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Stocking up on things you use all the time is my approach to Black Friday as well. But I try and have this approach all the time. There are great deals to be found year-round if you stack discounts and coupons and rewards.
I’m running about 200 auctions this week which will end on Monday evening. I miss the days of eBay bucks promotions on holiday weekends. But no sense in dwelling. It’s nice that eBay still occupies its own large space in the e-commerce world. So many competitors have come and gone in the last ten years.
My main goal this week was to focus on my trading cards consignment port since the company COMC was offering a Black Friday promotion special all week. The promo was free (usually costs a few bucks to set up) and 5% cash back on everything you spent, plus a discount on future submission fees if you sold $500 or more. Pretty great marketing on their part. I’ve put in a good solid work week just on their site, buying and selling and repricing. Really I’ve been putting in the work all month, as I’ve been running progressive sales throughout the month.
I had twin goals to reduce the size of my consignment port (which had swelled to over 15,000 items) and build up a cash reserve so I have more flexibility in 2024. I’ve sold over 1,000 cards (and counting) this week and 2,900 cards (and counting) sold this month. Many of them I sold a little lower than I would have liked, and some I sold too low, but I discounted everything across the board and figured I’d see what happened. I’m happy with the results and don’t have any regrets really. I will probably do it again next year.
I also found a large number of cards to buy, everything from cheap ($1 and under) to expensive (a few in the $100 range), and once I put in the shipment request and get all these sent to me, I’ll spend a solid week getting everything sorted for the various types of listings I make (Individual, small curated lot, large wholesale lot). This gives me a solid framework for how to spend my time the rest of this year, and a lot to look forward to heading into 2024.
The cafe sounds a lot like a scavenger’s dream. I have to get down there sometime. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
11/12/2023 to 11/18/2023
Listings: 405 (up from 404 the previous week)
Items sold: 47 (19 via best offer, 6 via seller initiated offer, 35 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $2181.03 (up 69% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1426.93 (up 62% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $46.40 (down 13% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $263.48 — a bulk lot of 48 graded cards
Lowest price sold (net): $8.78 — Nathan Eovaldi 2012 Topps Gypsy Queen autograph
Thanks, I thought that was outside your normal rules but I got curious. Even if it’s no longer a hard and fast rule, it’s an interesting way to think about scavenging if you’re space limited or deal with bulky items.
The STR scavenging rules have become a way of life for me this year. I feel very lucky to know you through these forums, it’s changed my way of doing business almost as much as finding the podcast so many years ago. Following your rules (with my own modifications, off and on) has been extremely successful for me within the trading cards niche and it worked with my big Chicago haul as well. So I think it would apply to almost anyone regardless of what types of items they sell. Take note, lurkers and those of you grumbling about slow sales!
Think about what items you’ve scavenging and selling. How can you find higher quality items or items which will sell faster? There is always luck involved with reselling, but it’s not all luck! Focus on STR and sales price, and you will start to see some higher dollar sales and some items which sell quickly. Do it over and over again, and that’s how you build a sustainable eBay business.
Something tells me you and Ryanne are not likely to go broke and start scavenging again, but if you do, please start a podcast about it. I think you’d find an audience!
Love the mural so much, it reminds me of some of my favorite murals in Philly which is a great city for street art, some of it great and a lot very generic. I’d love to know more about how the mural project came about. What was the inspiration for the design? And is there anything similar anywhere else in Luray?
Damn it the one week you don’t hit ctrl+c before typing your numbers post!
Glad you’re back this week, missed you last week and glad it was just a day job trip and you and the family are well.
What’s sourcing allotment? I have a few posts to catch up on so maybe I missed it, but don’t remember that number from previous threads.
Jay, I’m curious what is stoking your fears of recession. I don’t see a lot of big or small signs that’s what happened this year (despite repeated warnings) or what will happen in the next 3-6 months (despite lots of gloom and doom). Obviously there are situations in the US and around the world which could change quickly and dramatically, and income inequality is as bad (or worse) as it’s ever been. Don’t mistake my lack of worry about a recession as an opinion that everything is fine. 🙂
But you and Ryanne have really good instincts for your various businesses and I think you’ll weather any economic storms just fine. You didn’t start the coffee shop without a plan or try to learn everything yourselves, you leaned on your partners expertise throughout the process and I think that’s why your business is flourishing. Very similar to how you expanded your Airbnbs and even how you grew from the early days of your eBay business. You used to model all your clothes and do all the work yourselves! Remember those days!?
