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We spent last week in NYC where we increasingly go to enjoy ourselves. Living in a rural area, we often crave some intense city life to overload our s
[See the full post at: The Numbers: October 2-8, 2022] -
Items in Store 2094
Items Sold 23
Total Sales $943.00
COGS $86.00
Total Profit $857.00
Average profit $37.26
Average sales price $41.00
New Listings 16
Items scavenged 10
Listing 2022 weekly Avg 43Last week was rough as I got a rough cold (not covid) and the debilitating cough is still with me along with some laryngitis.
I was able to get myself back on the listing train this weekend. Yay! I got my ebay space cleaned up enough that I could function again. Speaking of listing, I am on the new tool. I actually like it. It is way faster than the old form. There are two quirks I need to figure out – shipping defaults to 1st class and my store category defaults to kids shoes. I want to change those – anyone know how?
Even with those two quirks everything loads so much faster.
I want some big listing numbers this week to reinvigorate my store. I’m shooting for 50+ new listings. As I’ve been organizing I’ve been setting aside the higher priced items to prioritize listing. So big listing numbers plus lots of $100+ items will hopefully lead to some great 4Q sales numbers to close out my year strong.
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Week Ending 10/8/22
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $953.55
Net Sales: $808.10
Total Items Sold 14
Total Items in eBay Store: 1090
Items Sold eBay: 11
Total Items in Etsy Store: 260
Items Sold Etsy: 3
Cost of Items Sold: $137.59
COGS Percent 17.03%
Highest Price Sold: $199.95 XMAS Music Box Set
Average Price Sold: $68.11
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Average Days Listed: 251
Longest Listed: 1291
New items listed: 8Good to see your sales boost. I had a good boost as well. Best since early July. Surprsingly, Etsy accounted for 30% of my sales this week after being very quiet this summer. This week reminds me of what is essential for good sales, “Always be listing”. 50% of my sales were from items posted within the last month.
Best sale of the week was a Time-Life LP Box set of Christmas music. This was still sealed and from the 1980’s. I paid $1.10 for it and it sold for $199.95. It came in a lot of box sets. I really didn’t expect it to sell for so much, but saw another had sold for that much earlier in the year and shot high, expecting to open it for offers after a few weeks, but it sold in 5 days.
I took a gamble in the same auction and bid on an early Macintosh computer hoping it still worked. It didn’t, but decided to part it out and sell the mouse, keyboard and CPU separately. All three sold within 10 days of posting. I expected to take a small loss but ended up turning $89 in $330.
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Total Items in Store: 3750 listings for 5705 items
Items Sold: 54
Gross Sales: $3656.90 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $2724.32
Cost of Items Sold: $751 ($117 mine / $634 consignors)
Highest Price Sold: $185 Shearling coat
Average Price Sold: $67.72
Returns: 2
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $58
Number of items listed this week: 23 -
Total Items in Store: 482 (closing in on 500 for the first time)
Items Sold: 10
Gross Sales: $1,566.08 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $1,150.19 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $72
Highest Price Sold: $795 (Large art glass with flaws, best offer, paid $14.99 at Goodwill)
Average Price Sold: $156.61
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $108
Number of items listed this week: 44 (Ebay and Mercari)Congrats! I’m also on an Ebay high with the best sales week ever for me. I pray that the highest dollar item does not get returned. There were significant scratches on the item that were fairly difficult to capture on camera, but it was a very desirable artist and I took a lowish best offer. In fact, 100% of these items sold on best offer. One of the items sold was a vase I bought for $2 around the corner from home at a junky garage sale, listed it and it sold like the next day for $40. I told my dad that is pretty addictive stuff. When I’m listing I picture myself spinning these cast offs into green on a spinning wheel. Should be able to do a good bit of listing this week.
I finally got around to doing sell similar. I cut it off at the end of 2021. It was super quick and easy but I should have and didn’t take the time to go in and fix up the listings yet and add cheaper USPS methods of shipping (parcel post). Good news: Ebay is reset my quantity on sell similar to the remaining quantity, so extra easy. After doing this I was able to make offers on some of these items to the new watchers so they definitely got refreshed. I sold just one of the items so far in the last few days. Unfortunately I will need to go in and fix my Pinterest boards, which I had recently started redoing.
