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Thanks Jay. The good news is that we have really capable people on board to address this hard case and they can save the adult problem tooth. We haven’t gotten the $ news yet from the surgeon or the orthodontist, but only some of the orthodontics will be payable this year. We do keep an emergency fund for things like this thankfully and can pay cash though I”m not sure how negotiable this will be since these people are in high demand.
Regrettably easy numbers this week for me. I’m listing new purchases so as not to add them to the death piles. Listed only 9 items, none from death piles. I think I will have a better week this week, even with the kids out for the holiday weekend.
Total Items in Store: 410
Items Sold: 9
Cost of Items Sold: $56 + $13 free shipping
Total Sales: $238
Highest Price Sold: $36 new pie plate
Average Price Sold: $26
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $26 (one church sale)
Number of items listed this week: 9Wow. It really felt like I sold no items this week. Finally listed yesterday after a three week break. We recently found out that one of the children has a rare problem and will need surgery and major specialized orthodontics. Despite a high likelihood for disturbance to roots of adult teeth, not considered medically necessary for insurance purposes since she can still eat with missing teeth. So, time to tighten the belt a bit more between that and additional taxes we anticipate this year without the SALT deduction.
One of the ways I’m saving is to use Walmart.com for groceries shipped free in 2 days. Love it! I’ve completely abandoned Amazon at this point due to my non-prime orders not shipping out for a week, because Amazon is annoyingly not showing the lowest price by default, third parties getting $3.99 to ship, etc. Also need to make time to hit the grocery outlet we got last year. Finally, I’ve majorly cut back on RA purchases and will keep focused on the death piles. It will be interesting to see how this affects my numbers and velocity, though I have a couple of thousand in RA inventory I bought in the past with Ebay profits. It probably would be wise to price the vintage items more competitively than I tend to price them. (Gears turning in my head…)
Smartpost was like triple what the buyers were charged for me and these were not huge packages – one
was an afghan I crammed into long medium flat rate – it was going to be $38! It’s so weird that you guys are not having a big problem also. Jason T. Smith did a show on this last night, though I still don’t know that I have any items SP would make sense for at this point vs priority. Most of my items are smaller than a large breadbox. I find USPS parcel post is often more expensive than priority by a tad. I donnno. My takeaway as a hard goods seller is that I need to give future purchases more serious thought if the item is not particularly valuable and can’t go flat rate or first class.One last thought. I bought a like new top that is one of my favorite retail brands – Velvet by Graham and Spencer – for like $10 bucks on Ebay. This seller was priced well below others and new would be like $125. Made me wonder if they didn’t do their research, if the market is flooded with bin sourcers, or if they are just cranking out volume. In any case, I’m definitely looking for clothing deals on Ebay, especially for my kiddos who are growing in leaps and bounds. Have a great week. BTW, love Queer Eye, but Carson’s humor really made the old show for me.
Thank you! I get my tape there.
02/08/2018 at 8:39 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Phono cartridge, Sony CD player, VHS re-winder, Hot Wheel set, Amateur painting #32574Sharing some sales, no home runs – just bread and butter – but a butter dish that was a winner.
Have two full boxes of flatware I never get around to listing. I don’t know why not because it usually does well for me. This sold quickly (twice, first buyer didn’t pay), paid $8 at my favorite indy thrift. https://www.ebay.com/itm/332531129960
I adore Holt Howard midcentury items and I buy anything I find. The look always stands out to me on a shelf. Paid $4 at a rummage sale and most of the photos didn’t successfully load into my listing but they sold anyway. https://www.ebay.com/itm/332362302508
From the death piles emerged some Dansk dishes. This was the best piece, paid $3 https://www.ebay.com/itm/332522343863 My family has broken two butter dishes in the last several weeks, so I get it.
Sharing this item just because it makes me remember that I am doing well to anticipate the holidays by a couple of months. Next up is Easter, so I need to get that box out. Paid .99 https://www.ebay.com/itm/332514407485 As you can see, I’m not on team all white background for smaller items and this is part of my overall strategy of using Pinterest.
I need to get back to listing bigtime. It’s been a pretty major break in the action.
I think it makes sense too to think outside the big bins. After hunting and losing a couple of small things, I bought some (used, thrifted) smaller plastic bins to keep very small items in. I also have a filing system for loose paper items.
02/07/2018 at 10:03 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 346: Frank Discussions. Gewgaws. Storage. #32401Yeah, I know Brian and I know you are SO smart to go right to the source. Many times I picking the leavings at GW Monday mornings, plus we have estate sales year round here. I will get these items to people who will use and appreciate them again, which makes me feel good. It’s just that I have a little sensitive side thinking about respect for the humans who lived their lives there and traveled places, didn’t finish projects, etc. Silly I guess. I once wrote into someone’s trust that under no circumstances would a bunch of scavengers go through his house like that! Funny.
