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I would bet this has happened with a large volume seller in almost every niche with very high end items. Something similar occurred late last year with one of the largest eBay card sellers, PWCC, which DailyRefinement mentions in passing at one point in the video.
The official reason PWCC was kicked off eBay was shill bidding (which is rampant in the card world, especially among consignment sellers) but the company/owner of PWCC are also complicit in working with “card doctors” who alter cards to receive higher grades, and there is tons of evidence demonstrating their involvement in this. The level of research and analysis to prove this card trimming is amazing, to the degree where the message board posters from Blowout Card Forums who were involved in the research earned the nickname BODA or “Blowout Detective Agency.”
https://www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1297767
Another similarity between PWCC and DailyRefinement: at the 2021 National card show, there was a lot of message board chatter about a possible FBI presence and investigation. In fact, there are articles about PWCC which have discussed FBI investigations going back to 2019. But nothing has come of it yet. In fact, PWCC has shifted auctions to their own website.
https://www.pwccmarketplace.com/weekly-auction
Most serious collectors and resellers (myself included) don’t deal with PWCC since their sale prices are extremely inflated compared to previous sale history, most likely because of continued shill bidding, and I have no doubt they are still selling altered and trimmed items without disclosing that.
But some sellers become so large that it’s impossible to keep up with every item. Or greed gets in the way and they don’t care until they break enough rules that eBay notices.
Many casual buyers don’t know any of this and just want an item for their collection, the hot deadstock sneakers or to buy stuff to start their own flipping business. And these large volume sellers end up with a lot of highly prized items just through sheer quantity of inventory. Others will never care, as demonstrated by PWCC’s continued existence and many of the YouTube comments on the DailyRefinement video in support of him as a seller. I’m skeptical that DailyRefinement will be able to pivot to a successful reselling business without eBay. But everyone in the card world has expected PWCC to fold and/or face criminal charges for a few years now, and it still hasn’t happened.
I rarely check the news, but happened to do so on Saturday morning and saw the headline about Haskins. I was out at the time, and by the time I got home less than an hour later, most of his cards in my inventory had already sold for full price. A few others had nice offers which would have been silly to decline.
I upgraded all the packages to priority mail and packaged everything real nicely and sent each buyer a few bonus cards too. Who knows why these buyers are purchasing at such inflated prices. But if it was out of nostalgia or emotion, hopefully when they receive their purchase, they feel a little happier.
This phenomenon is nothing new. It occurred after Kobe Bryant’s death as well as the deaths of other players. But I happened to have a good amount of Haskins cards since he was a top draft pick quarterback who was still finding his path to success in the pros. Basically the perfect recipe to get nice quality autographs and rookie cards for bargain prices, and double/triple my money a few months or a year or two later.
Unrelated to this post — once you receive your card lot purchases that you mentioned in last week’s thread, if you have any questions about what you have, let me know. You probably won’t find anything big — my experience with large lots of cards purchased online is that they’ve usually been picked over and all the good stuff is gone, or condition is terrible — but it will definitely be a learning experience regardless and build your knowledge base for the future. And that is one of my favorite things about scavenging.
It’s an interesting phenomenon. I am not a collector, but sell to them often so I can understand their mindset pretty well. But I am confused by people who pay inflated prices for an autograph or memorabilia after a celebrity dies.
I keep thinking about it from a scavenger’s mindset though. People (even smart people!) don’t always have a good sense of the value of things, especially their things, and spend money in ways that we as scavengers wouldn’t. I have some family members like this. They use the word “need” to describe an expensive purchase that is a luxury. But to them, it feels like a need, so they spend the money whether they have it or not.
I would bet that some of my Dwayne Haskins autographs buyers felt this way in those first few hours after news of the accident, as all his low-priced autographs and bargain priced cards were bought up rapidly.
I’m a night owl, so a late numbers thread feels like a good “excuse” to get a jump on my own numbers. My packages and SCAN form were ready to go this afternoon, too. Good start to my week!
I hope to take a short vacation by the end of the summer, and your experience is another piece of evidence that “Time Away” might slow down sales. It will be interesting to see if your eBay numbers tick upwards next week as your store returns to “normal” active status in the search algorithm. I think the old method of changing the handling time and messaging buyers is still the best way to approach a vacation or time away, as long as it’s feasible.
It makes me so happy to see that your coffee shop continued to flourish while you were away, and you had a nice equipment sale as well. Your businesses remain a huge inspiration.
