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I hope so. We lost out on over $100 this week because buyers didn’t have to pay immediately. eBay loses out on their cut too.
I have a feeling these types of buyers simply won’t make offers going forward. Will this mean less offers submitted overall? Maybe, but I think overall it’s a step in the right direction to require payment after submitting offers, as long as it remains optional for sellers like GSP.
If eBay ever required immediate payment on auction items, this would be a full-on disaster in the trading cards niche which functions heavily around large sellers who list thousands of auctions every week. Clever buyers save a lot of money off the “hammer price” with a combined shipping rate on 10 or 20 or 40 auction wins over the span of a few days up to a week. I doubt this would ever happen under the current team running eBay, since most of their new features and innovations have seemed to be reasonable and fairly common sense improvements. But who knows what the future could hold.
This past weekend was a microcosm of how slow things are right now. I sold one $20 item on Friday, the upside being I had listed it just a few days before that and my COGS was $0. Then on Saturday, all morning and afternoon into the evening…no sales, no offers, not even a message with an “offer” that’s 1/10th of my BIN price!
I try and treat Saturdays like a true day off and if I spend any time on eBay at all, it’s maybe an hour doing something that I really wanted to get done that week but didn’t have the time for. But the silence rattled me a little bit, so I spent a few extra hours working on Saturday night. I added a few more new listings than I usually do and sent about 75 offers to watchers. Within an hour of doing all that, I received a $30 offer on a $40 item which I accepted, a watcher accepted my 15% offer on an $80 listing and then I received a $100 offer on a $150 item which I couldn’t click accept on fast enough. This all probably would have happened without putting in that extra time, but I’m glad for the sales. Yesterday (Sunday) was similar in terms of activity.
eBay always makes more sense when you look at the bigger picture. It won’t remain this slow forever. In the meantime, I have plenty more low COGS items to get photographed and listed. Nothing glamorous, but this is the work that will pay off six months or a year down the line. I wish you all good luck this week with whatever tasks you’ve been putting off recently. May we all find the motivation in these times of slow sales!
6/12/2022 – 6/18/2022
Total items in store: 2123 (down from 2128 last week)
Items sold: 38 (26 via best offer, 6 via seller initiated offer, 17 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $2107.40 (down 33% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1502.99 (down 32% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $55.46 (up 35% from one year ago)
Time spent searching through online auction listings for new trading cards inventory: 14 hours (up from 13 hours last week) — because it’s so slow, I plan to cut down on this time this week. let’s see if I actually stick to that!
Highest price sold (net): $211.37 — Saquon Barkley gold prizm RC /10
This was my second experience sending an item to eBay’s new trading card authentication program. If you’re not familiar, a few months ago eBay required that sales of certain individual sports cards (not graded, over $250) are sent to a third party authenticator (a large grading company) to confirm their condition before going to the buyer. I know this program is used in other categories as well. Seems kind of unnecessary to me considering eBay’s Money Back Guarantee, but maybe this will help some buyers with deep pockets and little knowledge of expensive cards. The card was sent to an address in Florida and a few days later, it will get reshipped to the buyer at no additional cost to either buyer or seller.
Lowest price sold (net): $10.46 — Jordan Poyer autograph rookie /225
This buyer sent me a message about how happy they were that I accepted their offer, since their son was going to a sports camp hosted by this player, so I sent them a few cards of players from their favorite team. They also said “their friend” was interested in another card in my store, if only I could cut the price in half and give them 1000 details about the card’s condition, which is the point when I stopped responding. Nothing personal, buyer’s friend.
I really appreciate reading about your expertise even though it’s different than mine and following your selling model which is similar to mine–cherry picking from mega sellers and shuttling certain items off to consignments.
I’ve gotten so much joy from this podcast and learned so much from this community over the years that I feel like the least I can do is share my knowledge with all of you. I didn’t fully realize how much I actually knew about this niche until I started posting here.
I’m confident that my knowledge will serve some of you well scavenging out in the wild, just like what I’ve learned about Americana and Mid Century Modern items will come in handy for me at some point. I’m not selling that kind of stuff now, but in 5 years, who knows. And there are so many modern trading cards produced every year that some of them will sneak out into the world at bargain prices. A little bit of knowledge can go a long way with cards, and a lot of other niches.
