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Ah, the unglamorous life of selling random items on the internet week after week. If you’re reading this, you’re probably like us: you’ve built a pile
[See the full post at: The Numbers: March 20-26, 2022] -
03/20/22 – 03/26/22
Total Items In Store: 4299 (was 4313 previously listed)
Items Sold: 19
Total Sales: $ 809.03 (no shipping or included)
Highest Price Sold: $ 150 (Motorcycle Accesory)
Average Price Sold: $ 42.58
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 116.73
Number of items listed: 5Gut Sales Report for the week: Sales are much better this week. Decent STR and ASP.
Focus for the week : I finished my taxes, so not much listing going on.
Scavenge of the week: Got a really nice pair of Sorel boots. They fit my daughter and she loved them, so now they are hers.
Thoughts for the week: Go University of Michigan Hockey! They just made it to the Frozen Four!
Mark S
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Just checking in (from Chicago) to say I miss the podcast but I understand how it might feel like a grind to continue recording them with so much other stuff going on. Glad to hear the cafe business is going so well.
I’ve never done a numbers post on here but let me see what I can piece together:
- Total Sales: $1,147.67
- Net Sales: $793.69
- Items Sold: 26
- Average price sold: $44.14
- Items in store: 2687
Felt like a very slow week but has picked up the last few days. I looked at my numbers compared to last year and my sales are $6k+ behind the 2021 pace so far. I think my expectations need to return to be adjusted to pre pandemic-type sales. I guess the pandemic + stimulus $$ bump couldn’t last forever.
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@Green Dragon: I feel the same way about the slump. It seems more normal this year for us as opposed to the pandemic/stimulus wave we’ve been riding the past few years. While I miss the wave, it feels so good to have life return to normal again.
@Jay: Love hearing how much you are still enjoying the coffee shop. Congratulations on your best day! We still do live auctions here, two every Saturday. My favorite day of the week! I’m sure you know about auctionzip.com for finding local auctions near you.Our Store Week March 20-26, 2022
Total Items in Store: 514
Items Sold: 7
Gross Sales: $356.74 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $244.22 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $26
Highest Price Sold: $49.99 (1984 Sports Illustrated)
Average Price Sold: $50.60
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $30.50
Number of items listed this week: 11Sold 2 magazines this week from a death pile that I tackled a month ago. One was a Sports Illustrated Michael Jordan Olympic Team from 1984 (49.99) and the other was a vintage Record magazine from 1984 featuring ZZ Top (45.99). Not my favorite thing to list, it took me several hours to research the pile and figure out the ones worth listing. But, I was tickled when these two sold. Both went overseas via the Global Shipping Program.
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Weekly sales 3/20 – 3/26
Total items: 8519
Items sold: 174
New items listed: 350
Gross sales: $1,731.29
Net sales: $1,121.93
New buyers: 132
Repeat buyers: 6Etsy
Orders: 24
Gross sales: $80.00
Net sales: $68.00Gross sales total: $1,811.29
Net sales total: $1,189.93Pretty good week. I’m thinking hat sales are gonna start picking up with the warmer weather
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I said I’d try posting numbers so here they are. I’ll see if I can get into a habit of doing it on Mondays. A little back story. I’ve sold on eBay for many years, probably since 2008 or so, never full-time. About a year ago I made a huge change and went full time, but not selling on ebay, I started my own IT business. My wife works full time in accounting and her salary pays our bills and provides health insurance. The plan was to sell off the ebay inventory as well as a ton of items in my garage to cover costs for the IT business until we got a few customers and then shut down the ebay store. A year later, we have a handful of IT business customers that cover the bills but I really enjoy selling on ebay and can’t give it up! I sold off a bunch of my personal model trains, mostly stuff from when I was a kid in the 80’s and 90’s but I learned that I enjoy selling that stuff and it sells well. I buy large lots on social media and online and then part them out. Currently I’d say about 200 items in the store are model trains but it is a majority of what sells day to day. We follow a strict regimen of listing at least 7 items every day and have a large back-log of drafts that we pull from on days that we don’t make new listings. We are definitely in “growth” mode and don’t generate a ton of profit but I think that will change once we reach our goal of selling at least 10 items a day.