4/3/2022 – 4/9/2022
Total items in store: 2373 (down from 2451) I am still listing every day, and still purging my inventory of low-dollar, slow-moving listings.
Items sold: 46 (23 via best offer, 4 via seller initiated offer)
Gross sales: $2649.31 (down 18% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1903.80 (down 19% from one year ago)
Lowest price sold (net): $11.16 — DeVante Parker 2015 autographed draft rookie card
DeVante Parker was traded to the Patriots last week, and no surprise that led to a few sales of his cards to New England addresses. I have been trying to find and list more low-dollar items which I think will sell quickly, and it’s still gratifying anytime one sells.
Highest price sold (net): $133.53 — Dwayne Haskins autographed jersey rookie card #05/14
I sold 6 autographed cards of Pittsburgh Steelers QB Dwayne Haskins on Saturday morning at full price, and another 2 later that day. Sadly, this was because Haskins died unexpectedly early Saturday morning in a highway accident. He was just 24 years old and had barely started his life, never mind his quarterback career.
My card inventory has been built on finding bargain cards. Once or twice I bought cards when sellers incorrectly spelled his name “Haskings” but mostly I found good deals because Haskins was finding his way in his pro career. He had been released from his original team (a bad fit) just one year into his career before catching on with Pittsburgh, where he was working to find his place in the lineup. Since Haskins was a 1st round draft pick from a top football school (Ohio State), I figured his card prices would rise eventually. I was correct about that, but (obviously) wrong about the reason why, and I felt sad as these sales rolled in one after the other on Saturday.
Part of those feelings were definitely existential. Seeing a person (especially a young person) die in a strange and unexpected way is always a reminder of our own mortality, and the people in our lives who we lost too early. The card market is also irrational around in how it responds to a death. Prices spike dramatically, especially for autographs, and then after a few weeks or months those prices (mostly) return to whatever normal was for that player. The exception is for players who had a limited number of autographs, but Haskins was a 2019 rookie and high draft pick quarterback. So, he had autographed cards of all types distributed across 40+ sets — some more valuable than others depending on quality of card and set, but significantly more autographs across the board than players who only had an autograph in one or two sets.
Some of these sales are undoubtedly a nostalgia factor or emotional purchases. But I’m just as sure that part of the spike in prices after a death is from people who are purely in it to profit off the tragedy. Obviously there are a lot bigger things to worry about than sellers who put RIP in their titles, but it’s still tacky to see it happening in real time. At least those sellers are late to the party as far as selling at the peak. And wasting valuable characters in their titles, as well.
One of many things that I love about selling on eBay is that with one search and a few clicks of a button, I was able to send a small donation to Haskins favorite charity. I’m usually cynical about how much donating money really helps, especially in small amounts. But it felt better than doing nothing.
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Extremely consistent sales between this week and last week, and this year and last year, even though I’ve moved a decent chunk of my card inventory to sell (mostly) hands-off via consignment and I’m not considering those sales in these numbers. It’s exciting to see these steady numbers.
3/27/2022 – 4/2/2022
Total items in store: 2451 (down from 2507)
Items sold: 48 (38 via best offer, 5 via seller initiated offer)
Gross sales: $2497.16 (down 9% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1757.23 (down 12% from one year ago)
Lowest price sold (net): $9.18 — Max Strus 2019 autographed rookie card
Max Strus has risen from obscurity to carve out a worthy role on the Miami Heat, so even his most basic rookie autographs will sell for a few bucks. I have five or six more of this same card ready to go as soon as one sells. I’ve been trying to focus my $25 and under card listings on items like this one which will sell quickly and I can acquire the card in large quantities so I can keep refreshing the listing with new pictures once one sells. It’s taken a few years of building knowledge about what sells quickly and what doesn’t, and it’s still a learning process. But I enjoy these sales.
Highest price sold (net): $103.33 — Za’Darius Smith 2018 Panini Instant 1/1 rookie card
Panini Instant cards are a direct result of the 21st century impacting card collecting. They are print to order cards sold directly on the manufacturer’s website, only for a few days or until they sell out, which for rare cards like this One of One is within seconds or minutes. Every manufacturer does a version of these kinds of cards. These cards are not typically as valuable as the rarest cards pulled directly from packs or boxes, but for players (like Za’Darius Smith) who rise from obscurity and don’t have many other rare cards, or rookie card, the Panini Instant 1/1 or autographed versions sell for nice amounts.
