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I could write a novel about this one particular guy.
I don’t know about anyone else but I would definitely read this novel! Or at least more posts. I had a similar buyer like this (not a drop shipper just a weird guy) a few years ago when I was growing my store, and it led to a big lesson learned!
This would be a great topic for another thread if we can figure out the right title so it doesn’t turn into a vent-fest (not that there’s anything wrong with that…)
Seems extremely tedious with all downside if the actually item seller screws up.
This is the part that really puzzles me about drop shippers! One bad sale must wipe out so many good ones. I’m sure there are offshoots of drop shipping (private labeling? is that still a thing?) that are more profitable if you know what you’re doing.
I like the ingenuity of doing eBay while you’re on the clock at another job, but I can picture the YouTube channel you described (even though I’ve never seen it) and I bet the other recommended videos below it have titles like WATCH HOW I MAKE $10K in 87 SECONDS BUYING STORAGE UNITS!!! $$$ 🔥🔥🔥
I had one of those 7-10 day stretches where life stuff came up to such a degree that it’s cathartic to take a few minutes and go over the numbers. I haven’t listed anything since last Wednesday, my longest gap in listings in probably 6 months.
Fortunately, you would never guess that from this week’s numbers. I had 5 sales which were in the $200 range and another buyer who went a little crazy and spent over $300 on about 15 items. All of those sales helped a lot, but I still would have had a normal-ish week for my busy little store without them.
I doubt my sales will look like this next week if I don’t spend some time listing, but it’s nice to have a sales week like this with my body and brain mostly on autopilot.
10/31/2021 – 11/6/2021
Total items in store: 3438 (down from 3502)
Items sold: 76 (58 via best offer, 4 via seller initiated offer, 6 repeat buyers)
Gross sales: $3659.21 (up 134% from one year ago)
Net sales: $2746.43 (up 148% from one year ago)
Lowest price sold (net): $11.08 — Jake McCarthy Team USA patch and bat card
I had a few sales lower than this, but with this one the buyer sent me a really nice note thanking me for bonuses I had included for a previous purchase, a particular card for a friend’s or family member’s birthday.
For all the modern cards that are worth good money, there’s still a lot that are worth pennies or maybe $1 or $2. Cheap looking rookie cards of average players, plain jersey cards where the language on the back says “The jersey on this card was not used in any particular game, season or event) and autographs of players who got cut from the team before they ever played in a game.
I end up with a lot of cards like this when I purchase bulk lots, which are maybe 10 to 15 percent of my buys. So if a buyer indicates that they collect a certain player or team, this provides me with an easy opportunity to give them a little freebie and clear out a few cards in the process. I added some nice stuff to this buyer’s original birthday purchase, maybe $5 worth of cards (if that) but the types (rookies, jerseys, autographs) that collectors love if they like a certain team or player. Especially for free!
I added an autograph to their new purchase and received another glowing feedback. Feedback won’t pay the bills, but maybe the buyer will come back again for a Christmas gift. If not, well they made my day for one day.
Highest price sold (net): $296.48 — Cody Martin National Treasures gold auto patch rookie
Cody Martin is a backup player for the Charlotte Hornets, essentially an average player on an average team. National Treasures is one of the premiere sets (especially for basketball) and a box of 8 cards runs in the thousands per box. Whether you buy a box or buy into a case break, you will hope for a rare card of the top new rookie but more often than not, you’ll end up with Cody Martin. Did this buyer get a good deal getting one of the very best Cody Martin National Treasures cards for $300?
Well, I bought this card at auction for almost exactly $100 a few short months ago, before this season had started. Prices always drop in the off-season (out of sight, out of mind) but this season is just getting started and maybe Martin has improved tremendously. This might seem strange if you’re reading this and don’t know a lick about cards, but I don’t really know enough to have an informed opinion on Cody Martin’s current of future basketball abilities or card prices. I’m aware he exists, and if one of his cards sell, that might be an indication he had a good game. But that’s about it, even with all of my knowledge.
Basically, I know enough to bid on something that’s undervalued based on past sales history, to list it high (but not too high) and wait for the right buyer, then repeat the process thousands of times. That’s what works for me and how I keep this interesting.
But there are a lot of card buyers and sellers who focus on buying rare and expensive cards of individual players, getting as many as they can and the best of the best, then selling at the right exact moment. Basically setting their own market. That seems like a much riskier version of what I do, since if the player gets hurt or isn’t good, your “investment” is just a bunch of piles of dumb cardboard. But I’m sure it works for some people who really have the knowledge base. Or, if they don’t want or need to sell, then they have a collection that makes them happy and gives them something in the background of their life to think about and tweak and add to.
