels.com/news-news-news/caught-on-camera-rare-football-card-found-sells-for-100000.html
And here is a direct link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Anp0BSAvZsY&t=238s
A very happy day for him and his family.
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I did see that story, the father and son are from Akron, Ohio and their local news site had a nice article on them.
One thing that is missing from both articles is the cost of the original box, which was at least $50 for the smallest boxes you can get at Walmart and $250 or higher for the larger boxes that are typically sold at more traditional card shops. Modern cards aren’t cheap!
But the upside is that if you hit the one-in-a-million card, like these two did, there are no shortage of high rollers out there who don’t think twice about spending thousands on a specific desirable card in the hopes of selling it in the future after the value’s increased further.
I hope they put some of that money away for his future! Opening packs is how most collectors have their fun, but it’s a losing bet most of the time.
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I continued to purge and organize my listed trading card inventory and boxes of bulk cards to sell on consignment.
Wow, you’re really going all in on that consignment, and it seems to be working for you. Didn’t you have over 3000 items in your store just a few months ago?
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Wow, you’re really going all in on that consignment, and it seems to be working for you. Didn’t you have over 3000 items in your store just a few months ago?
I had about 3500 listings at my very peak. But I built my store with a lot of $3 and under purchases that I would list for $10 or $20. Probably 1000 or more of the 3500 listings fell into that category, and they would sell once in a while. But I was also running out of inventory space since I live in a pretty small apartment. One individual card is small, but thousands (plus all their supplies) start to take up room very quickly.
The consignment company I use (COMC) ran a promotional sale on their fees late last year. I had used their COMC to buy individual cards very occasionally over the years, but I had never sold on there. The occasional card that I had bought at a bargain price and then relisted, but that was it. But I sent in my first few dozen cards because of the fee promo and lack of space. This led to about $400 in sales on COMC last December, and I was surprised to see how quickly a few items sold (within minutes) and nice sale prices for some other items. Especially cards from $5 to $20. I had a hunch if I scaled up that this pattern would continue, and it mostly has.
There has been a bit of a learning curve. Not everything is a perfect fit to sell on COMC since their listings are created using a catalog, and the info in the listing titles is not always what a buyer would search for. Also, fees are high enough that any card which would sell for $1 or less isn’t worth sending in, at least not until they run another promotion on fees. But most of the new inventory I buy goes directly to COMC. I have more space, and free time, and a lot of ideas for other changes I can make going forward. Really all the things we are striving for in this crazy pursuit.
I haven’t yet seen much of a decline in my month over month sales on eBay, even though I’m down to 2000 listings. I think it helps a lot that I am still listing 5 new items almost every day and I have a better eye now than I did a year ago. I could probably stand to do another pass through my inventory over the next few weeks. There are still probably 200 (or more) listings in my store with no watchers and few to no offers which might be a better fit to sell on COMC.
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I had the inclination to lower prices and offer settings on about 50 of my higher priced listings yesterday, and wouldn’t you know it, I had more sales yesterday and today than the last three days combined. None of the items that were revised, but that doesn’t really matter to me as long as things are selling.
But maybe that is just a coincidence. Looking back at my monthly numbers, it seems that Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays have been consistently busier. Especially since June 1st.
Not sure if this is a fluke, a trend or specific to the types of items I sell, but I figured I’d share anyway. Anything to get an edge when things are as slow as they have been.
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“We’re coming to Leicester with the eBay Business Roadshow! We’re always looking for new ways to show our support for your eBay business. That’s why [blah blah-blah blah blah] free bar [blah blah blah]”
Really?
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Years ago, when eBay had events in the S.F. Bay Area, the two events I attended over the years not only had an open bar but also free food, which was actually pretty good, along with free entertainment. Of course, that wasn’t all day, but just after the conferences and lectures at the end of the day.
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along with free entertainment
There is (or was) a pub in Leicester called the ‘Ship’. Back in the 1940s the free entertainment was a man nailing a rat to the bar and then tearing it apart with his teeth. When I went there in the 1980s it was a man going table-to-table with a matchbox, doing an impersonation of Tommy Cooper.
Las Vegas ain’t got nothing on us!
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