Other versions of these on-demand cards have a time-sensitive memento with them, like this card I sold a few months back with a piece of jersey from the NBA finals. I can understand why someone would pay up for that kind of card, especially since once they’re sold out on the manufacturer’s website, there’s no other way to purchase them except through eBay and other card selling sites and groups.
I upgraded this buyer’s package to priority mail (something I usually do for $75 and up anyway) when they sent me a message anxious about receiving their item within a certain timeframe, and they returned to my store this week with a $35 offer on a $50 listing which I happily accepted. Third time is almost never the charm with repeat buyers, but hopefully they’ll be back next week with another purchase.
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What a great thread. I am still in the “pay off debts” and “embrace owning my time” portion of the scavenging journey, and my hope is that my next few years will be filled with some much-needed exploring beyond the northeast. But there are a lot of interesting ideas in here for the future…
It’s interesting how many different ways we can get data from eBay about our buyers or about our sales that just wasn’t available to us even two years ago. Also how many different tools we have to engage buyers, like coupons, sending offers to watchers, etc. I really love it. But how to make best use of all this data and all these options?
There have been a few really helpful threads in these forums in the last six months or so and I wanted to link them for you or others who are interested in this topic and may not have seen them.
First and best of them is @popeyespostcards Ebay store experiments to improve sales. Lots of great ideas in there and great discussion. That thread is one of the best I’ve read as far as thinking about how to improve sales and manage your inventory once you’re over that 1,000 listings mark.
Next and more recent is @retro-treasures-wv Compelling evidence for listing every day. I think this is a key factor for anyone with an eBay store who is interested in using eBay’s search algorithm to their advantage — even if it means scheduling a few listings throughout the week, try and have a few new listings every day. I’ve been listing every day since the beginning of February and after two months, I’ve really seen a consistency in sales from day to day. In the past, I used to have 2-3 days a month where I would get no sales or only 1 or 2. But I haven’t had a day that’s been that slow in over a month.
I also created a few threads on ending and relisting older low-activity listings during eBay bucks promos — something which seems to add a little boost of a few extra sales here and there when you do it in enough quantity. lI haven’t done this in quite a while. Might be time to try again whenever eBay does the next bucks promo.
Of course, all the old podcast principles are still as important as ever. List good quality items consistently. Do your research on your prices, and if you have an item that’s really rare or special, list it high and wait for that one right buyer to come along even if it means waiting a year or longer. Don’t get too stressed out over any one sale, or return, or weird buyer message, slow day or even slow month.
Most of all: sell trash, be free!
@retro-treasures-wv (and maybe @julie-b as well)
Likely that you both already use these, but in case you don’t or if others aren’t aware — I’m a big fan of the USPS regional rate boxes. My link is to one specific size on the USPS website but there are a few other sizes available which you can order for free. Their shipping rate depends on the distance between you and the buyer. In some instances, they are a nice savings over the flat rate packaging. In other circumstances (like a buyer on the other side of the country), they may not be.
Obviously this isn’t a box you could use for long, skinny items, or very large items, but it might be helpful for some more regular sized items which you are sending Parcel Select or Priority Mail using your own packaging.
It was great when you could see a buyer’s purchase history.
There used to be so much “hidden info” available which was useful from a scavenging perspective, either finding good sellers to follow where you could get huge steals as a buyer, or seeing which items specific buyers were targeting to get a better idea what inventory to look for or what would sell. Now it seems a lot more like searching for a needle in haystack…on eBay at least. I suppose that sort of info is now more widely available if you scour YouTube and podcasts and blogs for eBay reselling content.
Remember when eBay showed the exact price people paid for items? Now, when someone makes an offer, it’s just the full price with a mark through.
If you use Terapeak for your searches, you can see the exact price someone paid even with a best offer on a fixed price listing. It used to only be available to store subscribers at or above a certain level (maybe basic?) but I think it’s free for all users now. There is a 24 hour lag, so items that sell today don’t show up until you run the search tomorrow. Terapeak also provides a full year of sales info which usually turns up some kind of data point for all but the rarest of rare items.
Could it be multi-quantity or variation listings? I remember seeing a small discrepancy between the two totals in the past when I had listings with more than one quantity of the item. I discontinued those types of listings at some point because there were occasional errors with the quantity being adjusted, maybe when the listing renewed or sold out? I don’t really remember.
