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I thought I would trying writing a little something later today to see if that would stimulate a little more discussion over the weekend. This isn’t about my numbers exactly, but like most topics, it circles back to the eventually.
This week, I have been thinking a lot about my shipping supplies. Probably because I took some unused USPS priority boxes to the post office yesterday, after taking a bigger pile last week with the permission of my favorite postal clerk. Some of those boxes had been sitting on my shelves “just in case” for a few years! I know this for a fact because there were some regional A boxes in there. The post office doesn’t even make those anymore! Not great use of my available space. But I’m working through it. That’s all you can do sometimes when you do this full-time. There is always something more to do, but you have to live your life, too.
Part of living my life right now is tied into thinking differently about my space. I have had the same cheap shelves for years, mostly because I live in an apartment. I’m less inclined to buy something permanent because this isn’t my home. But I’ve realized I want to redecorate a little bit, because (at least for now) this is my home.
My current project is clearing off a corner shelf and finding a home for everything. It’s too easy for anyone who sells online to get used to piles and boxes on the floor, “what to do with this” bins and boxes, the previously mentioned just-in-case shelf (shelves?). I’ve started thinking about it like this: the mess is costing me money. And why can’t I be as creative with my space as I am with my reselling business?
@Christine, AI “customer service” makes off-shore customer service reps look like friendly employees from a small mom-and-pop shop. And just think…we’re only going to see more of AI’s influence in the coming years. Wonderful!
Thinking about it less cynically, probably means eBay selling ain’t going anywhere. I’ve been going out of my way lately to trade messages with repeat buyers. Chit chat about their purchases, ask them what they collect, talk about the sports news of the day. It felt weird at first…message buyers? Gross. But I like it now. I don’t initiate. But if someone messages me about anything, I take an extra minute or two to write a real, genuine reply. I think it’s more likely that I’m selling things because I’ve been listing very consistently, and sending out 25% offers instead of 20%, but your post reminded me how rare it’s become to have a real digital conversation anymore. How sad.
I don’t think anyone pays attention to ALL CAPS feedback at all, we’ve all had interactions with someone like that who was also not all there. However, I get fighting for principles. I hope you get it removed.
This was one of my stronger weeks in a while. Sold a few more items than usual and a pretty decent average sales price. We’ll see if it continues into July.
Christine, how high (or low) are you going with your percentages for sending offers and running sales? I’ve found 20% offers get some response, 25% gets a few more. If I run a July 4th sale this year, I might go 30% off to see what happens. Maybe even 35 to 40%? That seems crazy, but how bad do I want to sell things right now? A summer of sales sounds awfully nice.
The marketing tab in My eBay has seen a lot of changes this year. I’ve had some success with using buyer groups, where you can send a coupon tailored to buyers who purchased in specific categories. I think that’s more effective at retaining buyers than sending a 25% offer if they watch another one of your items.
I noticed there’s now a new tab for offers within the marketing tab. This tab allowed me to see that I had somehow automated offers set up on about 20 listings, and I don’t want that, so I turned off automation with one click. Thanks, new offers tab. It also shows how many offers have been sent and received. I have 26 items in my inventory where I’ve sent out 10 or more offers, and they still haven’t sold! I’m not sure what that means, but I like seeing the data all in one place. Definitely worth taking a few minutes to look at your offers tab and see what’s going on with your own items.
6/22/2025 to 6/28/2025
Total listings: 317
New listings this week: 27
Items sold: 26 — 14 via best offer, 6 via seller initiated offer, 7 via advertising
Gross sales: $1331.89
Net sales: $928.33
Average sales price: $51.23
My gross, net and ASP are all up 23 to 31% from this week last year. Love to see that.
High sale of the week: $146.52 net Matthew Stafford PSA DNA certified 2009 Topps Rookie Premiere autograph
This was from a group PSA submission back in December. This was one of the better cards that I submitted, a solid net profit just under $100.
I have learned so much from everyone here and it has definitely upped my eBay game. I sure do wish that Jay and Ryanne had time to post an update every now and again. It would be nice to hear how the coffee/real estate empire is doing. Steve S., I miss your what sold videos.
Hear, hear @clarity-sange! I agree with all of this. I’ve always been a slacker about posting my numbers in this thread, but every time I’ve done it, it’s been worth the time spent. Numbers aside, analyzing different parts of my business — like how many listings I’m doing daily or weekly, or exactly what happened after I did end and sell similar — has been so helpful. I’ve gotten much better over the last year about making these check-ins with myself part of my weekly routine, and I think it’s helpful in a lot of ways. Primarily psychologically, it makes me feel like I have a little more control over my business even though that’s probably not true!
