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From the sounds of it eBay is finally moving closer towards aligning their money making activities with their sellers, which is good! I can see why they don’t want sellers listing everything and the kitchen sink, most wouldn’t abuse it but those that did could cause more problems to the platform. I do think they should revaluate their fees, I don’t think they have significantly changed since I started selling decades ago. I think the insertion fee was .25 back then, but my memory could be fuzzy. They have tons of competition nowadays and like us need to keep up with the times.
The only reason I started in on low-end items was the fun – I was buying cases of VHS and cassettes for little or nothing, and they are totally easy to list and ship. I got some great stuff out of the boxes and it was easy to put up the remainder at low prices, but now I will either bundle or not list that stuff. Gotta start working smarter for sure.
One final question if anyone knows – are the store zero fee listing limits PLUS the 250 everyone gets? It makes no sense to spend $5 a month for a basic store with 250 free item listings if that is just what I already have. The difference in lower final value fee wont even out the cost. If it is 250 plus the 250 I already have that is a different story.
Thank you Jay for your help. I think I might just call in and be nice and see if I can get a credit of some kind. This is a first for me, so fingers crossed.
I am absolutely going to have to dig in and run some numbers. Even without the store I get 250 free fixed price listings, so I don’t know what the store would offer that I don’t already have. In the old days I only had 50 free listings – they should have adjusted the starter store numbers when they made the 250 listings free for all last year. I am reading the store changes for the big sellers, so perhaps they just haven’t made it down to the little guys.
We were planning on having our annual yard sale this month anyway, perhaps it is time I just purge the cheap stuff and upgrade my stuff. I really dislike Facebook marketplace in general, but that might be unfamiliarity with their platform. I might have to look into some of the other specialty online spots for selling as well. Live and learn!
Total Items in Store: 166
Items Sold: 6
Total Sales: $264.50
Highest Price Sold: $160.00 Peter Stone Artisan Hall Stock Horse
Local yard and estate sales are increasing with the nice weather, I had to resist going to several until I get my backlog listed. I hit a fun estate/yard sale a couple of weeks back where everything was dirt cheap and I bought a few piles of stuff. It is all selling quickly, I need to take advantage of those types of sales and buy more!
My interesting anecdote of the week- sold a nice MCM fiberglass shade wall sconce, then got the oddest email from the buyer. It had kind of poor english, and asked for a tracking number (which they should already have). It also asked for the item number to be written on the box, but I noticed when I printed the shipping label they somehow got the item number to be part of the address (HOW did they do that?). I was a bit wary that this was some sort of a scam, so I came here and searched the forums. Turned out to be Shop America, the freight forwarder. I guess they are still around. I am worried as I built a custom double-box for the lamp, and wired it into the inside box to protect the shade in shipping. I put in the email to pull the entire inside unit out, and not lift by the lamp, now I wish I had put a note inside the box. I have done this packing before with odd items (sent a heavy hand plane to France and had to wire it in it was so heavy and awkward), so I will type something up that I can place in the box for buyers just in case it goes through some intermediary.
Total Items in Store: 159
Items Sold: 9
Total Sales: $124.50
Highest Price Sold: $20 VHS Bloody New Year
Back to normal for me, which is just fine! Bummed I hit the 200 free item listing limit for us small fry, but not too unhappy as I had a sick dog to take care of. I will be taking pictures and prepping for my listing frenzy this Thursday. No scavenging which is also fine as I have the stuff to prep from the last 2 weeks.
I really need to spend time doing the storeroom/packing area cleaning and organizing. It is amazing how quickly things get out of control. I can’t hardly walk in my box room and the packing table is crowded with things to list. I was lucky everything that is selling is easy to pack lately!
Weather is so nice I am seeing lots more yard sales popping up, and hear tell that traffic at the antique mall is way down. I wonder if the nice weather will slow online sales as well. April is when I have my big garage sale, all the stuff I downsize from the house and store. I will do spring cleaning and pull stuff off eBay too, polish the older good listings and generally do some spring cleaning. My state opens up covid vaccinations to all next month, hope I can use some internet skills to get an appointment quickly! Then I will really start hunting again, it will be good to be back at auctions and shows again, I missed the thrill of the hunt!