I realized when checking these numbers that wow, I have sold a lot of items (17K), and also that it’s no longer possible to see who your followers are. Probably because of privacy reasons, same as why bidder IDs are masked. I used to waste some time looking at my followers (especially when the number went up or down) or other sellers followers, so for me personally it’s good that info is hidden.
I appreciate the tip. I am in New Jersey, so this would be quite a drive for me even if it wasn’t mostly stuff from the junk wax era of 1980s and early 90s that isn’t worth all that much. I actually made a trip like that maybe 3-4 years ago, when I was building up my store towards the magical 1000 listing mark. I won an eBay auction for someone’s entire collection. It wasn’t as large as most huge collection purchases, maybe 4-5 boxes worth which is a few thousand cards.
But this was the largest auction I had ever won — something like $300? In hindsight, it would have been cheaper to pay for FedEx shipping. But this was my first real scavenger adventure, and there were enough nice cards in the photos that I knew I would make a nice profit even with all the extra costs of a rental car and gas. I was afraid the cards would get damaged in shipping too. My eBay life is a lot less complicated now. Sometimes I romanticize those early days. It is often tedious scrolling through thousands of auctions every week looking for the gems and listing errors. But that is nothing compared to the stress of needing the $500 profit from one sale to pay my bills and pay for the next round of new inventory to keep the pipeline flowing.
–Do they have standards for what you can send in? I assume they don’t want cards that sell for common, lo quality cards.
COMC will pretty much accept almost any licensed trading cards, but the site’s been around for 10 years (maybe longer) so more common junk wax cards, like a 1991 Topps Ken Griffey Jr. have hundreds of copies available and it’s a race to the bottom in terms of price. Same goes for modern base cards, even of star players like this 2019 Panini Chronicles LeBron James base card which has hundreds of copies available, most at $2 or less and I doubt most of those will sell unless the seller drops their price to lowest.
The cards I send to COMC (and sell in my eBay store) are primarily ones with unique features, like an individual serial number, autograph or insert design. So they sell for higher prices and more quickly than cards with hundreds of copies available. Depending on the player and quality of card/set, often my copy is the only one available of the particular card on COMC or on eBay. Or maybe there are 1 or 2 other copies. My work is a matter of figuring out the right price using Terapeak and my own knowledge.
A lot of sellers on COMC (and eBay) have a habit of pricing their cards extremely high, 5 to 10 times above any sold listings of similar cards. I tend to go more on the lower end of sold listings, similar to how I approach eBay, where I’m usually aiming for 3 or 4 times. I price the really unusual cards very high and wait for the right buyer and perfect time to sell.
–Do they have a huge office complex with hundreds of people in cubicles listing all day long? How is that cost effective for them?
COMC handles the sorting, scanning and cataloging, and all I have to do is price the card. They handle shipping as well, but a good chunk of their transactions (maybe half?) are internal within the site — a user buys a card for a good deal and then reprices. So that’s not nearly as much work on their end. The beauty of the site from a collector’s standpoint is that you can hold your cards and ship them to you once you accumulate dozens or even hundreds, instead of buying one or two at a time.
Here is a short video from COMC’s YouTube which gets into how they process all the cards. It’s a few years old but I think the general process is the same. COMC has grown dramatically since that video was published, probably 5x growth in terms of users and the size of their warehouses. I don’t pay a ton of attention to the nitty gritty details about how they operate, but I know I’ve read that they have some automated sorting machines involved in the process. I’m sure it would make for a fascinating documentary like on a “How It’s Made” type of show.
I have slightly over 3000 cards in my COMC port, and they add more every day since I have a few thousand more cards in the processing queue. Because my prices are reasonable, I sell 10 to 20 cards daily and often get to about $100 in sales. But I’m a very small seller in terms of the site as a whole. The biggest users have 100,000 cards and some have a million or more. It’s pretty easy to understand how that accumulation can happen. There are dozens of new sets in every sport each year, and modern cards with unique serial numbers and the chase for the top “hit” insert or rookie have been going on to some degree since the late 1990s. If I keep up my normal buying habits, and keep sending in boxes every week, I will probably end up with 10,000 cards in my port by this time next year. That’s really amazing now that I typed it out, especially thinking back to how long it took me to build up to 500 and 1000 listing in my eBay store!
