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01/15/2018 at 8:32 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 343: Our Business = Little Things Every Day #30534
I know it’s a long shot, but if you happen to find any pre-1974 NYC Subway maps in the box of ephemera, I may be interested.
01/15/2018 at 12:33 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 343: Our Business = Little Things Every Day #304882017 Year End Totals
– Total Items Sold: 978
– Total Sales: $37,563
– Cost of Items Sold: $7,203 (19.2% of sales)
– Estimated Net Profit after Fees/Taxes: $23,300
– Best Sale (Highest Price Sold): $499.99 (lot of grammaphone records)
– Best Sales (Highest Net Profit): $404.99 (lot of grammaphone records) & $300 (Beatles record carry case)
– Best Sales (Highest % Profit): 11427% (Neil Young & Crazy Horse Everybody Knows this is Nowhere LP, paid $0.70 sold for $79.99) & 10557% (3 BASF Chrome Maxima Cassettes, paid $0.45 sold for $47.99)
– Worst Sale (Biggest Net Loss): -$87.50 (Seth Thomas Mantle Clock)
– Worst Sale (Lowest % Profit): -30% (Seth Thomas Mantle Clock)
– Best Month (Total Sales): $3700 (May)
– Best Month (Highest % Profit): 792% (January)
– Worst Month (Lowest Sales): $1863 (February)
– Worst Month (Lowest % Profit): 188% (October)
– Average Price Sold: $38.41
– Total Donations/Write-off Purchases: $487
– Promoted listings test: 415 sales, $15,012.74 (39.9% of total sales), $856.73 fees (5.7% of sales)Best year I’ve had in total sales & net profits. 2015 had a higher % profit margin, but sales were slightly less than half of 2017. I’ve also expanded into higher quality items that may cost a bit more but also command a higher price.
Cache Updates – some of the times I went “all in” in 2017
– March – at the same sale I bought 3 Celtics jackets & 1 Red Sox jacket for $40, sold for $590 total
– March – bought a box lot of 73 records for $325, have sold 58 for $1584
– March – bought a box of vintage 12 Zippos for $75, have sold 8 for $290
– May – bought a lot of family vacation slides for $20, sold for $180
– June – bought a box of 14 vintage locks for $50, have sold 7 for $222
– August – bought 52 Beatles records from a collector for $750, have sold 41 for $1769
– October – bought 24 1960s Barbies for $1300, have sold 14 for $2423-
This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
Brian Treasures from Grandmas.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
Brian Treasures from Grandmas.
01/15/2018 at 11:12 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 343: Our Business = Little Things Every Day #30482Week January 7-13, 2018
Total Items in Store: 850
Items Sold: 20 (2 Amazon)
Cost of Items Sold: $196 (21.2% of sales)
Total Sales: $923.78
Highest Price Sold: $199.99 (1962 Barbie)
Average Price Sold: $46.19
Returns: 0 (1 NPB though)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $325
Number of items listed this week: 17
Promoted listings test: 14 sales, $725.81 (78.6 of total sales), $43.14 fees (5.9% of sales)Strong sales continue, along with my highest avg price sold I’ve had in a long time. Sold two of those vintage Barbies, plus one of the last vintage Star Wars toys from the lot I bought last year.
Picks were pretty incredible, ended up at 3 estate sales on Saturday – got a 1966 Disneyland map/poster, 1897 card game, some large church keys, a victorian photo album & photos, plus tons of bread & butter stuff.
Now that we’re completely closed on 2017, I’m calculating all my sales/COGS/etc. In a separate post in a few minutes, I’ll summarize my 2017 including best & worst buys.
WhatsApp may be free to you, but it’s not free to everyone. In some countries, it costs $0.99 to download. In some places, it’s free to download and free for the first year, then $0.99 per year. While that can add up to $500MM-$700MM, it’s a drop in the bucket to the $19B that Facebook paid to acquire the app a couple years ago.
