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I didn’t think through the push completely and didn’t realize my 15% off would be combined with a 30% off sale I was running on Christmas items, so sold a lot of items for close to 40% off.
I like this combination of discounts sometimes. Could we hold out and get a few more dollars eventually? Sure, maybe. But sometimes it’s nice to clear out a bunch of stuff and make room for new. What was the oldest of the discounted items?
I checked tracking this morning and something is wrong as the package has been going back and forth between two Fedex centers and the notes indicate “Shipment exception” several times.
Probably weather related due to snow/cold and the size of the package, right?
Crazy online auction that had lots closing every 6 seconds with 90 lots all closing within 20 minutes. I would have bid on more but didn’t have enough time to place bids on all the lots and keep up with the ones I’d already bid on.
This is like a lot of the big card consignment sellers I buy from on eBay, they run thousands of auctions most nights which all generally end from 9:00 PM to midnight. If only you could have used Gixen or another bid sniper!
I feel like you have a potentially huge score on your hands with these drums, so fingers crossed that they all look good when you get them and you can figure out the best platform to sell them.
I have slacked on posting my numbers the last few weeks, and no better time to get back in the habit than a Philly snow day. Only a couple inches, but I’ll take it after two years of no snow. Nothing better than walking to the post office in the snow carrying a bin full of packages.
The consignment site I use to sell most of my sports and non-sports cards has been running a promotion, send any item to auction for $0.75 and those items get listed at a 7 day auction with a $0.99 opening bid. I’ve focused a lot of my time on turning over that inventory because…well, no shipping, no extra work, just click a button and a few weeks later, I get paid. Can’t beat it.
1/7/2023 to 1/13/2023
Listings: 345
Items sold: 26 (17 via best offer, 2 via seller initiated offer, 20 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $1069.56 (down 45% from one year ago)
Net sales: $714.77 (down 50% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $41.14 (down 39% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $90.07 — CJ Stroud 2023 TruCreator 1/1 black cracked ice
CJ Stroud is the hot rookie quarterback this season and has led his team on a surprising playoff run while turning in one of the best young quarterback seasons ever. I have a few of his autographs in my eBay inventory, each purchased for $100 to $150. I have the best one priced at a silly number and will be curious to see if any of them sell after the games this weekend.
I pay a little more attention to the sports news now than I did a year or two ago, and that time has been worth it. I have learned what is worth listing on eBay and how to price cards so they sell quickly, if that’s what I want. It is amazing to think that I started doing this full-time before I had really developed that skill. My eBay lifestyle is a lot more sustainable long-term now.
Lowest price sold (net): $7.84 — Charlotte Hornets 10 card lot
I sold 417 of these lots last year, and almost 200 of them in the last quarter of the year. When I’m home on Friday and Saturday nights, I have a nice routine where I spend a few hours sorting and scanning a big batch of these lots. It feels like I’m really doing the work (unlike the rest of the week which barely feels like work) and while each individual sale isn’t hugely profitable, in total I grossed $4,000 on these lots last year. Maybe about $2,000 profit? But I think those numbers will double this year, and I’m constantly coming up with new ways to keep the quality of the lots high but shave my COGS numbers a little further.
I’ve never really used Mercari beyond a quick browse here and there but I’m curious, Christine, what do you think has led to the downturn in sales? Are there simply too many different options for buyers at this point to stick with Mercari? Or are the items you used to sell on there (clothes especially) just oversaturated at this point?
Maybe a better question would be — is there anything Mercari does well, or could do, to distinguish it from eBay and Poshmark/Depop/Etsy/wherever else the kids buy and sell these days?
Amazing resource. Thank you!
I was stunned to win these treasures, but the timing of the auction (ended Thursday December 21st) was poor and the consignor had four similar signed items ending back to back to back to back. I will be curious to see if the other two show up in someone else’s eBay inventory or, maybe consigned to some auction house if that’s a better venue for this sort of item. I really don’t know but it will be a fun time figuring it all out.
Your posts are always inspiring. Always a great case study for how to make money selling on eBay in 2023. So much to learn from. Congrats at hitting so many benchmarks and can’t wait to see what you do in 2024.