COMC takes about 5% out of every sale on the site or on eBay, plus $0.50 or more when the card was originally sent in. They also run weekly eBay auctions (which I frequently buy from) which have additional fees. Multiply that by thousands of sellers and millions of cards, and I can see how they have created a sizeable business that keeps growing every year.
My last five sales today were all $3 to $5. I purchased 2 of the cards via individual auction for $0.99 and the 3 others were all part of larger lots where the average price for each card less than $1. It would be an unbelievable amount of work to list and sell those cards individually on eBay, which is why I have been so easily able to send them so many boxes of cards.
–Are you only sending in cards that you personally dont want to list? I assume you keep the cards that you know will make big money, quickly?
Your assumption is correct. With the store, I have been trying to focus more on cards that I think will sell quickly, or ones that are especially valuable or unusual.
I use a nice quality scanner to create front and back photos of each card for my listings. About six weeks ago, I decided to spend most of a week scanning and cropping photos to create a nice backlog of about 250 scanned cards where all I had to do from there was create the new listing using one of my templates. I’ve been listing a few cards from that backlog every day since then, and every once in a while (like tonight) I add a few dozen more scans to the photo pile. It’s a real shift from my previous lack of any real process, but it’s worked out well so far.
I have been going through my store’s inventory and pulling out older listings without any watchers or offers. I built up my inventory on tons of purchases of cards which I bought for $1 to $10 and listed for $10 to $30. Many of them sold, but some have just sat in boxes for a few years. Maybe the right buyer is out there and just hasn’t found it yet, but there’s also the possibility that the card won’t sell until I cut the price dramatically. That’s where sending to COMC has been really useful.
If I have a card listed for $19.99 on eBay, but it can sell for around $8-10 on COMC, and it’s been listed for 6 months or longer, I’ve been sending it in 9 times out of 10. Modern cards also come in all different shapes and sizes, and I have been aggressive about sending in larger sized cards like booklet cards since they take up more space. I’ve kept the booklet card in the previous link in my store’s inventory because it has 19 (!) watchers and has received 25 (!!) offers. I don’t want to end that listing. Eventually someone will purchase it at my buy it now price or close to it.
I’m a little afraid that I might go too far with removing too many listings and drastically reduce my eBay sales. This is my only source of income so that would be a huge problem. But so far, so good. I think it’s helped that I’m listing every day, and I have a huge number (1000+) listings with anywhere from 2 to 20+ watchers. A few of those listings are bound to sell each and every day, as long as I respond to offers and keep shipping on time.
I am hopeful that over the next few months, I can continue to feed the COMC pipeline while using my eBay store for the “best of the best” cards, as well as adding in new listings like small sets or lots which can’t be sold on COMC. And I hope to sprinkle in scavenging for other kinds of items as well. I know modern trading cards and unique media items (books, CDs, DVDs) at an expert level. But I have always wanted to learn about and sell other types of items, and I am finally in a place financially where I can experiment and it’s okay if it doesn’t lead to huge profits immediately.
So that’s the plan for this spring and summer. Hopefully along with some traveling this year or next. It’s all really exciting, and almost unbelievable when I think back over the last few years of building up my eBay store.
I hit a physical space limit with my inventory and especially the unlisted stuff a few months ago, so I’ve been reducing my inventory over that time by sending 1 or 2 full priority mail boxes every week to sell on consignment. There are a lot of very large card sellers who sell on consignment through eBay auctions, but I don’t like to sell on auctions because the prices vary so much. So I use COMC, a company in Washington which has their own standalone website, cross-posts many of their listings to eBay via buy it now listing and over the last 5-10 years has basically become the biggest card seller with massive warehouses which are full of cards they sell on consignment. Now that I’m a few months in, basically every night a few more cards trickle into my account with nice scans. All I have to do is price them and wait for the sales to roll in.
There are plenty of drawbacks to selling this way. It’s much more expensive to sell on than eBay, a minimum $0.50 to process each card, plus a percentage when it sells, and there are a lot of add-on fees for items like graded cards. The processing can take a few months unless you want to pay $1 or more per card. What is most frustrating is that COMC listings are not always optimized. There are mistakes or information missing from the title in one out of every five listings and maybe more. Because they are such a large company, so many things are automated and it’s easy to submit a correction. But it’s annoying to do that over and over again and wait a few days for the corrections.
