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We’re kind of powerless over who buys what when. The only power we have is what we list and how often we list.
The other power we have as sellers are the tools eBay gives us and our pricing strategy. It’s not as important as listing regularly and listing good items, but it does matter somewhat. I have been thinking about this a lot while repricing some of my oldest inventory. It is very rewarding to end a 0 watcher, 0 offer listing, cut the price by $10 or $20, sell similar and see that listing sell in the next day or week. I don’t think this is a good strategy for every item or every niche, and it’s not a substitute for listing new items, but it’s been a nice experiment while things are slow and probably something I will make time for every few months.
Since we don’t depend on eBay for our income anymore, we’re just listing items we find easily and are fun to us. We’re really testing the hypothesis of “what happens as eBay sellers if we don’t change”
I imagine you two will change and experiment eventually, if for no other reason than to get rid of some of your older stuff and make room for the new. It might take another new project or two before you get to that point, but you guys are due for a new project soon anyway!
Does the card market seem to still be full steam ahead? Or are buyers softening with the talk of recession?
On certain trading cards message board threads (the ones I avoid), this has been a weekly debate for the last year if not more and the discussion just goes in circles.
The market is definitely softer than the pandemic bubble peak of two years ago and probably softer than it was a year ago. From what I’ve read, prices on most high end cards ($5000 and up) are down slightly (maybe 10 to 25 percent?) and I would guess the same for prices on less valuable cards.
Most weeks, my eBay sales are down about 20% from last year in terms of number of items sold and overall dollars. But these seem like just normal ups and downs to me. If the high end card market starts to completely disappear, or the low end cards start going for pennies, then it would be time to worry.
And this year I started with the consignment selling, so my overall income is higher than last year even if eBay is a bit slower. Even though I’m as worried about the economy as everyone else, I expect my sales to continue to increase as I get more and more experience figuring out what to sell on which platform and how to maximize my time. eBay is becoming home for only the most unusual and special cards, or ones which I think will sell quickly, and the rest go to consignment. The overall market may be soft, but there are always buyers chasing those rare and special cards for a personal collection, and sometimes lowering the price by a few bucks or taking a slightly lower offer turns a watcher into a buyer.
I try and look at all of it like this: when you sell things online to make money, you’re at the mercy of change all the time. Sometimes it’s slow season. Other times it’s a change in your niche or eBay’s seller hub or your mail carrier or a million other things. You can build a successful eBay business by finding a system that works, sticking with it week after week and hoping nothing ever changes.
But what we buy, where we buy, what we sell and how we get the item to the buyer is always subject to change. It’s hard to stay one step ahead of possible changes because a lot of them (like slow sales or eBay’s many changes over the last few years) come out of nowhere. If you can anticipate the possibility that anything might change, you can be ready to zig or zag when everyone else is caught flat-footed, arguing on message boards about how much better eBay used to be.
I love the Smartwool socks so much (thanks Jay!) so I would love to know what kinds you have. I could use a few more pairs.
Thanks for the tip on this site, Ryanne. I had used a similar site a few years ago, but I don’t think it was as thorough as this one, which sent me straight to my state’s website. Using that link, I found a few accounts in the name of a relative (my mom) who passed away years ago. Within a few minutes, I received an email from the state with all the information I need to provide them to claim the accounts. I’m not sure how the claim process will go since I don’t have all the info they need, and I will probably have a hard time getting it, but it’s a few thousand dollars so it’s worth a try. What a surprise that this money exists at all, and it’s amazing to be able to find out about it so easily.
I listed nothing new this week for the first time in 5+ months, and instead spent a little while each day ending older listings, repricing and selling similar in batches of 50 to 100 items at a time.
At the beginning of the week, I was very selective in only ending items which were 6 months or older and had 0 or 1 watchers and no offers in the last year. I would end the items, sell similar with the bulk editor, drop the price by $10 and my minimum offer settings by the same amount. By the end of the week, I was ending, repricing and selling similar on most listings older than a few months, and sometimes I’d cut the price by $20 or even more.
I hadn’t done much in the way of end and sell similar, or any repricing, in about six months. I guess I was overdue because my sales were up almost $1000 on last week and about even with a year ago, which is better than it sounds because I had almost 1000 more items in my store a year ago and “feeding the beast” (aka new listings) took up a lot more of my time than it has this year.
I had a large order of about $500 which was mostly composed of $20 to 40 items with offers ranging from $15 to $30. From what I could tell, the buyer liked a few of my “newly” listed, newly repriced items, went digging through my store for more and sent offers on everything. I accepted every offer and they paid within a day. Truly the dream for any eBay seller.
It still would have been a nice week of sales even if that buyer never found my store. There were quite a few one off sales of ended and repriced items, including a few listings that were over a year old and hadn’t seen any offers in that time.