Sharyn, yes I’ll keep posting those threads. I have found the process of looking back on my last week of what I bought and sold to be really helpful for me, and not sure I would have ever starting doing it without the podcast and these forums. I will start posting the numbers threads when I do scavenge and sale of the week, too, so the posts will still be here so long as this forum is.
Retro, I already sent you a message through eBay, but I just want to add here for posterity reasons: I wouldn’t be where I am in my scavenging life without your posts. Jay and Ryanne lit the spark for me about what reselling could lead to, and your knowledge (especially the last few years since the podcast ended) added fuel to the fire in the best possible way. My life has changed in some amazing ways since I found this podcast, and I’m certain after the last six months that the best is yet to come. I can’t thank you enough for that. I can’t thank all of you enough.
This forum has kept me accountable and been a source of encouragement for years, and I’ll always be grateful. If we’re approaching the end of the forums, it’s been a lot of fun and y’all know where to find me if you want to chat about eBay or road burgers or life. I mean that — if you’re reading these posts in the future and want to talk reselling with someone who knows the game, send me a message on eBay and let me know that the trash elves sent you.
5/25/2025 to 5/31/2025
Total listings: 284
New listings this week: 25
Items sold: 29 — 20 via best offer, 4 via seller initiated offer, 15 via advertising
Gross sales: $1088.66
Net sales: $713.66
Average sales price: $37.54
High sale of the week: $47.88 net, about $25 profit after COGS Bruno Fernandes 2021-22 Panini Obsidian autograph jersey card /75
What do you call a vendor who looks at vintage razor blades and calls them boring?
That sounds like a joke book question, so I’ll take a serious or silly answer while I think up something funny…
Thanks for posting these, Liz. Such an interesting mix of items! Ever since I found this podcast, I have had a good idea of the value of taking apart appliances, but seeing your sales is a nice reminder that it still works. Are you getting most of this stuff at yard sales and estate sales? I’m so deep into my single niche and do 99% of my buying on eBay, so I love this forum for giving me a window into all these other items that I would never come across. It’s always good to have a wide knowledge base, just in case.
Those needlepoint stretcher bars are a great sale! How long did you have that lot listed before it sold?
Thanks, Sharyn. A lot (OK, all) of my current furniture was free or cheap estate sale stuff. When you don’t have a lot of money or space, you take what you can find or what’s given to you and make it yours. That is scavenging at its core. It is beautiful, and I really treasure some of the things that I own. But others are due for a replacement. I am not a social media person at all, but I might have to rethink that for the purposes of scavenging my perfect office. I also live in a pretty small apartment, so the real redecorating will have to wait for the next place.
But I will get that Herman Miller chair that I fantasize about eventually. When I do, I promise that you all will be the first to know!
There have been a lot of times in my reselling life where I would have been devastated by how slow things are right now. Emotionally, financially, existentially, you name it. But eBay is now only a piece of my reselling puzzle.
Most of my income this year has come from digital transactions of modern and vintage sports cards. In the last few months, I’ve become even more intensely focused on the eBay live auctions which my consignment company now runs 7 days a week, 6 to 10 hours a day. For $1, I can submit any card in my inventory to run in a future auction. Auctions are always a gamble, but after many hours of throwing the stream on in the background and taking notes (sometimes in my head, sometimes actually writing down sold prices), I’ve started to clearly identify trends and patterns, and the little encyclopedia in my head just keeps growing and growing. I have a much, much deeper knowledge about so many types of cards, from vintage non-sports to modern niche sports, and their values. There is (usually) a logic to collectibles markets, especially with cards, and learning more about it every day is exciting and gratifying.
Very quickly, this has become my main method of selling everything from modern to vintage cards. My buying habits have changed very quickly to reflect what is selling, though I don’t buy much from the lives. There are usually better buying deals on standard eBay auctions. But live auctions are hot right now and the consignment company I use does a great job with their streams. In the last few months, they hired more staff and expanded their streaming schedule, both of which were long overdue. I’m excited to see them continue to grow, since their success is my success.
It’s been kind of fascinating to see how the values of certain types of cards have shifted (some dramatically) based on what sells well in a live stream. Not sure whether these value shifts will remain long-term, but it’s so fascinating to see it all happen in real-time. I’m almost a little late to the party, as Whatnot and similar platforms have been thriving for a few years now. But I needed to find my little community in order for this to be something I enjoyed, and I’ve found that with this specific company’s streams.
