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We list stuff. It often sits for months or even years. But it all eventually sells. If we list enough, things sell everyday. And if we can get invento
[See the full post at: The Numbers: May 7-13, 2023] -
Items in Store 2017
Items Sold 17
Total Sales $345.00
COGS $52.00
Total Profit $293.00
Average profit $17.24
Average sales price $20.29
New Listings 0
Items scavenged 16
Listing 2023 weekly Avg 18We skipped town this weekend to Columbus and ‘may’ have skipped out on some baseball games. Oh well, my wife deserved some extra R&R for Mother’s day. Only went to one thrift while I was there and only got 2 things of no special note.
I did get to go to yard sales for the first time Saturday morning before we left. I was so excited I was literally shaking at the first sale once I found my first good item. Good times!
That first sale was a good one too. I bought one item (a slide rule) for $1 that I thought might be a $100 item (it wasn’t but a solid $30) and picked up another item as an afterthought for $5 that I thought might be $40-50 (it wasn’t – more like $500-800!!!) I’ll share more on the $800 item in the scavenge of the week post later this week. I want to get it listed live this evening first.
The yard sale experience is so fun and so rejuvenating! The negotiating, the pile building, the peek into another families life…it ‘s just on a another level.
Thrifting has really turned into a drag. The truly unique items just don’t make it to the floor anymore. Many items I would normally buy are overpriced, and the bread/butter clothing & shoes are just generally lower quality and MUCH higher priced now to the point they aren’t worth giving more than a high level glance. I mainly just do thrifting for the mileage deduction now, and the occasional higher dollar find. Even then it is just a “yay…another boring $50 item…” kind of feel most of the time.
Over the next 2 weeks I hope to find some time to start organizing my work and inventory spaces for ebay so I can hit the ground running in June with my listing.
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The yard sale experience is so fun and so rejuvenating! The negotiating, the pile building, the peek into another families life…it ‘s just on a another level.
Yard sales and flea markets are exciting!
Thrifting has really turned into a drag. The truly unique items just don’t make it to the floor anymore.
Well said. We just dont go thrift stores anymore. Maybe the tides will turn one day when thrift stores realize they’ve just become “regular stores”.
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@Retro – Totally agree about yardsales. I think that is what got me hooked on this whole scavenging thing to begin with. At first I was just tagging along with my wife as the designated driver, but it only took a few weeks before I was turned. I think we caught the back end of the thrifting boom.
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Week of 5/7 – 5/13
Total items in Store: 305
Items Sold: 6
Gross Sales: $1,210.80 (w/o eBay fees, shipping, or taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $41.46 (including consignment commissions but not the original cost of family castoffs)
Highest Price Sold: $1,000.00 plus shipping (antique brass miniature cannon relic from HMS Royal George)
Average Sales Price: $201.80 (not incl eBay fees, shipping, or taxes)
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $7
Number of new items listed: 5My highest price sold was that interesting miniature cannon souvenir from an infamous UK shipwreck that I found for $20 at the flea market and posted about in Scavenge of the Week here a while back. I started out shooting for the moon at $1,500. That resulted in many views, many watchers, and a few low-ball offers and indignant emails about my ridiculous asking price, but no real bites. After a while I began sending out offers at 50% off (still shooting high, even at that) to no avail but someone offered $1,000 out of the blue so off it went. I had a couple other sales in the $80 range that made it a great week for me.
Congrats on your sleeper find, Retro. Looking forward to hearing about it. I went to the single yard sale Saturday that was within a reasonable distance for me and it was fun for sure. I paid $7 for about $150 worth of stuff at BIN prices that I’ve researched so far but what really intrigued me was a 1997 Airstream camper van conversion that was in pristine condition with 70K miles on it, a working AC unit on top and a trailer that went with it. Not something we’d have any use for but boy was it sweet to look at and dream about.
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Did the seller know he had a piece of that shipwreck?
I doubt it. He’s a regular at that flea market, an outdoor seller with a larger setup of mostly used tools at fairly high prices. He’ll have a small card table by his truck of what he thinks is precious; old knives and military that’s invariably priced too high to make enough on resale. When I picked up the cannon and he said it was $20 I was very surprised it was so cheap. I just figured it was at the very least an easy $100+ since I could tell it was an early piece. At the time I did not know anything about that particular shipwreck or the relics from it. I did try and negotiate with him for a better price but he wouldn’t budge.
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How did you determine the authenticity of the cannon?
