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Totally. Cruisin’ for babes. Sittin’ on the hood of your Mazda RX-7. Aplines blastin’ Def Leppard, Skid Row, Motley Cru, Scorpions, Poison. Acid washed jean jacket with the collar up.
#SWOON
Week March 3-9, 2019
Total Items in Store: 1033
Items Sold: 18
Cost of Items Sold: $211 (25.3% of sales)
Total Sales: $832.60
Highest Price Sold: $227.49 (Vintage 1962 Barbie)
Average Price Sold: $46.26
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $270
Number of items listed this week: 29
Promoted listings test: 9 sales, $528.62 (63.5% of total sales), $29.07 fees (5.5% of sales)I thought this was going to be one of my worst weeks ever – going into Thursday, I only had 2 sales totaling $68. Starting Thursday night through Saturday night, sales started rolling in – not only volume but also quality. Anyone keeping score at home, I had approx the same number of sales last week but because I didn’t have any high dollar sales my avg price sold was only $25. Nearly double this week and a much more appropriate week of sales. Unfortunately, with several higher dollar sales, my COGS were much higher than I like to play.
Got a good number of items listed this weekend, bad news is that they continue to all be records. I need to pause on buying more cause now my store is nearing 60% records… but how can I when I find a great collection including high dollar sealed originals like these?!?!?! For those of you asking who would pay this much for a record, even sealed, I just sold Def Leppard Hysteria sealed this morning for $110! I love records, have recently started collecting myself as a mid life crisis, but don’t want to turn into a record shop exclusively.
Yeah, they were good items, I just overpaid for them in the heat of the battle. I guess nothing is really a “mistake”, it’s all relative to how much you invest to buy/clean/repair vs how much they sell. I just spent too much to get these items, whereas getting them for $1-$3 would have moved them into a “score”. 🙂
I’m also interested because it seems like @Geoff has a similar cost ratio to me… whereas, you R&J and many others have 10x+ ROI on your items. My goal is to be below 20% COGS, but like this week I was at 26%.
This is really good news and something that I know all of us have been asking for.
You were speaking directly to me in this show. I sell as extra income to help afford vacations, nights out, buying wants instead of needs… but also, it gives me something to fall back on if my employment situation changes for the worse. I lived through 2008-10 recession, was laid off in 2009 as a direct result of it – so now I have my store to supplement & provide insurance in case there is another serious downturn. I wouldn’t have to start a store from scratch if my day to day office job goes away.
Week Feb 24-Mar 3, 2019
Total Items in Store: 1028
Items Sold: 16 (2 Facebook)
Cost of Items Sold: $106 (26.5% of sales)
Total Sales: $400.45
Highest Price Sold: $49.99 (2) (Pink Floyd Atom Heart Mother & The Wall)
Average Price Sold: $25.03
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0
Promoted listings test: 6 sales, $117.49 (29.3% of total sales), $6.13 fees (5.2% of sales)Slow week. Low dollar items selling. “Mistakes” that I paid too much for selling. We all have weeks like this and this is my first really poor week of the year. Sold several low dollar items, items in clearance – which is nice, but kept my avg price down. Sold a couple items in the $20-$30 range that were mistakes that I barely broke even on.
No shopping or listing this week as we had a friend staying with us – and the second bedroom is where I do my cleaning/photographic/listing. Will likely be back on the listing horse hard this coming weekend.
EPISODE 400!!! Amazing, congrats, kudos! I believe I joined ~episode 7 and it’s amazing to see your growth, my growth, the community’s growth.
Week February 17-23, 2019
Total Items in Store: 1043
Items Sold: 22 (1 Amazon, 1 Craigslist, 1 Discogs)
Cost of Items Sold: $135 (20.6% of sales)
Total Sales: $656.50
Highest Price Sold: $79.99 (Leonard Cohen & Jeff Buckley – Hallelujah, 2012 Limited Edition Record Store Day)
Average Price Sold: $28.45
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $200
Number of items listed this week: 31
Promoted listings test: 7 sales, $173.49 (26.4% of total sales), $8.41 fees (4.8% of sales)Good week of volume, but a really good example of why average price sold is so important – my average this week is about 25% lower than it has been over the past month and that hits the total week sales hard. Had individual sales of $3.96, $8.85, $9.99 – those hurt the bottom line, but they were also things I’ve had forever and sold on clearance getting a little bit was better than nothing [at least I’ll tell myself that :)].
Good topic today, I actually did my taxes with my accountant this weekend as well. Because this isn’t my sole income (both my wife & I have full time W2 jobs, plus I have some other “consulting” 1099s), we file everything jointly & take deductions across the board. To date, it’s been pretty beneficial to do it this way and we rely on our guy to let us know if we need to make changes with evolving tax codes.
Great show as usual. It would be interesting to discuss the things that you know now that you’d love to go back and tell your 2009 selves that would have saved you something (time, money, headache). Because of you guys, I’ve done things like keep track of COGS, set goals, develop ways to store items so i can find them, keep meticulous expenses for tax season, etc. For that, I thank you and I bet a lot of us feel the same way.