People will always need (or “need”) a vacation, or a good cup of coffee and place to catch up with friends, or some random gewgaw which reminds them of their childhood or fits perfectly in their home. Plus you have the ability to adapt. Lots of people struggle with change, or new situations, or taking risks. But when you sell on eBay, all of these things are a way of life. So if a recession does come, at least we’ve got a leg up in terms of being prepared.
I would have written all that even if I sold 0 items this week because it’s what I genuinely believe, but I happened to have a good week of sales after one of my worst weeks. I don’t think it’s a reflection of much except the randomness of sales over a period of time, especially in my weird niche which is very busy right now, and I put in a little extra work on eBay this week.
I had auctions end last Sunday and I put all the unsold inventory back into my store with sell similar and I dropped some prices and I created a bunch of new listings towards the end of the week and my sales were strong throughout the week. As you would hope. As they should have been.
Ideally, every week would go like this. But some weeks I don’t put the same level of effort into eBay. I might put in close to the same amount of time, but it’s not as focused on the money making aspects. Or I will have weeks where I spend my time enjoying other interests or I use the flexibility eBay gives me to take care of other things. It’s a nice life.
In an effort to continue the good vibes, I’m running a 20 percent markdown sale this week. My first markdown sale in almost six months. Also sending offers to watchers on top of the sale.
Do I want to sell things at 30 percent off or 35 percent? Not necessarily, I’d rather sell them for full price. But at this time of year, I will push a little harder for sales. There will always be more inventory out there. So let’s get a little weird and try some things, see what works and what doesn’t.
11/5/2023 to 11/11/2023
Listings: 404 (up from 371 the previous week)
Items sold: 66 (38 via auction, 13 via best offer, 6 via seller initiated offer, 25 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $2468.67 (down 10% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1613.12 (down 16% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $37.40 (down 7% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $65.26 — Joshua Dobbs Panini Prizm blue autographed rookie ##/149
Joshua Dobbs is basically the talk of the NFL right now with an easy underdog story to root for. And his card prices are skyrocketing in response. Check out these Terapeak solds for the same card!
While those prices seem crazy, you should know that Panini Prizm is one of the most popular sets now and autographed rookies with a serial number are some of the most desired cards to collectors and flippers. With hindsight being 20/20, I sold too early, but I can’t be all that disappointed. I bought this card in August for $3 including shipping. And I bought a bunch more Dobbs cards just before the season started. I don’t always buy like this, but sometimes there are errors in the market and I try to buy low with the goal of selling high. I’ve sold all of my Dobbs autographs over the last few months and am down to his cheaper cards which I will feature in my curated team lots. I sold one of those at full price during the Vikings game on Sunday and hope to get another lot listed and sold between now and their next game.
Lowest price sold (net): $7.49 — Atlanta Hawks 10 card basketball card lot
Not every team has their Josh Dobbs, and not every card has the potential to spike in value from $5 to $50. So sometimes doing the work is just grinding out $10 sales. Still wouldn’t trade this life for anyone else’s.
Jay, I can’t wait for my next adventure like this. It will be a few months down the line, I want to spend the rest of this year really doing the work and maximizing my sales in Q4 as much as I can. But then it will be time for a nice break.
I think the Amazon resellers who did private label and resell on Amazon have a lot in common with the guy I met at the Chicago book sale who does all books, all Amazon FBA with his hand scanner. I texted him about a month ago to see how he did with his haul. Maybe I was hoping to compare numbers. But he hadn’t sold any of the stuff he had bought. He hadn’t even sent it into FBA yet. It was textbook season. I asked him a few questions about it, but he wasn’t too talkative. He suggested I watch some videos by a Youtube reseller named Joji Davenport to learn more. That’s what he did when he started out reselling. So I looked up Joji. Here are the names of some of his videos:
I Made $800 Profit in One Day Selling Used Textbooks
My Secret to Finding Expensive Books to Sell on Amazon
How I Make $300 Profit Per Day on Amazon
I really tried to watch a few of these videos, but it was a lot of math and graphs and it’s a completely different mindset than how I approach things. I didn’t enjoy them. I also don’t like the oversell of content creation. Joji Davenport’s methods might work now…but is their method going to work in a year? Three years? Five? And what kind of life does he have — or is it always about going to the next sale, and the next, and the next?
