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I think most card buyers these days do it in one of three ways:
1. Join box breaks, which are where the breaker opens x boxes (usually however many in a case) of the same product on stream and you buy (or bid on) the teams (or players) you want and whatever gets pulled of your team gets sent to you. I’ve never joined a break but almost everyone I’ve run into, if they know something about modern cards, they know about breaks. I think a lot of people who are into collecting memorabilia or playing fantasy sports fall into this category. Casual buyers and gamblers.
2. Buy boxes and open them to find what cards are inside, but this has become really expensive as you know. The best boxes are $1000 and up for a few cards, and the “quality” sets (not even high-end, like mid) are $250 and higher for one box of 10-20 packs. Even the junk boxes of undesirable sets in Target (which give you a miniscule chance of hitting autographs or anything cool — they’re almost all base cards) are $20-$30 each. As recently as five years ago, these boxes were $10 and you could get them on clearance sometimes for $5. But the pandemic put an end to all that. These are the high rollers.
3. Buy singles on eBay (plus other sites and social media). This is my game as you know. But not everyone has the time (or desire) to search auctions for the best bargains, or like me they hate social media. But buying individual cards can add up real quickly in another way, since shipping in a 4 oz bubble mailer is $4 to $5 these days. There’s eBay standard envelope (and sub $20 people use it all the time), but if a card’s worth about $10 or more to you, you really want it in a bubble mailer with a little cardboard for protection.
I think that’s how I’ve found my niche. I settled on 10 cards (which comes in just under 8 oz most of the time) shipped for a flat rate of $4.99 and I’ve been taking the time recently to research each team for a few minutes before I make the lot. So I’m not including a card of the player who just got sent to the minors or got into a fight with the coach and now everyone including the fans hates them. I scan every card in the lot, 4 scans (2 groups of 5 cards, front and back), which I think helps them sell as well. My buyers know what they’re getting. A lot of amateur hour sellers (and even some of the bigger ones) get sloppy when listing lots of cards (1 far away picture, half the cards not pictured) but my listings are much more professional looking.
But it’s always about quality first and foremost. I could put ten junk cards in the lots and they would never sell, or ten cards which sell $20 each and get immediate sales. I’m starting to find the right balance of the types of cards to put in the lots, so they are more likely to sell fast. And then it’s on to the next one.
Quiet in the thread this week. I hope everyone is enjoying the last days of summer.
I have been reflecting a lot over the last few weeks about how different my business is now compared to two years ago when I started doing this full-time. Three of the biggest changes:
1. My store is much smaller now (max 500 items compared to 2500 and more) with much more diversity. My year over year eBay sales are down, but not anywhere close to 1/5 of where they were. My overall income is up because most of my trading card singles have been moved to my consignment port. They used to be my entire store. Trading card singles are still the leader in my store most weeks, but not always. I have a much better sense of what cards will sell quickly and a lot less attachment to needing the perfect buyer to come along and pay my BIN price or close to it. It is a lot less pressure and more fun this way.
2. My inventory is much more organized. I put in a lot of time and effort into that over the last few months, and it was a massive project which was hugely rewarding. Recognizing that I’m just not that interested in finding and listing $10 items, and then actually donating them, was a huge step. So was making flat rate boxes of different types and seeing them sell. There is something very cathartic about the 10 minute walk I make to the post office and I enjoy it a lot more with a bin full of small packages (trading cards) and a few big boxes. That’s how I like my outgoing mail to look, always.
3. I have developed a lot more confidence and willingness to take chances. Sometimes this meant losing a few bucks to learn about something new or learn how to do better research! I really couldn’t afford that when I started scavenging years ago and there was a period the last few years where I was all-in on trading cards, so it didn’t make a lot of sense to spend time on other areas. But I can afford to branch out now, and I love to learn about new things, so that’s what I’ve been doing. Really this isn’t only about flipping but in my life. The next few years are going to get really interesting.
It’s amazing how quickly you can make massive changes to your flipping business when tiny changes happen so slowly within most organizations. I’m energized and excited for Q4 and beyond.
