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Just when we start buying into all the conspiracy theories that our eBay store is being hidden, we had a surprisingly busy week of sales. No rhyme or
[See the full post at: The Numbers: Week of September 10-16, 2023] -
Items in Store: 2688
Items Sold: 43
Total Sales: $2,340.00
COGS: $234.00
Total Profit: $2,106.00
Average profit: $48.98
Average sales price: $54.42
New Listings: 81
Items scavenged: So, so many. Does anyone even read this?
Listing 2023 weekly Avg: 43Wow what a weekend. On Friday I did Premium Hoarder round 3 for clothing. I bought about 150 items for $1780. On Saturday we did our yard sales. We didn’t leave until 9 as I (THANKFULLY) slept in. As we got in the van I told my wife I had a really good feeling about yard sales, which is contrary to middle of September experience. Usually yard sales are crap this late in the season. My scavenger spidey sense is never wrong though. Twas a GREAT yard sale day that lasted until 1 pm. I filled the van with amazing items.
The good news: I filled BOTH vans this weekend with high dollar inventory.
The bad news: I have to deal with two vans full of high dollar inventory.
I can leave my van full as I just commute to work in it. I don’t need room for passengers except as a backup for my wife’s van.
I did need to deal with my wife’s van so I tried to get most everything listed. The clothes went in my van and all the hard goods were listed except the medical stuff.
Medical stuff? Yep. I bought two bins full of vintage medical/surgical equipment from a retired doctor. He was a fun dude to scavenge with and I was able to be honest with him regarding what I do with the stuff I buy. I paid $40 for two large bins packed full of awesome stuff. It will take some time to strategize how I will sell it all and what everything is really worth. Potential profit is anywhere from $500 to several thousand depending on individual item value and how far I want to break it down.
Which brings me to a fun topic: To share or not to share if I’m a reseller with people. I ran the full spectrum of interactions around this subject.
Interaction 1: The premium hoarder folks. I made a strategic decision to tell them straight up what I do early on in order to work on a deal to negotiate bigger purchases. This Friday I was able to talk with them as I went through the items they had ready for sale. I can talk openly about my business and negotiate with the knowledge that they know I’m going to sell and make good profit. We’re slowly working towards a complete buyout sometime this winter I believe. Honesty is my strategy. They know what I’m doing is a lot of work.
Interaction 2: A yard sale with tons of cool stuff. I openly discuss my children at sales. If someone wonders why I’m buying a lot of shoes or toys or clothes – I tell them I have 6 kids. I do buy stuff for my family regularly. As we walked back to the van, the man offered to help carry stuff out. On the walk he started talking about sleazy resellers and how he doesn’t want to cut them deals, etc. Awkward!!! He detailed some poor experiences with some buyers who lowballed everything and insulted his items to get the price lower. I generally paid his asking price and just negotiated on a few things. I made sure to put this stuff in the trunk where I knew I only had a bit of clothes. I didn’t want him to see all the other junk in the middle row. If I would have told this guy what I really do with the stuff I buy, he may have not wanted to sell to me at all even if I paid his asking prices and his prices may have been higher. I am respectful at all times as a general life policy. It sucks that this guy has a bad opinion based on some bad actors.
Interaction 3: The doctor. When I asked about the medical stuff I saw the twinkle in his eye. I don’t think he expected anyone to even recognize the stuff. He had sooo much amazing stuff! Eventually he asked me what I did for a living. Based on my interactions so far I could tell it would be best to be honest. I told him I was an engineer by trade and in my spare time I scavenge at yard sales and thrifts to sell interesting things online. He thought it was neat and started pointing out things that would be good for resale. I waited until the end to ask him about the massive collection of vintage fly fishing poles. It was nice to be able to be straight up with why I wanted them. He named his prices and it was thankfully more than I wanted to spend. I REALLY didn’t want to deal with those things! Even at his prices there was a lot of money to be made but man those things are big and hard to ship.
Quick Premium hoarder update:
Sold 12 items for $936. The new buy brought my investment up to $8180. My total sales minus fees is up to $7500 on 101 sold items. Thanks to my great sales this week I’ll be back into the profit MUCH quicker this time. The highlight of the week was a pair of Louis Vuitton shoes I sold very quickly for $475.
The first 10 drafts of items from the new batch of clothes I just bought have a list price of $800 – 2 of the 10 being $200 items.