The real revenue comes from ad sales. No, there are no ads in the app, but because they’re now owned by FB, they can use the data gather from your location, the location of the people you’re talking to, etc for ad targeting. They estimate 42B messages sent per day, that’s a lot of data points. The more data points, the more stable ad targeting becomes on FB’s ad supported platforms (FB proper, Instagram, Oculus, etc).
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/040915/how-whatsapp-makes-money.asp
Thanks guys. I’m absolutely going to take to a jeweler, but also want to do my research online first so I sound at least slightly educated. Knew about the smooth second hand movement, but good point on the quartz callouts. Any suggestions on serial number lookup sites? Found this site but the past 7 years of “random” serial numbers freaks me out a little bit.
Week December 31-January 6, 2018
Total Items in Store: 845
Items Sold: 18 (1 Amazon)
Cost of Items Sold: $110 (17.3% of sales)
Total Sales: $636.41 (+$815 of scrap 14k gold jewelry I sold for a family member)
Highest Price Sold: $80 (2) (1979 Empire Strikes Back Tauntaun and c1950s CAT Puffer Vest)
Average Price Sold: $35.36
Returns: 0 (1 NPB though)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 7
Promoted listings test: 6 sales, $215.96 (33.9% of total sales), $12.25 fees (5.7% of sales)Sales kept on truckin’ post holiday. Gonna assume most of my sales were “self gifting” – lots of records, some vintage toys, etc. The Star Wars Tautaun was part of the high end toy lot I bought last year, bought that piece for about $25 so only 3x my money but keeps nicer things in my store. The CAT puffer vest on the other hand was a nice $1 garage sale find that sold for $80 after about 6 months, headed to Japan.
Building off of R&J’s comments in the show, I’ve also noticed that my “normal” weeks are much higher than this time a year ago. Yes, I have a bit of bigger store, but I’m going to have to think that eBay’s optimizations and getting out of Google’s doghouse have to be driving more traffic. Last year $300-$500 was normal and now I’m more like $600-$800 as being the norm. I’ll take it.
Any watch/Rolex experts in the forums? I took a stab at buying a box lot of watches at an auction. Paid up at $350 because it looks like there are 3 Rolexes in there. Obviously a big concern and big difference in money if they’re real. Looking for reliable sources online that I can check serial numbers, things to look out for on fakes, etc. Fingers crossed.
There’s apparently a window where the seller (especially a pro seller like he is) can cancel orders without penalty. That’s just what he told me, but not sure. He also might take the ding if it’s 1 or 2 orders… he was selling nearly 300 items a day in late Nov & early Dec!
Happy new year Scavengers! Didn’t get to post last week, so here are my numbers for the past 2 weeks:
Week December 17-30, 2017 (two weeks)
Total Items in Store: 863
Items Sold: 50 (7 Amazon, 3 Bonanza, 1 LetGo)
Cost of Items Sold: $410 (21.5% of sales)
Total Sales: $1,904.66
Biggest Sales: $215 (1962 Barbie), $150 (vintage K&E slide rule), $130 (Beatles record)
Average Price Sold: $38.09
Returns: 0 (3 cancellations though)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $605
Number of items listed this week: 65
Promoted listings test: 21 sales, $532.82 (28% of total sales), $32.19 fees (5.9% of sales)Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. We welcomed a new addition to the family – my brother’s wife had a cute baby girl on 12/23 and we spent pretty much 12/24-12/29 with them out in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. First couple days we just helped out running errands, making meals for mommy & daddy, etc. I’ve noted before in the forum, my brother is a full time Amazon seller, so I also made runs to Target/WalMart to pick fulfill some of his sales – he turned his store off a couple days before his wife went into labor, but there were a few straggler sales that needed to be fulfilled. I know December is obviously his busiest time of year, so I was asking him if turning his store off at this time would crush him… but he had actually started listing his holiday & gift items earlier and made even more than forecasted/compared to last year.
