The Numbers: November 6-12, 2022

[Jay]

This week is a good example of just business as usual. We listed items, we sold items, we lived our lives. We sold some winter gloves, cabinet knobs,
[See the full post at: The Numbers: November 6-12, 2022]

[Mark S]

Sales were slow, so won’t waste time with that.

I went to an epic sale on Saturday that turned into an adventure.

I ended up there on Saturday for the last day of a 3 day sale. The estate sale company was trying to get rid of everything, and there was tonage. I thought I had come prepared with 3 large Ikea bags.

It was fill a small bag for $5. Ok, game on.

I filled up 1 Ikea bag in the upstairs area and put it in the hold area. I went downstairs and started going through some really nice clothes in big boxes. I gathered 2 overflowing Ikea bags worth of clothes and some shoes.

Then I noticed all the great pairs of shoes in large boxes. Lots of people rummaging thru items, but no one seemed too interested in the great pairs of shoes. I got 3 huge boxes of shoes. Each had about 20 pair of mostly size 12-13 Mens athletic and causual shoes.

But now I had 3 huge boxes and 2 overflowing Ikea bags. Way more than I could carry in one trip. I could only carry 1 huge box at a time.

Another guy left his pile and couldn’t find it when he came back in about 5 min. I didn’t want that to happen to me. But what was I to do? Everytime I started to look at something, people would start going through my stuff. People were respectful and not purposely getting into your stuff, but there was just so much stuff and no way to tag what was yours.

There was no one from the sale downstairs to help. I had nothing to put a sign on my stuff. I couldn’t call my wife, because she was in a Saturday class. I was stuck. So, I called my photographer who wasn’t very far away. He came to the sale and stood guard while I carried it all up. That was a life saver! I got it all for $200.

Then, I figured I may have missed some things. So, I went back in and realized I missed the garage. I went there filled a large trash bag full of clothes. Lady said $20. I went back into the basement and filled a large trash bag full of clothes and shoes. Lady said $20. I just barely fit it all in my car.

So, $240 total. I estimate that there are about 75 pairs of shoes that will list for an average of about $40. About 100 pieces of mostly athletic clothing that will list for an average of $35.

So, that is about $6,500 worth of items, but I won’t know for sure till I go through all of it.

I am still sore, but what a great feeling of accomplishment.

Mark

[Jay]

What a fun scavenge. I get a little anxiety thinking of times I’ve hit the jackpot but am unprepared to buy as much as I want. Sounds like you did a great job. Usually Ryanne and I are always together so can team up on huge piles of stuff.

[Mark S]

In about 9 years of doing this I have not been in this situation before. I got stuck at a rummage sale in October, but was able to find someone running the sale to help.

I guess I need to get more iKea bags and go with pen and paper.

Hey, but what a great problem to have. I see sales like this a lot, but they don’t have this quality of items. This sale had quantity, quality, and a company willing to wheel and deal. That equals picker paradise.

I asked my family how one guy could own about 100 pairs of shoes. My teenage daughters had a theory – he was a mass murderer and only murdered guys with a shoe size of 12-13 and collected their shoes.

[Temudgin]

That does sound like quite an adventure! Congrats on the score.

“The estate sale company was trying to get rid of everything.”

I haven’t run into one of those in a long time. The companies in my area just take the leftovers back to their warehouses and bring them back out to put in with the next sale or they have retail stores they take them to, so they don’t deal. Some don’t even do 50% on Sunday. I went to one a couple weekends ago that had loads of old things coming out of a couple storage buildings which I got excited about until I saw that most of it was literally junk and anything promising was water, mold, bug, or heat damaged. Nothing was priced and they weren’t bashful about starting high at checkout which was annoying enough, but I walked out when I saw the son sticking his nose in the pricing and I learned that he was living in the house and it was apparent that he had no compulsion to clean it all out.