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Yes, Retro, I do read it 🙂
A few years ago, I purchased several bins of dental & denture instruments. It was certainly interesting, and many of the items sold rather quickly and for good money. Even someone’s denture impressions sold; I figure it was the same category as scary dolls and such.
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Lol! You get an A+
It’s difficult to put a number on how many actual items I bought because I never know how I will lot some things. Definitely over 200 items sourced this week. I grabbed a handful of random things off the top of the medical equipment pile this morning and started researching/creating listings. 9 items listed for $280. Some prices are supported with comps, others unique.
I can always lot them up in the future. I’m actually considering doing this with some cheap video games and CD listings.
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It has been a blast following your growth in the last year. I speak for all the lurkers when I say it’s a real privilege (and education) to see the reports of your premium clothing hoard and your many, many smaller hauls. It has also been inspiring to me as my store is going through its own evolution. It’s crazy to me to see how much you can accomplish with your reselling business while retaining your day job!
Figuring out when to share that you resell and when to mask is one of my favorite puzzles. I’ve had a few of those run-ins lately (most of them documented in the scavenge of the week threads) and I kind of love them because it feels like I get to play a character. I’m a musician, I’m a collector, I’m an artist, I’m whatever you want me to be so I can buy your thing in peace without getting a bizarre (and uninformed) lecture about ethics.
I like to think that the people who complain about sleazy resellers would change their mind if they knew the truth about me. I am not keeping their thing forever, no, but I love it deeply anyway. The profit is important (obviously) but what I really, really care about is getting this random item to its next buyer, who is hopefully the forever buyer. I care so much that I take good pictures of the item and try to advertise it so someone who loves it as much as the original owner can find it. I use clean bubble wrap and actual cardboard to protect their valuables from the big bad postal workers. I have a real label printer and I get the package scanned at the post office instead of dumping it in the blue bin five days after I mail it. If a customer has a problem with one of my items, I send them a message with empathy like a normal person and usually I just refund them. Do people complaining about resellers think about any of this? Probably not.
The barrier to entry to selling online is comically low, but I would like to believe that there are as many of us good eggs as there are lowballers and scuzzbuckets. At least among the pros.
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Total Items in Store: 900
Items Sold: 8
Gross Sales: $296.73 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $163.52 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $35
Highest Price Sold: $74 (Needlepoint canvas completed)
Average Price Sold: $37.09
Returns: 1 partial adjustment (didn’t want a return), buyer did not read description
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $100ish
Number of items listed this week: 35Not a great week of sales. Disappointing for this time of year. I’ve been thrifting a little more than I should be and need to buckle down for some serious listing. Enjoying the Thursday flea market though. Nice outing.
Amazing you have the patience to part things out. Glad you got your money back.
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You are closer to the big 1-0-0-0 listings than it might feel like. Get 10 done today if you can! You’ll feel great about hitting that listing milestone and probably see a boost in sales for making the algorithm happy.
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@Craig thanks! Sales really stink. I really should save listings as drafts so I would be posting new ones each day. I get impatient so it’s boom and bust. I created 10 yesterday but need to take photos.
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FYI,
Scheduling listings is now FREE!
You can create all your listings in one batch and just schedule a few to go live each day.
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Last week’s sales were crappy. This week is already much better, so hopefully we are on our way to a decent 4th quarter.
The real news, though, is that the auction I put together for my neighbor is finally up and running! Already received a few bids! Auction ends Thursday next week, and pick up will be Sunday, Oct 1. Check it out:
https://bidder.maxsold.com/auction/84317/bidgallery
My numbers for last week:
Week of Sept 10 – 16
Total Items in Store: 1709 eBay, 31 Etsy
Items Sold: 5 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $4.90 + $40 Commission
Total Sales: $119.94 eBay, $0 Etsy; includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $38 x 2 for Maya Bohler pottery to same buyer
Average price: $24
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 16-
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Auction looks amazing. You did a great job with the pictures on the lot items in particular. How do you plan to handle all of the different pickups? Will you have different time slots for different rooms/types of items? I’ve never done something like an estate sale before. None of my family who’ve died have possessed anything that resembled an estate when they passed, which is kind of sad now that I think about it. Anyway, can’t wait to follow along your auction, I hope the bids come fast and furious at the end.
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The way it works is that we have three timeslots on Oct 1. The first is A for most item on the main floor, B is for items except for furniture in the whole house, and C is for furniture. It should all be done in less than three hours.