I had slow sales last week, but I’m running my auctions twice a month now so that’s why so few items sold. Next week’s numbers are going to look a lot better.
8/13/2023 to 8/19/2023
Items sold: 16 (6 via best offer, 6 via seller initiated offer, 7 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $941.12 (down 72% from one year ago)
Net sales: $588.42 (down 74% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $58.82 (down 33% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $151.67 — Sergiu Celibidache Complete DG and Decca 33 CD box set
This was one of the buys from my big haul in Chicago. Making a post about that soon and I’ll crunch all the numbers in detail. Not to spoil too much, but I had some nice sales. I am used to the trading card market, which is irrational in many ways, but music collectors are also willing to spend.
Lowest price sold (net): $11.33 — Vegas Golden Knights 10 card hockey cards lot
I have focused a lot of energy on really perfecting these small card lots sorted by team as i can make them fairly easy with “leftovers” from my constant flow single and lot purchases. It took some work getting the system in place where I had everything organized and it wasn’t taking up nine shelves and boxes on the floor, then figuring out how to create the lots and listings without too much extra work, and finally determining what cards will make the lots sell consistently.
Now I’ve got a real system in place. When one lot sells, I package it up and sort out the cards for the next lot while I’ve got everything on the desk. Then I scan the new lot, put everything away and move onto the next team. I will usually do two at a time. I include three autographs and jerseys in each lot (these would typically sell for $1 to $3 each) and the rest of the cards are made up of the team’s top players and rookies. I have found that’s the best way for them to sell. The lots cost me $4 to $8 to make and I list them at $29.99 BIN/BO and sell them for $18 to $25. Every few weeks, I send all the team lots in my store to auction with a $14.99 starting bid and some more of them sell that way. If I want to clear space, and in the sports world there’s always the possibility of a player getting injured or traded, I drop the BIN/BO price to $19.99 or I run an auction with $9.99 starting bid.
I had never used systems like this before. I have never been a very organized or methodical scavenger. But I wanted to try something new and knowing the market as I do, I felt like these type of small lots would sell well. It’s a little old school, more like how cards were bought and sold when I was a kid and everyone was about their collection and not just about the big flip with cards. I’ve sold over 100 of these small lots in the last 90 days, so that’s enough evidence for me that I have something here and keep putting in the work.
If we’re talking cross stitch, there is surprising money in some vintage pattern books and modern more artistic designs. Basically the stuff that you can’t find in a big chain hobby store. Plus these items are usually cheap out in the wild. Not quite $6 for a big, but cheap. Whoever priced that bag should do the pricing for everything.
Completely agree on the “fast dime” especially when you have a buck or two in the item and it’s small enough to ship easily or big enough to takes up significant space (whatever that means to you). Get it listed, get it sold, get something else in the queue.
I took a look at some of the other items you sold this week and I loved the sale of that Rolling Stones backstage pass. Hope you’ll post about it in next week’s thread, I’d love to know the story behind it. I like imagining the buyer’s collection with items like that; I assume in most cases that’s where those items eventually end up.
One of my biggest character defects is getting way too competitive so it was nice to see how you and the Amazon seller got along and co-existed as boxes came out. My blood pressure racing hearing about the boxes coming out. This is why I do better when I find caches that no one else notices.
Yeah, I also get those deep base urges to be an asshole. I’m generally not a competitive person in most areas but flipping has been my ticket out of poverty (or misery, take your pick) so it’s one area when I can get really fired up. I also hate aggressive behavior, so these sales often feel like a test of my patience. I skip them sometimes because I just can’t handle the bs.
When that second cart full of good quality items rolled out, the Amazon guy was on top of it right away and I realized I could either work with him or against him. I got lucky that he was a nice guy and it helped a lot that we were buying using different parameters. I wanted the rare stuff and he wanted the stuff with more robust Amazon sales data.
We exchanged info, so I will text him before I write my next post and find out how he did with the stuff he bought. And I won’t gloat too much, even if this is a place where I know everyone else would understand. Always trying to do better.
