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We’ve been selling a lot of the weird, vintage stuff that we love finding. Old dishes, pocket knives, artwork, cigar boxes, skater shirts. Some of the
[See the full post at: The Numbers: October 3-9, 2021] -
10/3/21 – 10/9/21
Total Active Items (2 different stores): 378
Items Sold: 13 Gross Sales: $537.92 (not incl shipping or taxes)
Highest Price Sold: $255 plus shipping – USS CONSTITUTION 74<sup>th</sup> Commanding Officer’s challenge coin on consignment, at auction.
Returns: 0
COGS: $157.55 (including consignment commissions but not including original cost of any family castoffs sold)
New Listings: 9
$ Spent on New Inventory: $175.35A much better week for me than last. Scavenge of the week: A large lot of sealed vintage 1/25 scale car model kits at the flea market for $4 each. There were just a couple on a dealer’s table that were marked $10 each when I started looking at them. When he said he had a bunch more I channeled Jay and said “how much do you want for all of them?” And the haggling started in earnest. Some decent scores I made sniping this week are runners up.
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Total Items in Store: 290
Items Sold: 3
Gross Sales: $114.48 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $80.15 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $23
Highest Price Sold: $48 (Two preowned pillow covers, paid $8)
Average Price Sold: $29
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $65
Number of items listed this week: 4 Ebay, 6 MercariSlow week on Ebay. Listing our old costumes on Mercari to move. Trying out Mercari Local, where a delivery person will make the run between buyer and seller. Cost $7 and up to the buyer.
I lost my TRS status I think because of my low sales volume during my sort of break. Hoping to get it back again soon. Had a nonsensical message from a buyer who maybe has dementia. I avoided an out of stock with a generous partial refund sending a similar item she agreed to, then she got it and is like “where’s my original item?”. I offered to refund but she’s gone quiet so hopefully no bad feedback will appear.
Miss the podcast. 🙂
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Week of Oct 3 – 9
Total Items in Store: 1381 eBay, 36 Etsy
Items Sold: 12 eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $20.18 + $0 Commission
Total Sales: $172.10 eBay; Includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: $21 Indoor soccer shoes
Average price: $14.34
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 5No high value items sold this week, so the sales total is pretty low. I’m trying not to buy anything until I get to cleaning up some room in my basement, so basically going through my death piles.
I watched a video on how to replace the belt on a Walkman II and decided (yet again) that I just don’t have the time to repair electronics like Steve does. I’ve decided to list it as-is.
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Total on eBay: 74
Items Sold: 4
Items Listed: 4 (Goal Achieved!)
Total Profit: $60.65
Average Profit Per Item: $15.16
Highest Profit: $22.88 (Linda Allard Ellen Tracy Black Silk Cardigan)
Goal This Week: 4
Potential Scam Thwarted: I goat an immediate payment at full asking price on a typewriter from a buyer who had created his account same day as purchase. I emailed him asking him to confirm his address and advised him I would pay for a “signature required” on my dime. Interestingly, he replied he didn’t need the item anymore and requested that I cancel the sale.
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Hey, Jay. I could be wrong but if there would have been no signature and the buyer said he didn’t receive it and wanted his money back then I would have been out. I am probably more suspicious than I should be but I’ve had a few over the years and I do my best anytime I smell something fishy. I realize that in the big game, one sale is not a lot so to be excessively suspicious is not helpful.
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10-3-21 to 10-9-21
Total Items in Store: 1690
Items Sold: 8
Gross Sales:$ 181.56
Net Sales:$ 119.47
Cost of Items Sold: $ 30
Highest Price Sold: $ 31 Ryka womens shoes
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 0
Number of items listed this week: 0Back after the move was completed. It was nice to shut down Ebay for a little more than 2 weeks. I shut down completely not offering sales since I wanted to make sure all my items made the move intact. Once I got my shelf back up, I turned my store back on and sold something that day. It was cool to hear the cha-ching sound effect at the new house.
The move means that I have a huge box of new items that I will be listing. It is all stuff that if I wasn’t a trash elf would have been donated. Now it will help pay for stuff we need at the new place and other expenses.
Hope all of you are having a great start to fall.
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Our Store Week October 3 – 9, 2021
Total Items in Store: 2012 – Yay! We broke the 2K Listings Ceiling!