Bigger picture, if these trends hold for a few more months, I will have to really think about how much time and effort I want to put into eBay. For the time being, I still have plenty of odds and ends which I can’t sell through consignment, or low-end cards which do a little better on eBay when I sort them myself. But the wheels in my head are turning pretty rapidly. I can see an opportunity to get rid of some death piles and some slow-moving items through some bulk/wholesale listings to another flipper, or maybe a big flea market. It’s hazy still, but if I completely change my buying habits, I can see my whole reselling setup change. I could get a proper desk! A nice chair. I could get some new to me, proper shelves. These are goals which felt impossible to me since…always. There was always more work to do, bills to pay, and never enough time. But even though I’m down 38% on eBay so far this year compared to the same period in 2024, my overall sales are slightly up thanks to consignment, and significantly up in April and so far in May.
The cynic in me looks at the economy right now and (not to get too meta) this forum and thinks that the end is near. I’m out here coming up with goals when eBay is dead right now for almost everyone, and we’re about to enter the slow season on top of it being dead. Most likely, live auction card prices will collapse over the next few months and I’ll be thinking, as always, what will I do next. But for now, I am going to keep dreaming.
I hope you can do the same, even if your numbers were as brutal as mine this week. The numbers below aren’t bad, though they were boosted by one big sale. This current week has been frighteningly bad. But it will get better. Create a few more new listings, send those offers, create a coupon, end your older listings and relist them using sell similar. Keep doing the work.
5/4/2024 to 5/10/2024
Total listings: 294
New listings this week: 25
Items sold: 13— 4 via best offer, 6 via seller initiated offer, 4 via advertising
Gross sales: $832.53
Net sales: $566.36
Average sales price: $64.04
High sale of the week: $249.33 net, about $150 profit after COGS Russell Wilson 2020 Panini set of 4 autographed printing plates
Like many of you, taxes are still at the top (?) of my to-do list. But I know the process by now. I will get it done, and it’s not as stressful as I pretend it is to justify putting it off.
On the eBay side of things, has anyone run a sale or coupon in the last month, and how did that go for you? I had really great success sending a 25% coupon targeted to previous buyers in specific categories last Saturday, and I would urge everyone to give something like that a try and check back in. Especially if you see lousy weather on a weekend like we have in the Northeast the last couple weekends. With the economy on its current downward shuffle, I think it’s so important to figure out what eBay tricks and tools work best for your inventory, and the numbers behind them. Coupons? Markdown sales? Adjust prices every 30 days? Auctions? If things start to slow down, mastering these tricks can net you some sales that you probably get from the old-school method of set it and forget it listings.
Within a few hours of sending out the coupon, I had four or five sales including a few buyers who bought multiple items. I used a long expiration date (June 30th) and turned on the option to let the buyer use the coupon more than once. The whole thing took five minutes. This turned an okay week of sales into a good one, and I’ve gotten more sales from using the coupon this week. Once taxes are done, I would really love to buckle down and crank out a ton of new listings by the end of the month, and then send out the coupon to those same buyer groups the first week of May.
3/29/2024 to 4/5/2024
Total listings: 236
New listings this week: 21
Items sold: 27 — 9 via best offer, 6 via seller initiated offer, 10 via advertising
Gross sales: $1288.49 (down 3% from one year ago)
Net sales: $875.12 (down 0.8% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $47.72 (down 39% from one year ago)
High sale of the week: $168.67 net, about $100 after COGS Justin Jefferson 2021 Panini Contenders Optic silver prizm autograph /50
With the addition of AI, I would REALLY hope eBay would come up with a method to encourage multiple sales to buyers.
for instance, a person buys a pair of women’s size 8.5 athletic shoes from me. A screen pops up saying “this seller has these other size 8.5 women’s athletic shoes as well. Why not buy another pair and get 10% off and combined shipping?That would be FAR more targeted and likely to get another sale than the ridiculous spray and pray approach to promoted listings that appear at the bottom of every screen.
I really doubt the eBay elves are still scouring this site, but if they are, this is 100% an idea they should steal. I have bought from a few companies who had that exact checkout approach and wouldn’t you know it, I can think of a time where it even worked on me. I’m a scavenger! I’m supposed to be immune from these marketing tricks! But the offer was a decent discount on something I was thinking about buying anyway, and I had the money in my budget for it.
I’ve noticed promoted listings creeping more and more at different possible points of purchase. It’s turning me off from the program a little bit. It’s not yet at that point where it’s making me reconsider how much I use the site, but it’s on that road.
