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It’s a roller coaster out there right now. 1 sale yesterday on my main Ebay store. Currently at 10 items sold for today. Wednesday and Thursday were normal sales days. Last Wednesday through this Tuesday were way slower than normal.
Comics and graphic novels are doing really well for me right now. I wish I had more in my backlog, but I think I’m completely out.
Ebay is transitioning phone support out of call centers and into work from home. I’m glad they’re doing that for their workers!
I’m really glad I never took the FBA plunge. While sales have been down this month, they do have a possibility of picking back up once all of the FBA copies of items are out of stock.
I’ve always felt uncomfortable with an outside company handling stock. They can change the rules whenever they want for whatever reason. At least if a relationship sours when you’re MF, you can just take your stock and figure out what you want to do with it. As resellers, we are solely defined by the stock we currently have or will have in stock. Having another variable to potentially mess that up is just way too stressful.
I’ve been continuing to buy stock online. Not going too crazy just in case we’re forced to shut down our stores. When I get items in, I just let them sit for a few days before opening. I’m probably going to start wiping down the cardboard boxes when they come in, even though I’d rather save cleaning supplies.
I found 2 tarot decks in my backlog that I listed this week and sold within a couple of days. I’ve also been doing well with kook books. I think everyone’s feeling a little bit paranoid and scared right now.
I think people might be starting to get over prepping and are back to buying normal items. Even though sales are down overall, they are slowly starting to come back in. I am also starting to get higher dollar values for items as well. It could be that either people are feeling more back to normal, or this is the new normal, so they’ll get back to their usual routines. It could also be for reasons a bit more depressing than that, but I’ll just go with it while I still have an opportunity to make sales.
03/16/2020 at 2:54 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 454: Being Frugal During A Global Pandemic #75175Now that the schools are closed, I might start scheduling a USPS pickup. I actually don’t mind bringing the mail in on foot, it’s nice to get out of the house for a bit to get fresh air and walk around. My concern more is if they enact a lockdown that includes shutting down retail operations for the USPS completely. It would have to be really bad to get to that point – not even Italy has shut off their mail – but considering how slow they have been to react to this situation, I wouldn’t be surprised if that did happen at some point during this for this region.
Oh god no, I would have to be a millionaire to live in Manhattan with this much space LOL. I’m in the outer boroughs. Manhattan is fine to head into sometimes to thrift, eat in and run errands in, but it would be annoying to live there with the insane density and tiny apartments. Not like I’d be able to afford it – you have to earn an insane amount to live in them. I would complain about the tourists, but we unfortunately get out fair share of tourists out where I live that I am already frustrated dealing with them.
03/16/2020 at 2:01 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 454: Being Frugal During A Global Pandemic #75171It was really eerie bringing mail in today – all the streets in my neighborhood that are usually packed full of students/commuters/residents were empty. The local park was empty, the commuter lots had spaces. It was easy to cross the streets for once with no traffic! Even on weekends it’s more crowded.
I looked at the data on TomTom for traffic and it’s so quiet compared to normal:
Normally on a Monday, I would just bring in the mail via Uber. Since I don’t know the cleanliness levels of drivers and how often they’re cleaning their vehicles, I am skipping taking Ubers completely until this all blows over. I did turn on the app this morning during rush hour to see how impacted Uber is by all of this – there were at least 5 cars available within a few blocks from me. On a normal commuting day, I would sometimes have to wait 10-15 minutes to get an Uber. So weird.
We had a little over 40 packages to bring in this morning. Sales were only “that good” because I combined three days worth of packages into the ship-out. Normal ship-outs consist of 1 or 2 days worth of sales on Mondays. I currently don’t feel comfortable going into the post office on weekends when there will be more people using it. So, for now, I am just going in daily M-F. Dollar value is way down due to running a large sale and sending generous offers out on all items that offers are available for.
I really don’t know at this point if it’s worth it to continue listing. I have a deep backlog and am continuing to get stock in, but I also don’t want to list a bunch of stuff and then have to go on vacation for a few weeks or months for it. I’m currently near 13,700 active listings on my main Ebay store alone. I still have the second Ebay store which is a premium store, as well as my Etsy store to deal with for fees. Currently up to 200 listings on the Etsy store. Plus Amazon, plus other sites. I am looking at $600 in listing fees for all of my stores before I sell a single item. I might lose a minimum of $600-$1,200 if I am forced to put my stores on vacation for a month or two, depending on how serious the lockdown gets.
