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Total Items in Store: 528
Items Sold: 7
Gross Sales: $454.38 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $260.45 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $60
Highest Price Sold: $139 (Set of three new plates)
Average Price Sold: $56.80
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 2Can’t complain about sales as I didn’t list much. I’m working on tax stuff and hope to finish today. Haven’t been sourcing so that’s good. I have a bunch of better clothing of ours in my bedroom that I really want to list on Mercari and purge. Construction will probably start finally on our bathroom so another distraction. I always get overwhelmed trying to pick from all the cool tiles. I find I’m better and picking and isolating for sale on Ebay and trying to bring a whole room together… Luckily the rents here are sky high so no temptation to open a booth in one of the vintage or antique malls.
@Jay I’m curious where you got so much inventory. I always have the fantasy that you guys go into the urban area and grab up inventory to bring home and list. I’m not exactly a farmhouse gal but I enjoy vintage feed sack graphics. Cool sale.https://www.ebay.com/itm/234779954072 Yarn for the win. Paid $5. I list only the number of new skeins and throw in the rest “as a bonus” in case they don’t look closely at the listing. Yarn and needlepoint kits sell really well for me. I have no personal interest in them at all but can’t ignore the sell through. My mom was one of those people buying lots of supplies and never using them. This was before Ebay and we donated a giant closet full of fabric, including European fabric from when she was a stewardess on TWA.
I pretty much do what @Retro explained and have used foam board mainly with art. I never double box and sell a lot of breakables. I buy and use rolls of cushion foam (like for packing dishes) and the price at Uhaul is not too bad actually. I hardly ever use small bubble wrap and buy large bubble in quantity. Sometimes it makes me us a bigger box but it’s very protective. I haven’t sold a lot of art bigger than 14″ on one side – I intentionally look for smaller original art. Large art I plan to remove from the frame but sometimes the metal frames are kind of hard to get off imho. The very high end painting I sold I had professionally packed and put in plastic first.
@retro I paid a lot more for the RA items so COGS higher, taxable profit lower with more RA. Sometimes my used items sell for as much as lower end RA items but they only cost $3-5.
8 items for me.
Some external things have come up that will keep me from quickly accomplishing even my short term to do list, but maybe in the latter part of February that will improve. I’m also spending some extra time with my family lately.
@Antique Frog interesting art sales. I love finding art and it’s especially nice to be able to identify the artist, though many I pick up turn out here in California turn out not to be well known.
I rarely go to garage sales but after delivering my daughter somewhere saw a sign for one where it was family run but the woman had done her online research on everything and priced a bit higher than I like to pay. I did do a bundle with her on a few items and sold this pair of mini watercolor paintings for $88 (paid $8) https://www.ebay.com/itm/334649780579.
The cool part was a family member of the late artist bought them for his son and wrote to me.
Total Items in Store: 522
Items Sold: 13
Gross Sales: $816.20 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $557.34 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $127
Highest Price Sold: $200 (used Williams Sonoma pasta set)
Average Price Sold: $62.78
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 8This week sales were surprisingly good since I didn’t mange to list much quantity. Shipping is slower and annoying with the cast. I’ve been working on my COGS bookkeeping and should finish that today. I had three big sales (for me) of $12-15 used items in 2022 and overall a lower COGS so even with fees up and kind of barely doing Ebay in the beginning of 2022 will make more money than 2021 due to those three art sales and a great 4th quarter.
I had an unusual INAD this week which was deserved but was really for a minor flaw IMHO. I’ll need to slow down a little bit maybe and inspect the used items carefully. So I’m sort of ruminating on the differences selling fewer RA items in my store. At tax time here I’m like wow that was a great sale! but also darn that will increase our tax liability.
I’m also enjoying people’s discussion of plans for business change. For me the most significant change is to be more careful about picking up only higher profit items. The exception to this is getting a $12-18 item with a bar code maybe. However, those easy to list items tend to get me into having a less
curatedfocused store, which maybe doesn’t matter on Ebay so much. I made some more headway into my piles in 2022 and finished listing all of the holiday items but there is a lot more to go. It would be wise to further limit shopping as a treat outing and get even more selective about pick ups.I’ve been working on cleaning up my Pinterest boards going into this slower time of year. I’m seeing between 10-15% of views coming from outside Ebay, though I suppose most of that might be Google mostly. I wish Ebay would give a bit more specifics.
@Retro he does already do extra but my income has varied quite a bit.
Forgot to mention that Goodwill Finds sent me a 40% off one item coupon for late shipping even though I never complained. Tempting to ship off the boxed items in the same packaging when sold but unfortunately they used GW branded tape. It looks like the same thickness as Ebay tape so should be able to peel it off.
Listed 5 items last week. I’ve got some life chaos so short term need to do my bookkeeping for taxes. I love to buy and sell textiles but don’t enjoy listing them. I’ll be focused on that and then break it up with some smalls that are easy to pack I think. I also have some paper stuff but I’m even less excited about listing that stuff. It’s weird how you can appreciate something but then kind of hate listing it. I mean, these aren’t items I don’t personally value.
I was on time away last week. Glad to hear you enjoyed NYC and had great sales.
I need to hurry up and work on COGS so I can figure out with the CPA a quarterly to send in. If I had matched 2021 profit we wouldn’t have owed a quarterly (due to leaving my day job) but 4th quarter was quite good for me. My COGS should be quite a bit lower since I sold many more used items in 2022. Fees will be a little higher. So probably won’t get a ton of listings done this week. Obviously would be better to do COGS monthly or quarterly but I’m not that disciplined.
I’m enjoying hearing about everyone’s reflections and goals.
We had other health issues in the family but I also managed to break a bone in my wrist trying to catch myself falling (cold sober in case anyone wonders). Of course this morning I sold a big, heavy pasta set. Fortunately my son is still here on winter break from college. I changed to two day handling on my listings and need to try to remember to schedule USPS pick up as needed. A couple of times in the past they failed to pick up but we have a friendlier post office guy now.
Certainly an eventful New Years week for our family. I’m now wearing a cast on my dominant hand wrist/arm. I’m able to type awkwardly but not lift heavy bins. Should be interesting. I’ve reopened my store today and hoping my most challenging to pack items don’t start flying off the shelf. Should be pretty slow I think. Post-Christmas week sales were quite good at about $550 net and I was happy to see mostly holiday items still selling before I put Time Away on. Looking back the lead up to the week before Christmas was very good as I was listing a lot.
I’ll probably be listing a lot of linens and vintage fabric next since they are easy to lift, pack and ship. NOT my favorite thing to list by any means but I have ample supply in the piles. I also have a number of smalls on hand in the piles for variety.
I too am always interested to hear what you pick up in NYC on the street and on super clearance. Enjoy your trip away.
0 for me. Family emergency.
Goal will be last year’s average.https://www.ebay.com/itm/334676525231
I’ve been checking the toiletry bins at one of our larger local thrift chains and found some great sealed new items. Selling this type of stuff doesn’t really turn me on, but so easy to list and it’s really priced well. Some even has a bar code so extra easy to list. I’m moving away a little bit from having a curated store. Maybe that’s a mistake.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/334551993075
Sold this interesting Midcentury spaghetti Santa Claus for $100. Hope the buyer is ok because his spaghetti was loose. I put in a lot of extra packaging.