I really need to get back to the piles. I did a few shopping runs this week. I have only one box of Christmas and it’s mostly listed now. I have a small amount of Thanksgiving I need to locate. One of the larger thrifts just put out Christmas already so I will check their sister store across town as a treat to myself this week. Have a great week.
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@ChristineR – Congratulations on the big sale! Didn’t you show us that piece a while back? Seems I recall something like that.
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Yes it was that one. I also sold this Murano boat. https://www.ebay.com/itm/234682241767 So a great week for art glass. I found both of these in the case at Goodwill, which normally just has some in box junk and technology stuff. You know I’ve been checking that case ever since.
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Gut Sales Report for the week: Sales were not that great, so not bothering to do those details.
Focus for the week : I am in the process of getting cross listed to other platforms to increase sales for the upcoming busy season. I have decided to go with List Perfectly. So far, I have my etsy store setup
and I am loading my vintage items into LP to cross list to etsy first. That is about 1800 items.That is good news from lukastreasuretrove about his etsy sales. I am hoping to get 20% – 25% of the sales volume on etsy as I get on ebay.
Next, I am going to cross list to Facebook Marketplace. That will be nearly all my items except about 275 that have been out there for many years.
After that, I plan to cross list my clothing and shoes to Poshmark.
In the end, I hope to at least increase my current sales by 50%. It may go higher than that, but my research shows that 100% improvement is not out of the question. It just depends on exactly what you are selling and how well it will do on these other platforms. I will have to keep you updated.
Please share you experiences on how these other platforms have worked for you. Please give the % of ebay sales that they are generating for you if you know that information.
etsy
Facebook Marketplace
Poshmark
mercari
etc.Mark S
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@Mark I find the buyers on Mercari to be cheaper than those on Ebay generally and maybe also skewing younger. But I do feel like my items get seen over there and you can promote and keep it active for a while. I don’t crosspost but instead use Mercari for damaged and low dollar items or our used clothing and kids’ / teen items.
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I sold more items than I realized this week, but they were mostly smaller sales. This week has started off slow.
Week of Oct 2 – 8
Total Items in Store: 1715 eBay, 31 Etsy
Items Sold: 16 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $16 + $41.50 Commission
Total Sales: $272.29 eBay, $0 Etsy; includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $40.46 Lot 8 Silvertone Recording Wire Spools and Canister
Average price: $17
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 29 -
I hit 10,000 feedback in the middle of the night last week. I got a screenshot of my feedback page when it was at 9,999 but I fell asleep before it hit the big 10,000 and by the time I woke up, I was at 10,002. I sort of got nostalgic for the days where eBay would make a kitschy big deal out of little feedback numbers and other trivial occurrences.
But there is truly no better time to buy and sell online. My eBay inventory is one-third the size it was a year ago, but old and new things still sell every week. I have a lot of new inventory to get listed as the weather gets cold. Not quite 10,000 things, but we’ll get there eventually.
10/2/2022 – 10/8/2022
Total items in store: 1158 (down from 1164 last week)
Items sold: 32 (24 via best offer, 7 via seller initiated offer, 6 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $1803.36 (down 24% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1328.35 (down 15% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $56.35 (up 36% from one year ago)
Time spent searching through online auction listings for new trading cards inventory: 16 hours (up from 15 hours last week)
Highest price sold (net): $130.88 — Bryce Harper 2012 Topps Update gold sparkle shortprint rookie card
Lowest price sold (net): $7.85— Alec Bohm Topps gold rookie card ##/2021
Both of these cards were in the same $600 order. Both players on the Philadelphia Phillies and sold to a buyer in my local area. It’s funny to think about how much different this transaction would have been 10 or 20 years ago.
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My eBay inventory is one-third the size it was a year ago
I know you started sending thousands? of cards to that consignment company.
–How much are you averaging a week/month in sales there?
–Your time is spent looking for inventory, but how much do you list on eBay now that you have that consignment route?
–Can you see a time when all you do is have fun buying and sending it all to consignment? Or is eBay still a valuable use of your time?
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I know you started sending thousands? of cards to that consignment company.
