The Numbers: Week July 14-20, 2024

[Jay]

Slow week? Average week? Good week? Who knows. We’ve lost track of what’s what. We have a store, things are selling, yeah!! We certainly are not the p
[See the full post at: The Numbers: Week July 14-20, 2024]

[Retro Treasures WV]

Items in Store: 3039
Items Sold: 34
Total Sales: $2,461.00
COGS: $271.00
Total Profit: $2,190.00
Average profit: $64.41
Average sales price: $72.38
New Listings: 38
Items scavenged: 34
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 35
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,454.00
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 33
2024 ASP $44.57
2024 projected total sales $75,608.00

 

The week started off great with a $1050 sale on those nail kits I got last week. Still selling off old cheap items – I had 10 low dollar sales of old stale items for $14 or less.

I’m quite busy taking care of everyone in the house and getting all the chores done. I haven’t been able to do much ebay listing, thankfully the listing backlog has let me keep new lisitngs going. I did list pretty much everything I sourced at yard sales Saturday. Just a few more SNES games that I’m waiting on replacement batteries to come in. I like to fully refurbish the games with cleaned contacts and new save batteries to list at top dollar.

 

I am making some progress slowly ‘listing in place’ and listing the big items on a shelf in my garage office. $100 items that have just been sitting there for years. Sad!

Premium Hoarder update:

Sold 8 items for $787.

A good mix of shoes and clothes this week.

 

[Jay]

Hope the new baby and mom are doing well! Amazing you have time for yard sales (assume its where relaxation happens).

[Retro Treasures WV]

Ah well the key was that I started at 7:30 and was back home by 9:45 with Tudor’s breakfast for everyone. My yard sale loop typically takes about 2 hours unless there is a ridiculous amount of sales.

[NC]

Items in Store: 15,064
Items Sold: 130 (Down 8.5% from previous week)
Total Sales: $1,293.83 (Down 6.2% from previous week)
Net Sales: $728.24 (Down 14.9% from previous week)
Average Sales Price: $9.95 (Up 2.4% from previous week)
Cost Of Goods Sold: Roughly $100
Number of Items Listed: 210

How’s it going gang? Been a long time since I’ve posted. Glad to see you’re still hanging around here and doing well on eBay. I don’t remember what my status was the last time I posted but I’m back to working a 9-5 after trying full time for a year. Just didn’t have the right strategy to earn what I wanted to.

IDK if anyone remembers but I’m the guy that was building up a big store with patches. I’ve flipped flopped different niches over the past few years but ever since they allowed patches to be shipped with eBay standard envelope back in November I’ve gone back to listing 99% just patches. I’ve got about 12,000 listed and a couple thousand hats. I’m kinda tired of hats and don’t make a ton more profit from them vs patches so I’m going all in and want to be the biggest patch store on eBay.

It’s going to take more than listing 30 patches a day to become the biggest store (the biggest store has over 50,000 patches) but I’m just listing 30 now until my sales catch up closer to what I list. If I get to where I’m selling 30 a day then I should make about $50k profit a year which would be pretty sweet.

 

30 a day may sound like a lot for a side business but I can take photos in a couple minutes and list about 1 per minute. Shipping is a breeze as well now that I can just print the label directly onto the envelope.

[Retro Treasures WV]

My big question is how do you source that many quality patches? the big benefit to being an everything seller is that everywhere I go I can find quality items. I can count 0n my fingers the amount of times I’ve seen patches at yard sales.

[NC]

It’s like any other niche, the more you learn about it, the easier it gets to source. I get lucky every now and then and come across someone with thousands of patches and that keeps me good on inventory for months. The main thing I’m curious about is if I get my store up to 50,000 listings like the biggest store in the niche, will we both have enough demand to sell a similar amount of items. He doesn’t do best offers so I’m hoping that will give me an edge.

 

There’s still more for me to learn and other sourcing methods I haven’t tried. I’ve barely dipped my toes into boy scout patches cause I thought they were slower sellers and go for cheaper but then I stumbled across this guy’s store and was quite surprised at his sell-through and how many patches he’s sold for hundreds of dollars.

Running a patch store isn’t easy, it takes a ton of listings just to make any kind of decent money. I think every reselling method is hard in it’s own way so you just have to choose your hard.

[Jay]

I also was just thinking about you the other day. I also was thinking about the seller who ust sold trucker hats who used to comment here. I think he lived in the Bay Area and had a tech day job. We now have Craig here, who primarily buys and sells sports trading cards.

I’m glad things are going well selling and working full time. I’m also impressed that you can buy enough vintage inventory to grow your store this big. That’s a feat in itself!

I can imagine that photographing and listing patches is a breeze, but do you now have enough knowledge to quickly price patches correctly? Assume most patches sell for under $10? But we just sold some boy scout patches for $90/each. Took some research to see what we had.

 

[twizzle]

Hi NC i remember you and your posts, always enjoyed reading them. I have not listed any items on Ebay in years but still buy antique postcards if i stumble on a good deal on a collection.    “Shipping is a breeze as well now that I can just print the label directly onto the envelope”. How does that work can you explain, do you need a special kind of printer and labels to print the addressees on an envelope ?

[NC]

Thanks, yeah I just use an old Dell laser printer I’ve had for like 8 years that I got at a yard sale. I buy the label on eBay and then when I print I set it to the #10 envelope option and it works great

[Antique Frog]

@retro-treasures-wv  The drawback to being an everything seller is the conversations with non-scavengers. Like, you know what a set of Staunton chess pieces is, but you don’t play chess. You know what a Stanley 4½ plane is, but you’re not a carpenter.  And never mention the death piles… they start thinking you’re Franz Stangl.

[NC]

I would add that you have to deal with making new listings for all the different categories, researching prices, all the different sized items, how to ship them, store them, test them etc.