At a library sale I’d expect many more book scanning guys. Why do you think it was just you and that one other guy going all in?
I’m really not sure. I’d love to figure out the answer. Maybe it was something about Chicago or the midwest? Or because it was summer? Or in a city? I plan on testing some of these theories in the future. I have the time and flexibility and money to take some trips and make some memories now. But sometimes we have a fluke lucky find and I think this was mine for the year.
There was a third guy who went all-in because he bought all the notable trials books I was interested in, but he didn’t touch the music as far as I could tell and I was there most of Sunday. A lot of the stuff I bought does not do well on Amazon (found this out from my buddy who showed me the software he uses) and the prices were high, even with half off some of the stuff I bought was $50 or $100. I think a lot of book scanning people do the buy for $1 sell for $5 to $50 trick over and over again, especially with FBA where you’re shipping everything to Amazon for them to ship to the end buyer.
Plus these sets were bulky, you can probably fit 25 books in a box to ship to FBA versus one of these big box sets.
The library sale competitiveness is really an epidemic. I am going to take the Amtrak into NYC in a few weeks to check out a sale in Manhattan. As much for the laughs as the hope of finding any gems. I really think this haul was a once in a lifetime kind of thing.
I have lived right outside for Philly for about five years but never been to Berlin flea market! I grew up in the central part of the state so I always gravitate to Columbus. But I will check that out next time I have a weekend free. If only to go to the raw bar. Nothing like a good dozen oysters with a nice mignonette.
I love using public transit, only wish it was more widespread in the US. Chicago’s Ventra was great though. In addition to all of the scavenging, I was able to explore the city and the only Uber I took was to/from the library sale.
This weekend, I will add some more pictures to my flickr album of the trip and include the link in my next post early next week. From the first day when I spent $160 I had a few large boxes and that would have fit in my suitcase. But there was just too much stuff from the big haul on half price day. I had two boxes of books and small boxes and then probably a half-dozen large box sets, and the big sets were large (like 12″ x 12″ x 4″) and 10 to 15 pounds each. Plus the Bach set. So I shipped it all home. More about that adventure soon.
One of the most interesting things about stepping outside of my comfort zone like this was everything that I learned in the process. I will try different approaches the next time that I find a haul like this and see what comes of it. Nothing harmed by asking questions. I’m not sure that asking for a discount would have worked with this sale, in many ways they were frustratingly inflexible when I asked about discounts for buying in bulk, etc, but the quality of items more than made up for their inflexibility.
Taking pictures is something I’m going to start doing much more regularly when I’m considering a purchase or it makes sense to do so. Having those pictures of the items I was considering made my life so much easier for day 3 of the sale.
That’s a really good weekend of yard sales from where I’m sitting. Love both those backpacks and the boots. Really using your scavenging rules to grow your business in the best way!
I played baseball growing up, so the price of bats doesn’t surprise me all that much. But it’s still wild how much composite bats cost, even when they’re as well loved as the one you bought. With how common year-round athletics is now, I will be curious to see if that one sells soon or not until spring.
So these are the jeans I tried an auction on because I saw an identical pair in terapeak go for over $1k on bid. Other sellers told me the terapeak auction was likely a glitch and not real. There were no other comps higher than $70.
I read something somewhere about what this glitch might be — something like seller has a multi quantity listing, goes out of stock, then reups the listing with new items? I’m sure there are other scenarios where that can happen too. I think the $150 you took was a great sale.
I had to list some death pile stuff to clear off a shelf in my listed inventory shed. This has been sitting in a bin on a shelf for YEARS. Sold within a few days for $125 sent offer.
Good to know I’m not the only one who’s bought stuff and didn’t list it right away. For a while it was my scavenger’s shame. But you’ll get there eventually.
Do you remember where you got this bag from and what you paid for it? And what makes it so valuable? I’m guessing the design and size, but I don’t know anything about bags at all.
So 60+ more will sell $200+. I’m being fairly aggressive with pricing and offers to keep things moving. Multiple pairs I’ve had listed for $300-400 I’ve ended up selling for $200-$300.