It’s been too long, good to see you posting again. Let’s get into the nitty gritty details of your store while things are slow. What percent are your promoted listings at? When’s the last time you did end and sell similar? What are your offer settings at?
eBay is weird and unpredictable but there also seems to be a predictable method to its madness at this point in the 2023-24 selling season. Whenever I create 10+ new listings, I see a good number of sales in the next few days. When I price things well based on Terapeak, I see a nice sell through rate.
I’d love to discuss your etsy store more as well. Not a platform I am too familiar with but selling online changes so much and so rapidly that it’s always good to learn in case you need to adapt next year.
If you don’t use coolness factor as an item specific (and let’s be real, no one’s searching for it), I would love to know your personal coolness factor on all future tiki shirts & similar items!!
Great info as always. I don’t know anything about golf but considering my sports memorabilia niche, probably should educate myself as much as I can.
Need to get my Cocoa Puffs Crocs shoes photographed and listed soon. What a weird niche. But it will definitely sell sooner than I think!
Running these numbers can be very educational. My numbers don’t look like anything special but this was a really good week of sales for me considering these factors:
1. I had 200 listings — basically half of my eBay inventory– at auction all week. All those sales will be in next week’s numbers since the auctions ran from last Monday the 20th to this Monday the 27th, except for one auction which sold for a best offer late last week. The other 27 items that I sold last week were all from my BIN/BO inventory. That’s an excellent sell-through rate for the size of my store.
2. I didn’t create a ton of new listings, since I was mostly focused on my Black Friday sales on the consignment trading card site I use. I tried to make a few new eBay listings every day, but I missed a day or two. I think something like 4 or 5 of my eBay sales were items that were listed last week. Usually it’s higher than that.
3. I haven’t really scavenged a ton outside of my trading cards niche since my Chicago haul in early August. Based on how eBay works these days, I think this means that my listings in other categories are falling lower and lower in the search algorithm.
With that in mind, $1200 gross sales ($800 net – COGS) is a really good number. I think there’s a few reasons my numbers were so strong.
1. This is the busy time of year for online buying, period.
2. I ran a 25% off markdown sale and frequently sent offers to watchers for another 10 to 15 percent off on top of that. This worked especially well on $50+ items. I would really recommend this to those of you who want to sell a bunch of items quickly or clear out old inventory. 35 percent off feels like a real bargain and 40 percent off is hard to say no to, psychologically.
3. I’ve focused a lot more this year on curating my ebay store with items which I think will sell quickly, or for a nice price, or both. I’ve gotten a much better sense of how to do this in the last six months which means I have some nice weeks. I expect that to continue at least for the next month or two as I have lots of interesting, high quality inventory on its way to me or sitting in shelves and in bins until I get it photographed and listed.
4. I’ve got a nice routine down where I send a listing to auction (regardless of category) after about a month of no sales, offers or watchers. I start the bidding at around half of my BIN price. Then if the auction doesn’t sell, I send the listing back into my store inventory and often I lower my BIN price and offer settings. After about a month, I’ll do the same thing all over again. Sometimes things sell randomly after two or four months, and sometimes you want to price high and wait, so it’s a balancing act. I have some inventory which I exclude from this process. But most listings under $5o or even $100…sometimes you just want to sell, even if it’s for $20 less than I’m hoping or 50% off of the “value” I think the listing has.
I’ve found that I like it when I move through inventory faster through any means possible. Even if that means pulling some stuff that doesn’t sell from my inventory and selling it in a bulk lot, or donating it, or throwing it away. I started selling full-time (no other jobs) two years ago and I’ve lived with a lot of clutter since then. It’s kind of crazy to think about how messy my life (my apartment) got at various points. I’m space limited and I sell things online as my only income, so some clutter is inevitably going to be part of my life. But it was too much.
However, I’ve made a lot of progress this year and I know I’ll make even more progress this winter because I work on eBay more when it’s too cold to enjoy being outside. I’m a lot happier because I can see the progress in my bank account and in my better organized, higher quality inventory. It’s nice to have that spring in your step especially in the winter.