It’s funny because this mindset should appeal to me more than it does. I buy and sell a lot of cards. I have been trying to think about the “seasons” of selling lately. Recently I have been selling a lot of cards from players who were in the baseball World Series, and starting to step up on football cards because it’s the middle of football season and soon it will be playoff season. I’m figuring out that timing can be a big factor with certain types of items. Maybe that’s obvious to most people, but never really how I approached things. It was often about, how can I make enough money to pay my bills and make up for the low pay for my shitty job? Fortunately I have gotten past that point.
I still love selling the cards after 21K items sold and counting because I know them so well. I understand why some cards are valuable and others aren’t. I know the market well enough that I can have a little fun along the way. I don’t have to maximize profit on every sale. I can give a repeat buyer a deal or run some auctions and make a little less profit. There are always going to be more cards to buy and sell .I can throw in a little bonus here and there, and sometimes I get a really happy message from a buyer. It makes selling fun for me. My main challenge this year has been keeping my inventory manageable and starting to enjoy my life a little bit. I’m still getting used to that. The challenges will change next year and in the years following as my business continues to grow and change, and I’m excited. I like change. I think you have to, in order to sell online.
Are the Amazon people having fun? I’d love to know the answer to that question, but I don’t think my buddy from Chicago has time for that conversation. He’d probably send me a link to some video. If I go back to the Chicago library sale next summer, and I’d really like to, I hope he’s there at the sale, too. It would be great to hang out with him and talk shop some more. Joji videos weren’t for me, but I liked seeing a different perspective on selling.
If he is there, I’ll make sure that I ask him directly: Is this fun to you? Do you enjoy this? How is your business going to change in the next year? Or is it just go to sale, scan until you hear the cha-ching, ship to Amazon, set prices according to some graphs, and do it all over again the next day?
Is that fun? Is that really fun to some people? I can’t imagine it is, but I’d love to know his answer.
Wow, what an incredible score on those cowboy boots! I assume the other boots will net you a nice profit as well putting your total somewhere in the vicinity of $1000. Is that the best haul you’ve found for free?
Who leaves nice cowboy boots out at the road for free? As Jay and Ryanne always used to say…we live in a country with more waste than anywhere else. Nice to see you saved something from the trash (or the elements) and made a nice profit on it too…
Interesting stories from your week, thanks for sharing them. I haven’t run a markdown sale in a long time, but a few years ago when my store was much larger i used to run them every 6-8 weeks. Usually 20 to 30 percent off, sometimes 40 percent. What I found is that some weeks they are really successful and others not so much. So don’t let one good (or bad) week affect you too much.
Auctions are a fun trip. Those bidding wars are so rare, but fun to see.
You made me think that cranking up promoted listings for Black Friday week might be a really good idea. I promote at either 5% or 7.5% right now, but I might try a little experiment at 10% and see if that does anything. 10 percent! That seems like a crazy amount to pay in fees!!!
But this is the game of eBay now. No sense in romanticizing the past. Just have to adapt. And I’m not going to care about higher fees if I’m selling more.
This was a great post, a lot of interesting topics for discussion.
As far as sale prices go…what’s your floor as far as offer settings and running sale prices? Do you figure it out based on what you paid? Value compared to other sold listings? List price? These factors are what make this art as much as it is science.
I auto-decline offers below 60% of my BIN price, and when I send offers I usually do 20%. I get almost no responses at 15%.
I am thinking about running a little pre Black Friday markdown sale this week…I am saving my monthly auctions to end on cyber Monday on the off chance eBay runs a promotion this year. Maybe I will try 25% off markdown sale this week and see how that goes.
I think to myself sometimes…25% that’s a pretty big discount…then with fees we’re at like 40% off of “my price.” But we have to make these decisions sometimes! Do I want to hold out another month (or year) for the perfect buyer who wants to pay “my price” or sell now for a little less than my target price? It’s all about considering what your goals are.