My niche uses a lot of shipping forwarding services since sports cards (especially basketball) are huge in Japan and China. The most well known is Shop Airlines America but there are a number of other similar services which are more specific to trading cards.
Shop Airlines always requests (using a similar “stock message”) that I write the item number on the outside of the package, supposedly as this makes it much easier to sort the package. I forget whether or not they ask for an invoice. I don’t think so, but I’ll let you know next time I get an order from them.
Either way, Shop Airlines always leaves positive feedback, whether I follow their instructions perfectly or not at all. I imagine the same thing would happen with your drop shipper’s “gift” since it will only become an issue if the end user (the buyer who bought the item on Amazon or wherever for higher) contacts the drop shipper and makes an issue about the invoice. I’m sure that is possible, but it’s probably fairly rare, and I would think that any negative or neutral feedback around sending or not sending an invoice would be very easy to get removed.
Drop shipping seems like so much effort (and reliance on other sellers) for so little return.
If you’re ever in a pinch, Staples has a lot of varieties of boxes available for sale online in bundles of 25. I checked and they had 14 x 14 x 14. Their brand name for boxes is Coastwide Professional. Decent quality boxes and they usually arrive within two days of my order since Staples is such a big company.
Prices are predictably expensive but they offer decent coupons (1o off $50) pretty frequently and you can recycle ink and toner in-store or online and get Staples Rewards for that as well. I go through a lot of boxes and other shipping supplies but usually between coupons and rewards bucks they cost me nothing, or almost nothing.
Boxery prices are really impressive though. I may have to order a few bundles just for comparison’s sake.
Is this just a form of really unhealthy gambling? Are they just stupid rich people who just want to say they have that guys card and pretend they saw it coming with their Saturday night drinking buddies?
Probably a little bit of both. The card breaking culture, and large consignment companies like COMC in particular, has made it possible to buy and sell cards without all the messy and time consuming work of scanning, listing, packaging and shipping. There are a lot of “collectors” who are interested in cards because there’s money to be made on them and you don’t even have to touch the card! But like most people at the casino, or buying stocks based on what Reddit says, they’re going to lose 9 times out of 10.
However, there are just as many buyers and sellers who purchase cards of specific players, teams, sets etc. because it makes them happy. I can relate to that. I like to watch a good game, especially like an underdog story. I don’t have an attachment to a particular team, but I can understand why others do if it was their team growing up or it’s their adopted hometown team or whatever. Same for individual players, even though I think hero worship is a little strange. But the card is a way of tapping into those good feelings. On top of that, some cards look really good aesthetically or are very unique. And of course the most valuable cards of the best players (Tom Brady, LeBron James, Sidney Crosby and many others) and from the best sets (Skybox Precious Metal Gems is my favorite example) have been going up and up in value for 20+ years now.
It’s not only specific players but sealed packs and boxes that have gone up in price. You can buy the cheap packs and boxes for $20 or $40 at Walmart or Target, but the good boxes with chances at the most unique and high quality cards are all sold online through breakers and distributors and they run from hundreds to thousands for one box which typically has 10 cards or less in it! So it makes sense that the top “hits” (rare autographs, desirable inserts, low serial numbers) from these boxes also sell in the hundreds to thousands.
If card companies never moved to manufactured scarcity, and this gambling mentality, cards probably would have died out in the early 90s when they printed so many as to make almost of them worthless. And at some point, card production will change in a new and different way. Maybe that is already happening to some extent with NFTs and digital cards. But it will be interesting to see the next big change, whenever it happens.
the people that really fascinate me are the people shelling out the big bucks in this highly speculative single performance.
These speculators (desperate gamblers?) fascinate me too. Recognizing how many of them are out there has been one of my favorite things about writing these posts. I didn’t realize how extreme the ups and downs were around these flash in the pan performances until I started documenting my sales week after week.
Those types of sales will most likely never be more than a few extra bucks a week for me. I would hate to rely on figuring out the next new flash in the pan and selling as fast as possible as a foundation for my business. Too dependent on time and luck. I prefer to do things on my own pace and rely on knowledge of what’s likely to rise in value or what’s undervalued.
For whatever it’s worth, Mike White made his second career start earlier tonight for the Jets. He played a nice first quarter and led the team to a touchdown on their first drive of the second quarter, but their opponents the Colts kept scoring touchdowns, so the Jets were trailing. After the Jets first touchdown, White exited the game with an arm injury and didn’t play again. The Colts kept scoring almost every time they got the ball, and the Jets lost 45-30.
What will happen to our friend Mike next week? Well, that’s the other part of what keeps the gamblers and collectors coming back. So much of life is very predictable, down to the hour and minute, and sports is one of those areas where something completely unexpected can and often does happen.
