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I like Steve’s approach. I often get asked if I do needlepoint. I have to say no or that I’m not very good to avoid getting into a conversation. Sometimes the older ladies at the thift store ask me what I’m going to do with things. I usually just say that I just buy what I like.
One sharp lady (pricing nemesis) at an indy thrift asked me and I once told her the truth. She always grills me about that I’m buying or inspects it at the register. Last time I bought some pottery and she’s like “what do you know about this” – I honestly told her nothing. She told me she decided it looked midcentury but wasn’t old because the bowl was not worn on the bottom. It was a wall hanging with a hole in the back but I didn’t mention that to her. I just shrugged and told her sometimes I just buy things I like. https://www.ebay.com/itm/332629420473
Sharing a few recent sales. I’ve been listing some Mexican and South American textiles and pottery, which is relatively easy to find here. A lot of antique dealers scoop up the higher quality embroidered dresses, so I don’t find those often. Those do well – $80-100 or so on Etsy I hear from Youtuber Karen Laebo.
This rug https://www.ebay.com/itm/332378522470 was not in great condition. I couldn’t get the pet hair out of the fibers without putting in some time so I took a best offer of $55.
I don’t remember if I’ve posted about Ken Edwards vintage folk art pottery before. It’s marked KE on the bottom. He’s an American artist who built a factory in Mexico and I find this pottery one piece at a time, never a cache. Learned about this on ThePaperCastle Youtube channel. https://www.ebay.com/itm/332156632410
Mentioning this sale of two pillows https://www.ebay.com/itm/232629649159 because I forgot to take Smartpost off. Ended up being only $15 for a 15″ x 11″ x 9″ basically cube. Lucky because she bought two and Ebay changed the weight but not the box size when it calculated combined shipping. I’m not sure why it was so reasonable. That size box was coming up earlier for me at like $35 and this buyer was not close. I’ve been cramming 18″ square pillows into a 12″ x 12″ x 8″. It doesn’t look great probably to the buyer but they sell faster with cheaper shipping. I look for good feather inserts which I get for about $4 with ugly or stained covers and use them with covers I find solo.
My daughter picked out these atrocious Ugg shoes at the outlet for $3 and they sold super quickly. Ugg corporate is here in town and they have a pretty good outlet in nearby Ventura. https://www.ebay.com/itm/332634087371 Is Ugg still a big thing where you are? Not that I need to do any RA. Just wondering. Have a great week!
Listed 24 items, 14 from death piles. Have almost all of my few recent thrift shop purchases listed. I sat down to list 4 times, so I’m quite happy with that. I’m starting to have some empty spaces in my listed items areas as things sell down. Feels good. I sort of feel like I’m a slow lister even though I’m using the method people talk about here. Lately it’s a hodgepodge because I’m making myself list the latest purchases so they don’t get added to the piles. Hoping to get back to my sorted backlog soon so I can try to move a bit faster with sell similar. I also did a bit of pruning to stale listings this week and revising. Also making some decisions as we are going to have a garage sale to get rid of some of our kids’ furniture since they have grown. It’s kind of hard to let go of things for cheap that I could sell for more on Ebay, but honestly I’ll never get to it all at this rate.
Total Items in Store: 429
Items Sold: 12
Cost of Items Sold: $97 + 8
Total Sales: $384
Highest Price Sold: $84 (Set of 4 new bowls, paid $20 winter clearance sale https://www.ebay.com/itm/332481759279)
Average Price Sold: $32
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $15
Number of items listed this week: 24Yeah! Back to listing this week as I got a break from the day job. I started on Ebay after watching Thrift Hunters with Jason T. Smith. I saw some great vintage stuff I admired but I’m pretty minimalist. It occurred to me (unfortunately after the recession) that I could essentially swap that stuff for stuff my family needed. I wonder if other people started shopping secondhand during the recession too. I did that more often for my kids clothes when my contract work was slow and it was part of my evolution.
I still advocate for you guys scavenging the nearby urban areas. Be ready for some competition I guess with the phones out, but your knowledge runs deep and maybe you need to get closer to the source if thrifts are getting picked over. Thanks for sharing all that you do! There’s the crowd on Youtube who are there to make a buck, and there’s the crowd who want to help others and connect. Super grateful that you two are in the latter category.
Have a great week! Also quick shout out to Mike, Kate and others for help with my art topic. I’m flying into San Francisco this weekend to meet my dad but probably won’t deal with it then since I won’t have a car. I’d like to get on it soon. I have dreams it will pay at least one of our quarterly tax payments!
We are a couple of hours outside of LA, more with traffic. But, there are a lot of rich people up here so I think some places will schedule visits if they are coming to town anyway. I’ll look into it. There is a number and some writing on the wood frame on back that I cannot make out, so if I send some photos off, maybe they can help by email. It will probably take me a bit, but I’ll update later on this topic.
Thank you both! I have no background in art and really struggle to distinguish medium, etc. even after reading descriptions online. Also I don’t have a loope. Using my magnifying glass and trying to follow your instructions, it appears that the brush strokes all go in the same direction – black and otherwise, and there are raised areas of paint that are not clear. This is nothing from Marshalls for sure. It’s old. Also we do have a number of oil paintings by my grandmother and it does not look to me like an oil painting. So maybe acryllic?
Amatino, are you using Ebay for relisting? I’m not sure I could keep up with it but I do believe it might be helpful. I just ended some more items that were cheap and getting few views, plus lowered some prices. Despite better listing it’s pretty darn slow.
I’m fairly close to LA. I might be able to have someone from a big auction house do a drive by when they are here to check out items for someone else in town. There is an LA gallery with a collection from the artist’s estate too. I love it but if it belongs in a museum then it should be there. Also, we could use the $ for sure!
Thank you both. I actually have a painting very similar to the print linked above. findartinfo has a similar sized painting with a title / description that sounds right. Just one sale back in 2005 for $1500. I can’t look at the link for free.
This has happened to me occasionally. I was pretty sure but wasn’t 100% sure if I missed unclicking the free shipping box that is defaulted on or not, so I honored the sales.
How funny that all this time I didn’t know that functionality was there. Most of my items don’t have bar codes, but still good to know. Apparently 4/20/18 they fixed some bugs and attached it or improved catalog attachment. It’s supposed to now bring up the stock photo and description. That didn’t work for me. One of the listings did bring up the item specifics though, which was nice. Love how the default was a cheap auction switched to default 7 BIN day listing and flat shipping fee. LOL. I might use this occasionally for sourcing. Fixing all my preferences takes so long, it’s faster to list on the desktop at this point.
One of the reasons I got started selling on Ebay as a hobby is to sell cool things of value I found that we don’t need and essentially swapping them for things we do plus a few vintage items I like and never find. Then it just blossomed into a little side business.
I just bought a vintage 60s wooden monkeypod toothpick holder appetizer server – tiki style. Did I need this? No. but $6. Surprisingly, I have not found one of these in the wild amongst the monkeypod cast offs. I also have bought vintage Hawaiian style wood wrap Siestaware glass sets on Ebay. Currently, I’m looking at David Weidman midcentury art.
I also make the listings in the desktop, take photos and launch from the iphone. Sometimes I need to go back and lighten up the pictures since I’m working in a room with less than ideal lighting. I’ve kind of given up on having fantastic photos in terms of lighting and due to time constraints, just want to get items up! I’ve abandoned hopes of getting on Etsy with perfect presentation, social networking, great packaging, etc. I feel like Ebay is great in terms of selling anything and listing quick and dirty style. If I can get through my backlog and bring up ASP, then maybe I’ll look into an autocorrect program – nice results up there!
