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Hey we missed you. Last week for Labor Day, we planned to do nothing. Instead the sewer pipe in our cafe broke so we spent four days on a big construc
[See the full post at: The Numbers: September 4-10, 2022] -
Total Items in Store: 279
Items Sold: 4
Gross Sales: $193.49 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $154.00 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
— “>1,000% vs prior time period” says eBay – sorry, still pitiful
Cost of Items Sold: $41 (including consignment commissions)
Highest Price Sold: $112 (Czech rifle bayonet)
Average Price Sold: $48.37
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 12Things are picking up as I’m trying to list more regularly. Hey we missed you too! Sorry to hear you had to deal with outgoing plumbing. Not fun.
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Are you now living full time in Florida? I forgot where you were in your journey?
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Yes, full time now in Jacksonville for good since my wife finally retired from the Navy. Since retirement she’s been actively self-employed with a couple things professionally so can’t really put in much time to help with eBay. She’s supportive of it, though. What’s not to like about a husband’s retirement hobby that makes money instead of just spending it?
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09/04/22 – 09/10/22
Total Items In Store: 4649
Items Sold: 13Gross Sales: $767.92 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $508.38 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Highest Price Sold: $ 90 (Jacket)
Average Price Sold: $ 39.11
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 277.34
Number of items listed: 44Gut Sales Report for the week: Sales were decent.
Focus for the week : Getting as many items over to my photographer as I can before they leave for vacation. My photographer is taking great pictures and getting more done than I can list.
Scavenge of the week: Found a 1960’s Mod Jacket for cheap that I will list for $300. Found a vintage designer wool coat for cheap that I will list for $200.
I went to an estate sale on Saturday where they were just trying to get rid of everything. At first I didn’t see much, but the longer I looked the more I found. I had to dig quite a bit, but well worth it. I love those kind of sales.
Thoughts for the week: J & R – Sewer issues are never fun. Hope that is all behind you now.
I am trying to reach my goal of 5,000 items listed before the end of the year. I think I can hit that if I can keep focused on listing between now and then.
Mark S
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We installed a new 150 foot sewer line directly into the town’s system. We bypassed the 100 year old cast iron pipe that had a break in it. We should be good for at least my lifetime!
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We missed you too J&R. Hope everything in your lives comes out smelling like roses this week. You both deserve it.
I am taking a scavenger road trip this week to Lancaster, PA. Two library sales in the area will pay for some of the trip, maybe all of it depending on what I find, and I’m optimistic that I will come across some cool old Mennonite stuff.
But this trip is less about the sales and more about getting out there to explore somewhere new. I’ve lived in different parts of New Jersey my whole life and never had the means or opportunity to travel much. Lancaster may as well be Mars. I am nervous for my trip but also very excited. The first of many to come.
I’ll have a lot of work waiting for me when I get back. Auctions are big in the trading cards niche, and I figured that sales are going to dip while I’m away, so why not run a bunch of auctions over the course of the week to guarantee some extra money in the bank?
I spent some time this weekend carefully plotting out how I wanted to do this. The end result was about 600 auctions ending next Sunday and Monday night with starting bids between $10 and $50 (about half of the BIN price was in my store) and best offer option turned on (free for auction listings, unlike BIN which is $0.10 minimum). It cost me $0.10 per listing to schedule the listings in advance which was taken from my available funds as soon as the listing went live.
From the batch of auctions which started earlier tonight, two listings have already received the minimum bid and a buyer sent me offers on two other listings for $15 and $20, which I accepted. It’s a reminder that eBay users are all different. Some only check auctions. Some really care about negotiating over a few dollars. Auctions aren’t right for every type of item and you want to be careful with how you use them, but they are also one of eBay’s most unique elements.