I think that cherry picking from mega sellers and smaller sellers is the present and future of scavenging. We’ve already seen the widespread increase of prices at most thrift stores, and so many people whose full-time grind is to buy every good item from the thrift store as soon as it hits the shelf. With FB Marketplace, OfferUp, Mercari, etc a way of life for a lot of people, younger and older, I’m not sure how prevalent yard sales and estate sales with good, quality items will be in 5 or 10 years. But there have always been bargains to be found from eBay sellers who don’t know what they have, or don’t care about maximizing price, or make mistakes in their listings. I assume those bargains will continue as long as eBay resembles its current form — which for our sake I hope is a very long time!
Wow, you’re really going all in on that consignment, and it seems to be working for you. Didn’t you have over 3000 items in your store just a few months ago?
I had about 3500 listings at my very peak. But I built my store with a lot of $3 and under purchases that I would list for $10 or $20. Probably 1000 or more of the 3500 listings fell into that category, and they would sell once in a while. But I was also running out of inventory space since I live in a pretty small apartment. One individual card is small, but thousands (plus all their supplies) start to take up room very quickly.
The consignment company I use (COMC) ran a promotional sale on their fees late last year. I had used their COMC to buy individual cards very occasionally over the years, but I had never sold on there. The occasional card that I had bought at a bargain price and then relisted, but that was it. But I sent in my first few dozen cards because of the fee promo and lack of space. This led to about $400 in sales on COMC last December, and I was surprised to see how quickly a few items sold (within minutes) and nice sale prices for some other items. Especially cards from $5 to $20. I had a hunch if I scaled up that this pattern would continue, and it mostly has.
There has been a bit of a learning curve. Not everything is a perfect fit to sell on COMC since their listings are created using a catalog, and the info in the listing titles is not always what a buyer would search for. Also, fees are high enough that any card which would sell for $1 or less isn’t worth sending in, at least not until they run another promotion on fees. But most of the new inventory I buy goes directly to COMC. I have more space, and free time, and a lot of ideas for other changes I can make going forward. Really all the things we are striving for in this crazy pursuit.
I haven’t yet seen much of a decline in my month over month sales on eBay, even though I’m down to 2000 listings. I think it helps a lot that I am still listing 5 new items almost every day and I have a better eye now than I did a year ago. I could probably stand to do another pass through my inventory over the next few weeks. There are still probably 200 (or more) listings in my store with no watchers and few to no offers which might be a better fit to sell on COMC.
The vast majority of my counter offers go on deaf ears anyway, but every once and a while that low-baller is just fishing and will snatch up my 25% off counter offer. Perhaps they would have made another higher offer anyway, but you never know. You have a much larger store than I do, so I can imagine that shutting down some of the noise could be helpful.
I’ve found that regardless of offer settings, there are some eBay users whose negotiation tactic is the message “what’s your lowest price.” Usually, if they send an offer before their message, the offers are less than 50% of my buy it now price and sometimes as low as 10%. I don’t ever reply to these messages and I really wish eBay offered the ability to filter them into a spam folder based on message content. Same goes for users trying to get us to sell off eBay. But the auto decline setting is better than nothing.
I have taken a few offers at or below 50% recently as well. Usually it is stuff that has been in my inventory for a year or longer, and my initial price was probably a bit too high.
I started doing Promoted Listings on all my listings about a month ago, after eBay sent me a 75% off fees promo offer and it led to a nice bump in sales. I was skeptical that would continue, but about 40% of my sales in the last month have come from promoted listings. I promote every listing, but I have noticed that items which have many other similar listings are more likely to sell via a buyer clicking on the promoted listing.
I will happily continue to pay 2% — and might even pay more — if it means these types of items sell faster, even if I don’t fully understand why.
I had the inclination to lower prices and offer settings on about 50 of my higher priced listings yesterday, and wouldn’t you know it, I had more sales yesterday and today than the last three days combined. None of the items that were revised, but that doesn’t really matter to me as long as things are selling.
But maybe that is just a coincidence. Looking back at my monthly numbers, it seems that Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays have been consistently busier. Especially since June 1st.
Not sure if this is a fluke, a trend or specific to the types of items I sell, but I figured I’d share anyway. Anything to get an edge when things are as slow as they have been.
I did see that story, the father and son are from Akron, Ohio and their local news site had a nice article on them.
One thing that is missing from both articles is the cost of the original box, which was at least $50 for the smallest boxes you can get at Walmart and $250 or higher for the larger boxes that are typically sold at more traditional card shops. Modern cards aren’t cheap!