Week March 20-26, 2022
Total Items in Store: 532
Items Sold: 26
Gross Sales: $656.42(including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $361.40 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $74
Cost of helpers: 0
Highest Price Sold: $140 (steam train locomotive)
Average Price Sold: $25.25
Returns: 2
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $215.05
Number of items listed this week: 52 -
Something I have already shared and most ebayers probably already know about this. If you want to get customer service on the phone at ebay, go to the desktop version and go to Seller Hub and hover over Payments and in the drop down menu click All Transactions,(link below) if it is during regular business hours then over on the right side of page is a small help box with a phone icon, click that icon and a box will open where you can put your phone number in, make sure you clear out the number that looks like your phone number with a bunch of X’s and retype your phone number and click the “have us call you button”. They will likely call you back in a few minutes, just ask them what you need from there (I have found it can be about anything – you are not restricted to payment topics).
https://www.ebay.com/sh/fin/transactions
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Week of Mar 20 – 26
Total Items in Store: 1484 eBay, 36 Etsy
Items Sold: 8 eBay, 1 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $11 + $12.50 Commission
Total Sales: $120.29 eBay, $14 Etsy; Includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $27 perfume bottle
Average price: $14.70
Returns: 0 (one partial refund)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $50
Number of items listed this week: 16I had a piss-poor week, but I also had another item pulled down. Perhaps all my pulled listings are causing the algorithm to slow down my store; perhaps it is just the normal March/April slowdown. It was a bunch of tubes and accessories for someone who needs oxygen. I didn’t think the tubes required an Rx or anything, but apparently they do. I found out that a local synagogue was collecting stuff for Ukraine including medical supplies, so I brought it over and put it in one of the bins.
I went to my first live auction in at least a year yesterday. It was an on-site auction at an auto shop where the owner retired. He didn’t keep the place very clean, so there was dust everywhere. The items my husband were interested in sold at pretty steep prices, so we didn’t get what we came for. I did get some items for resale. The one big thing is a bunch of vintage car shop manuals and similar. The only issue is now I have to wipe them down before I can even bring them in the house.
The guy that did this auction has live ones occasionally, so I follow him and can go to his events.
The others have gone online, and I’m sure that they like the format much better. One guy has a small farm where he previously held the auctions, but he and his family also lives there. I’m sure he is happy to only have pickup there now. He also runs a live auction at a farm coop place every other week. He used to run them on Monday evenings, but changed it to Friday evenings. My family always eats dinner together, but Friday nights are particularly important. So, unless he changes the day, I won’t be going.
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Glad to hear the coffee shop is bustling! One of these days I hope to find time to come grab a cup of coffee and say hi. I grew up in Christiansburg, VA and still have family there so I’m not too far from your neck of the woods whenever I visit my parents.
3/20/2022 to 3/26/2022
Total Items in Store: 1838
Items Sold: 32
Gross Sales: $964.65 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $588.53 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $58.84
Highest Price Sold: $101.86 (Sterling silver panther link bracelet)
Average Price Sold: $30.15
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $17
Number of items listed this week: 18
Number of hours worked: 32:01:43
Average hourly salary: $18.95 (net sales divided by hours worked rounded to nearest half hour)Didn’t get a ton of stuff posted this past week, but I’ve been working on my death pile of clothes. I’ve got 18 medium sized moving boxes stuffed with clothes from several storage lockers I’ve picked up. My goal for the forseeable future is to work on clothing for the first half of the day and then switch over to hard goods in the afternoon. That way I don’t get bogged down in the drudgery (for me) that is clothing.
One big issue I’ve been fighting this past week has been lost packages. I’ve had four packages, all shipped parcel select, that have not had tracking updated in almost two weeks. Several angry customers contacted me this week which tipped me off to the problem. In each case, once I opened a missing mail search, tracking updated within 24 hours and 3 of the 4 packages have been delivered. Still no news on the fourth package though. Has anyone else been having issues with lost items lately? All these packages were shipped around the 10th of March.
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I did have one package stop movement for 2-3 weeks. It finally did find its way back on track and delivered to the buyer. Another seller here posted about a similar issue last week.
During the pandemic, when USPS was having all these problems, most of my delayed packages went through a hub in Kentucky.
This time, my buyer was in Lexington, Kentucky. I’m thinking that whoever/whatever created the problem before is up to it again.
Just my guess.
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Items in Store 1770
Items Sold 33
Total Sales $1,439.00
COGS $220.00
Total Profit $1,219.00
Average profit $36.94
Average sales price $43.61
New Listings 40
Items scavenged 5
Listing 2022 weekly Avg 56
Sourcing Allotment 19Twas a good week. I had a fateful scavenging trip this week. Took the kids to the dentist for cleanings, and stopped by a goodwill in that area that I very rarely go to. I bought two guitar amps there for $30 each. Got them home and tested them. One worked great and the other did not. Listed and sold both same day this weekend. The working one sold for $105 (it wasn’t a very good amp but looks super cool). The broken one sold for $310!. The broken one is a very old and desirable tube amp in great cosmetic condition. $300 net profit for a 5 minute scavenger run? I’ll take it! I wish they were all like that.