Items Sold: 13
Gross Sales: $551.90 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $293.97 (minus eBay fees, shipping, taxes & Store Subscription of $21.95)Item Sales: 387.40
Cost of Items Sold: $15.86
Cost of helpers: $0
Highest Price(s) Sold: 49.95 X 2 – Book – The Feasts Unlocked and a Scottish Cashmere SweaterAverage Price Sold: $ 42.45
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $137.26Number of items listed this week: 45
We day-tripped and shopped 4 stores – Spent 82.32 and found 19 items to list for 650.25. A little under my target of 10X my spend, but some nice things. Good Mexican food from a taqueria we’ve never eaten at before and the prospect of another place to try on our next trip (with very good reviews). We are all about the food and junk!
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Weekly sales 10/3 – 10/9
Random Item Store
Total items 1165
Items sold 42
New items listed 70
Gross sales $819.77
Net sales $474.37Patch Store
Total items 3661
Items sold 53
New items listed 140
Gross sales $429.04
Net sales $326.23Etsy
Orders 48
Gross sales $366.90
Net sales $311.86Gross sales total $1,615.71
Net sales total $1,112.46Another day another dollar… Seems like I’ve created a decent money multiplying machine just gotta keep building it!
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Items in Store 1570
Items Sold 14
Total Sales $782.00
COGS $60.00
Total Profit $722.00
Average profit $51.57
Average sales price $55.86
New Listings 25
Items scavenged 0Not bad considering I didn’t open my store back up until Friday afternoon! The highlight sale was $400 for an autographed Terry Reid Record album. Man I hope that sale doesn’t come back to me.
I had 25 pair of shoes that just needed photos that my daughter knocked out real quick this weekend to give me a listing boost. Thank goodness the drafts were still there.
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Great to see your store is up and running again. Your Terry Reid is a great example of the lessons J & R taught all of us over the years. Yours was the highest sale of any of his signed albums in the last year. I’m sure you could have lowered the price to $300 or $250 or less and sold it quicker. But your listing was the only signed version of that album (I assume his debut or most important record) which must be why it sold for more.
Great pictures too. Every little flaw on the sleeve is clearly visible. eBay bucks for last quarter came in at the beginning of last week, so maybe that was the little incentive your buyer needed to click the buy it now button.
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Honesty I had no good reason for pricing at $400. It just felt right and I would have taken any reasonable offer. I did have one person who sent me a lowball offer with a “you’re delusional and it’s only worth x dollars” kind of message. I should find that one and rub it in their face.
I got that record at an awesome yard sale for $1 along with a bunch of other excellent classic rock vinyl. I’ve only listed a portion of what I got at that sale, and I’ve had a great time listening to it all.
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Total Items in Store: 176
Items Listed: 14
Items Sold: 9
Total Sales: $142.50
Highest Price Sold: $35 Hagen Renaker Bug Band Cricket with Viol
As I expected all the Hagen Renaker figurines I am listing are selling very quickly. I really need to dig in the storeroom and find the box of HR’s I packed away years ago before I was selling so regularly. Halloween is still selling strong as are baseball hats. I purchased very little this week – I have too much inventory build up over the summer when I was slacking on listing, gotta prioritize ‘shopping’ my store room, prices are cheaper than elsewhere! (^;
I did want to share my annoying mistake as a parable of keeping organized and detail-oriented. I listed a lot of 8 plastic toy cars (all by one brand) with one extra unmarked car as a bonus (just in case it was something special). I then made the first mistake of just dumping the cars in a box with other small items I had listed. Item sold, second mistake was just browsing the listing title of 8 toy cars, finding 8 cars and shipping. Buyer was very nice and emailed because of course the 1 that slipped to the bottom of the box was one of the branded ones he was actually interested in. I paid for my lack of detail with paying for some extra shipping to get that car to the buyer. Moral of the story, be sure to bag/box/tie together everything listed in one lot and double check when packing that everything in the photos is included!
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10/03/21 – 10/09/21
Total Items In Store: 4085 (was 4015)
Items Sold: 18
Total Sales: $ 623.06
Highest Price Sold: $ 75 (Vintage Jacket)
Average Price Sold: $ 34.61
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 728.46
Number of items listed: 88Gut Sales Report for the week: It was about an average week of sales for this time of year.
Focus for the week : This week turned into a buying frenzy. I spent $728.46 between 10/6 and 10/10. I got over $7000 worth of mechandice. I bought about 50 pair of shoes at a great private school rummage sale. The shoes were worth around $2000. I paid $2 per pair for the shoes.
Scavenge of the week: I actually didn’t “find” this. I was at the thrift store and the manager who knows me asked if I wanted a pair of Converse all stars that just came in. I took them and I always look for “Made in USA” on them. This pair were Made in USA and are from the 80’s. I will ask $500.
Thoughts for the week: I knew if I wanted to scale my store I was going to need a lot of good items. I went to a few great sales and found more than I bargained for. I am moving a good part of my inventory to a 10 X 30 storage unit this week. I really needed this to keep scaling my store because I am way out of space at my house.