Considering the size of your haul, I think this path makes a lot of sense. Getting to that breakeven point quickly is always a good goal. But you can get flexible depending on certain variables.
@Jay if you had purchased a haul like this with the storage you have in place, would you get aggressive with pricing (low end of sales history) or price everything high end of Terapeak & up and wait for that perfect buyer to come along?It’s an interesting question considering how most of the sales are $200+ and you might think, if someone’s spending $250+ on anything on eBay, is price really as much of a factor as it is with sub $50 items? But I think Retro’s experiment shows that a lot of buyers with deep pockets are more price sensitive than we might think, and my own experience with these types of items has shown that as well.
@Jay Here is my haul from the first day of the sale. I was going to post this immediately after my original post and then the internet went down in our area.
$50 Colin Davis The Symphonies 54 CD RCA Red Seal box set
$25 Hans Knappertsbusch Venias Records box set The Parsifal Recordings
$14 Sir Simon Rattle Leaving Home DVD set minus the box
$3 An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, leather bound Easton Press with gilt pages
approx $50 20 to 25 back issues of Ballet Review magazine
a handful of $2 DVDs with the most interesting being Nordic Dawn: Modernism’s Awakening in Finland
a handful of $2 books, mostly poetry books that I want to read first and then will lot up in a flat rate box
That would have been a decent haul on its own but there is obviously more to come.
My numbers this week are what sales look like with my store on time away and with half my tiny store inventory sent to auctions which didn’t end until August 7th. Next week’s numbers will be much, much better thanks to the auctions and a nice haul which I will post about shortly.
I’m planning to run two batches of auctions this month — one 7 day auction starting next Monday and one 10 day auction on the 31st ending on 9/10. I always start the opening bid at the absolute lowest I’ll take for the item (for me it’s usually 50% of my BIN) since auction results can be very random, but I like playing around with other variables. I have had a surprising amount of success selling books through auction in the last few months, and I’m curious if that will continue.
Likely this is my version of what Jay referred to as juicing in his post, we’ll see if the juice is worth the squeeze.
PS @Jay next time you two are in a mood to experiment, curious what end and sell similar on old listings would do for a 10,000 item store. Not sure if you did end and sell similar before your 50% sale or not. I’d recommend just on my experience sending unsold auctions back into my store inventory. Always get a few extra sales in that process. For reference, last night around 8 PM I sent about 200 unsold auctions back into my store as BIN/BO. I had two listings sell within in an hour, two more overnight and one more as I was writing this post, even though the same listings had all gone unsold (at a lower or similar opening bid price) a few days earlier. It’s nothing crazy, maybe $100 total, but that can often make the difference between a “good” week and a “bad” week. I think the explanation is fairly simple: different eyes on eBay at different times. Considering how eBay is your third (?) priority and how it takes mere seconds to end 200 items at a time, I’m confident this would juice your sales a bit here and there. Especially as we enter Q4 and people start really hunting for those weird, one-off items as holiday gifts or gifts for themselves. I’m sure there is a point of diminishing returns with this “trick” though I hesitate to call it a trick, I think it’s just adapting to eBay’s current algorithm. But with a store as large as yours, you could end and sell similar on your oldest 600 items every month and still not get every listing refreshed over the course of a year.
7/30/2023 to 8/5/2023
Items sold: 15 (6 via best offer, 7 via seller initiated offer, 13 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $671.45 (down 67% from one year ago)
Net sales: $327.94 (down 80% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $44.76 (down 17% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $126.16 — Najee Harris (Pittsburgh Steelers running back) autographed patch booklet rookie card #/49
I sold this for a 30% offer sent to watchers while my store was on time away. A little lower discount than I’d usually send out, but I wanted to make some sales while I was gone. I only paid about $30 for this card. I don’t remember all the specifics of the original listing but there was a pretty major error — wrong title or wrong picture or something. But it was from one of the big consignment sellers I buy from every week. They have so many listings that it’s more efficient and cost-effective to pick and ship the mistakes than to figure out what went wrong, how to fix the listing, notify the buyer, cancel the item, relist, etc.