Like you, I’m space limited and could use the cash. So I’ve been in sell mode. Or donate. Or lot up. Or trash. It’s easiest with the cards I sell on that consignment site because they’re not in my possession anymore and no shipping involved. Just slash the price until it sells.
But you’re comfortably over 1,000 items in your store now. So you have some wiggle room. You could run a significant sale (like 40% off) on a selection of your inventory (say 100 oldest items) and clear some space / make some cash that way. We talk a lot about the flexibility eBay provides (especially when life is busy) but the customization is nice too. Very easy to run different types of sales for however long you like.
I hope you have a great week of sales this week…at whatever discount you choose!
It’s refreshing? to see that even you can have a slow week! I know it’s pat of life in our store. Question: what percentage of your eBay inventory is trading cards vs other stuff. I wonder if you’ve been offloading your cards to that consignment company so your eBay store is becoming like most of ours: old weird stuff that’s long tail?
I also thought it was kind of refreshing to have such a slow week as well. It gave me some time to get myself organized and think ahead to next year without taking time away from enjoying my life.
Right now I have 50 out of about 400 listings which are weird long tail stuff outside of the trading cards category. Mostly media items. Less than I thought. It was much higher percentage of weird long tail stuff after my Chicago haul…but a lot of that haul is already sold, and I haven’t really been scavenging much outside of the trading cards I buy each week.
Actually, I have spent most of my reselling time on the trading card listings. Both eBay and the consignment site. With eBay, I have been focused on making my curated lots. I’ve been trying to do 20 or 30 new ones each week. I’ve figured out a good formula to make them. It really helps to include a card or two of players who are in the news — the hot new rookie or the old time player who recently passed away. I would say at least half of them sell to buyers who are in the same state as the team or their username relates to their fandom. Then after a few weeks, if they don’t sell, I send them to auction at 50% of my BIN price. If they still don’t sell, usually I’ll lower the price a few bucks. It’s a nice routine.
With the consignment site, they run a big Black Friday promo every year which leads to a lot of extra traffic on the site. To prepare, I’ve been repricing a few hundred cards each day and running progressive sales over the last few weeks. I’m at 50% off right now and will go 55% the rest of this week. It’s a bit daunting running that steep of a discount, but it’s working. I had about 15,000 cards in my port a month ago and now I’m down to 13,600. I’d love to get under 10,000 by the end of the year or even the end of the month. I’m holding off on sending new submissions for a few weeks because part of the promo this year is a discount on submission fees for the month of December. It should be a great month of buying and selling.
Nice to see you had such a strong week of sales. The end and relist is nice to get an immediate boost in sales in the first day or two after, but I’ve also seen a similar little boost in sales the next week or two. Definitely something to keep in mind with Black Friday coming up…even if eBay doesn’t run any promos (and they haven’t in a few years, so it’s not likely they will) there will be more people buying online that week than most other weeks. So may as well try every trick of the trade possible to boost sales right now — end and relist, run a sale, slash prices, run auctions.
Did you change your eBay username and store? Or have you always had multiple stores?
Good on you for getting those longtail items listed and sold! I have a few boxes of china (well, most of a set) from a summer thrift store haul. Too cheap and decent sell throughs, I had to go for it. I have a few more trading card monster box death piles to get through, then it’s on to the china and other weird stuff that I may or may not ever actually get interested in really selling. But it will be fun to try. Especially when things get slow and the weather is still cold in early Q1.
I hope this week’s sales are going better for you!
I was reading flipping reddit recently and someone mentioned how easy it is for resellers to start with books now. So much content related to it and easy to sell through Amazon FBA, so you don’t even really need to know shipping.
I’ve noticed the same at library sales and am re-evaluating how much time I will put into them in 2024. It’s often a lot of time spent coming and going and browsing for less than $100.
Maybe that means I will try to find my first auction! How did you find yours? Got any tips for a novice?
I’m an expert at bidding on eBay. My #1 tip by far is to use Gixen (or another bid sniping service, but Gixen gets the craig rex seal of approval) and my #2 is find big sellers (or small bad ones) who run auctions in your favorite categories. But I feel like I would become much more undisciplined at a live auction. At least the first few times.