9/4/2022 – 9/10/2022
Total items in store: 1425 (up from 1378 two weeks ago)
Items sold: 41 (26 via best offer, 9 via seller initiated offer, 19 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $2006.40 (down 27% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1430.34 (down 29% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $48.94 (up 2% from one year ago)
Time spent searching through online auction listings for new trading cards inventory: 12 hours (down from 16 hours last week)
Highest price sold (net): $101.67 — Aidan Hutchinson 2018 Leaf autograph #6/15
Lowest price sold (net): $10.69 — DJ Skee 2021 Chicago National I Feel Like A Monster promotional card
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We also love the opporuntity to travel for scavenging. Especially in our early days, we’d always look for evening auctions if we visited a new town. Gave us a reason to meet people. Our relatives always thought we were crazy when they’d see us drive to their homes with carloads of stuff. Its not the way most people spend vacation.
Ryanne spent the weekend in South Plainfield, NJ for a professional coffee workshop. Sounds li ke that’s definitely not the garden part of the garden state.
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Nooo, South Plainfield isn’t the nicest NJ has to offer. Ryanne was only 35 or so min drive north from where I live. Whenever I have a chance, I prefer to drive south rather than north.
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I know there are much nicer spots in NJ. Just had to be there for a coffee tasting at a warehouse 😂.
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LOL. NJ is not the top beauty of the country, but it isn’t the armpit that some like to think it is.
I hope that the coffee tasting was worth it. Sounds like fun, only second to wine tasting.
Seems to me that Steve Shultz once mentioned he lived in the Plainfield area, maybe a few decades ago.
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When I first found the podcast, I was living and going to school about ten minutes from where you were in south plainfield. Also working at a warehouse! NJ has a lot of geographic and cultural diversity but some areas may as well just be one big warehouse or strip mall.
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@craig-rex – Gutsy move on the auctions. That is a lot to take care of when you get home. I like the way you set them up though. I assume all of the auctions were for inventory that was stagnant and you were OK getting half price with? Might half to give that a try on some of my older inventory. Hope it turns out well.
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I just got home today and here are the numbers on my auctions so far. The first batch ends tomorrow and the second batch ends on Monday so these aren’t the final numbers. But even if I get no more bids, I’m happy.
Out of 525 auctions:
3 have already sold for best offer prices totaling $50
37 have bids totaling $750.12
3 have bids which are higher than the buy it now price I had the items listed for
Auctions are a huge part of the trading card niche, so that certainly helps me. But I think there is a percentage of ebay users who mostly, or only buy at auction. I was very careful to only run auctions with starting prices that I would be happy with. So no starting prices under $10, usually no less than 50% of my buy it now prices and almost all inventory that was at least a few months old.
I would be really curious to see the results running auctions like this in another niche or a variety of niches.
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Items in Store 2145
Items Sold 12
Total Sales $380.00
COGS $34.00
Total Profit $346.00
Average profit $28.83
Average sales price $31.67
New Listings 6
Items scavenged 1
Listing 2022 weekly Avg 46
Sourcing Allotment 2I’ve been on vacation for the last week and a half. I DEFINITELY had a better labor day than J&R. That sucks! Glad to hear you were able to get it all fixed and I hope the financial hit wasn’t too bad.
Having time away turned on definitely impacted my sales the last two weeks. Once I turned it on 9/1 my store died. Fortunately, before I left I listed a bunch of copier Toner cartridges and almost all of them sold quickly. Bought them for $10 each and sold for $100+ each. Twas a very nice boost prior to going on vacation so the first week of September was still close to an $800 week.
Speaking of vacation, my entire stay was provided free of charge via my business credit card. Several years ago I got a hilton honors Amex because they have 9x points for shipping purchases. I’ve been racking up quite a bit of points over the years. I haven’t paid for a hotel since I got the card. I typically use the points for weekend getaways to Columbus.
I was able to cleverly use my points and award nights at this embassy suites oceanfront.
This is where we stayed using all points and reward nights for 8 nights: https://www.kingstonresorts.com/coming-soon/
Needless to say my $ per point value on this trip was through the roof! They opened all the new pools the week before we arrived.