Weeks Feb 3-16, 2019 (2 weeks)
Total Items in Store: 1034
Items Sold: 36 (1 Bonanza)
Cost of Items Sold: $274.18 (20.3% of sales)
Total Sales: $1,351.34
Highest Price Sold: $179.99 (1965 Midge)
Average Price Sold: $37.54
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $669
Number of items listed this week: 47
Promoted listings test: 15 sales, $318.96 (23.6% of total sales), $14.58 fees (4.6% of sales)Decent couple of weeks – two week numbers since I was out of town last weekend. 4 day handling time instead of 1 day caused no problems. Contacted each person after a sale went through and no cancellations.
That Midge high dollar sale was still part of the large early Barbie lot I bought about a year ago. Has been a great pipeline. Originally bought 24 for $1300 – so far have sold 20 for $2,835 and still have the most valuable one to sell.
Other bigger sales came from all over – this Beatles record via Bonanza for just under $124 (paid $25, kind forgot I still had my Bonanza store open), c1945 sealed deck of mini cards for $50 (paid $1 at the flea market). Also sold this painting – was one of the items I sent out offers to watchers on, sold for $100. Had bought it like 4 years ago and had high hopes for it that just never panned out. Paid $30 for it, so still more than tripled my money on it.
Using the long weekend from my office job to catch up on listing. By the end of today, should be close to clearing out a “money pile” (NOT DEATH PILE). 🙂
So it happened – sent out offers on the top 5 items with the most watchers… and one sold! I’ve had this piece of art listed for somewhere between 4-5 years. Obviously priced very high because comps were all over the place for this artist. Ended up selling for $100 in an offer sent to a watcher (paid like $25 for it at an estate sale). https://www.ebay.com/itm/191920094923
I guess I’m a believer now. 🙂
They may not have paid straight money for the deal, but instead exchanged some earned/owned equity or something like that. I work in the advertising/marketing industry and there are always “creative” ways to get paid.
The article does say “Disney benefits from the exposure eBay is giving the movie via its own paid advertising. For instance, eBay is running a 30-second TV spot showcasing its starring turn. It also amped up its social mentions about the film, and has a dedicated merchandise site. In the UK the brand is running some out-of-home marketing as well.” That co-branded advertising may even be more valuable than $1MM fee paid directly to Disney for the brand mentions.
Other examples could be: perhaps eBay is allowing Disney to open a storefront for $0 fees, or eBay promotions will feature Disney items prominently, etc. That all being said, there’s also the slim chance that Disney said there’s no way this story works without eBay so we’ll do it for nothing – but I think they could have gotten around it by saying “we can only find this part on the internet” as opposed to eBay specifically.
Thanks for the offer link… I just sent out some offers items with the 5 most watchers. We’ll see if something happens.
LOL, I immediately thought of R & J when watching the episode last week! Lamp – check, rug – check, tables – check, power strips – check. 🙂
Strong show today. It was posted just before I left for work this morning, so got a chance to listen on the way in. To one of the first topics – at thrift stores, Goodwill, etc I definitely seen a difference in what’s available over the past 5 years I’ve been doing this. Jay has said it many times, thrift stores now have “the case” under lock and key things they deem valuable, plus anything super valuable ends up on their website and never in the stores. However, I’ve found that estate sales still seem to have everything and at least in my area those are my go-tos. Drawback there is that they seem to be increasing in popularity and I’m standing in more lines that I used to.
Week January 27 – February 2, 2019
Total Items in Store: 1014
Items Sold: 29 (6 Amazon)
Cost of Items Sold: $218.67 (16.3% of sales)
Total Sales: $1,339.31
Highest Price Sold: $99.99 (German carved chess pieces – sold same day I listed last week)
Average Price Sold: $46.18
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $612
Number of items listed this week: 39
Promoted listings test: 11 sales, $384.18 (28.7% of total sales), $18.92 fees (4.9% of sales)I’ll take weeks like this anytime. Just awesome – above average volume, 50% higher price sold than my average, COGS below 20%. Outside of that chess set that I probably should have priced $25-$50 more, other great sales included an empty reel to reel (bought for $3, sold for $68 best offer), pro recording reel (bought together with the empty reel for $3, sold for $85), Empire State Building handkerchief (paid $1, sold for $30), tarot cards (paid $1, sold for $50), Givenchy perfume (paid $10, sold for $50).
You spoke of buying online lots and that’s exactly what I did this week. Hit a couple of good lots and then listed the contents individually for much more – I’m sure I won’t get my asking price on everything, but piecing it out will pay off in the long run “pipeline”.
Yes, it’s generally a year for them to drop off. However, if you call eBay and have a link or some data about your region having extreme weather (snow, floods, fires, etc like many of us have dealt with), they will take them off your account for you. I did that when we had some serious snow last year and a whole week’s worth of shipments arrived late.