Lowest price sold (net): $11.16 — Chase Vallot autographed game-used batting gloves
This player never made the pros, so this sale gives you a good idea what the floor is for an autographed memorabilia item without much significance. $10 or so. I paid about $5 for this a year or two ago, but I wouldn’t pay more than about $2 for an item like this now.
@Jay I love to see the results of experiments, good bad or ugly. I agree that it’s not exciting selling items for $10 no matter how you get to that sold price — buy it now for $10, 50% off sale or an auction with a $9.99 opening bid that only gets one bid.
But it’s nice getting those more expensive $100+ sales from price reductions and sales. Would the same stuff sell in six months or a year at its original higher price? Maybe! But I think there are a lot of instances where it is preferable to close the sale now and use the cash for something else. Especially for you and Ryanne, since you have other income streams which gives you a more freedom to experiment with eBay if you choose.
Love the new airbnb listing, the transformation is unreal and that coffee table is something else. I hope to come visit and explore the Luray area sometime in the next year or so. Everything you two are working on is a huge inspiration to me.
Two weeks worth of numbers for me this time around. I have a big scavenge of the week type post coming up soon which I can’t wait to share with everyone. Just finalizing one more piece of the deal before I post it up. It’s not related to sports or trading cards in any way, and I don’t think I would have had the confidence to make the deal if it weren’t for the conversations on these forums.
7/16/2023 to 7/22/2023
Items sold: 39 (18 via best offer, 15 via seller initiated offer, 25 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $1587.66 (down 40% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1044.65 (down 51% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $40.71 (down 18% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $60.96 — Domingo German (New York Yankees pitcher) Bowman Chrome 1st autograph
Lowest price sold (net): $9.75 — Dylan Carlson (St. Louis Cardinals) Leaf Flash autograph # to 25
7/23/2023 to 7/29/2023
Items sold: 27 (15 via best offer, 4 via seller initiated offer, 18 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $1196.09 (down 50% from one year ago)
Net sales: $831.82 (down 57% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $44.30 (down 20% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $126.47 — Amazing Spiderman 2011 Marvel Comic Cuts panel card #5/80
Lowest price sold (net): $11.16 — Stories from the Mines DVD (anthracite coal mining documentary)
I was on time away for the second half of the week of the 23rd, so I am really happy with these numbers. I sent a message to every buyer reminding them I could not ship until the middle of the following week and no one had a problem with it. In fact, about half of them sent messages telling me to enjoy the time off. So much of our online communication has become nonexistent or automated that I think it’s almost a nice surprise when you find out you’re dealing with another human being.
I’ve never dived into his details but I’ve never seen a direct correlation between the ways people futz with their store and sales. Or at least never seen evidence of huge jumps in sales for the odd ball stuff.
I don’t follow reselling content much at all, nothing has ever grabbed me in the way your podcast did, but I remembered reading that article at some point and then I found his eBay store after a little Googling. Based on the amount of feedback they receive, they’re moving at least 500 items a month in a 35,000 items store, and they definitely still use the end and sell similar technique. I sorted their store by age and 30 pages in, their oldest items are just eight days old. Talk about commitment to the process!
They had some items on sale too, but like you I question the logic of markdown sales. I think if you’re gonna do a sale, do it right after you’ve refreshed your inventory so you have a lot of newer listings that also show up as on sale. But I like sending offers to watchers directly ahead of running a sale.
When I do end and sell similar, I end 200 items at a time, then go into unsold items and sell similar, then I delete those items from my unsold once they’re back in my store. This way nothing gets lost or duplicated and the whole thing takes maybe two minutes. Seems like an easy process to train a helper on as well.
Fiddle around with prices and titles if you like. I do, but I have a smaller store now. But even if you make no changes to the listings, you’re likely to see a few sales right away from items showing up as new in interested buyers saved searches, and a few more sales in the days and weeks after as other interested buyers find the “new” items. I’ve had even more success as I’ve started to cut prices a little bit, but that’s more on $50 and up items.