I have been pretty methodical about listing 5-10 items per day, every day, for the last six months. It was nice to take a break from that “grind” and still have a nice week of sales. The new bulk editor made the process of end and sell similar a breeze. It was much faster than the old bulk editor. I would definitely recommend trying this end, reprice and sell similar process if you haven’t, and especially something to keep in mind if you plan on taking a vacation but still want to keep the store active or want/need to take a break from creating new listings for a short time.
6/26/2022 – 7/2/2022
Total items in store: 2043 (down from 2091 last week)
Items sold: 64 (50 via best offer, 5 via seller initiated offer, 22 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $2953.11 (up 1% from one year ago)
Net sales: $2082.51 (down 1% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $46.14 (down 16% from one year ago)
Time spent searching through online auction listings for new trading cards inventory: 14 hours (up from 11 hours last week)
Highest price sold (net): $144.16 — Giancarlo Stanton 2010 Bowman 1/1 black printing plate rookie card
Giancarlo Stanton is one of the big home run hitting outfielders for the Yankees, who are having one of the best years in their storied history. This card is from when Stanton was coming up with his former team the Marlins and has the coveted rookie logo, but the real value is that a printing plate is used in the making of the card. While printing plates of lesser players regularly sell for $10 or less, the nicer ones with an autograph, jersey piece or simply a desirable card (like the Bowman rookie of a star Yankees player) can get up there in price.
A few years after this 2010 set was made, Stanton changed his name from Mike (his middle name and childhood name) to Giancarlo (his given name) after a trip to Europe. The name change is why I was able to acquire the card for a good price originally. Many fewer searches and listings for Mike Stanton than Giancarlo Stanton. I actually have another Mike Stanton printing plate from this set, and I’m sure it will find a good home sometime this summer if the Yankees continue winning with Stanton leading the way.
Lowest price sold (net): $11.35 — Ji-Hwan Bae Leaf Metal green autograph /10
One card of many from the large order. It was fascinating to see how this buyer selected the cards they were interested in, it was a real mix of players from different teams but they definitely had a certain type of autograph card they liked (lots of colorful ones with low serial numbers) and there was a clear focus on “undervalued” players who were either on the verge of making it to the big leagues or having a tough time right now but with the potential to do better in the future. There were a few items which didn’t fit this pattern (maybe for their personal collection?) but overall they seemed to have a similar buying mindset to my own.
I sent the buyer a pretty significant coupon, 30% off, in the hopes to entice them back to my store again in the future. I’ve had mixed results at best with the coupons. A few buyers really love them and come back to my store again and again with them, but the vast majority of my customers are one-off buyers and I get some repeat buyers who don’t use the coupon for whatever reason.
@maybel9 had a great post in last week’s thread about ending 10 to 20 items each week to sell similar. I haven’t done that since January, so I’m going to play around with it this week in small batches and will report back.
Thought I would make a separate post about this in case anyone is in need of some inspiration during another week of slow sales. I have tried a new experiment this week where I sorted my listings from oldest to newest, then filtered by price. Then bulk edit, end and sell similar any listings that were older than 2 months and had 0 to 2 watchers, or where I felt the price might be a little high.
So on Monday night I did $19.99 and $29.99 listings, end and sell similar on about 50 listings. On the $29.99 listings I dropped the price to $19.99. I wasn’t going to lower the $19.99 listings any further but I did drop my minimum offer to $10.
One of these listings sold for full price within a few hours, and I received offers on two others which went nowhere but, hey, at least they got an offer.
On Tuesday I did $39.99 listings which I ended and sold similar for $29.99. Again one sold right away, and another the next day through best offers.
I have seen less success with these items selling in the last few days as I’ve moved into end and sell similar on listings priced at $50 and up, but I had nice sales in my store overall. I have found that over the last few months, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays have tended to be my busiest, and I also have a 10% coupon running on all my listings right now. But I’m sure all the “new” listings have been helpful. This has also been a nice break for a few days from the usual listing grind. It will be interesting to see how many of these items sell over the next few weeks and months.
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I guess that’s what makes “corporations” so successful. They take a product/service, strip it of any one person, and build a system to repeat it again and again.
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That consistency of a corporation is a double edged sword, there’s nothing special about a Starbucks or ____ chain, it’s the same everywhere — but at least you know what you’re getting. They stick to their posted hours. Quality isn’t completely terrible if the chef takes a day off. I can’t say the same thing about many of the small restaurants in my town. It’s a very thin margin. I still give them my money as often as I can, and just try to learn their tendencies so that I have a good experience there. But I understand why so many people stick with chain restaurants.
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I plan on being aggressive with my coat pricing this fall and eventually liquidate with $9.99 auctions at the end of the year.
Congrats on 2000 listings. I am really curious to see how these auctions end up for you. I haven’t done auctions in quite some time, but every month I think about running a few just because I have the free listings available.