Total Items in Store: 162
Items Sold: 11
Total Sales: $1,16.50
Highest Price Sold: $850 Breyer Special Run Olympia Morgan Mare
Well I am sure glad I worked so hard in the last few weeks to list to eBay – it paid off for sure! Several older pieces sold which was very nice as well as several items I just listed. I laugh every time I sell a cassette or VHS tape. Did well with some TDK PRO SM-X90 sealed blank tapes, some sell in the $20 each range, I got an offer of $15 each for all of mine – sold!
I went to 2 estate sales last weekend and they couldn’t have been more different. One was the official company where they total each item, everything is priced close to retail the first 2 days, with discounts the last 2. They do sell, but I only bought a few things for myself and the house was still pretty full. The second was a couple clearing out mom’s house, stuff in the front was cheap, stuff in the backyard was dirt cheap. I bought 2 big boxes of miscellaneous items – they were happy and I was happy – win-win! I do need to tone down the buying so I don’t totally neglect selling from my storeroom, but it sure is fun to discover new things.
Well, not exactly the same problem but something did change. Today my labels don’t print too close to the edge, they print super-size in the middle of the page! I had to resize to get them small enough to fit on some of the smaller boxes I shipped. Luckily I caught it before printing, ink is too valuable to waste!
Total Items in Store: 165
Items Sold: 6
Total Sales: $94.00
Highest Price Sold: $26.50 VHS Night of the Creeps
Having a cranky week – meh sales, THREE unpaid items and fell prey to the glitch where eBay defaulted to a higher cost shipping method than the buyer paid for. Hrmph, every other internet site on the planet requires payment at purchase, why is it taking so long for eBay to implement a standard business practice? Now I have 3 items basically in limbo waiting to close the case and relist. I cancelled the higher priced shipping and reprinted the appropriate shipping, but have to wait for that refund as well, and I suspect there will be a cost in fees on both shipping or something. Grump.
On the bright side I did work my tail off listing and relisting to get my numbers up, so that should pay off down the line. Spring is coming so yard and estate sales should pick up. It is getting lighter longer and slightly better weather so that helps me feel better. I am slowly getting paperwork organized and filed. Shot my first YouTube video in forever and got it uploaded, so hope to get that going again. Gotta look on the bright side, it is too easy to find the negative and dwell on it.
I have been curious how USPS designates Media Mail, since it has so many odd permutations like this. Why could I ship recipe cards MM but not their container? Or CD’s but not their cases? How do they define pages for an 8 page or longer book?
On a tangent since eBay charges more fees to sell books I have been known to list them in their other most closely related category. I listed a book about Muppets under the Muppet category instead of books for instance. Then eBay wouldn’t let me print a media mail label. As the above seller says, I went outside eBay and bought the label, and put the label number in the shipped area for the buyer and eBay to see it was shipped. Dunno if that is 100% copacetic, but I try to work in the spirit of the rules since they can so often depend on the reader.
Total Items in Store: 126
Items Sold: 6
Total Sales: $91.50
Highest Price Sold: $21.00 Frank Lloyd Wright tabletop decoration
I am rethinking my strategy of listing items as auctions first then changing to fixed price if they don’t sell since eBay now evidently does not relist items automatically at all. I had 134 items for sale last week, listed 20, sold 6 and am down to 126. It eats up my free quota to have to relist stuff 2 weeks in a row. Well, I wont ever get better if I don’t change and adapt, so I may move towards more list and forget over the need for instant gratification of sales.
On a thread in the last week someone asked about putting tape over barcodes on shipping labels. I am a rule-follower, so I never have. I got a box in the mail this week that made me laugh, they not only put tape over the barcode, they put it on so sloppily it had multiple creases and almost 1 cm high folds in the tape and had smudged the barcode in one corner. It still got here in a timely fashion, so I wont be so worried now when I am taping up boxes. I do still need to get off my duff and buy a label printer someday, but for now it is one less thing to obsess over in my routine.