Mark S
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Incredible score on the shoes! To buy in such large quantity, do you typically go to sales as early as possible on the first day or to a preview? Or do you focus on the types of items which other sellers don’t see?
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<p class=”p1″><span class=”s1″>Craig,</span></p>
<p class=”p1″><span class=”s1″>The sale with the shoes is an annual sale for the private school. I gave been going there for 5+ years and I always get about 30 pairs of shoes and some good sports equipnent. This year was a little better for shoes. They have several hundred pairs of shoes, I just select the best ones.</span></p>
<p class=”p1″><span class=”s1″>About getting to the sale early, that depends on the sale. For this rummage sale with the shoes, i have to be there at 8am when it starts because more than 100 people attend the sale that early – it is a thing here. People know what shoes they like so they can go quickly. </span></p>
<p class=”p1″><span class=”s1″>Most sales dont require that. But if there is a vintage sale with hard to find items, I will try to get there in the first couple hours. If they have stuff like GI Joe, I try to be first or second in line. I went to an estate sale last year like that. I was third in line and got $1300 of GI Joe items. $3000 in all from a house full of vintage items. I first grab the good obvious stuff, then go back slowly so that i dont miss anything. At the vintage sales, some items can be extremly valuable. For example, i went to a sale Sunday that had a whislting yo yo. Didnt think much of it cause i hsve seen yo yos and most dont go for much. But this one was from the 1950’s and i am going to ask $100 for it- paid $5.</span></p>
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For those vintage sales, I mean that an item that doesn’t look very valuable can be much more valuable than you think at first glance. For example, I was at a vintage estate sale on Sunday. I had been there on Saturday, but everything was half off on Sunday. I saw an old Rook game and tossed it in my bag for $2.50 because I used to play Rook and know that there is still a following. But, what I didn’t know is that the game was brand new in the box and never been used (not sealed). I am sure there are more than several Rook people that would love to have that game. I think I will list it for $50.
So, my point is: don’t rush it at great vintage sales. You may think you know what is valuable, but if you have not seen that item before at that age, take a good look and even look it up on ebay.
One more example. I was at a extremely vintage sale a few years back. They had things from the 1920’s on. I came across some new in the box typewriter brushes (I think it was about 40 of them). I couldn’t really see them on ebay at the time, but I figured “Where else will someone find one of these?”. They have been selling slow and steady for good money. I think I had one sale for a quantity of 10 or so.
Mark
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Really interesting anecdotes and observations. All things to keep in mind if/when I start seriously sourcing at estate sales. The odd ones I’ve gone to here and there have never led to any major scores, certainly nothing like what you detailed. But it’s almost certainly a numbers game. And I have a lot more knowledge now than a few years ago when I was indiscriminately stopping at any thrift store, library sale, rummage sale or yard sale. Desperate scavenging is not profitable scavenging, in my experience.
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Sales Report for: 10/9/21
Total Items in Store: 1193
Items Sold: 11
Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $862.52
Net Sales (After fees): $724.91
Cost of Items Sold: $95.73
COGS Percent 13.21%
Net Profit Margin: 72.95%
Highest Price Sold: $375.00 Antique Beer Stein
Average Price Sold: $78.41
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Sold via promoted listings: 7
Promoted Percentage: 63.64%
Average Days Listed: 49
Longest Listed: 148
New items listed: 2Better sales this week. Interesting that this week was the lowest “Average Days Listed” at 49 days since I started keeping track. Usually around 300 days. 40% of sales were Christmas related.
My big sale this week was an antique Hofbrauhaus beer stein for $375. Unlike the tourist steins that are so common, this one was from around 1870 and was originally used in the brew house to serve patrons. These were all numbered individually and the HB logo was actually hand etched onto the mug rather than printed. I picked it up for $60 at an estate sale a few weeks ago.
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@lukastreasuretrove That’s a good catch on the stein! I’ve been teaching myself stein for the last couple of weeks since I bought a combed and etched Augustiner stein for £20 (25 USD) from a thrift shop. Of course, since then I’ve bought a couple of rubbish steins. On the other hand, I’ve now got an appreciation of some aspects of German culture I didn’t have before- or maybe that’s Bavarian culture
Problem is, the big market for steins is in the US, and by the time eBay’s added on Value Added Tax, customs duty, state sales tax, insurance, the American collector’s going to want a steep discount on the sale price.