Both buyers were clearly dedicated amp people who restore them. They leave excellent feedback and the risk for returns is very low.
I also sold the 1928 phonograph I’ve had for over a year I picked up at a yard sale. I picked it up for $50 and was hoping to get $300-400 for it, but I sold it on FBmarketplace for $150. Again, I’ll take it! I didn’t have to do anything to it at all.
In other news, I finished refurbishing the counter tops in a corner of my ebay office so my wife has a dedicated place for her vinyl crafting stuff. The counter was cheap nasty unfinished particle board. I added a rounded edge to the front and patched up all the holes with wood filler. Then I applied a nice vinyl contact paper to make it smooth so she don’t get splinters. Much cheaper than buying real counter top material.
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Nice amp sales. I sold a vintage fender to a local music store for $600 last year. A friend of mine inherited a house and let me go through it and buy stuff before he sold it so I got the amp for like $10. I’d like to get more into the music stuff but the electrical components are what keep me from going in.
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craig rex wrote:
Jay, I hope you continue to have a great time in the dish pit. There is nothing quite like that experience, especially in a busy cafe or restaurant environment. It’s not for everyone (the pay is…not great) but I always found it cathartic. No matter how much I mess up the kitchen when I cook at home, it’s never quite the same.
3/20/2022 – 3/26/2022
Total items in store: 2507 (down from 2668)
The Great Purge of pulling slow moving $10 and $20 listings continues, as I move more of those items to sell on consignment which gives me back space to sell other types of items which don’t fit the consignment model. I have all of my individual cards inventory organized by sport or type, then last name, and I still have a few more boxes to go through and pull listings. Most notably, basketball and football. So we may get under 2000 listings within the next few weeks! And I almost have one full set of shelves cleared. But I am still listing at least 3 good, quality items every day. Those new listings are so important.
Items sold: 54 (40 via best offer, 8 via seller initiated offer)
Gross sales: $3295.23 (up 8% from one year ago)
Net sales: $2314.67 (up 10% from one year ago)
Lowest price sold (net): $13.76— Shaheen Holloway Sage Hit autograph
One of the smallest schools in my home state was the biggest story in sports over the last two weeks, as Saint Peter’s University went on a shock run through the annual college basketball tournament, defeating 3 heavily favored teams in Kentucky, Murray State (an excellent basketball school) and Purdue before finally falling short against North Carolina this past weekend to get eliminated. This was a historic event — the Saint Peter’s team was seeded a 15 on a scale of 1-16 (16 being the worst teams) and this was the furthest round that a seed lower than 12 had ever advanced. Even among small schools, Saint Peter’s was a huge underdog.
Shaheen Holloway is the team’s head coach, and 20 years ago he was a star college player for Seton Hall just around the time small card companies (like Sage) were fueling the autograph craze in the card world by inserting them one in every pack as opposed to one in every 24 pack box or even rarer. Holloway never made it to the pros because of injuries, so his Sage autographs are basically his only autographs and the sets are 20 years old now, so most of them are probably lost or in closets somewhere.
My cache of his autographs (I probably bought 30 or 40) will be my version of J&R’s ICP hats over the next few months and years. Probably not quite as profitable (ICP collectors are a spendy bunch), but Holloway is young for a coach and is likely to be named to be the next head coach at Seton Hall, or another large school. If he can accomplish this amazing run with tiny Saint Peter’s, who knows what he will do in the future. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s an NBA head coach in 5 or 10 years.
Saint Peter’s last two games against Purdue and North Carolina were played in Philadelphia, which I live right outside of, and I splurged and bought a ticket on StubHub to their game on Sunday which they lost to North Carolina. Something I haven’t done since…well, ever.I’m honestly not a huge sports watcher, though obviously I follow the players and teams closely. It had been years since I’ve been to a live game in any sport and maybe 5+ years since I went to one by myself. But I do enjoy watching basketball and I really enjoyed Saint Peter’s magical run. It was a lot of fun to see the Elite 8 Game in person even though they lost by a lot. There were so many people in the arena and all of these signs and cheers for this small school from Jersey City. Even from the last row of the upper deck, it was a blast. I don’t think I’ll be using eBay profits to go to a game anytime soon, too many other things I like to do, but this was a special experience and isn’t that what life (especially the scavenger life) is about?
Highest price sold (net): $177.86 — Keston Hiura Bowman Chrome black refractor autograph
Baseball is back, and with it the time honored tradition of card people speculating on young players Bowman Chrome autographs. Hiura was a top-notch prospect for the Milwaukee Brewers who are a pretty good team, but he’s struggled to find his footing in the big leagues the last few years. Of course, the world’s been topsy-turvy for much of that time, and I can imagine that some players were affected by all that uncertainty just like you and I. Hiura has been having a lot of success in this year’s practice spring training games. With his pedigree if that carries over to the regular season, in a few months this price will look like a steal for the buyer.