Fitflop, that’s a good name to file away in the memory banks. I wouldn’t have known those were ballet shoes just from the pictures, but now that I know I can kind of see the difference. Really great info…
Love the McGwire bat! Can’t believe I’ve never seen one of those before. Amazing that it survived until today, let alone in good shape like that. My sports equipment from when I was a kid does not look that good!
That pawn shop set up with everything behind the counter or under glass sounds so wildly inefficient. It’s amazing to me that places like that stay in business…but I’m sure video games are just a small amount of their overall sales.
If you’re taking 50% offers on coats, try creating some coupons and sending them to specific buyer groups. This process has changed a lot since I last used it, and I was pretty impressed with how easily you can drill down very specific groups and send them discounts with a personalized message. I set up a 25% coupon last weekend and have already gotten 12 sales from it. I feel like you could do really well with a public coupon offering such a large discount, or setting up automated offers of 35ish% to buyers in specific categories.
In another auction, on Saturday
Worthless?
1988 — right in the middle of the period (mid 1980s to early 1990s) where it should all be used in kindling or blasted into space. Well, 99% of it anyway. Uncut sheets are sometimes worth a second look. A key player’s rookie, or a sheet from a hard to find set, can push values from the $10 range to $25 and up. That’s not the case with yours. High supply is what drives down sports collectibles from the 1980s and 1990s, but uncut sheets have a second problem: little demand. I think it’s because they’re annoyingly large compared to the standard individual trading card.
I’ve bought and sold a handful of Brooke Bond cards through consignment, though the only one I currently have in my port is this 1970 Viking ship PSA 5 which cost me $3.04 through a live auction. Nice looking card for a 5 grade. Brooke Bond really loved their animals cards, but my favorite BB set is the 1987 Unexplained Mysteries set. I’m a sucker for a good (un)natural phenomenon, like Cities in the Sky.
I think any discussion of a slowdown or eBay being slow should always come back to what, I, personally, am trying to accomplish with my eBay store on a day to day and week to week basis. For example, if I want to move inventory that’s older than a year, I have a few options at my disposal:
I can end and sell similar, modifying prices/offers downward as I do this. For the relatively small time investment, and boost to these items within eBay’s search algorithm, this is always my #1 option.
I can send offers to interested buyers, run a markdown sale or create a coupon. Markdown sales are easier now than ever: just a few clicks and you’re done. The features with coupons are even better, since you can group buyers around specific eBay or store categories and then send them a targeted coupon. But make sure your coupons/sales aren’t just a paltry little discount. I get little to no engagement unless I go to 20% off or higher. People are inundated with coupons in 2025.
I can send items to auction. This is the most extreme, but depending on your niche and your expectations, it can work well as long as your expectations are realistic. I deal in a lot of small collectibles like sports cards, and auctions have been part of the hobby for 25+ years. Some buyers only search auctions. I don’t recommend starting your auction below the absolute minimum you’d accept for the item. I usually go 50% of the buy it now price I had the item in my store, and I accept offers over the minimum bid price. I ran 235 auctions this week since it was the end of the quarter, which seemed like a good time to reassess my store. I’ll be happy if I get 35 sales from these auctions. I’ll be thrilled if I get 50. Then I’ll get a few more over the next few weeks when I return the unsold items into my inventory.
This is all kind of a reflection of the nature of reselling in 2025. The name of the game is still the same, but how we get there has changed. It’s not enough to just post a listing and wait, wait, wait anymore. Some buyers only like auctions. Some buyers are waiting for you to cut the price 25%. There are a lot of websites beyond eBay to get a deal, and what sold well last year isn’t necessarily going to sell well today. If you have items in your inventory that you haven’t “touched” in 6 months, my recommendation would be set aside a few hours and really go through these listings. End and sell similar is great, but what’s even better is to actually analyze your inventory: take a look at similar actives and solds, make sure your pricing makes sense and that there’s actually demand for your items. If there’s not, consider if there are other ways to sell this stuff. eBay is not the best platform for every type of item anymore, but the profit from a sold item adds up no matter how you sell it.
Whenever sales slow down for me on eBay, it’s typically because I haven’t been listing as much recently or I wasn’t listing a few weeks ago. Sometimes, with hindsight, I can see that the things I listed weren’t very high demand or weren’t priced correctly. Obviously politics and the economy are factors in all of this, but if this podcast taught us anything, it’s to focus on the things we can control.