[Retro Treasures WV]

“I already said I’m in, you don’t have to sell me!”

lol!

just this morning I tested, listed, and cleaned a sewing machine, two manual typewriters, 2 vintage radios, and an electronic battleship.

And people pay me to do this! What fun!

[NC]

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll pick up a Gameboy or DS or digital camera if I come across one. Not gonna pass up on a quick $50+ profit for something I can throw in a small box. I do have an antique booth that I stock once a month and sell the stuff like sewing machines and typewriters but I just dust them off and sell as is lol. Not worth it to spend the time when I only make a few hundred bucks a month profit from the booth.

 

I’d love to be a pocket knife seller. So many $100+ items in that niche but tell me where I can find a truck load of them lol

[Sharyn]

I’m one of those everything sellers. I pretty much took my business plan off this website LOL. Every once in a while, I consider the things that would make life easier if I focused on one area, but I think I like thriftiness of buying at $1 and selling at $20+.

One thing I do need to do is stop with the $10-ish items. If I buy an auction lot and pull out the $20+ items, I have a hard time ditching the $10+ items that are still sellable.

This week was normal again, but only because I’m listing at a pretty good rate.

Week of Jul 14 – 20
Total Items in Store: 1710 eBay, 32 Etsy
Items Sold: 15 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $23.20 + $51 Commission
Total Sales: $448.51 eBay
Highest Price Sold: eBay $58 for Civil Regime Mens Black Hoodie (on commission), $56 for Vintage F Dick Knife Sharpener Honing Steel
Average price: $29.90
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $5
Number of items listed this week: 30

[The_SEAM_Store]

July 14-20, 2024
Total Items in Store: 4273 listings for 6717 items
Items Sold: 28
Gross Sales: $2046.97 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $1509.25
Cost of Items Sold: $330 ($208 mine / $122 consignors)
Highest Price Sold: $248 Vintage FRYE Boots
Average Price Sold: $73.11
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $440
Number of items listed this week: 30

[ChristineR]

Hello, I’m still locked out of the forum on my desktop but sometimes can get in on my phone.

I’m back from my daughter’s graduation trip to New Orleans, Nashville and Dollywood.  So interesting to be in a very different part of the country. The Goodwill bins in Nashville were just chock full of usable items but not a lot of vintage.  My daughter enjoyed trips to the Buffalo Exchange clothing stores.  Other than that, not too much thrifting.

Coming back I am realizing how I’m quite overrun with inventory.  This year I have learned a lot about what to sell where, what is not worth shipping and selling online any longer, the value of checking sell through rate, what I’m tired of packing, the appeal of becoming a multichannel seller, and how to source less expensively.  I’m moving away from the slow dime approach and I need to look at sell through and not just pick up what I love (like 50s pastel dishes for example).  Live selling has been a fun experiment but it cost me a lot of listing time and I had to buy the equipment.  There is a better monthly vintage market about an hour and 10 minutes south of me in LA that I might try later.  The markets in my area have been a little disappointing but enjoyable.  Today I’m going to the regular flea market with our used clothing.  I’ll never get it listed so will let it go under value.

congrats @Retro on the birth of your baby!

[craig rex]

@ChristineR

I was locked out of the forum for a few days as well. Something called Wordflare was blocking me. But I was able to get back in just now. I’m honestly not sure what I did differently, if anything, but you might try clearing your cookies and cache to see if that helps.

Q4 coming up — keep the faith! You’ve got some big sales numbers coming, I’ve got a good feeling.

[ChristineR]

@Craig, thank you I will try to figure out how to do that when I get a chance.

ugh loaded all the clothes for the fire and they had a special event going on so it was canceled.   We have some kid going back to school stuff going on and a bbq for the college kids tomorrow before they leave.  Then I hope to really make some traction on the business.

[Sharyn]

I had a problem with logging in yesterday, so I contacted Ryanne. Today, I was able to login. I did login differently, so I don’t know if that made a difference. Instead of using the login at the bottom of the page (right after all the comments), I used the login at the top right under the “favorite subscribe” buttons.

[Jay]

Check to see if you can see if you can use the forum on your computer again. We just changed the spam detection on the site that might not be as strict.

[craig rex]

I have been in a decent groove for the last month now, and I’m feeling really good about my business. I have been improving around the margins lately, particularly in terms of keeping myself organized and tackling specific eBay tasks that I usually procrastinate on.

Turns out that photographing one or two weird items, even listing them only takes a few minutes. Especially if I set my mind to “just get it done” instead of “get it done perfectly.” If I really focus for an hour or so, I can start to tackle bigger problems like organization and storage.

This has been a bit of a breakthrough for me, so I’m excited to see what my productivity is like over the next few weeks. This week has been a good one so far, and I always get my best work done on the weekend.

07/14/2024 to 07/20/2024

Items in store: 259 (down from 333 two weeks ago)

For the first time in about three months, I did end and sell similar on my store. More about that in next week’s numbers thread. As always, I recommend doing this on your store quarterly at a minimum, especially on those 6 month and older listings with no watchers or lower priced competition. Give your listings the best possible chance to sell!

Items sold: 28 — 20 via best offer, 9 via seller initiated offer, 20 via advertising

Gross sales: $2070.22 (up 26% from one year ago)

Net sales: $1409.39 (up 24% from one year ago)

Average sales price: $60.89 (up 22% from one year ago)

Highest price sold (net): $292.71 — Reggie Miller 2017 Panini Chronicles V-Team autograph jersey card

Lowest price sold (net): $14.67 — Texas Rangers 10 card modern baseball cards lot

[Jay]

Be careful about the weird items. Once you start seeing them, you start seeing them everywhere and you won’t want to pass them up.

[Author]

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