$39.99 for unlimited Amazon listing fees is fine. Etsy fees are minimal stretched out over 4 months. Even a premium Ebay store is fine. Having an anchor store with additional items listed over the 10,000 “free” allocated limit is really going to be painful. That’s $485 for 13,7000 items listed. I really feel like Ebay needs to do more than they are doing to help sellers who might be out for awhile through no fault of their own. They need to provide relief for their larger sellers. I really don’t believe that the USPS will remain completely open throughout this crisis.
I found the following COVID-19 status alert page for the USPS that I’ve been checking daily:
03/15/2020 at 7:05 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 454: Being Frugal During A Global Pandemic #75145Oh my god. Thank you for posting this information.
I think it’s one thing to see it happening elsewhere, calmly prepare and come up with plans, and then another thing to start enacting the plans you have come up with. Now that it’s actually here (well, outwardly here in the news and the slow start of tests), it’s terrifying. Everything is shutting down.
I’m waiting to see what happens with mass transit – that’s the next shoe to drop in the tri-state area. Most likely Saturday, Sunday or Holiday service will be coming to NJ Transit, LIRR, Metro-North, the subways and bus system. If the schools are closed and most people are working from home, there’s no need for normal weekday service. This will be detrimental to the whole social distance issue for those who still have to commute into work and don’t have a car.
Also, two of the most recent deaths cited in NYC were people in their 50s. That’s not old.
I’m in NYC (it’s a completely long & convoluted story about the hows & whys of it) and I feel like my business could shut down any day now for I don’t know how long? At this point, I’m just taking it day by day. So, the panic I have about my business reflects my fears over the unknown of what could happen here over anything else.
My handling time for orders is 2 days for all the sites I sell on, but I’ve been doing it same day or next day for all orders since Wednesday. That way, if it gets serious here and services shut down, I can try to eke out a last day of shipments before I put the stores on vacation for an unknown period of time.
I’m glad I got thrifting out of my system in the first few weeks of February. I have been ordering stock online for the past week – some of it is coming today, some next week. I might continue buying a bit online, it really depends. My buying overall is way down already for this time of year, and will probably go to nil for a few months soon.
I had to run errands in the financial district in Manhattan yesterday and you wouldn’t know anything’s amiss. Broadway was still full of tourists, commuters, residents, the tour buses were still completely full on the top of people pointing at things, most of the normal food carts were out, the annoying touts were out. It was weird to walk around there and then read about all the closures happening around the city – Broadway theaters are shut down, the major museums are temporarily closed, talk shows are without audiences or temporarily going off the air. It’s weird now and will probably get weirder. de Blasio says we might have 1,000 cases by next week.
I’ve had the same thoughts about estate sales. They will increase, but who will want to go to them? It used to be beneficial to say “from an estate” in listings, but now?
I was going to thrift today, but I’m skeeved out by the thought of it and putting it on hold indefinitely. If I do this for a living, how will other people who do this for fun feel? I guess this might cause thrifts to lower their prices if a lot of people eventually feel the way I do.
To be honest, I wouldn’t personally invest a lot of money in buying stock to resell at this time If I did, I would just continue buying and selling the same sort of items I normally do. If you have a backlog built up, spend the next few months listing through it. At the very least, this will have enormous implications for the economy and will push us straight into a recession (if we’re not already in one).
I’ve been reading articles on this since before the quarantine in Wuhan back in January. I knew at that point that my normal spring buying habits for my stores were not going to happen this year. A true pandemic with quarantine and travel restrictions coupled with a crippling recession is very, very bad with the effects felt way beyond a few weeks of potentially having to be a shut-in.
Sales are currently Q4 level strong here. I don’t know how long it will last, but I’ll take the extra work!
Sales right now/normal Q4 level – 30-50 packages shipped out on Mondays & Fridays, 20-30 packages shipped out Tuesdays-Thursdays.