$9.99 was in the range of what I would use as minimum bid as well. Anything less and you risk only making a few bucks after fees. Every once in a while something gets bid up or you get a buyer who bids on multiple items, but mostly I found that auctions would seem like a good idea and the bidding was exciting, but about half the auctions in a batch wouldn’t get bids. Maybe my minimum bid was set too high or the right buyers just weren’t bidding that week.
Then I would go to package up all the auction wins and that was the worst part about it. It felt like my own little assembly line from hell. I used to do 500 auctions ending over the same weekend, so maybe if I ever do them again I won’t run quite as many.
The aggressive markdown strategy is a really good one. You might also see a boost with these slow selling items if you end some of the listings and sell similar, or if you add a public coupon to them. Especially since they’re taking up a lot of space compared to your other inventory.
Its fun to see you diversify and adapt how you sell. I think think has been our key to success over the past decade +. If you get stuck in the one way that worked once, then it’ll dry up fast.
I am coming up on one year of doing this full-time, no other jobs to pay my bills, and it’s amazing to look back on all the changes I’ve made over the last year. My eBay business is so different now. So many process improvements and experiments and it is really satisfying to make changes on the fly and see their impact within a few weeks or months. I think that some sellers want to stick to the same system forever, but it’s so important to adapt and change and find little advantages where we can.
The real challenge is building systems that are logical, practical, and can be taught…while keeping standards and quality high.
I understand why many businesses fail because the owners do everything and cant let go.
There is one restaurant in my small town that is like this. When the owner is there, he is always at the bar hovering and he is a real sourpuss with both customers and employees. The restaurant is a night and day difference when he’s not in the building. I would go there a lot more often if the owner would step back and let his employees do their jobs. Or if he was pleasant. The restaurant does seem to have enough systems in place (good food quality, outdoor dining during and after the pandemic, decent customer base) that I expect they will still be around in a few years. But it also wouldn’t surprise me at all if they suddenly close.
I am doing these numbers after enjoying today’s Too Good To Go surprise bag from the local coffee shop a short walk up the street in my small town. My bag contained two scones, two chocolate croissants and a small container of carrot sticks in some kind of sesame dressing, all for $3.99. I don’t eat a lot of sweets or carbs when I’m not obsessed with a new food waste app (thanks J&R, sincerely Craig Rex’s waistline). So I loved to see a savory, healthy snack in there. I can’t imagine the shops or the app make a ton of profit since prices are so low, but I hope everyone makes just enough that this app continues to be widely used.
I had a really nice experience at a library sale late last week as well, lots of good quality items and a very friendly staff. So it’s been a very positive week of a scavenging life even if eBay is still pretty slow.
In contrast to eBay, my consignment sales remain strong. This month was my third consecutive with over $6,000 in consignment sales and the last two months are very close to one another in terms of quantity of items sold and total dollars. Before you get too jealous, those numbers are gross, not net. My monthly profits have been about half that since I pay a fee every time a card is processed and added to my port, and I have sent in a few hundred cards every week for the last 3-4 months, so those $0.50 and $1 charges (sometimes more) really add up. 95% of the cards I’ve sent in over the last few months have been processed by this point, which means I won’t pay as much in processing fees in July but my sales will likely slow down. Stuff that is priced well sells very quickly on COMC, often within minutes. It’s a unique marketplace. Everyone in the trading card world is complaining about how slow sales are on every platform, but I wasn’t selling on consignment last year, so I’m really happy with my sales, and eBay still has its bursts of activity now and then.
@maybel9 had a great post in last week’s thread about ending 10 to 20 items each week to sell similar. I haven’t done that since January, so I’m going to play around with it this week in small batches and will report back.6/19/2022 – 6/25/2022
Total items in store: 2091 (down from 2123 last week)
Items sold: 34 (22 via best offer, 4 via seller initiated offer, 16 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $1880.83 (down 43% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1344.73 (down 45% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $55.32 (down 15% from one year ago)
Time spent searching through online auction listings for new trading cards inventory: 11 hours (down from 14 hours last week)
Highest price sold (net): $140.95 — Richard Mentor Johnson 2018 Historic Autographs cut signature
Richard Mentor Johnson was the ninth vice president. I don’t love a lot of the contemporary political trading card sets for a bunch of different reasons. But this oversized autographed “card” is a little piece of Americana. I paid about $50 and listed it for $250. I knew that this would be worth something in that range to the right collector. My buyer had sent an offer a few months back of $150, and I countered to no response. But after I put a 10% public coupon on all my listings last week, the buyer tried again with a $175 offer, and I wasn’t going to haggle over $10 or $20 when things are so slow.