Eyes, hands, and brain. I started picking antiques and collectibles for auctions and antique dealers for fun when I was a teenager – going on 50 years now – so I’m confident in my abilities to identify when something is really old and spotting fakes and reproductions (even older ones) in manufactured items. So I start with that and research from there. For the cannon it started when I saw and felt patterns of wear and patina and craftmanship and age tells that can’t be faked or would cost too much to be worth it in a reproduction. I lucked out with the Royal George shipwreck connection because internet searches brought up many similar items to mine for sale and already sold to make detailed comparisons. (I got the idea to ask $1,500 from a few antique dealer web sites.) So armed with that, I felt safe in guaranteeing its authenticity in my listing. Why not? I offer free returns anyway. In a higher price range I might have paid for a certificate from someone with credentials, but that’s such a racket outside of the big companies that do trading cards, etc. You’re just paying for an official-looking piece of paper. Mostly they’ll put on there whatever you tell them to put on there, within reason, unless you can find a real expert in your narrow area, which is very difficult.
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Total Items in Store: 900
Items Sold: 79 (ebay) + ~50 (private sale)
Gross Sales: $4,559.08 = $2,459.08 (ebay) + $2,100.00 (private sale)
Net Sales: $3,700.80 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $471.00
Highest Price Sold: $160 (N scale passenger car set)
Average Price Sold: ~$35.00
Returns: 2
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 80Definity a big week for sales thanks to a private collector buying a ton of stuff from me then coming back for more 2 days later. Also driven by the type of item I was feeding my store. In model trains locomotives are one of the best selling, high dollar items and nice used ones pretty much sell right away if the price is right. About 50 used n scale locmotive listings went up last week and a lot of them sold. I did get two return requests for locomotives but so far neither has been sent back. I test all my locomotives before listing them and write detailed descriptions of what is wrong. As with all things with flaws on ebay, you get a few buyers that dont read the description, or even the title, and just buy that half-price broken item thinking they somehow found the deal of a century. For this reason I always request the item be sent back and more often than not the buyer admits they didn’t read the description and keeps the item.
On the topic of returns, I really dislike this trend of online retailers allowing the customer to keep an item when they initiate a return. Over the past year I’ve had a few buyers who raised an absolute stink with all manner of insults and crazy threats simply because I wouldn’t give them a refund until the item was sent back, at no cost to them of course. In all cases it was very much “buyers remorse” and the items were quickly resold once I finally got them back but man, if I had to deal with that nonesense on a weekly bases this job would be a lot more stressful.
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Amazing week of sales. Really exciting to see your big investment pay off so quickly. Hope the sales keep coming!
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@JasonK – I have a Lionel train set from the 50s/60s that I have to list. This is for my neighbor where I am selling his stuff on commission. Most likely, I will sell it together rather than selling the parts, but I haven’t done the research yet.
Nothing terribly interesting this week except for my biggest sale, a rare atlas. Again, it was for my neighbor on commission, but still nice.
Week of May 7
Total Items in Store: 1715 eBay, 30 Etsy
Items Sold: 11 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $0 + $64 Commission
Total Sales: $324.26 eBay, $0 Etsy; includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $169 Historical Atlas US Congressional Districts 1789-1983
Average price: $29.50
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 10-
@Sharyn if it’s a complete set with a transformer and track then I would recommend hooking it up and testing it. Make sure the locomotive goes forward and reverse and the headlight works and test the whistle/horn. I actually don’t sell Lionel sets complete on eBay due to the huge shipping costs, I part them out. The most valuable items are the locomotive and transformer, but only if you can verify they work. That being said, vintage post-war Lionel starter sets are not worth a ton unless there are lots of accessories that come with it. I get phone calls from people all the time wanting to sell me their old Lionel set thinking they have something super rare. As a dealer I only pay $20-$40 for those old sets and hope to get maybe $100-$150 for everything once it’s all tested and parted out. The paradox with model trains is that everybody thinks old=$$$ but in reality the newest stuff is the most valuable because it has the latest and greatest technology and superior detail.
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How’s it going guys?
Been a long time since I’ve posted here. Glad to see a few folks still hanging around and making money on eBay.
I went back to working a job in October last year. I didn’t really want to, but 2022 just didn’t work out like I thought it would with selling things. We also had several large expenses come up and the savings account got slimmer than I’d like.
I’m working 100% remote at least and don’t talk to my boss or co workers very much at all so that’s nice lol. I’m designing roof and floor trusses for houses so I mainly just look at the plans that are sent in and start designing.
As far as eBay goes, I’m still listing patches and have been doing that exclusively this year. I’ve got about 10,000 patches in my store and list 25 a day. It’s a breeze since I just sell similar off my old listings and all of my inventory is in one closet. I’m getting close to selling about 20 items a day and I’m just going to keep trucking at this rate until I’m selling 25 a day. I also have over 2,000 hats in my store but I don’t list those any more and I’ll be glad when they’re all sold.
I want to pay off our house early and eBay will be a big help in doing that. Maybe once we don’t have a mortgage I will consider going full time again. Baby number 2 will be here in August and it’s nice having good health insurance to cover that. I guess there are SOME positives with a regular job..