Normal sales for the rest of the year (other than January, which is usually as busy or busier than Q4): 20-30 packages shipped out Mondays & Fridays, 10-20 packages shipped out Tuesdays-Thursdays. This was what it was like until the past week.
Sales are all over the place. From the cheapest items ($5 free shipping ephemera) to expensive – sold a $200 movie last week! Also, all ranges of dates listed – items listed for 10+ years to items listed yesterday. Getting rid of lots of old stuff on both Amazon & Ebay. It’s nice to see a lot of it go – I’m just filling the newly empty spaces from the backlog.
Starting to change the way I go about shipping – used to take Ubers for the larger ship-outs. Now they’re just being walked in. Uber drivers are starting to get the coronavirus, so I don’t want to risk taking one if I don’t have to. Also skipping out on public transportation if I can avoid it, so I guess I’ll just get used to carrying more than normal. At least most of the items I sell are small – I don’t know what I’d do if I had to carry in 20-30 large boxes of random items each day – probably use a large bicycle trailer cart to walk it in? I’ve still got mine from when I used to hitch it to a cargo bike, but I live in a bad location to bike in.
Purchased nearly 200 books this weekend because sales are good. This might be it for awhile – keeping an eye on another 200 books, but eh. I don’t know how long sales like this will last for. It could go from Q4 type sales to a trickle at any moment.
I live in one of the worst-hit places for the coronavirus, but life is just going on as normal. I saw no one in masks when I went out today, people shopping, eating out, living life like normal. Other than the stock market tanking, everything is completely normal. It’s eerie to see that and read about potential future quarantines in the news for where I live, but eh.
The $2.99 copies are Ebook/PDF copies.
This is annoying for those stuck in a region that’s completely sold out of hand sanitizer. I thought they would just nix the high-priced listings and leave them otherwise available for purchase. Amazon still has Purell up, but it’s wayyyy overpriced.
Also:
12,086 results for hand sanitizer on Ebay right at this moment.
Yep, this was a fun one to look out for. 3 weeks ago, when this first started appearing in the news, I picked up a few copies off Amazon & Ebay for $4-10 apiece. Sold them for $40-70 apiece. I wish I had bought more, but at the time there were a ton listed for cheap prices and I didn’t know how high the prices would eventually go. I also wish I was less picky and just bought the ones that sounded junky or didn’t have descriptions that were also in the $4-10 range. Oh, well.
Oddly enough, the Leigh Nichols 1st editions ones were going for more than the Dean Koontz ones – even though the Wuhan-400 is mentioned only in the Dean Koontz ones.
I’m surprised that “The Stand” didn’t take off as well as this. There has been a ton of interest in the mini-series over the past month, so I thought the book would do just as well. Still a ton of cheap copies out there.
Up until a few years ago, all the cds I listed only went on Amazon. That was the place to be for it. When they gated people a few years ago in cds, I moved all of my cds onto Ebay.
I haven’t bothered with Discogs because it is mainly niche, best for small labels (1,000 or much less runs) or hard to find rarities of more common artists & material. I do have a number of records that would do better on Discogs than Ebay, but I can’t bothered to open up an actual seller account on there – I just have a buyer & artist account. It is a good place to compare prices when you have no luck pricing items on Ebay/Amazon/Terapeak/Worthpoint, or prices seem too high because they are being priced by people who have no idea how to price items.
I would look at the statistics on Discogs when listing, including the want lists and the previous sold prices to see if there’s any interest in what is being listed. If there are competing prices in the marketplace, I would also look to see condition and location of seller. If you’re price matched with an international seller for a foreign-produced item and matching condition, the sale will most likely go to someone in that country first over what would be to that buyer an international purchase.
If you create pages, keep an eye on them to see how quickly people swoop in and edit your listings. There are a ton of people on there that have nothing better to do than to “fix” your listings, even when there’s nothing to fix!
I would cross-list them on both Etsy and Ebay. I’ve sold both a mixed lot of paperback Dunes (Dune/Dune Messiah/Children of Dune), as well as a slightly unusual Chilton paperback Dune on Etsy. There’s also less competition on Etsy.
A search for “Frank Herbert Dune Book” on both Ebay and Etsy:
Ebay: 1,673 results for frank herbert dune book
Etsy: “frank herbert dune book” (125 Results) -
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