I hit 12,000 items in my consignment port maybe a month ago. A lot of that was from sending them boxes almost every week earlier this year. My most recent submission, in September, was maybe 1500 cards, basically the majority of my purchases in July and August. It helps that some/most of my COMC cards get cross-posted to eBay, with a price increase that I don’t benefit from to cover COMC’s eBay fees. I get at least a few sales to my COMC account every day from random eBay buyers, occasionally 10+.
–How much are you averaging a week/month in sales there?
I know you love numbers so here are my consignment sales for the year. Remarkably consistent numbers once I got the hang of things. I am excited to see how high the numbers go over the next few months. COMC runs a Black Friday promo every year which sees a lot of buying and selling activity and I plan on running a strong sale. There is a lot of overpricing on the platform, and “75% off” sales which bring prices down to a more normal level. So someone like me who prices normally and then runs discounts does quite well.
COMC’s processing fees are high (50 cents up to $5 to add the card to my account, plus a small percentage when it sells) so I always try and keep a few hundred in my account to cover the next submission that’s in the processing queue. Because of that, it took me until around June to make a consistent profit. Much like how it goes building up an eBay store. But since mid-summer I’ve been able to request at least a $500 check every week with occasional $1000 checks, all on top of my regular eBay sales. It’s not what I envisioned a year ago when I started doing eBay full-time, but it’s basically my version of having an employee and it’s helped me a lot.
- January 2022: 388 items sold for $2546.70
- February 2022: 526 items for $4019.04
- March 2022: 596 items for $5683.09
- April 2022: 788 items for $7539.30
- May 2022: 870 items for $6949.67
- June 2022: 803 items for $6937.08
- July 2022: 661 items for $5477.18
- August 2022: 698 items for $6751.24
- September 2022: 641 items for $6475.94
- October 2022 (so far): 347 items for $3177.28
–Your time is spent looking for inventory, but how much do you list on eBay now that you have that consignment route?
I am still consistently selling 25-40 listings on eBay each week from BIN/best offer listings, and I list just enough to replace those sold listings. Usually I shoot for 2-3 items a dayand 10-15 if I really want to knock out a bunch of listings. I have templates for everything and it’s all price research and change a few things. I’m sure I will spend more time on new listings once the weather gets truly ugly. I’d like to clear out a few boxes worth of low-value items, probably by selling in bulk at a steep discount. But sometimes the extra space can be more valuable than maximizing profit.
I have become much more selective about what I list on ebay. I’ve been thinking a lot more about sell-through rate with my newly listed items. It’s more fun to list when all your new listings are ones which you think will sell quickly, or have a nice high price, or are unique and interesting items. I always had a hard time getting myself motivated to list $10 or $20 items which were also long-tail. Probably because I’ve never had a ton of inventory space and also like you, I worked a lot of $10 and under low-paying hard-work jobs. Those low dollar items bring me back to those long days and everything feels like a slog. So I don’t really list items like that anymore. Especially now that I can send them to consignment and have someone else handle all the “dirty work” and I just price everything.
–Can you see a time when all you do is have fun buying and sending it all to consignment? Or is eBay still a valuable use of your time?
I am sure there are trading card dealers who make their living just buying and selling on consignment because when I underprice a card on there, it sells in minutes and sometimes seconds. And my port is tiny compared to the biggest sellers. But the platform has a lot of flaws. For one thing, you don’t create the listing, the company (really their algorithm) creates it. All you do is price. So sometimes the title isn’t optimized to reach the perfect buyer. This creates opportunities to purchase on COMC, have the items shipped to me and then list on eBay with a better title. I get a nice box from them every few weeks. It’s a little extra work (more stuff to list) versus cashing a check but their cash out fee is 10% so it’s often worth it.
COMC only allows for single trading card listings. So no groups of cards, no sets, no sports-adjacent stuff like signed memorabilia. It’s a great platform for $1 to $20 sales and it’s interesting where they drew the line on what to sell and what to exclude. In a way, their rules for what they sell have helped me rethink what my eBay store could be.