If you click on the tab “Pickup Information” or “Terms & Conditions”, you will see the timeslots and other information on the auction.
The listings start to end at 8PM on Thurs, Sept 28 (basically a week from now), and then pickup is on Sun, Oct 1.
MaxSold runs their auctions where you put in the max you want to pay (not including 15% premium & tax), and then they bid for you up to that point. If someone places a bid within 2 minutes of an item’s auction end, the timer is reset to 2 min. I’ve seen people keep bidding and extending a listing for 10 min or more.
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Week Ending 9/16/23
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $911.65 (eBay $711.80 / Etsy $199.95)
Net Sales: $786.57 (eBay $608.26 / Etsy $178.31)
Total Items Sold: 8 (eBay 5/Etsy 3)
Total Items in eBay Store: 1191 / Etsy Store: 511
Cost of Items Sold: $106.60
Highest Price Sold: $600.00 Antique Spyglass
Average Price Sold: $113.96
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $90.26Average Days Listed: 120
Longest Listed: 220
New items listed: 9
New Listings Value $440.00It was a good week last week until my big sale of the week opened a return. The buyer doesn’t believe the item is as old as I claimed and has been refurbished. After a bit of back and forth I made him an offer to keep it for $350. Though we agreed via email, he hasn’t accepted yet, so return is in limbo.
Fortunately, several of the books I bought with my Tokien lot a few weeks ago are selling. I still shake my head when I think of all the Amazon scanners at book fairs, while antiquarian books sell for decent amounts and can often be picked up at auctions in lots for so little. I guess their business model is all about volume.
Had a good scavenge this week with an estate auction. I’m so used to being outbid, I’m now surprised when I win several lots of good stuff. Everyone must have been sleeping during the closing this week and I picked up a decent amount of stuff and stayed in my target >10% of what I hope to sell them at: pre-ww2 trains, knives, and electronics.
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Fortunately, several of the books I bought with my Tokien lot a few weeks ago are selling. I still shake my head when I think of all the Amazon scanners at book fairs, while antiquarian books sell for decent amounts and can often be picked up at auctions in lots for so little. I guess their business model is all about volume.
I hit 4 library sales last week, so this has been something I’m seeing constantly. I cruised into a room at one sale hours after opening and found two old RuneQuest games from the 80’s which were probably worth more than the combined profits on half the books at that sale. I have a favorite sale which is no scanners on Saturday and about an hour after opening, saw someone get kicked out. That was really just a treat to watch, very cathartic.
In July, when I went to the large sale in Chicago which constantly restocked, I ended up chatting with an Amazon seller for a chunk of the last day as we waited for more stuff and more stuff. Once he saw I was going for different stuff than him, he explained his general book scanning process to me. Sales rank is a big factor as well, often more important than selling price. Essentially almost every scanning person is looking for something which has a proven history of selling for a certain target price. My pal for the day passed up a lot of items with bar codes which I bought and made a nice profit on. Some of which sold within a day or two of listing. Basically eBay and Amazon sellers are two different ballgames. Good to know AI (Artificial Intelligence or Amazon Idiots, you pick) aren’t coming for our jobs anytime soon!
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@Sharyn – Good luck with the Maxsold auction. Pity I’m not closer, there are several items I’d be bidding on. You take much better pictures than most of the Maxsold auctions around me.
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Why thank-you 🙂
I would have listed everything on eBay if he didn’t have SO much stuff. I couldn’t handle it all.
In addition, I decided not to list some items on eBay so that I could get a good catalogue of interesting items. I would have wanted to list all the sterling, but I know those items will create some excitement. I have another full set of sterling that we found in the attic, which I will list on eBay sometime after the auction completes.
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I have been slacking badly on posting my numbers over the last 4-6 weeks. No single reason, lots of little ones. I’ve decided Wednesday nights will be my forum posting nights until I get back on track. Maybe this will get some more conversation happening here towards the end of the week, too.
Despite not posting in the thread as often, I’ve been thinking more about my numbers than ever. How I sell online has changed dramatically over the last year and has become a process of consistent change and evolution. I am thinking about another vacation in the next few months and I was in Chicago just seven weeks ago. I never made more than $35,000/year working for someone else, so money was always a problem for me. Especially on the rare occasions I traveled or did anything fun. Still some work to do to fix that, but I have a lot more options and flexibility now and the next few years are going to be amazing. I am trying to keep that in mind all the time so I remain humble and appreciative of what feels like a whole new life.