[craig rex]

@mark-s

This was such a great recap, thanks for writing it all out. It’s always a rush trying to beat the crowds on the first day of a sale but there is something so satisfying about strolling in later or last day and finding some gems. This sounds like the scavenge of the year for you! I’m looking forward to reading all next year about your sales which came from this trip.

[Mark S]

Craig rex,

This was probably one of my best lifetime scavenges!

The estate sales these days almost make it impossible for me to attend – 10AM – 4PM Thurs-Sat. Hey, I work a full-time job during the day, I can’t make those times.

This is very overwhelming to get processed. I was just able to organize everything into the proper containers. Now the long process to get it listed. I just lost my photographer, so that makes it even more difficult. I have been looking for a new photographer, but no hits yet, I will have to keep looking.

Mark

[Lukastreasure]

@Mark-S – I share your anxiety about leaving stuff aside at estate sales.  I’ve had a few occasions where stuff walked off from the “hold” area.  Just two weeks ago I had a pile on the hold table with an expensive trailer hitch and it disappeared.  It was already a good price and I was getting ready to check out when they lowered everything to 50% off.  I walked away to grab a few more things and came back to it missing.

[Mark S]

Lukastreasure,

Yes, that is why if I find a really good item I will hold on to it as opposed to setting down in the hold area.

Mark

[ChristineR]

Total Items in Store: 500
Items Sold:  7
Gross Sales: $374.64 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $229.50 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: only $24 (yeah!)
Highest Price Sold: $75 Used Pottery Barn Christmas serving bowl, paid $5
Average Price Sold: $53.52
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $28
Number of items listed this week: 23

It was an ok week. My daughter has honor choir out of town the second part of this week, so I’m really going to try to list as much as possible before then.  Buyers seem to be coming active again.  Mercari also is giving out a $20 off $50 coupon for listing just 10 items so I got that.

Very happy to hear about the coffee shop sales but not about the viruses.  @Retro I hope you and  your family continue to heal as quickly as possible.  It’s so tough to not feel well when your kids are ill too – and super stressful.

I was listing way ahead of my shopping mainly this year but the week before last I realized I wasn’t keeping caught up.   Also we are approaching construction and will need to move everything out of the garage again after Thanksgiving and I would love to see that inventory go down.  I joined a Facebook group for people looking to eliminate their death piles.  I have some heavy stuff going on with my kid so a little thrifting is kind of a nice and safe dopamine distraction for my brain.  Really though, I need to get my inventory down so talking to myself about that lately.

Have a great week of sales everyone.

[Jay]

Always a good feeling to declutter and focus on the items you enjoy selling. Let that other stuff find a better home.

[Sharyn]

The sales this week was not great. My higher priced items aren’t selling. I have been listing lots of Christmas stuff over the past few weeks, so hopefully that will help this month and next. I usually don’t have a huge fourth quarter because generally I don’t have lots of gift and holiday items, so I’m hoping for better this year.

Week of Nov 6 – 12
Total Items in Store: 1812 eBay, 33 Etsy
Items Sold: 13 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $9.80 + $68 Commission
Total Sales: $242.37 eBay, $0 Etsy; includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $34 Pair Clarks leather shoes
Average price: $18.64
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 25

[Retro Treasures WV]

Items in Store 2052
Items Sold 13
Total Sales $441.00
COGS $58.00
Total Profit $383.00
Average profit $29.46
Average sales price $33.92
New Listings 0
Items scavenged 0
Listing 2022 weekly Avg 39

Had my store on time away most of the week. Historic low 4Q sales trend continues.  Will keep recovering this week. I’ll take what I get from ebay at this point.

 

[Jay]

Still a good week for everything you guys are going through. Your family’s health is the top priority. I know influence and RSV is nuts right now in the Mid-Atlantic.

[craig rex]

@retro-treasures-wv

I’m so glad to see your numbers this week. Continued good health for you and your family. eBay buyers will always find your stuff when you’re ready to focus on selling again.