While there they asked me to do a timeshare presentation. I normally say no to these, but they offered me 100k hilton honors points. That’s worth about $600, so sure I’m game to take 2 hours for that!
I have alot of non-ebay work to do this week. Now that my health is improved and the weather is going to get milder, I have alot of home improvement projects I want to finish.
Have a great week everyone!
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@retro-treasures-wv – Great sales on those toner cartridges!
Awesome on the points vacation. I’ve never seen 9x points for anything. Just for shipping is an odd one. Is it sponsored by a shipping provider? That resort looks like fun.
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This is why I love the forum. We’re signing up since we love Hampton Inn when we travel.
Does the credit card recognize Pirate Ship, eBay, etc? Any weird hacks you have to do to get it to register 6x the points?
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If you download the Hilton honors app, you can see how much hotels are via points. Just look up the typical hotels you would stay at in places you would go and pick “search with points”.
The typical hotel costs are:
embassy suites: 30-45k points for one night.
hampton inn: 25-30k/ night.
both of those are $150 a night (plus tax fees) hotels.
I tend to stay in these brands. You can find 20k rooms regularly but I’ve never stayed in them – I want the bigger rooms and better amenities.
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I’ve tried to get the eBay shipping to be recognized but because it is filtered through PayPal it isn’t recognized. Pirateship works correctly so I use pirateship for everything that is equal to or better price than eBay.
so 1st class, ups, and priority cubic all go through pirateship.
you have to keep your PayPal empty and pay via PayPal on eBay to use credit card.
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So 3x points if you use the paypal credit card hack on ebay. 6x points on pirateship.
Even if you don’t deduct meals or gas directly, you do get 6x points at restaurants and gas stations as well.
And Jay, Hampton inns are nice but embassy has a way better breakfast (cooked to order omlettes), all suites rooms, and free drinks/snacks in the evening. Try one of those out sometime.
If you look at the point value for dollar spent, there are some cards that give better value than hilton honors – chase rewards being one of them.
Take that trip to myrtle beach I took – for 5 nights I paid 267000 points. It was a holiday weekend, that same stay would have cost about $2500 if I paid cash. The math comes out to around 4.6 cents per real dollar spent if I earned every point with the 6x points option, but realistically I’m at about 3.5 cents per dollar on my hotel stays.
I have a chase rewards card that gives me 5x points on gas purchases and if I directly convert those points to cash it is 5 cents on the dollar. I only get 1 cent per dollar on shipping if I use that card for shipping though.
Once you add in the free rewards nights I get each year and the diamond status, all the little perks start to add up. Plus, I just like being able to never pay for hotels.
The other big benefit to us using this card with the 6x shipping points is that the money spent on shipping is FREE money to earn points with! It’s not the same as spending money on gas or cost of goods. With the way I cleverly use my shipping discounts and how I switch USPS to Fedex depending on the buyers location, I tend to make money on shipping after FVF every year.
I spend 8-10k on shipping every year.
If you only use this card for shipping and nothing else, you could still rack up multiple free nights every year easily.
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Wow, thank you for this, Retro Treasures, I use Pirateship exclusively for shipping and this would certainly help. I have a couple of questions if you don’t mind. 1) Can the points be redeemed for cash? I don’t travel much so if they can only be used for hotel or such, I wouldn’t benefit much from it. 2) Is the extra reward points for shipping pretty stable? What I mean by this is, I know some credit cards rotate the extra points occasionally to different categories, will the extra points on shipping pretty much be permanent? Thank you for your time.
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Total Items in Store: 421
Items Sold: 10 (Many were clustered on Labor Day)
Gross Sales: $356.21 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $213.33 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $39
Highest Price Sold: $59 (Royal Albert flower of the month tea cup and plate set, paid $8)
Average Price Sold: $26
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 1R&J missed you too. Your long weekend fun ties with my friend who has Covid and luckily a guest house but without air conditioning – it’s been super hot here – over 100 where she lives inland.