Let’s fire up the old weekly numbers one more time to see how I’m doing now that this is a part time gig again:
Items in store: 12,182
Quantity Sold: 131
Gross Sales: $1,052.48
Net Sales: $686.89
Cogs: $65.5
Net income: $621.39
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With a young kid and another one on the way, getting a job with benefits make sense. And if you work from home, then its almost like not having a job 🙂
Awesome to hear about your patch experiment:
–So are you averaging $100+ a day selling patches?
–Is it harder finding collections of patches to purchase?
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Yeah, the job situation could be much worse! I’m also making $7k more a year than I was at the job I had before I started selling full time so that was a nice outcome as well. The insurance is cheaper than the old company too.
Looks like I’ve averaged about $80 a day selling patches so far this year. I sell about 3 hats a day on average so I am getting over $100 a day with patches and hats.
Surprisingly, I haven’t had any trouble buying patch collections. If I can’t find some of the nicer types, there’s always a lot of people selling boy scout patches. Scout patches are slower moving than other patches but they do sell and you can get them cheap. It’s just a volume game and you have to be patient – like list patches for years kinda patient lol.
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Week Ending 5/13/23
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $555.60 (ebay: $440.75 / Etsy: $114.85)
Net Sales: $472.41
Total Items Sold: 14 (eBay: 11 / Etsy: 3)
Total Items in eBay Store: 1224 / Etsy Store: 539
Cost of Items Sold: $50.08
Highest Price Sold: $149.95 Byers’ Choice Caroler
Average Price Sold: $39.69
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
New items listed: 24
New Listings Value $733.70Not a bad week of sales. It would have been a bit better, but a few Saturday buyers waited until Sunday to pay, so those will go on the next report. Was happy to have three of my newly listed items sell almost immediately upon posting. My big sale was Byers’ Choice caroler depicting Martha Washington – part of the Mt. Vernon collection. I asked more for it than previous sales and it sold within a few hours of posting for $149.95. I paid $20 for it from an online auction.
I’m working my way through the lots I purchased a few weeks ago still. This week was a lot of lower dollar items. A bunch of Longaberger pottery, a few more Byers pieces, and a handful of Persian music CDs that I’ve had sitting aside for a while. I was prompted to post them after I received my one return request for a Persian cassette that I sold that was DOA. The person that purchased it asked it I had any more, so I posted the stack quickly. She didn’t buy any of them yet, but someone else purchased one for $25 overnight.
Will be taking Friday off this week to go on another college visit for my daughter. Heading down to Williamsburg to see William and Mary. Kind of hope she doesn’t like it, as I always hate making that road trip down 95. I feel like something is jinxed on that road as the last few times we’ve gone that way the trip has changed from a 2 1/2 hour drive into 5 or more. Wish me luck.
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A lifetime ago, I spent a year at Christopher Newport University in Newport News. I liked taking the train from NJ instead of driving for the exact reason you mentioned. Safe travels.
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My monthly auctions ended last week and I’m starting to really enjoy running these every month. It’s a very busy workflow for a few days as I get caught up on shipping everything, but if you’re a shipping nerd like most of us, that’s actually kind of fun. I list a few hundred items from my store at about 50% of my buy it now price and turn on best offers. A few items sell through offers, about 10% sell through bids (usually 1 bid, maybe 1 in 20 get a little bidding war going), then the unsold goes back into the store and a few more of those sell. The bulk editor is so fast now, the “busy work” of setting up auctions and changing prices and relisting everything takes me maybe 30 minutes total.
5/7/2023 to 5/13/2023
Items sold: 94 (63 via auction, 29 via best offer, 6 via seller initiated offer, 31 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $3499.25 (up 33% from one year ago)
Net sales: $2370.04 (up 30% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $37.23 (down 40% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $267.90— Mixed lot of graded and encased cards
I have spent a lot of my listing time the last few weeks on creating small and large lots. It took me a while to refine my process for creating these listings, but they’re becoming a larger part of my business. Really nice feeling to pack up a USPS regional (RIP) or flat rate box and get it on the way to its new home.
Lowest price sold (net): $7.56— Brian Ferneyhough contemporary classical CD
A possible argument in favor of running auctions on your oldest inventory: this CD sat in my inventory for three years without so much as an offer. Sure, it only sold for $10 (50% of my BIN price) but that’s still a profit, and now it’s on to the next.
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Nice sales! Interesting to see your experiment listing lots of cards. Assume that your knowledge helps create relevant sets.
Are you back at home and into your normal life now? Its always interesting when we take time off and then get back into our routines again.
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Yeah, I am home again for about a month now and getting back to the routine in the last few weeks after a while of just going through the motions. I was barely even posting here and I missed it. It feels good to get back to the work, I have a little bit of a new energy since things were not normal for so long. It should be a fun summer of continuing to tweak the store and shape it in ways that I like.
