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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.
22 listings for me last week.
I can’t think for the whole year but went ahead and posted my short term goals here. @Retro posted some Ebay goals that are in line with mine. I’ve been catching myself thrifting $15-20 items which I really should stop doing since I have a big backlog. Also need to list and discount pillows and larger items – they take up so much space and I want to get my Ebay stuff out of the guest room closet. I have a bit of inventory consolidating to do as well.
Total Items in Store: 598
Items Sold: 16
Gross Sales: $664.15 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $406.65 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $123
Highest Price Sold: $119 (Vintage spaghetti Santa, paid $5.99)
Average Price Sold: $41.51
Returns: 1 (But hasn’t shipped yet)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: +/-$40
Number of items listed this week: 22Sales were pretty dead right before Christmas but were brisk yesterday and this morning. I didn’t realize today was a postal holiday. I have a lot of stuff to ship by tomorrow and it will be pretty annoying. Grateful for Ebay. I know the really dreadfully slow time is coming but I will be listed more this year during that time so hopefully that will help.
I was hunting RA today and the discounts aren’t really impressive enough for me. Many of my favorites aren’t doing an extra % off but I have had better luck in February and even early March. One store discounted early and I spent about $100 last week, scooping up some returns that landed in my local store and were nicely marked down. Today Goodwill Finds is running a sale as I posted elsewhere so that was my arbitrage.
I also noted that Macy’s has created like an outlet in the top level of their store. I’m under the impression it is supposed to be like a TJ Maxx. Their extra sales discounts don’t apply so I’m not impressed with the pricing or brands. However, I’ll keep an eye out because nobody locally seems to be shopping in there heavily at least for home goods. Happy bargain hunting to those who participate.
@Mark I’m honestly surprised about your Etsy success. I know it has been very slow for some others who tried it. Curious if you are promoting your Ebay listings? Between Ebay having the item specifics and Etsy having the tags (and a higher standard of photos imho) I’m sticking with Ebay but I feel like I need to make deals and give them a bigger cut now.50% off sale items today. I’ve been keeping a favorites list since their prices went sharply up following the grand opening.
I bought three items for $50. Two were very good deals and one was an Arabia Finland piece that I paid up for a bit. It’s a little bit of a gamble since the condition notes are vague but it brought some of their ridiculous prices down quite a bit. I’ve bought 3 items before this and they were all well packed.
@Retro these sound like great goals and I should also adopt them, though I don’t have a lot of $50-100 items lying around. I have some larger items I should 100% prioritize listing to cut down the space needed for storage. I also should mark down the pillows in inventory as they take up a lot of space and tend to sell slowly but are still profitable.
Oh duh I guess I was looking at the screen that says the percentage of costs that was FVFs. I needed to pull up a statement and that looks lower. Shipping definitely takes a bite from gross as I sell a lot of breakables.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/234816527864 Found this piece of art and learned the cool technique is called linocut. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what it is. Searched but could not find the artist or read the signature. Just noticing a couple of my last photos are blurry. Oops.
Happy to report that both of the early Department 56 pieces sold last week. I featured one of those on the find of the week post.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/234727725741 Sold this item that had been listed a long time. I knew it would either go to the old lady type or someone young and hip. It ended up being the former and we had a little message exchange and she left me really awesome feedback.