Also, you can only list individual cards on COMC, not large lots or sets. So it’s not a perfect outlet for every type of listing by any means. It’s an interesting buying and selling market where I often see the same COMC buyer ID’s snapping up my underpriced cards in minutes, sometimes seconds, and immediately they price them higher. Do they ever sell for higher? Maybe, but that’s not my game. I bet a number of the top buyers make their living buying and repricing on COMC, considering how often they are buying my listings and I’m a pretty small fish in terms of the big ocean of sellers.
In addition to the users on the site, a few times each day someone on eBay will buy one of my cards under the comc_consignment eBay ID which has 500,000+ feedback. When I first started sending to COMC a few months ago, I only sent a few dozen items at a time and mostly less valuable cards. But I was pleasantly surprised to see how quickly things sell on there, so I’ve gotten much more aggressive with what I send over the last 4-6 weeks. I have been sending almost all of my unlisted and excess inventory and going through my eBay store for items that have been sitting around for months or years without watchers and ending those listings. They may sell for half price on COMC but for some items, that’s a good sale. Especially when you have space limitations!
I received my first check for $2500 from COMC just over a week ago which was basically my profits for January and February. This month has been even better. I have another check in the same amount coming in the next few weeks, plus thousands of items listed and thousands more in the queue to be listed. I expect the steady sales to continue. It’s funny because if it weren’t for my space limitations, I never would have considered selling on another platform. But now a lot of my time this spring and summer will be figuring out the balance between selling on COMC and selling on eBay. Basically figuring out which cards are the best ones for the eBay store and send the rest to sell through COMC. This will allow me to figure out new ways to expand my eBay store while also giving me more time back.
I think back to those exciting moments of growth that we all got to hear about on this podcast over the years like hiring your first helper (you guys used to model all your clothes for listings!!!), the Air BnB’s and of course the coffee shop. It’s such a thrill to see my own version of that, and I’m so grateful for this community. Maybe I’d be doing just as well on eBay completely on my own, but more likely I’d be working some job that I hate and living paycheck to paycheck and struggling to find the time or energy to supplement that with eBay. It’s amazing to dream bigger than that.
3/13/2022 – 3/19/2022
Total items in store: 2668 (down from 3349) — despite this decrease I am still listing a few new items every day. I really recommend this to anyone whose sales are slow or who is trying to build up their store. Even 3 or 4 new items a day will make an impact on your sales over a series of weeks. It has been a factor in my sales staying relatively steady even as I significantly decreased the number of listings in my store.
Items sold: 49 (38 via best offer, 5 via seller initiated offer)
Gross sales: $2612.35 (down 27% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1812.79 (down 27% from one year ago)
Lowest price sold (net): $16.85 — The Andy Clyne Columbia Comedies softcover book
This wasn’t quite my lowest sale of the week, but for the purposes of this post I’m going to pretend it is because it made me happy to sell a book. One that I got for free a couple years ago off a library rack so it was all profit.
This sale made me so happy that I took the plunge and drove to two library sales last week. My first in-person scavenging in almost two years! It felt really great to scratch the itch for true scavenging again, even if it will never be as profitable as the cards have been. It took a little bit of dumb luck, but I found some really unusual items at both sales that I think will sell for nice prices. My favorite was an out of print wrestling documentary DVD that surprisingly sells for $50 and up — and my copy is autographed by someone. If I can identify the signature, I might have stumbled onto a really desirable item for some fanatic collector — and it cost me all of $1.
I haven’t listed any items in the books or DVD categories in at least a year, so it will be interesting to see if listing these new items leads to some older listings selling. I have a few hundred items in books and CD categories that are all at least a few years old. I have to figure out a better organization system for these items as they’re all just piled on a single bookcase.
Highest price sold (net): $188.92 — Lonnie Walker zebra prizm rookie card PSA 9
This one sale explains a lot about the modern card market. Lonnie Walker is a pretty good, but not a star, 23 year old basketball forward in his fourth year with the San Antonio Spurs, who are a fairly popular but average team. This is one of Walker’s rarest prizm (shiny) rookie cards, but it’s not the most premium set and there are other valuable prizm designs for him like tiger stripes and white sparkles. This card is not autographed or serial numbered and it’s graded, but PSA 9 is not a grade for modern cards that really increases the value.