Really good couple of weeks for me, especially with the extended handling time last week. One sale in particular made me feel so good. Had this 1960s Santa blow mold decoration listed for a good 3 years. Couldn’t get rid of it, had it on clearance several times. A buyer contacted me, asking if I could call him because he needed the item the next day – was a red flag, but did it anyway. Turns out, this man’s little brother died in the early 1960s when he was like 5 years old. His mom placed this Santa on his tombstone every Christmas since then. This year, someone stole it from the cemetery and he had been looking for the same one to get there before Christmas. I was able to help him out, he paid for express shipping, and it was delivered on 12/23 in time for him to place on his little brother’s grave. Only made like $18, but really made me feel good about helping someone out like that.
This Facebook group is VERY helpful if you need help identifying military patches, insignias, age of them, etc. People are usually friendly in there. https://www.facebook.com/groups/7817160305/
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This reply was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by
Brian Treasures from Grandmas.
Looks like $240 asking for it isn’t out of the question.
My family is everywhere Monroeville, PA to Steubenville, OH. We’ll likely be spending most of our time in the Washington, PA area where my brother lives because his first baby is due on Christmas Day.
Enjoy your week in NYC! I’m sure you’ll have no shortage of things to do, but I’m off work on Friday and may go out to see if there are an estate sales Friday/Saturday before we head off to Western PA for Christmas.
Week December 9-16, 2017
Total Items in Store: 850
Items Sold: 17 (1 Amazon, 1 Bonanza)
Cost of Items Sold: $106 (14.6% of sales)
Total Sales: $717.42
Highest Price Sold: $187 (1960s Boston Celtics jacket)
Average Price Sold: $42.20
Returns: 0 (1 NPB though)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0
Promoted listings test: 13 sales, $536.45 (74.8% of total sales), $26.98 fees (5% of sales)That Celtics jacket was the last of the 4 I bought back in Feb at an estate sale. It was the last day before closing when I got there and 3 Celtics jackets and one Red Sox jacket were still there. They had them priced at $40/each, but were already at 50% off for the last day to take them down to $20/each, I offered $10/each for all 4 and they accepted. I thought they were just nice recent throwback jackets, but when I got them home and noticed made in the USA & the very early RN number I realized they were all legit 1960s. Paid $10 each ($40 total) and sold each for $150-$200 (about $700 total).
Starting to develop some death piles after not listing for a good 3-4 weeks. I’m off on Friday and all next week so I hope to catch up in between visits with family & friends.
12/12/2017 at 12:44 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 338: Rich Scavenger, Poor Scavenger #28663Week December 3-9, 2017
Total Items in Store: 862
Items Sold: 17 (1 Amazon, 1 Bonanza)
Cost of Items Sold: $90 (11.4% of sales)
Total Sales: $788.40
Highest Price Sold: $200 (1955 Philibert Erotic Le Florentin Playing Cards)
Average Price Sold: $46.38
Returns: 0 (2 NPB though)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0
Promoted listings test: 7 sales, $281.90 (35.8% of total sales), $27.12 fees (9.6% of sales)Not a bad week at all considering I was away for 3 day with extended handling time. I though that was going to be a killer during the holidays, but of the 9 sales while I was away no one had a problem with it. Much like you, R&J, my high sale of the week is currently a non payer thusfar… he is in France and has very choppy English so I’m hoping the delay is just a language barrier and not a sign of not paying.
12/04/2017 at 5:09 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 337: If You Build It, You Will Have Storage #28096Listening to the show right now… congrats on moving forward with the storage building! Now you’re TrashElves4Life!
Week November 26 – December 2, 2017
Total Items in Store: 874
Items Sold: 30 (1 Amazon)
Cost of Items Sold: $124 (12.4% of sales)
Total Sales: $998.78
Highest Price Sold: $110 (300+ pre-1950 Stamps from Around the World)
Average Price Sold: $33.29
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0
Promoted listings test: 18 sales, $599.32 (60% of total sales), $35.81 fees (6.0% of sales)Another fine week for me, 2 weeks in a row of 30 sales for the first time ever as far as I can recall.
I have some alerts set up on EBTH and have made a handful of purchases. I will say that rarely is anything a “bargain”, but they often times have pretty high quality items or items that come with provenance/history. I’m rarely making 10x my money, but I can sometimes find a little room left for profit, maybe 2x-3x money.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
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