My store has been really dead but had a good day on Labor Day. Our power is out today but hope to list in earnest this week. I’m hoping to get to the thrifts right after they put out Halloween.
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Week Ending 9/10/22
Gross Sales: $506.25
Net Sales: $422.67Total Items in eBay Store: 1073
Items Sold eBay: 8 ($356.30)
Total Items in Etsy Store: 259
Items Sold Etsy: 1 (149.95)Cost of Items Sold: $56.20
COGS Percent 13.30%
Highest Price Sold: $149.95 Ships Lantern
Average Price Sold: $56.25
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00Average Days Listed: 456
Longest Listed: 1506
New items listed: 17Haven’t been on the forum much since taking a few weeks of vacation in early August. Between the vacation and end of summer activities haven’t even had time to run the numbers until last week. Had a very week month of August, having used Time Away for a few weeks and not having time to post much. I looked back at the last two years for the same time period and was amazed. For the same period in 2020: $4400. 2021: $2200 2022: $661 Ouch!! 2020 was a bit of an aberation having sold an $1800 item, but still…
Hope you guys can find another solution for the forum firehose. I miss the daily download. Not having those daily reminders definitely cuts back on my trips to the forum. Probably better for my productivity, but I miss the community, and for me and my ADD, out of sight is often out of mind.
Good hunting!
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Monthly numbers: 08/1 – 08/31
Active listings: 1442
Items sold: 39
Sales: $691.99
Highest price sold: $65.00 1952 Shooting Award Wall Plaque
Average price sold: $17.73
Cost of items sold: $84.64 / average cost: each $2.17
Spent on new inventory: $229.00
Number of items listed: 81Good to have you both back R&J. Seems like the best laid plans to have a day off and relax are always interrupted by unforeseen demanding events. At least you now have a new sewer pipe that should last for many many years to come (or should I say to go).
August was another slow month for me, but Sept. is looking much better for sales
, I just hope they keep up. -
Total Items in Store: 3781 listings for 5746 items
Aug 28-Sept 3
Items Sold: 47
Gross Sales: $3542.12 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $2425.12Cost of Items Sold: $619 ($ 95mine / $524 consignors)
$Highest Price Sold: $230 Hanover Shoes
Average Price Sold: $75.36
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 65Sept 4-10
Items Sold: 41
Gross Sales: $2863.91 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $2096.53Cost of Items Sold: $587 ($63 mine / $524 consignors)
$Highest Price Sold: $199.99 Florsheim Bookbinders Bourbon Wingtips
Average Price Sold: $69.85
Returns: 2
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 65 -
So, how did you find that the pipe had been ruptured? Something started to smell bad? Gross stuff flowing up through the ground? I’m coming up with all sorts of crazy visions.
Last week, I had a good number of sales, but they were all small. I had my whole store on sale for the first week of September just as an experiment or push to start the month off better. So, even the higher sales weren’t so high. The week before was better.
I had a non-paying buyer where I had accepted a counter offer, but, after no payment, I checked and found that the buyer had bad feedback. You know, when the seller selects positive, but writes something negative. I’m glad it didn’t go through.
Week of Sept 4 – 10
Total Items in Store: 1676 eBay, 32 Etsy
Items Sold: 15 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $4.25 + $56 Commission
Total Sales: $266.38 eBay, $0 Etsy; includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $28.76 for 2 NWT cardigans (on commission)
Average price: $17.76
Returns: 0 (1 NPB)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 9Week of Aug 28 – Sept 3
Total Items in Store: 1679 eBay, 32 Etsy
Items Sold: 14 eBay, 1 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $9 + $75 Commission
Total Sales: $334.14 eBay, $34 Etsy; includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $45 for Vintage Naaman Vase made in Israel
Average price: $24.54
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 40 -
Does anyone have experience with exportyourstore?
They claim to be able to sync your ebay store to 10 other platforms seamlessly. Seems too good to be true. The main con I am seeing is the price. Let me know what your experience was if you have tried this service.
https://www.exportyourstore.com/
Mark
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