Lowest price sold (net): $11.15 — Pete Pihos 1975 Fleer autograph PSA DNA authenticated
One of the mega card sellers whose auctions I look through every week (in fact that’s next up after I submit this post and drop off this weekend’s mail at the post office) ran a bunch of auctions last year with many multiples of the same item ending at the same day and time, or a day or two apart. I was fortunate enough to win a large quantity of these auctions for $2.27, $3.02, $4.26, prices like that. Every 3 or 4 weeks since, I’ve sold an autograph of Pete Pihos for $10 to $15. He is an old-time football player who made it to the Hall of Fame in 1970, but he’s not famous enough that I knew that before Googling. I’ve also had quite a few sales of autographs of Red Sox manager Bill Carrigan, and I sold my first signature of the civil rights leader Barbara Jordan this week on the Juneteenth holiday.
Since I had so many duplicates, I also sent some of these autographed items to sell through my consignment port though they sell much slowly there, even though they are also cross-posted to eBay. Before the last few months, I had only ever sold on eBay so it is really interesting to see what sells on different platforms.
I wonder how eBay will handle combined shipping on offers with immediate payment. What if a buyer wants to buy 2+ items from you? Do they have to pay shipping each time and then you refund them?
I would love to see eBay move towards a more streamlined offer system where a buyer can send one offer for multiple items and that is what the seller responds to instead of the current system of individual offers for individual items.
I think it would be smart for your store to end 10 or 20 listings of this type per day and sell similar.
I notice better views and more sales on the items I do this with.
This is a great point and so important to remember this time of year when things are so slow. I made a few threads last year to document my results with end and sell similar, where I experimented with ending listings that were months old and had no watchers. After I ended those and relisted them using sell similar, I typically saw a small boost in sales over the next few days and weeks. It was also a quick process even in large batches thanks to the bulk editor.
I haven’t tried end and sell similar recently, but this week I did send out coupons to buyer groups and saw three sales from it. We have so many options now to engage with interested buyers. It’s a different world from list it and forget it, but it’s also very rewarding to click a few buttons to send buyers a discount and actually get some sales from it. I wouldn’t spend hours a week sending offers to watchers, creating markdown sales or ending and relisting. But spend a few hours experimenting with these things in July, and you’ll likely see some positive results.
I have no clue why ebay didn’t swoop in and buy the service. It was a no-brainer! Instant $10-15 per month fee for sellers they could collect. With the new laws tightening down on tax evasion, ebay should ABSOLUTELY have a fully integrated book keeping service.
This is really one of those ideas that are so brilliant that I hope the eBay elves are out there reading this forum. Like you said, a true no-brainer. I would happily shell out $10 or $20 a month to type one COGS number into a form and have it spit out my true net profit.
I’m thinking I’ll just use ebay’s reporting for all my sales and fees. Then I’ll just manually fill out a spreadsheet from my credit card transaction history. The only pain is developing the discipline to do my book keeping either weekly or monthly to keep things straight. I really should just go ahead and do it weekly.
I also lack this discipline if it makes you feel any better. But I do basically what you do as far as using eBay’s reports for fees and sales. They’re basically perfect for tax purposes now that they run from the beginning of the month to the end. Last year, the “monthly” fees would start on the 15th and end on the 14th. I also buy almost all my inventory online and I pay through Paypal which provides a nice, tidy form every year with all my transactions. So that simplifies the end of year bookkeeping process quite a bit as well.
I don’t know why I’ve never really noticed the summer slowdown before, but it is really jumping out at me this year. Maybe it’s because I’m listing so much more this year? I built up this flawed belief that I would have $1k+ weeks every week of the year. WRONG!
J&R talked often about how there’s a point you want to hit with your store so it becomes more than just an occasional thing where you’re selling the odd good find from where you source, or the stuff in your closet, and you can keep the pipeline of sales flowing — just get to 500 items, or 1000. That’s a big milestone for a lot of eBay sellers and it’s really hard to figure out what to buy, where to buy it and how to sell it in a way that keeps sales steady.
I think at the point where you and I are at, around 2000 items, the patterns from week to week and month to month become a little more predictable and you can experiment more freely in different categories like you’re doing. There is probably another point, maybe at around 3500 items, where you really need an employee and some good storage to keep things humming along.
The last two years have also been unusual from the standpoint of public health and human behavior, so it makes sense that people’s attention is on going out to places and not necessarily buying things on eBay. But if this slowdown is comparable to pre-COVID slowdowns, which I think it is, then the holiday season should lead to a nice boost in sales across the board. And all your hard work listing will pay off then!
Love your new focus on media items, a lot of those LPs are a nice score even in used condition since they’re just the right type of item for someone to casually drop $10 to $30 on because they need it right now and there aren’t a million other copies available. Probably half of my trading card sales are that sort of item.
How carefully are you going over condition of each LP, or do you just give each a quick play test, one or two songs, and that’s that?