[Temudgin]

Week of 11/6 – 11/12:
Total items in Store: 315
Items Sold: 12
Gross Sales: $502.41 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $294.02 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $49.21 (including consignment commissions)
Highest Price Sold: $102.50 incl shipping (Tektronix 2101 Pulse Generator for parts or repair)
Average Price Sold: $41.87
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of new items listed this week: 9

Another busy week for me. Not sure how long it will last since like Sharyn my Q4 is normally so-so and I’ll have a long time away coming up over Thanksgiving. I am using various strategies to stimulate sales, like ending and selling similar, putting things up on auction and offering free shipping (which I did for the pulse generator that was my best sale last week, the free shipping for competitive advantage since the label was only $15 and auction because I had no clue what it was worth), and I’m paying more for promoted listings and taking lower offers. It makes me feel like I’m not making as much and working a lot harder for it.

[Jay]

It’ll be interesting to see how this holiday season pans out. I feel the anxiety about the economy. I feel like we’re all waiting for a big crash that actually may not come. Glad the midterm elections are over.

[craig rex]

I’m paying more for promoted listings and taking lower offers. It makes me feel like I’m not making as much and working a lot harder for it.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. A year ago, I had never used promoted listings and would regularly have 200+ items with watchers who I could send offers to. I would be overly selective and only send 10% or 15% offers on select items, stubbornly thinking I would wait out “better” listings to see if they sold at full price. I had all my best offer settings at about 75% of buy it now prices. In hindsight, I was weeding out the low ballers and time wasters, but I also missed out on some good offers and some interested buyers who moved on to something else they were interested in where the seller was more flexible.

I think this is an easy trap to fall into considering the relative novelty of the send offers to watchers, compared to how long eBay has been around as a selling platform. But I’ve been trying to focus more on how eBay is now and look at my sales from the larger perspective. Do I really need to wait for “full price” when full price is often just my best guess at an item’s true value? On certain listings I will continue to wait to get “my” price, but so far I’ve found that I never regret sending a 20% offer or upping my promoted listings to 5%. Mostly because it’s led to some items selling quicker than I expect or some long-tail items finally selling. There is a logical endpoint to what percentage offers or promoted listings will work for each of us. But I think experimenting is very important with the way the ebay algorithm rewards consistent activity in your store.

[craig rex]

I had a nice week of sales last week due to a large auction batch. Setting up the auctions was quick and painless, but the packing and shipping felt a lot more like work than my typical day to day. But it was a nice way to get a quick boost in sales. I am thinking about running another batch of auctions to end on Cyber Monday. The free listings are one of the perks of having a store, may as well use them.

11/6/2022 – 11/12/2022

Total items in store: 904 (down from 1255 last week, most of the discrepancy is from unsold auctions which I haven’t relisted yet)

Items sold: 71 (4 via best offer, 6 via seller initiated offer, 9 via promoted listings)

Gross sales: $3008.59 (up 44% from one year ago)

Net sales: $2088.95 (up 48% from one year ago)

Average sales price: $42.37 (up 3% from one year ago)

Time spent searching through online auction listings for new trading cards inventory: 16 hours (same as last week)

Highest price sold (net): $119.51 — Vince Carter Topps buyback rookie card hand numbered to 100

Lowest price sold (net): $7.35— Gino Odjick Pinnacle Tough Times autograph

I have many copies of this card and have regularly sold about one a month in the $15 range for the last six months. Since I have been messing around with auctions, I figured I would try an auction with a start bid of $9.99 and see how that went. The ending price was $9.99. Shows you how auctions go most of the time.

Some more auction numbers and my thoughts.

I had 300 auctions end last Sunday. 21 sold from bids and 279 did not sell. I had 247 auctions end last Monday. 1 sold via a best offer, 32 sold from bids and 214 did not sell. I’m not sure I would draw too many conclusions from this as I think my Monday batch were “better” items or at least better items for auction.