The lot listings are fun to make. I have done them here and there in the past, but never consistently. I had a lot of hours to think with all the time spent with my grandfather and driving to and from seeing him. Mostly I was spending that time collecting life, but occasionally I had some eBay ideas and it’s nice to start to put them into action. It took some tweaking to figure out the best strategy to create these lots so they sell somewhat quickly and so I can reload them once they sell, and still make a profit. But now I am full steam ahead with these types of listings. Spent quite a bit of time sorting my inventory boxes so I can potentially make one for every team in every sport and file it away into the appropriate box until it sells.
I would say about half of these lots sell to a buyer in the same state as the team. So probably a casual collector buying a few cards of their favorite team or favorite players. Each one brings me an $8 to $15 profit, which can really start to add up when I sell 5 or 6 in a weekend like I did this weekend. The popular teams can sell very fast, for example I’ve sold 4 New York Yankees lots since April and 3 San Francisco 49ers.
Also sold a magazine lot and poetry lot in the last week or two, so this method of selling has been very profitable for me lately.
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Its great to hear your story. So many sellers chug along, then a big event/chaos happens, and they lose the flow. Sometimes I guess it can be difficult to get back into the system of selling online after a big event. But like you, we’ve always found eBay as a meditative endeavor. We like the discipline.
Lots of items are fun to sell. Magazines always do well for us so we look out for boxes of them. But not all lots work: we tried lots of clothes and that was a bust. Collectibles are what make sense (like trading cards).
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I think you’re right that a lot of sellers lose steam after a big event happens in their life and don’t get it back for a while or never get it back and move on to other things. I wonder often if that would have happened to me if I had never found your podcast. After all, how many people really make a go of it selling on eBay and stick with it? There’s a reason a lot of the Youtube gurus are focused on clicks and courses and discord and bots and all that stuff. I’m sure that works for a little while. But something tells me in five years, they’ll have moved on to something else while (I hope) we’re all still here posting about how eBay VR is treating us.
In my experience, lots make the most sense when your market is collectors or maybe certain types of resellers who also collect. That’s not how a lot of clothes reselling works but I think makes sense for DVD, magazine and book buyers, and definitely with collectors of cards and other collectibles like coins and stamps. It is easy to buy a box full of Boston Red Sox cards, there are thousands of listings for lots of Red Sox cards at any given time, but most of them are junk cards from the 1980s (or even more contemporary junk cards — they are called “commons” now since cards are too expensive to be “junk” quality) and I think that’s why my lots have been selling so well. The buyer gets 10 cards and while most of the cards cost me $2 or less, I fill the lots with cards of popular players and hot rookies and star players from years ago. So it’s a curated lot for a more casual collector, but someone who has at least a little knowledge of cards and is a fan of their team.
I’ve been doing a lot of research on the different teams to make the lots, really trying to educate myself. It’s taken some trial and error, but it’s nice to see how quickly it’s turned into a pipeline. For example: I have 12 packages to ship tomorrow, and 5 of them are my small team lots. 2 of them (Philly Eagles and San Fran 49ers) I have sold multiple lots of the team in the last few weeks. Each lot is between $8 to $15 in profit, and what’s interesting is I’m not sure I would make that much if I sold the cards individually on eBay or consignment. They are worth more together than as individual cards. I think I have developed a good system to restock the lots where the profit is consistent. Still a few more months to get the listings (and my inventory) built up where I have a lot for every team in every sport, but I’m getting there. Not sure I’ll make these forever, but right now I’m really enjoying them. Love when they sell, a nice thick envelope goes in the outgoing mail and I put another lot on the desk to get scanned and listed.
I have been picking up magazines here and there, and I really enjoy them too. Easy to store and ship and it’s interesting to see the old advertisements and the way print has changed. Whenever I find some old media, it makes me think that part of our job as scavengers is saving treasures from getting lost forever by getting them into the hands of someone who cares about them.
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Your knowledge is what’s so valuable with those lots of cards. Sounds like that’s rare within the card market where everyone else sells individual cards? As an eBay buyer, I find its pretty rare in general to find sellers who seem to really know what they have and how to sell it to me. Lots of low effort.
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As an eBay buyer, I find its pretty rare in general to find sellers who seem to really know what they have and how to sell it to me. Lots of low effort.
It can get easy to focus on how much competition there is on eBay, race to the bottom and all that, but thinking about it from the optimistic POV that you and Ryanne had with the podcast, knowledge is really one of our biggest advantages as scavengers. Or it can be. Years ago, maybe you would show that knowledge with a long description full of backstory about the item. eBay was different back then. Now I think you can demonstrate your knowledge with a good title, good price and most importantly — quality items.
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