11/19/2023 to 11/25/2023
Listings: 349 (down from 405 the previous week)
Items sold: 28 (14 via best offer, 9 via seller initiated offer, 18 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $1208.10 (down 50% from one year ago)
Net sales: $805.58 (down 52% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $43.15 (down 41% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $118.61 — Hans Knappertsbusch Opera Recordings 43 CD box set
One of the last big items from my Chicago classical music haul. It’s been so much fun selling these and can’t wait to find another big score like this in a new place sometime next year. I also need to make a return trip to the same library’s annual sale to see if they get another incredible collection donated!
Lowest price sold (net): $9.93 — Jauan Jennings Panini Prizm silver autograph
One of my favorite ways to scavenge the last few years has been buying cards with points through the Panini Rewards website, basically I buy the points (which are randomly inserted in all types of Panini card packs) on eBay and then it’s a waiting game to see what cards they drop each week. I got really into this during the early part of the pandemic when Panini Rewards Points values dropped a lot while everything was shut down.
Sometimes there are great deals, other times the points to value ratio is all out of whack. I’ve had a lot of success with lower cost cards like this one, where I buy them in the max quantity of 5 which makes my net cost in points + shipping is about $3 to $5. I list and sell them in the $10 to $20 range and when one sells, I grab the next one from my inventory, scan it and make the new listing. When I get a huge number of these cards, I will buy cheap base rookie cards of the player in bulk for $0.25 to $0.50 each and include one or two in the package as a bonus. I get a lot of happy customers and even some repeat customers this way. It’s like a micro pipeline and I really enjoy it.
You killed it with the free/throw in/random finds this week! Those loving family figures are a nice sale for such a small item. How did you know about them?
Nice to see the end and sell similar trick work after about a month, too. I have a notes app on my computer where I keep my eBay workflow organized (in my own weird way, it would probably look like nonsense to anyone else LOL) and I track the stats for end and sell similar as well as the auctions I run a few times a month. But I only track sales from the end and sell similar batches for about a week. I find it hard to keep track longer than that, plus with a lot of my card listings that I can restock easily (like my curated team lots), I’m fine sending them to auction every few weeks because I can easily make a new listing when it sells.
Christine I think I remember that quilt from when you got it! It reminds me of one I had as a kid. Nice sale and glad that it will get a new life in some sports-loving 8 year old’s bedroom.
That tiki shirt is too much. I kind of cringe at the idea of paying $50 for a shirt, but I kind of love the whole aesthetic, and of course there are lots of people whose hobby is scrolling eBay/etsy/posh to create “their style.” Will add that brand to my thrift store bucket list, I guess.
The cross branding with shoes is something else. I’ve got a pair of Cocoa Puffs crocs (kids or maybe even toddler sized) that I should really get listed over the next week of two so it ends up in someone’s Christmas or holiday stocking. I don’t get the appeal, but I’m always happy to find weird items like this because someone will just love them.
I guess selling on FBMP shipping isn’t really an issue. Do you ever ship a set of golf clubs? That sounds complicated. But maybe FBMP and local pick up are the way to go with these big bulky things.
I haven’t been to California since I was too little to remember it, so that would be a fun trip in a lot of ways. It certainly would be one way to learn about comic books! Not sure I can make a trip happen in the next month or two (mostly from lack of space for more inventory, also just busy with life), but let me know what you hear about the sale anyway. If they do liquidate, I assume there will be some deals available and I love those stories. Maybe you will even start selling some comic books!!!
That apothecary jar is gorgeous. In all my attempts to scavenge at thrift stores and estate sales and flea markets, I’ve never seen glass half as eye-catching as the things you find on a weekly basis. Every area is different, I guess. Plus when you know a niche well, you can spot the gems even if they’re a little dusty or hidden away.
Yeah my whole accounting method is cash in and cash out. I buy pretty much all of my card inventory through eBay auctions using Paypal, and I don’t use Paypal for anything else, so it’s a pretty decent system now that most of my cards go directly to the consignment site.