I’m waiting on estate sales too because even though they are well attended I think I would have trouble processing as much as I could easily pick up. Since thrifts are thinner pickings, it keeps me in line a bit. I hope by the time I allow myself to attend them that I will be able to identify items people are missing – like these craft kits. Keep the what sold posts coming! I also always look in garden, under tables, up high, on the walls…
02/06/2018 at 4:11 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 346: Frank Discussions. Gewgaws. Storage. #32332Total Items in Store: 409
Items Sold: 8
Cost of Items Sold: $74 + 15 free shipping
Total Sales: $317
Highest Price Sold: $76 Dansk Arabesque Butter Dish (death pile thrifted find – paid $3)
Average Price Sold: $40
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $106 (mostly a cache of high end stitchery kits from estate sale)
Number of items listed this week: 0Glad I ran the numbers because it felt very slow. Hectic week outside of ebay with hosting a big superbowl party, a number of medical maintenance appointments for the fam, and family visting. No progress on the death piles and I hit one of our big three annual rummage sales. On the way home, I found an estate sale. I’m kind of looking forward to allowing myself to shop those after I’m through the piles. However, I felt like a total schmuck when I lied to the late homeowners’ daughter after she asked me if I needlepoint. I’m a bit sketchy about digging through someone’s house and life. I suppose I’ll feel better after I start selling these off, here’s a bolo for you: Ehrman brand kits. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=tapestry+kit+needlepoint+ehrman&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=tapestry+kit+needlepoint+ehrman&_sacat=0
Have a great week.
After a good start I am super busy outside of Ebay last two weeks. No listing and all zeros for me. To boot, I went to one of our big three annual rummage sales this weekend and one estate sale down the street from my house. Good thing I don’t have time to go to many estate sales! I basically bought one large grocery bag worth of stuff – a few multiples – so about half of what I would have bought in the old days of creating piles. We have family in town this week and work is busy, so I hope to list a bit this coming weekend. I also have taxes and bookkeeping for last year to tackle. Oye!
02/02/2018 at 1:36 pm in reply to: Gallery Plus Checkbox Glitch Happening When Revising Listings #31935I try to always make sure it is unchecked since the first time I had a problem with it. I know I don’t have over half of them that were checked before, so I’m confident that it auto populating when I start to revise the listing.
ChristineK, if you can get the page to load try searching for the topic on Smartpost not calculating correctly and there is a whole discussion. FedEx just added a quite stingy dimensional weight factor for Smartpost package charges. It’s hard to imagine having a package that will be cheaper now than USPS flat rate or even regular USPS. To add insult to injury, Ebay is undercharging buyers because they did not update their calculated shipping for Smartpost to reflect the new DIM factor. In my case, about $25 short per package and these were not huge items, so I sent them in very overstuffed flat rate boxes.
Thanks. I’m too small time for software and I don’t charge handling but didn’t like business policies because I didn’t want to go through all of my listings to narrow down the polices. Maybe it’s a good time to turn them on if I have to make changes anyway.
Have fast shipping record but waitlisted for GD. Recently I’ve put overnight as my final option just in case it helps later.
I hope Ebay does a good job negotiating commercial discounts going forward. I have to be even more selective I think on buying items that don’t fit in a flat rate envelope, especially being coastal.
So, from what I can tell SP no longer makes sense vs. the Post Office on the vast majority of items due to the new dim weight assumptions. I believe Ebay does not sort your shipping to show the lowest priced option to the buyer for search or at the purchase point unless they dig, which many do not. Correct me if I’m wrong. So everything defaults to your first option. Therefore, I need to remove all of the SP options or at least change the order of SP out of first place. I certainly do not want my items showing up with $38 calculated shipping taking 8 days. Ugh. Wish I could spend that time listing instead.
Tough for sure to find a good podcast. I listen to Thriftycast occasionally but it’s kind of by passionate quirky vintage collectors, rather than resellers focusing on the business end.
You have to watch the screen but I do still like The Paper Castle and Karen Leabo. The Paper Castle is storyteller haul style but I love how she follows up with banner insertions saying how much she ended up getting for most of the items. Her estimates are pretty accurate. Karen is amazing at describing vintage jewelry, hard goods, knives, and textiles. I try to absorb her descriptive terms as much as possible. She also follows up with sale price banners and Etsy sales videos.
Whoa! Found out about this issue this morning bigtime. Has anyone figured out what dimensions still make sense for SP? I guess something that is pretty small and heavy at this point. One of my packages was only 12x12x8 and like $35, buyer paid like $13. I only ate about $6 shipping priority, but still. The other one was $38 but I crammed it into a MFR priority box luckily.
Also, if Ebay fixes, I have SP as my first shipping option on a lot of items. If a buyer sorts a search by total cost, doesn’t Ebay only have the functionality to sort by the first choice? Thanks.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
ChristineR.
I just shipped on Ebay this week while doing other things, so it’s zeros for me across the board. At least I only bought one item for resale.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
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