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@antique-frog – I’m a big fan of steins. Lots of interesting history on some of the older ones. One of my first big sales on eBay was one of the Mettlach steins that I picked up before I knew anything about them. The area I live in is pretty decent for picking them up as a lot of servicemen brought them back from when they were stationed in Germany after WWII. I guess that is why they are still so popular here. It can be tough to tell the valuable ones from the junk though, and their are a fair amount of counterfeits.
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I ship 3 times a week, typically Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays unless (like this week) there’s a postal holiday. Typically I send out between 25 to 40 packages on a Monday and 6 to 10 on each of the other shipping days. This has been pretty consistent for the last month.
Last week, I was good about listing every day and had fairly consistent sales (though nothing much over $100). I figured between listing so often and the long holiday weekend, I’d have a huge stack of mail to send out on Monday. Instead, the opposite happened. When I woke up, I saw no new offers, which meant I had only 3 (!!!) sales from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning. It was a very slow end to a slow week, at least compared to my last few months. It can get discouraging when things don’t sell, especially when you use all the tricks like markdown sales and sending offers to watchers.
But one of the things about scavenging is that almost anything you can do for your store is better than getting discouraged. Take some pictures, especially items from your death piles. Finish some drafts. Edit your prices. Create a sale or coupon.
The faucet turned back on for me on Sunday. I dropped off 23 packages today and have 12 more packed up for tomorrow. All in all, it was a normal weekend of sales. The sales just happened to fall on Sunday and Monday and Tuesday. Maybe next week it will be Thursday and Friday and Saturday. There’s no point in trying to predict.
10/3/2021 – 10/9/2021
Total items in store: 3453 (up from 3438)
Items sold: 47 (30 via best offer, 6 via seller initiated offer, 4 repeat buyers)
Gross sales: $2104.99 (up 82% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1437.52 (up 85% from one year ago)
Lowest price sold (net): $7.64 — Max Carey Lumberjacks jumbo boxtopper
This is the kind of sale we all love as scavengers, turning $1 into $7 over and over. In February, I won a lot auction which contained 6 of these oversized, intricately cut Lumberjacks cards. The title was a little bit unclear (it wasn’t obvious from the main picture or title how many cards were in the lot) but mostly I won the auction for $10 total because auctions are an inefficient way to sell your items. I’ve sold 4 of the 6 for $10 to $20 each, and the other 2 will sell eventually. Maybe in two years. 🙂
Highest price sold (net): $84.63 — Bobby Hull O-Pee-Chee Superstars autograph
Bobby Hull is one of the greatest hockey players of all time and also one of the most prolific autograph signers. It’s fairly easy to find one of his autographs for $25 or less. This card sold for $100 plus shipping to Canada because it is a rare insert in the highly collected O-Pee-Chee platinum sets. Most autographs from this set go for $50 or more, regardless of who the player is. I may have underpriced this one as it sold very quickly for full price, but it had some fairly obvious wear since the card design is so intricate. Like most of my inventory, this card was originally purchased at auction and the title left out some key information (in this case, the desirable set name).
You can find a lot of good deals on inventory by finding the right volume sellers or developing search terms which allow you to find items which have more value than the listing shows. It is really the best feature of the platform. I am lucky enough to have a niche which has had millions of auction listings ending every night for 20+ years. But I think most niches have bargains available on eBay right this moment as I type this. It is just about figuring out the right process to find those valuable items.
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I learned the hard way to include searches for the mis-spelled versions of what I want years ago.
I used to be big into pinball machines and arcade games. I had Craigslist searches set up and back then there weren’t that many collectors unlike now hunting for pinballs. One of my fellow local collector friends scored a pinball called “The Champion Pub” for $400 because the seller misspelled pinball. It never hit on my searches but did on his because he looked for the mis spellings.that pinball was low production and at the time was worth $6000!
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It makes me nostalgic for the days when eBay allowed for Boolean searches and you could add an asterisk to the end of a word and get all sorts of variations and misspellings! But there are still ways of finding those listings that slip through the cracks of eBay’s Cassini search engine, and I think it’s much easier for an amateur seller to use eBay now than even a few years ago. So it is probably a net positive overall: more listings to search through, and more sellers who are selling things for under value. We just have to adapt our searches to find the hidden gems.
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Many of you may already know this, but a nice way to get to talk to someone on ebay is this. Go to Seller Hub, click payments then all transactions on the drop down menu. There should be a list as you know of all your transactions there and there is a blue phone icon over on right (on desktop). Just click that phone icon during normal business hours and retype your phone number in it and click “Call Me” and they will call you back in like 5-25 minutes and just ask what help you need. Yes it’s preferably for managed payment stuff, but I have had them call me a number of times and they have helped or tried to help me with whatever it was, about like when you used to be able to call customer service with a lower level store.
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