But the upside is that if you hit the one-in-a-million card, like these two did, there are no shortage of high rollers out there who don’t think twice about spending thousands on a specific desirable card in the hopes of selling it in the future after the value’s increased further.
I hope they put some of that money away for his future! Opening packs is how most collectors have their fun, but it’s a losing bet most of the time.
Hi @pikapopblog
Your general eBay knowledge and gut instinct is right on the money with the possible value of these cards. In most cases, cards from the 1980s until 1995 or so aren’t worth much money, regardless of which sets, how many cards you might have, or how nice the quality of the cards appears. There are a few exceptions, but for the typical scavenger or someone who knows someone who kept cards from the 80s and 90s in a shoebox in their closet, it’s a good rule of thumb answer.
The biggest reason is overproduction. There were millions and millions of cards printed in the 80s and 90s every year. The reason was that people had started to see the value in older cards, so the thinking was it’s the cards themselves that must have had value. Make more and everyone (manufacturers, collectors, dealers) gets rich!
Of course, that’s not how supply and demand work. Almost every set, and individual card, from that era, were printed in such huge numbers that the value of everything went down. It wasn’t the cards from the 1960s themselves that were really valuable. It was the fact that so few of them survived kids’ bicycle spokes and card flipping games in good condition. This wasn’t the case with 80s and 90s cards (and many other collectibles) because everyone’s mom or grandma (mine too) told them their cards might be worth something someday, so take care of them.
The trading card industry solved this problem in the mid 1990s with higher quality cards and artificial scarcity. There are still millions and millions of cards printed annually, but now there are hundreds of different sets and designs and ways in which the manufacturers have created cards with unique attributes (autographs, limited insert designs, etc) and scarcity. For example, one of the most popular current insert cards is Panini’s cartoonish Kaboom! cards which are only released as rare inserts in one or two sets for each sport, only produced for the best players and these sets have had a nice following for at least five or six years. This is not Panini’s nicest or most desirable type of card, it’s one of many different Panini inserts that collectors and flippers chase after, and the prices of Kaboom! cards reflect both high demand and limited quantity. The same goes for cards from the other manufacturers. Modern card collectors value certain features like an autograph or unique serial number, and the quality of set and player, and since 1980s and 1990s cards have none of these, on top of being overproduced, their value just isn’t there.
If you have a decent quality trading card binder with the cards held in thin plastic pages with an Ultra Pro hologram on the left side of the page, there is more value in the binder and pages than in the cards themselves. Maybe $10 to $15 on a good day? But these types of items are very long-tail and it’s really hard to differentiate them from hundreds of similar listings.
I should also add that Classic Best was basically like a store brand version of trading cards. They only made cards from 1987 to 1994 and the cards were generally pretty low quality. Companies like Topps and Leaf have been involved in trading cards since the 1940s and 1950s, and more recent companies like Upper Deck used much more innovation and higher quality printing techniques. Not that you’d be sitting on a goldmine if it was a binder of 1992 Topps instead of 1992 Classic, but figured I’d mention it anyway.
Had mostly low-dollar sales again this week, but my week was saved by a sale of an 1930’s Art Deco lamp shade for $350. I was originally asking $650 but with things being so slow I accepted an offer.
You have such an amazing eye for these types of vintage items. I don’t know what separates a $10 lamp shade from a $100 lamp shade from $350 and up, and probably never will, but I know quality when I see it. What a gorgeous piece.
I have been fiddling with lower offer settings as well. I’m starting to think that auto decline offers below 50% of asking price is the right setting for low $$ ($25 and under) and high $$ (for me, it’s $150 and up) items. This avoids the lowballers, but decent offers still get through.
I always think about things like this when sellers talk about how slow their sales are. No doubt, things are slow right now and probably will be for a while. But we have so many options now to engage with interested buyers, tweak prices and promote our listings. It is hard to do those things when there’s no immediate boost in sales, but things won’t be slow forever.
I would have loved to see an organic vegetable store in my choices! A lot of bakeries and chain bagel shops in South Jersey’s Too Good to Go, at least for now. I usually cook at home and eat pretty healthy so this was a splurge.
I was able to make reservation for my pickups the same day, but in the future I will look at my options the day before. Just looking through the Too Good to Go reddit that @Jay linked, the best deals sell out in minutes. No surprise since you get a good amount of food for $3 to $7 and depending on what you get, you may be able to freeze some of it.
Bakery was actually a “bread and pizza bakery” and gave a huge box of sicilian pizza slices, at least 15 total.