For what it’s worth, I didn’t know any of this until after the card sold and started writing this post. It is fun to reflect a little bit on which items sell, when and why. There is always a reason. I got my full buy it now price on the listing, which is all you can ever really ask for as an eBay seller. Well, that and no returns and no conspiracies on eBay’s part to suppress our listings and slow down our sales. But none of that is worth worrying about. Just keep listing good items at good prices and things will all work out.
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(I reposted Craig’s comment above because I think it got lost)
Having had many grinding jobs as a young dude, it is nice to do menial work when you’re the boss because I can pick/chose what to do + it’s for my own business. Its very difficult grinding for someone else.
I bet Sweet 16 brings up lots of selling opportunities with autographs. Do you follow the games and reprice as you see what players will become popular?
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Yeah I’d say doing dishes in a restaurant you own and enjoy is alot different than just being a dishwasher.
I’d enjoy cleaning used shoes ALOT less if I didn’t get to realize 100% of the benefit of my work. I mean really, who wouldn’t question their life’s journey if they were making $10-15 an hour picking gum and rocks out of used shoes? 😀
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Week Ending 3/26/21
Total Items in eBay Store: 1056
Items Sold eBay: 17
Gross Sales eBay (W/o shipping and tax): $1,108.17 (Includes FB Marketplace Sale)
Net Sales (After fees) eBay: $1,006.74Total Items in Etsy Store: 150
No Etsy SalesCost of Items Sold: $127.11
Highest Price Sold: $450 Vintage MCM Night Tables
Average Price Sold: $65.19
Money Spent on New Inventory: $273.00
New items listed: 13Nice to see some new faces on the weekly numbers board. Welcome!
Had a nice week of sales for a change. Nice to break $1000. Big sale of the week was a nice pair of MCM night tables we grabbed from an online auction for $50 and sold for $450. We’ve done well lately with furniture and considering expanding into that area. Even though we also post them on eBay they’ve been selling on FB Marketplace. Nice to sell something without the fees.
Hit a couple of Estate Sales this week and found some good values. Most of what I posted this week came from those sales.
One of my first jobs was as a dishwasher in a restaurant. That’s hard work during busy times. I can see how it might be more satisfying as an owner. It sure wasn’t fun as a grunt on the low end of the pecking order.
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Even though we also post them on eBay they’ve been selling on FB Marketplace. Nice to sell something without the fees.
I read somewhere that Facebook and Venmo were going to start sending 1099 to people now. Maybe the end of tax-free profit if you dont get cash?
Venmo: https://help.venmo.com/hc/en-us/articles/4407389460499-2022-Tax-FAQ
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I read somewhere that Facebook and Venmo were going to start sending 1099 to people now. Maybe the end of tax-free profit if you dont get cash?
Interesting. I assume this applies only if the money exchanges within Facebook, otherwise I can’t see how they will now what final value is. I see with Venmo it only applies if the buyer tags the payment for good and services. Pretty low bar for Venmo, they report after only $600.
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One of my first jobs was as a dishwasher in a restaurant. That’s hard work during busy times. I can see how it might be more satisfying as an owner. It sure wasn’t fun as a grunt on the low end of the pecking order.
Very very true. Its the definition of a grind. Though I did enjoy experiencing dishes through Pete’s eyes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishwasher_Pete
As an owner, its nice to wash dishes because I get to a part of the action and keep an eye on things…but don’t need to deal with orders or people. Turn off brain, keep things clean, enjoy the atmosphere.
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For this time period I had zero sales while time away was on. The day we got back I had several sales. We had a nice vacation. It was in Hawaii where masks were still required inside and everything was outdoors or very well ventilated. It was strangely amazing just to talk to random strangers again and do normal tourist things without being paranoid about getting Covid. Unfortunately my daughter is sick this week with a regular cold after returning.
While away I did some shopping on Ebay for an 80s party we are going to. It’s kind of amazing what some surf and preppy clothing I used to own goes for. It would be a fun niche to get into. I opted for some crazy print high top Reebocks and a color block shirt so far. Need a Bongo jean skirt to go with it. The 80s careerwear is hilarious.
Congrats again on the growing success of the coffee shop!
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I just wanted to chime in on the lost packages in Memphis comments.
I had a first class mail package that arrived at the Memphis hub on March 12th and never made it out. My buyer was super patient and understanding, she said there’d been a rash of lost mail/packages in that part of the country around that time frame.
USPS just closed my lost package request without resolution and I refunded my buyer.
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