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01/21/2020 at 4:28 pm in reply to: Travelling to Japan – any suggestions of what to buy for resale in the US #73146
Hi Aperture,
I’m sure you’ll have fun on your trip. My wife and I head back to Japan almost every year. She is Japanese, and I lived there for just over a decade working as a journalist and doing all sorts of other things.We’ve found scavenging to be pretty thin in and around Tokyo for anything you can bring back with you. When I lived there I was able to get all kinds of stuff for my apartment from the trash and second hand, but those weren’t necessarily the kinds of things I would put on Ebay.
A big part of that is the expense of shipping from Japan. It can get real expensive real quick, even for sea mail. We’ve done best with books and comics sorts of things, as well as CDs and some clothes. There are a lot of japanese versions of certain albums that are still important to collectors, and we’ve also found some comics that were Japanese versions of comics in the 80s that sold well in the US and Europe.
One thing We did well with too was some of the ‘Chirashi’ that movie theaters give away. It really depends on the film, but we got a lot of star wars ones while we there, and they sold fairly well – though not for a ton. They were free though, so if there is something coming out while you’re there that has a solid fan base it can be worth it.
The best places we’ve found are 2nd hand markets that local city offices run every once in while. Machida and Musashino run them fairly regularly in Tokyo and we’ve definitely scored. That said, heading to such an event would be pretty far off the beaten path for someone visiting Japan for the first time without Japanese skills. It’s definitely a local event.
I also feel that Japan has a pretty established market for second hand stuff that can make vintage shops pretty pricey. Even more so with the rise of Mercari. One of the coin laundry spots we used last time we were there had a white screen with lights and a mannequin sponsored by Mercari for people to take photos of things to sell. It was pretty neat – I think they have some of that softbank money.
Cheers!
Yes, this is Hong Kong.I second Antique Frog in case there was any lingering doubt.
Ebay System Status is showing issues for both Listing and Label Printing. Last updated at 8:26AM PDT, so hopefully they get a handle on it soon. We’re having the same issues here.
09/13/2019 at 8:41 am in reply to: FYI: Managed Payments – eBay gave our store a deadline to join 22OCT19 #67754I received the apology email overnight, so thats good. Honestly I’ll be fine switching to managed payments after 4Q and once GSP is covered. Just a weird slip up to happen by Ebay.
09/12/2019 at 3:55 pm in reply to: FYI: Managed Payments – eBay gave our store a deadline to join 22OCT19 #67732I agree Sharyn – no issue with switching as long as GSP works!
09/12/2019 at 2:47 pm in reply to: FYI: Managed Payments – eBay gave our store a deadline to join 22OCT19 #67720I actually just received this email as well. But in My eBay:Messages the title of the email was’Count on Big Sales with these items.’
So, this has to be some kind of mistake, no? I too did not receive an email on Aug 22nd. No time to call eBay today, hopefully tomorrow. But with the goofy nature of this email being completely unformatted, and the wrong subject – I have to imagine its at least premature.
Thanks for posting that MyCottage. May I ask where you got this? Seems like a good Q&A with perhaps some more interesting bits to read through. Cheers!
Ryanne – Yeah, wow your experience certainly makes Webinterpret seem awful. Not so interested in that really, but will not even click through to read about it now. I am hoping for a change of the tier system for stores though.
MyCottage – I had heard something similar (that tiers wouldn’t change) later last year, so thats why this caught my eye. Hopefully there’s some more explanation soon. My store is really on the edge for going from premium to anchor, so any kind of intermediate step would be great for us.
11/26/2018 at 1:33 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 387: Do Black Friday, Small Business Saturday or Cyber Monday Matter? #52291Thanks again for a great episode.
I heard a report this morning on Bloomberg basically saying that 1% of products on sale amount for over 50% of purchases over the Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend. They were talking about how a retailer is in better shape if they have a large volume of a given hot toy like Hatchimals, than if they have a broad selection of toys that aren’t the hot item per se.Here is a link
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-26/cyber-monday-success-for-retailers-rests-on-the-1I think that says quite a bit about what these events mean for small vintage online sellers such as ourselves.
I talked with someone at Ebay this morning and they told me it was a known issue with how seller hub is calculating things. So there’s that.
Seriously, Ebay needs some kind of twitter feed that gives sellers updates on stuff like this. Just a general – “hey we know stuff is messed up right now, don’t freak out, we’re working on it” or what not. Would alleviate a lot of problems. For themselves most of all.
02/26/2018 at 12:27 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 349: Having A Huge Inventory Is Not The Goal, It’s The Strategy #33898It is always interesting. Last week you mentioned on the podcast that your store felt ‘slow,’ and yet in our own store we had a great week. And then this week it sounds like you had a great week, and we had a terrible week. A real roller coaster feel high to low.
As we are adding more and more listings, we also get smarter and smarter about what we should and want to add. We try to be aware and somewhat analytical about things, but we have a lot of things pulling us in different directions right now (namely our daughter and other work commitments), So we like building our inventory based on things that we enjoy or choose from a gut-level. That said, we have doubled our income so far year over year, so we feel our strategies of steadily building inventory are working.
My wife and I operate our store together, and we are set to cross 2000 items this week. We’re planning to celebrate.
Thank you both for your responses. I have called Ebay about 6 times since my initial call last Thursday (the day the customer opened the case). The story that I got from several reps was that since the buyer purchased the item from Ebay.DE, one of their CSRs would have to resolve the case.
I called 3 times today, and then just now the case was resolved. I also got an email from someone at Ebay.com saying that the case was resolved in the buyers favor, but with Ebay paying the refund, fees, et al.
But I did have to make a hobby out of calling them today. They transferred me to a German rep at one point today as well – which was great fun since neither of us really spoke the other’s language. And then a few emails auf Deutsch as well.
It looks like a Ebay.com supervisor made the decision in the end, but it is hard to say now since I have been talking to both .com and .de off and on all day.
Weirdness!
11/01/2017 at 5:55 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 332: Share Your Extreme Scavenging Confession #24726Ryanne..Thank You! I had wondered about it, but then convinced myself there was nothing to do. Thanks to your encouragement, I just called EBay and they will remove it!
Cheers
10/30/2017 at 5:03 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 332: Share Your Extreme Scavenging Confession #24587Have to say that I enjoyed hearing the stories of extreme scavenging. I’ve had a bad ebay week, and this was a good pick me up as I listed today.
My extreme scavenge was picking up 4 dozen boxes of donuts from a Crispy Creme’s trash. This was like at 1 in the morning in Manhattan. I got approached by a security guard at the time, but he accepted a box of donuts to look the other way.
I took the donuts to a meeting the next morning and everyone was thrilled to have donuts even though they were old. I just said they were from a friend. This was a student meeting when I was in school, so there were no real connoisseurs in the group.
As I said this week has been pretty bad for me on Ebay. It was slow in terms of sales, and I got my first negative feedback.
The negative came because we had a group of 6 packages stolen from our porch. The 1st time since started shipping regularly over a year ago. We sent emails to everyone explaining what happened, and then canceled the orders. The negative was from someone who obviously never saw the email and said we canceled the order with no explanation.
So the bummer of having packages stolen was then compounded. Needless to say it got me a bit down.
But, although I don’t have this weeks numbers to post, I do know that October has been my best month yet. Grossed just under 2200 so far. So, focusing on the positive!
08/08/2017 at 4:27 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 322: Don’t Forget To Make Your Own Weekends #21548Awesome. Thanks very much for that info T-Satt.
Although I guess it won’t matter since we do 1-day on everything. But perhaps when we transition to full time we’ll be able to ship same-day and take advantage.
Cheers! -
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