Deli was a whole italian hoagie with lettuce and tomato and mayo, a pint of rice pudding and a few prepackaged items (snack cake, beef jerky).
Not bad for $12 total! I will keep updating as I try different places.
This was a slower week than usual for me on eBay, but that’s to be expected this time of year. There will be weeks where the buyers just aren’t buying no matter how many offers you send or new listings you create.
But there are other elements to this life beyond your net sales. I continued to purge and organize my listed trading card inventory and boxes of bulk cards to sell on consignment. I have cleared 3/4 of one of my 4 shelf units over the last few months. I am getting some old death pile items listed, and my consignment sales have become a nice, secondary income stream which has settled around $2000 profit per month for the last two months. It will be interesting to see if that remains steady or improves. I have been sending 90% of the new inventory I purchase through online auctions directly to consignment, and I expect that to continue going forward.
Changing my process flow for new inventory has freed me up to think more about how I want to spend my time and what other changes I can make. I have some other ideas for the next few months and beyond, and I really enjoy seeing them through from concept to actually affecting my business and day to day life. It makes this exciting even on slow weeks.
For now, I have returned to one of my earliest scavenging loves, library sales. I have hit four different sales in the last five weeks and spent about $200 total (probably less) to bring home dozens of interesting books, magazines, CDs and DVDs. It’s been a few years since I’ve regularly listed these sorts of items and it will be a fun project for the next rainy weekend(s) or when the weather gets colder.
I have two Too Good To Go pickups scheduled this evening from local businesses (one bakery and one deli) and will report back tomorrow with the goods. I spent a lot of time cooking this weekend (another benefit of this life), but I don’t have any scavenging plans for this week and Too Good To Go kind of scratches that itch for me.
6/5/2022 – 6/11/2022
Total items in store: 2128 (up from 2118 last week)
Items sold: 41 (30 via best offer, 4 via seller initiated offer, 20 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $1901.38 (down 37% from one year ago)
Net sales: 1298.60 (down 39% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $46.38 (up 7% from one year ago)
Time spent searching through online auction listings for new trading cards inventory: 13 hours (down from 13.5 hours last week)
Highest price sold (net): $82.94 — Malik Monk Panini Instant autograph rookie #2/5
This card was part of a large sale to one buyer last Saturday and Sunday, 20+ items which totaled nearly $1000 (gross) and $500 (net). I rarely get these types of high roller buyers, more often it’s 2 or 3 $20 items in one purchase, but build up your inventory enough and sometimes the unexpected will happen. Very exciting and nerve-wracking. I couldn’t resist checking the tracking all week long.
It will be interesting to see if the buyer returns to my store again. I really went the extra mile with packaging and adding some bonus freebies that I thought they’d enjoy based on which cards they purchased. I’d love to know their story, especially what their card budget is and which cards are “investments” versus their collection. Some buyers love to share this information, and it feeds my own enthusiasm for buying and selling all these cards.
Lowest price sold (net): $11.03 — Jamal Agnew Panini Contenders rookie ticket autograph
These are always my favorite kinds of sales — $1.63 into $11.03. An autographed rookie card of the Jacksonville Jaguars return specialist and backup wide receiver, plucked from one auction out of 20,000 listed every week by one of the biggest card sellers.
Sometimes card values go up and down for logical reasons, usually the player improves or becomes more popular. But these types of sales aren’t like that. This was knowing why something has value (the player is not a star performer but a fan favorite and only has cards in a few sets), and just wait for the right buyer (no surprise, located in Florida). Bargains like this are always out there. Our job is to go and find them.
Love the story about the photography equipment and everything that came along with it. A great reminder to always ask questions if we think there might be value there. Sometimes employees have a lot of discretion to sweeten a deal and get something sold. I can’t help but wonder if you hemmed and hawed for a few more minutes what else she might have thrown in to close the sale!
Wow, that lacquer box you sold is really beautiful! It reminds me a lot of the matryoshka dolls that my mom had on the bedroom mantle growing up. I wonder whatever happened to them…
I’m assuming you knew this was worth something immediately since you paid $58 for it. What distinguishes your lacquer box from one like this which only sold for $60 and is also signed, dated, etc?
PS – I hope your buyer of the Topps Finest basketball cards was happy with their cards. I took a look at your sold listing after your post in last week’s thread, and the listing was really well done. If you sell any more cards in the future, and need any shipping or storage supplies, please let me know. I’ve got almost every type of sleeve and case and envelope, and it would make me really happy to help out a fellow scavenger.