I posted a reply to this thread last night with more sales from this haul, but the post seems to have disappeared. I saved it, so let’s try again.
Here is the rest of what I’ve sold so far from this big haul.
Igor Markevitch Deutsche Grammophon 21 CD box set
COGS $20, Gross $71.48, Net $45.07
George Szell Complete Columbia Album Collection 101 CD box set
COGS 50ish, Gross 191.23, Net 114.75
Sergiu Celibidache Complete DG and Decca 33 CD box set
COGS 20-40, Gross 204.98, Net 151.67
Sir Colin Davis The Symphonies RCA Red Seal 54 CD box set
I bought this set on the first day of the sale for $50. I was a little irritated with myself until it sold because I’m sure it would have been there on the half price day. But it sold full price.
COGS $50, Gross 174.58, Net 106.92
Herbert Von Karajan Complete EMI Recordings Volume 2 72 CD box set
COGS $40-60, Gross 173.99, Net 115.18
Martha Argerich Complete DG Recordings 48 CD box set
This box was damaged which lowered my profit quite a bit, but it didn’t look like shipping crush damage. I think it was damaged when it was donated, and I didn’t notice the damage while I was looking at it in Chicago. This was one of the items I bought through email from the bookshop, and I don’t think I ever touched those items, just took pictures of them to do my research on the way back to New Jersey.
COGS $25, Gross 107.68, Net 68.04
Leopold Stokowski Complete Phase 4 Decca 23 CD box set
COGS $25, Gross 294.69, Net 190.75
Quartetto Italiano Complete Decca Philips & DG 37 CD box set
COGS $25, Gross 263.73, Net 176.64
A Place to Call Home Complete Collection DVD box set
I love weird DVDs and usually I spend my book sale time looking for as many as I can find. But the DVDs donated to the sale were a joke compared to this incredible CD collection. Plus the DVDs were in a different room down a hallway. I snagged this set on half price day after filling up a big library trolley with CD box sets. Surprised no one grabbed this DVD set in that first hour while I was busy elsewhere, but it wasn’t a huge profit, so maybe that’s why.
COGS $10, Gross 64.18, Net 40.74
Glenn Gould Complete Columbia Album Collection USB stick
I saw a sign for this item in the CD room, but it was kept in another room which had a table with all the high-priced items. I overpaid slightly, but a few minutes research made it clear this would sell for $150 or more, and that’s what happened.
COGS $50, Gross 193.04, Net 126.03
Total net sales so far $2435.24
I still have a few items in my inventory from this haul, one $500ish box set (Arthur Grumiaux Complete Philips) and a few in the $50 to $150 range, plus a few odds and ends. Even if I only make another $200 profit from this stuff, I doubled the money I spent with the library. My profits from the book sale, my purchase from the bookshop and the card show paid for the whole vacation, hotels and trains and food and fun.
I have a few lessons learned from this experience. I’ll try and organize them in some way to put a final bow on this haul.
I am also attempting to pay more money for better items. It’s a hard habit to break as I have been sourcing from the $.99 rack for so long.
This is something I struggle with a lot as well. Thinking about sell through rate has helped me feel a lot more confident about what I purchase and what I pass up. I try and weigh each of these factors:
- How many sold listings in Terapeak (especially last 3 months) and how stable were the prices?
- How many active listings for this item, and do those have watchers?
- How fast do I expect the item to sell, and why do I expect it to sell fast or slow?
- How much profit margin am I making? (either in whole numbers of percentages)
- How excited will I be to list this item?
Usually this list can help me figure out what’s a buy and what isn’t, and thinking about these questions has helped me get a better idea of what I want my business to look like in 2024 and beyond.
Also, very interesting international shipping story. I ship direct to international customers (most of my packages are 8 ounces or less) and they are happy to get what they want without jumping through the hoops (and costs) of the Global Shipping Program or whatever it’s called these days. Every once in a while, I get a weird buyer like yours who asks too many questions and it makes nervous. But it usually works out. I hope your jeans make it safely to Sweden and the buyer can comfortably go outside soon. Ideally after they leave you a positive feedback.