Despite all of those factors, it sold for $250! Mostly because the zebra prizms are quite desirable and it’s Walker’s rookie card. Plus, he’s not a bad young player. I may be selling him short as I don’t know a ton about him (or anyone) beyond a quick Google and general knowledge of different players. I bought this card for about $100 a few months ago via auction, since all sold listings of the same type of card were $300 or higher. I didn’t expect to win the auction, but often how I end up with new inventory.
My sold price was less than I was hoping for, especially after priority shipping to the Czech Republic which cost me a pretty penny. But I don’t sweat that stuff much. At this point, I am much more focused on scaling my business up than maximizing profit on one single card. This buyer will most likely be thrilled with receiving a nicely packed card much more quickly than eBay’s estimates. Maybe Walker turns out to be great and his card prices go way up, but that’s the buyer’s gamble or whoever buys it from them.
I hadn’t been on the forums in a few weeks before tonight, and the whole time I was missing this place terribly. But it has been great to see so many new posts and threads. I have a lot of reading to get caught up on this week and I’m really excited for it. Sell trash be free!
And a bit different than sports cards, when selling things of varying size/weight style it pays to have a system to deal with the new listings and getting them into inventory. I have a bin setup in my listing area.
This is definitely a key, and I am just at the beginning of seeing the effects of what it’s like to have a listing area that is consistently clean and organized.
I have had an extremely organized inventory system with the individual cards — by sport and by player’s last name — since I had less than 500 listings in my store. It was a problem that was easy to solve and the basic system has worked for me ever since.
But my storage of larger items (some autographed items and occasionally other niches I am interested in like books and media) has always been more haphazard, just pile it all on shelves. And the same for to-be-listed items. It was always a priority to get the main tasks taken care of — shipping, buying new inventory, creating new listings — than it was to keep the eBay room clean. Or even to keep piles from building up on the desk that I use for listing, shipping and photos of larger items.
But it got to a point over the last year where it was too much mess. Always stepping over things and constantly shifting piles around or not quite knowing where something was. I realized that I was making enough profit every week that I could afford to slow down a bit, and think through my processes more and organize my space better. This was also when I decided to try and follow through with listing every day, which has been a success so far. I’m not all the way organized yet, but in a few more months I will be.
It is a WORLD of difference having a clean space versus a messy space. This is probably obvious, but it’s really difficult to grow your store and keep your inventory well organized and keep your space tidy. But this is some of the best time I have spent on my eBay business in the last year. It’s made it so much easier to stick to my goal of creating at least a few new listings each day, and inspired me to think about how to adapt these systems if I start buying and selling in other niches or move to a larger space beyond a bedroom.
As my own little experiment, and a sort of personal scavenger’s revolution, I have listed at least 3 items every day since February 1st, and more often between 5-10. Prior to this, I would list inconsistently — 4 days one week, 5 the next, sometimes just 1 new listing on one or two of the days and then 30 new listings on another day. 3000+ item store, mostly focused on one niche (trading cards). I sell at least 50 items even on slow weeks. It’s very rare that I go a day without a sale, but maybe once or twice a month I have a slow day of just a few low dollar sales — less than $100 total. Usually I will have a $500+ sales day on one (or more) of Friday, Saturday or Sunday.
I’ve noticed since I’ve started listing every day that the low days are not quite as low. My two lowest sales days this month are February 1st ($100.16) and February 22nd ($106.59). Every other day was at least $150 in sales. I have also been sending watchers to offers every day the last few weeks, something else I think I’m going to try and continue.
Like you @retro-treasures-wv my listing impressions and page views are down from last month. Impressions down 25% and views 16%. I have never looked at these numbers before, so I wonder how much of that is normal decrease from January to February. I would bet if we had the data that these numbers would be up from the same period one year ago.
I have never used promoted listings, so that might be the next experiment to play around with.
Unrelated to numbers — it feels very satisfying to list every day. Focusing on listing every day has allowed me to build up a nice backlog of listings with pictures done, so all I have to do now is the research and create the listing, which are the parts of listings I enjoy most. I’ve also tackled some death pile / “I don’t feel like taking pictures of that or researching it” items. I don’t think those listings are perfect, but they’re done and I can always mess around with them at another time if they don’t sell.
If you’re struggling to list consistently, or have large death piles, I think there’s enough evidence in this thread and other posts that developing a system where you list every day is an important step. Even if it’s just 2 or 3 listings a day for a few weeks or a month. I’m going to stick with it for now and curious how it will affect my numbers next month or three months down the line.