9/10/2023 to 9/16/2023
Items sold: 47 (16 via best offer, 7 via seller initiated offer, 18 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $1916.15 (up 88% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1156.88 (up 66% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $40.77 (down 28% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $196.19 — Flat rate box of 54 graded and encapsulated cards
The buyer of this lot was located in Australia, so this was one of the most expensive items I have ever sold in terms of fees — $112.02 shipping label, $53.35 final value fees, $28.42 promoted listings. So my net profit is maybe $50, and even though I sent the cards in a large flat rate box, the tracking has been painfully slow — last update 9/14 in the international hub in Jamaica, NY.
But I had another motive beyond profit. A lot of my international card buyers become repeat customers because so many card sellers use the Global Shipping Program (or whatever it’s called now) and the fees are much higher than shipping direct. And international buyers are some of the most active on trading card groups, too. I sent the buyer a small envelope with some bonuses. If they’re happy, maybe they tell their collecting friends and I get a few more repeat customers from down under. If not, for once I put in some real, honest work to make my $50.
Lowest price sold (net): $6.55 — Golden State Warriors lot of 10 basketball cards
I had a lot of contenders for low sale of the week this week because I had auctions ending last Monday. I had one crazy bidding war where this lot of Vegas Golden Knights hockey cards went from a $10 starting bid to a $53 final price! It was two bidders back and forth and the winner had bought from me in the past. Not sure which card in the lot had hidden value (even after I did some research out of curiosity), but seeing that sale was a thrill and really felt like what eBay was like a decade ago. Or Yahoo auctions a decade before that.
But most of these small card lots, which have become a core part of my business model in the last few months, sell for their opening bid. Usually that’s $10 with higher quality lots at $15. In the case of this Warriors lot, it had sold for $10 and went unpaid and then sold again for $10 and went unpaid. So I dropped the starting price to $8, which is the price it sold for, but at least this buyer actually paid. I might have made $2 profit on this lot when I usually make $5 to $10 on each one. Oh well, I’ve already got a new one posted.
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I’ve never had to worry about cash flow with my ebay business since it is purely a side job for me. My only two basic budgeting rules are keeping my business checking balance above $2000 so I don’t get hit with a monthly fee, and making sure there is money in there to pay my auto withdrawal payments for my two vehicles. Then I pay my business credit card off in full several times a month when I have excess above that. Other than that, I don’t even think about cash flow. Any other excess funds in this account go to paying other monthly bills (I’ve been paying all utilities with ebay funds for several years but I don’t have them set up for auto withdrawal in case things change). I also make extra payments to my regular credit cards or transfer money to my personal checking (such as paying for vacations) whenever the account gets high. In general, I keep between $3000-4000 at any one time in my business account. It is basically play money for me so I don’t have to maintain a strict household budget.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone here report their numbers based on cashflow. Another reason I’ve been really thinking about this is because of this video series I’ve been watching this summer:
They had to re-evaluate their goals halfway through as they quickly realized cashflow was a MAJOR problem while trying to aggressively grow a new business.
My death piles (or mountains if you prefer) have always been my protection against this cashflow issue if I ever got into a situation where ebay needed to be my full time income. The plan was to have enough inventory on hand so that I could go 6 months without buying anything and list very aggressively in that 6 months – at least 2000 items and the space to store them. I’ve maintained that backlog for years now – thankfully that insurance policy hasn’t had to be used.
Now having said all that, I’m genuinely interested in how cash flow works for someone who is 100% full time. How do you budget for inventory purchases? What does your bookkeeping look like?
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Craig, I love the thread you’re on in your life. As much as online selling is interesting, whats more interesting is how scavengers start changing their lives as a result of owning their own time (and making money). It becomes a philosophical journey as you make enough to live, no one tells you what to do or where to be, and possibilities open up.
Retro, cashflow has never been an issue for us when buying new inventory because of how we scavenged. Our pride has always always been scavenging where others ignored and paying as little as possible for inventory. Definitely means we have long tail items that can take a while to sell, but we’ve also never had issues running out of money.
We used to talk about this all the time when the Amazon reselling was so popular back around 2016. You’d see guys dump thousands of dollars into new inventory (often from China) and sold huge amounts online. Problems you’d see is if items stopped selling because other resellers joined the listing…or Amazon arbitrarily banned the seller. That’s a huge risk having that much cash tied up in inventory.
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