Total Items in Store: 134
Items Sold: 8
Total Sales: $129.50
Highest Price Sold: $50.00 Of Muppets and Men book
Hrmph, I packed so many boxes this morning I thought my total would be higher. Fine for me, but I was spoiled earlier this month with good sales. Spent last week researching and listing VHS tapes, already sold 2 and still have quite a few to list. My least liked part of the ebay payment reports is that they break out tax collected in 1 spot, but adds it in to total selling costs. If ebay collects and pays the tax it is net neutral, why combine it into my sales/costs? Makes the report messy for me to look at and actually see how I am doing.
Anyhow I already have this weeks listings prepped and no purchases last week so work should be pretty light. I need to organize the storeroom/shipping area (again!), it gets out of control quickly when I am rustling about. I need to clear more room for listed inventory, it is starting to spill out onto other shelves and that is a recipe for disaster. Weather is improving, might get the bike out for a spin. That is the best part of the scavenger life – being able to be flexible and take advantage of having fun when we can. Back at work I’d have been working from dark to dark and only seeing the sun on the weekends.
Total Items in Store: 123
Items Sold: 9
Total Sales: $268.00
Highest Price Sold: $60.00 vintage toy cars and Jeeps (Lido and F&F)
A good average week for me. Mostly easy shipping, took a couple offers (some higher some lower), overall happy with how things are going.
I got a great tip on an estate sale with a huge collection of vintage VHS tapes that they did not advertise. I got 36 mostly horror and action tapes, all opened but nicely cared for that I am looking forward to listing this week. All those plus a bunch of other random stuff for $9! I also am working on a bulk sale on another platform so February is shaping up to be a very nice month.
Total Items in Store: 120
Items Sold: 11
Total Sales: $427.95
Highest Price Sold: $97.50 Caterpillar Service Manual
This was a huge week for me – things kind of trickled in so I didn’t notice until packing today that I had quite a pile of boxes. Had a few issues to deal with – another annoying customer cancelled a purchase due to changing their mind, I handled a return incorrectly so had to call ebay (sent them the wrong thing, so I issued a return label then sent them the right thing. Should have just sent the right thing and denied the return) and I still have ripples from the customer who initiated a return before I shipped, it is hitting my shipping rate so had to request that taken off my performance. I guess the more we sell the more issues, so I should be happy I am selling so much!
A little up thread someone mentioned selling a good DVD – I got hooked on DVD and VHS tapes last summer when I hit a mother lode of good horror VHS tapes. Sold a ton for good money, now I am chasing more. They tend to get overlooked at yard sales and sold super-cheap, I even pull them from the trash. Horror sells the best, along with B action movies. Easy to ship, small to store, nothing not to like about them!
My thoughts were either an ‘arty’ cloche (the glass covers for plants and display) or a vase that needs a base (although it would make the signature upside down). Also try bell jar or terrarium for some key words. Not sure of the size but stirrup cups are a similar style, but not usually made of glass.
Oh. My. Goodness. I don’t have pricing help other than you should be able to ask at least 2-4x unsigned prices. I am geeking out here. I echo posters above that Disney forums will be helpful – try the slightly more specialty ones like MiceChat – NOT DisBoards! Or I have contacted bloggers for specialty items and they have been very helpful. Gorillas Don’t Blog and Meet The World are both collectible bloggers. Good luck!
Thanks annasthetic23 for the info on finding the buyer paid shipping – I knew there would be a trick! (and I love your username!)
For the previous poster asking about spaces in antique malls, here is my 2 cents. I have a booth and have had one for years, it is where I started reselling seriously. My psychological concept for it is just thinking of it as a storage unit. Cost of doing business sort of thing – if I make money great, if not the stuff is out of my house. I actually did continue to sell stuff last year through grit of the owner and advertising online. There are specific things I put in there: stuff I don’t want to ship (large, fragile), local items (local businesses, casinos), and things that are unmarked/difficult to research online (easier to sell in person). When I am buying I think of who will be buying this item. Decorative stuff (cabin decor for Tahoe, rustic ranching, anything I have seen in a recent magazine) goes to the booth. I go through the booth a couple of times a year to pull old stuff which sometimes goes for sale online, sometimes to our yard sale. It is a fun sideline with little work (no listing or shipping time) and I can get my inner decorator out. I make money, not as much as online, but I also don’t put in the amount of work there that I could. Hope this helps!