For the last few years, my inventory has been 90% trading cards and 10% other stuff, mostly obscure music CDs and DVDs and books since that’s the other area I have some knowledge in. I’ve been buying up those items over the last year when I find them at local thrifts and library sales, and occasionally from the online auctions I browse, but I haven’t been in a huge rush to list them as my focus has been on building up my consignment port. There will be plenty of time this winter, and next year, as I continue to figure out the right balance for me between the different platforms and how I want to spend my time.
I would like to take at least a full month off eBay next year to travel and pursue some creative interests. I think the consignment sales would allow me the opportunity to do that without a lot of changes to my day to day life, and if I find a compelling reason, maybe I liquidate everything in my consignment port or eBay store. It’s not as if there won’t be more things to buy and sell, after all. It’s exciting to see the possibilities that selling online can create. It’s far beyond what I would have imagined 10 years ago when I started selling a few obscure CDs that I found for $5 or less at my local record store.
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It’s so fun to see people’s stores and scavenging evolve. There’s no wrong way to do it as long as you enjoy your time and are making the money you need to own your time. It’s important to take vacations or just time off!
How much do you need to net in a month to pay all your bills and have enough to enjoy?
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How much do you need to net in a month to pay all your bills and have enough to enjoy?
@Jay I have no kids or other big expenses (house, etc) so even living in the expensive northeast I am comfortable as long as I net $4000 a month. Most of my excess the last few years (especially the last year) has gone into reinvesting into inventory which is why the consignment sales have grown so much for me. That has been a bit of luck but I figured that if I took the risk to do this full-time that I would find some new edge or a step forward in order to grow my business.I realize that most would take a safer approach but I wanted to go big from the start. I figured if it didn’t work out, I could sell most or all of my inventory and recoup my losses and if it did work well, I would have more options sooner. I would like to move out of the northeast and maybe do some traveling and explore some creative interests. Those things obviously wouldn’t be possible if I was working a regular 9 to 5 job or dead end job like I did all the time before I started doing eBay full time. I was always so tired then and still only had a two or three figure bank account pretty much all the time.
I operate in a really interesting niche because the modern trading cards are so expensive, especially unopened boxes, that I think a lot of people buying and selling cards are card rich and asset poor if you get what I mean. I would still put myself in that group as well even though I have more money in the bank than I’ve ever had before. I plan to really focusing on growing that bank account over the next year or two, and if it means that my eBay store ends up much smaller and more focused until I have a bigger place or am more settled down somewhere, I can live with that.
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I love that you have choices and are thinking of the lifestyle you want. The numbers are important, but it’s really about the life puzzle you’re trying to solve.
I love the NorthEast (why we love spending time in NYC), but doing geographic arbitrage to buy a house in rural Virginia was a game changer for us. Though houses in rural America are now more expensive than two years ago, its still much cheaper than a HCL area like NJ. Taxes are much cheaper (though will less services too).
Without knowing your specifics, I bet you could pay a mortgage on a small house in a rural area for what you spend on rent. You’d just have to be okay with less access to restaurants, variety of stores, etc.
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Here is a question for you etsy sellers. Do you always add tags for your listings? How many tags do you usually add?
I am in the process of listing over 1800 listings to etsy. Not sure how much time I should spend on tags. It would appear that they are important because etsy takes these into account for search placement.
Maybe I should just get all 1800+ listings up on etsy, then go back later and add tags as I have time. But, I am already going to be touching each listing to get it there initially, so it may be a better use of time to do it now.
But, I know Etsy uses other factors such as price, feedback for seller, and location in comparison to the buyer.
I am just wondering if you have noticed much better sales when you have spent more time on your tags and if you can quantify that.
Mark
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For my little eBay store (~250 items) things have sold pretty good lately. One thing I noticed recently is that when I list stuff, my new stuff tends to sell instead of the older stuff. That’s not entirely true, but it seems to have shifted a bit from how eBay sales occurred months ago. Oh well, at least something is selling.
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For the week ending 10/8:
Total Items in Store: 283
Items Sold: 6
Gross Sales: $223.79 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $149.20 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $62 (including consignment commissions)
Highest Price Sold: $39 (Royal Australian Navy Wash DC Naval Attache Challenge Coin)
Average Price Sold: $37.30
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 5Very late but posted for the sake of good order and to embarrass myself to do better.
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