COMC (which eBay just bought a stake in) is an interesting platform in terms of how it operates. Anything you sell, you receive store credit after COMC takes their few percent cut. You can cash out for another 10 percent in fees (I do this once or twice a week) or you can buy cards and have them shipped to you to sell on eBay or Facebook or at a show or to keep. Most COMC listings cross post to eBay but not all of them (only BIN — no best offer option), and any sales you run on COMC are visible on COMC but not on eBay. So there are plenty of opportunities for arbitrage.
Any cards bought on site and repriced to flip, the price I buy it for is visible to me. This is a decent chunk of my inventory, maybe 20 percent. But anything I send in, obviously COMC doesn’t know that price. I use Terapeak a lot when I’m pricing out COMC inventory and sometimes I can see the original listing I bought from, but other times if it was part of a lot or the original listing was bad, I price based off my own knowledge of the player and rarity of card and set.
I lost money on plenty of individual cards over my 65 percent off sale, but the overall volume of sales more than made up for that. And sometimes the market for certain cards changes in a year, no point in clinging to what I thought something was worth a year ago.
I am planning to reprice aggressively over the next month (ideally I’d like to reprice 500 cards every day) and then run another big sale in January. COMC offered 5 percent back on each $100 spent during the Black Friday sale and the bonus $$ will hit our accounts in January. I don’t think I’ll go to 65 percent off again, but maybe 50 percent and see if I can raise another chunk of cash at what would be a slow time of year.
Jay, it was such an interesting mix because of the way COMC works where you can immediately reprice anything you buy, or buy individual cards from dozens of sellers and get all of them shipped to you in one package. So I had plenty of one card orders which got repriced or shipped home (I assume to someone’s collection), and just as many orders where the buyer kept adding more and more cards from my port to their order. I had lots of orders with two or three or five, and a few huge ones with 20 or 30 or more. Sometimes the buyer would purchase one every few seconds which was always fun to see in real-time, and other times they’d load all of them into their cart and buy in one click so I’d have a huge long page of solds to one buyer.
I wanted to build up some extra cash this month, so I ran sales from 35 percent in early November to as much as 65 percent Black Friday to Cyber Monday. I repriced old inventory all month too. There is no messaging on the platform, so it is all about price and which offers you accept. I went bigger with the sales than I would on eBay because I have so many cards on there and it’s hard to keep up with prices on all of them. That’s really the name of the game buying and selling on COMC. A lot of buyers (myself included) find a good deal on one card from a seller and then dig through the seller’s port to add more cards to their order.
I think the largest individual sale I had over the week was an authenticated autograph of composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold for $110 which was repriced by the buyer to $191. My cost was $35 and I bought it on eBay in March. Personally I wouldn’t buy something for $110 and relist it to $191, those are lower margins than I like to deal with. But that is a pretty normal buying pattern on COMC. There are a lot of volume sellers and a lot of scavengers who deal in cards that are $5 or less. That was basically my average sales price over the promo week — 1163 items for $5825.34 over Black Friday and 261 items for $972.16 on Cyber Monday.
I was buying all week too, and I’ll have a good number of $50+ card sales on eBay over the next month or two as I get these nice cards listed. Especially if we get some snowy weather in the Northeast for the first time in almost two years.
I had this silly fantasy of selling all the cards in my port over this month and maybe December, but I have 10,000 left even after all these sales. That’s the product of the last few years of scavenging and hard work. There’s a point where you can go too far with discounts and it was fun to find that tipping point. I think for next year, I will reprice my inventory twice as much and max out the discount at like 50 percent unless I really, really need to sell. I like to play the long game. Sometimes it’s better to wait a few months for the market to change or the right buyer to come along.
Overall, this week went as good as I could have hoped. I am going to really try and push myself with eBay in December. I haven’t been over 500 listings in a long, long time because I spend a lot of time on organizing inventory for this consignment site and I try and run the max 500 collectibles auctions every month. I’d love to get to 500 and stay at that level.
But I also have some plans for fun stuff now that I’ve got some extra cash at hand, so at some point early 2024 that will become more of my focus. Can’t wait to share more of those stories with you.