I did $1780 in sales via auction and surprisingly $1200 in sales from fixed price listings. I had one order of four fixed price listings for almost $300 so that certainly helped my overall numbers, but even without that, I was happy with these numbers.

Almost everything sold for minimum bid or one or two bids up. This is why it’s so important to set your minimum bid at the true minimum you would take for an item. Just two items led to a true bidding war, and those were very timely listings — autographed rookie cards of players who had starring roles in the World Series. I got lucky with those but even with that, the bidding wars only added up to an extra $75.

Almost everything was paid for within the first three days. The only listing that looks like it will go completely unpaid went for a mere $10. I might spread out my auctions over a few days next time to see what effect that has, if any.

Part of my auction success is because trading cards are the #1 subcategory for auctions, but I sent some of my other random unique inventory to auction and received two sales. This 100+ year old book sold for a bid of $30 after months of no activity as a $50 BIN/best offer listing, and the buyer already left happy feedback. This photography book went unsold at auction but had 1 watcher who (I assume) is the same watcher who accepted my 20% offer after I relisted it.

Three buyers added onto their single item purchase with other items from my store in the same order. I scheduled all of my auctions start times staggered a few minutes apart hoping to get more buyers who grabbed multiple items. I wonder if that might be less common with “new eBay” than it used to be a few years ago, but honestly it was well worth the $50 in scheduled listing fees to set the auctions up and forget about them until they were done.

There was not a ton of rhyme or reason to what sold. Some of the items were “bargain” prices and some were very close to my BIN/best offer price. Some were older listings which had not had much activity in the last six months and others had received offers which I had auto-declined and ended up selling to that same buyer for at or near their offer price. There are a lot of different factors which go into why an item sells and when it sells, and I think it’s helpful to play around with your listings regardless of what you sell or how big your store is, and see what works best for you. Especially now that bulk editor is as fast as it is.

[Lukastreasure]

@Craig-Rex – having so many auctions simultaneously must be a nail-biting event.  You are constantly shaking things up and taking risks.  Though they do seem to be well calculated risks that pay off.  Quite impressive.  Always enjoy your posts.

[Lukastreasure]

Week Ending 11/12/22
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $515.50
Net Sales: $410.33
Total Items Sold 11
Total Items in eBay Store: 1088
Items Sold eBay: 9
Total Items in Etsy Store: 284
Items Sold Etsy: 2
Cost of Items Sold: $63.36
Highest Price Sold: $124.95 Vintage Train
Average Price Sold: $46.86
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Average Days Listed: 379
Longest Listed: 1397
New items listed: 11

Below average sales this past week and much lower than this time last year.  I’m running about $4000 total below last year at this time.  I’ve listed a lot less this year, so I guess it should be expected.

I spent a good portion of the week last week sorting through the auction lots I won the previous week and writing drafts for listings.  Hope to get all my drafts listed this week which will be a big week of listings.

[Pikapop]

Interesting to hear most everyone else had a slow week as well; I sold almost nothing and had 2 returns, probably the worst week since the summer and November is usually brisk for me.

[Lukastreasure]

As an aside, had my first ever case where a buyer opened a request for a refund because the customs duties were too high and they didn’t want to accept the package.  This was for a vintage 1950’s leather camera case I’d sold for $30 and shipped to Brazil.  He was claiming the customs duties were $40 and the item was only really worth $10.  Whatever.  I called eBay to confirm I wasn’t on the hook for anything, and they said to just confirm to the buyer that customs duties are the responsibility of the buyer and outside my control.  They would close the case in my favor when its time elapsed.

[craig rex]

Had a stretch from about 10 PM on Tuesday until an hour ago with zero sales and no offers except for a few weak counteroffers when I sent offers to watchers. Then two sales within the last five minutes. Just keep listing, the buyers are out there in the ether…somewhere.

[Author]

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