I am hopeful that by this time next week, I will have received a few of the Mike White cards I already bought so I can get them listed and sold. I know I won’t appreciate them as much as the buyer who is willing to pay $30 or $50 or whatever his prices are next week. I’m not fully sure that I can understand why that person is willing to pay more than I used to make in a few hours at my day job, but I will take care extra care in packaging their new prized possession and send them a few bonus Jets cards, too. Then we will all end up happy.
Well, maybe all of us except Mike White if his arm is still hurting. But he had a great day just last week. We should all be so lucky.
How much can you buy a card that’s been misspelled?
I paid around $30 including shipping for the Urquidy card. His name was misspelled in the original listing, but the listing was not terrible. The picture was clear and the title included the key features of the card like the autograph and 1 of 1 stamp. The reasons it only sold for $30 were 1. the misspelling, anyone looking for Jose Urquidy autographs would not have found that listing 2. auctions are not always the most efficient way to sell a rare card since it only allows your possible buyer 7 days (or whatever your auction length) to find your listing and 3. the timing, selling in August when the baseball season was winding down but before the playoffs where Urquidy was one of the best pitchers for his team.
Most of why I was able to sell the card for more now was that I used buy it now / best offer, priced it high and waited for the right buyer and time to sell — all lessons straight from the Trash Elf Manifesto! I made a little more because he pitched so well in the playoffs and his team made it to the World Series, but it still would have sold for $75 or more at some point. There are only so many 1/1 autographed rookies of Urquidy and this set (Panini Prizm) is one of Panini’s most popular.
This is the biggest difference between my niche and more traditional scavenging — my COGS is usually quite high. Even on listings with errors, all it takes is one other collector or card flipper to find the auction and that will bump the price up. But I put in my max bid and if I win, great. If I don’t, there will always be more auctions to bid on.
Do big card sellers start auctions at 99-cents?
A lot of sellers do. Here is one seller who I have no affiliation with other than I buy from them quite often and they have thousands of auctions ending every night which all start at $0.99. Some will end for hundreds and others for $0.99 or $2.25 if they sell at all. This seller is a big card breaker and I believe they sell items on consignment as well.
Other large card sellers such as probstein123 or COMC operate in a similar fashion. These are full-on corporations with massive warehouses and many employees. True card listing machines with millions of listings, but the downside is that your order is one of a million for them, so good luck resolving a problem if you’re not happy with the card’s condition or they send you the wrong card.
The biggest benefit to using auctions for cards is if the player has a stunning performance that happens to time exactly with your auction. For example, New York Jets quarterback Mike White — an unheralded backup — made his first start recently and had a completely unexpected record passing performance that was the best by a Jets QB in 20 years. You can see from sold listings exactly when he had his record breaking game and how big the spike in prices was. The buy it nows for his autographs were long gone by the time the game was over, so that’s why auction prices spiked for a few days. I linked his autographs but the same effect happened to his rookie cards, particularly those with a serial number or the cards from coveted brands.
I bought a few Mike White autographs in the week before the game, all less than $10 each, and eventually they’ll show up in the mail and I’ll make some money on them. Not as much as if I had them in hand the day after the game and got them listed that same day, unless he continues to break records. But it will probably be quite a while before his autographs drop back down to under $10 again, despite the fact that he’s much more likely to have had one amazing game than he is to be a future legendary quarterback!
One of my scavenger goals in the next year, now that I’m doing this full-time, is to prepare for these spikes better. Now that spending $$ is not as much of an obstacle, it’s a matter of organizing my inventory and to-be-listed items more (always a work in progress!), doing more research in advance and maybe spending $200 on 20 Mike White autographs the week before his game instead of $20 on 4 of them. Even typing that out makes me uneasy, but I’ve observed spikes like this over and over again, and eventually as a scavenger you have to trust your experience and knowledge.
Do most card sellers use auctions or BIN?
Many of the larger consignment sellers and breakers run weekly auctions and also offer BIN/BO listings. A lot of small time card sellers (<100 feedback) will do a few auctions every so often to clean off their desk or sell off their “hits” so they can buy more cards. Then you have sellers like myself who have a pretty sizable inventory and it’s all BIN/BO waiting for the right buyer to come along.
A recent blog post at the bid sniping service I use, Gixen, mentioned that sports cards auctions represent over 18% of all snipes that Gixen places for its users and collectible trading cards (non-sports) are another 4 to 5 percent. There are 30+ new sets every year for baseball, football and basketball, and so many collectors join breaks to get their cards rather than buying packs and boxes. So it makes sense that auctions are the most efficient way to sell off “hits” (the autographs, jerseys and rarest inserts) and get cash (or credit with the breaker) for the next break.
Before I found Scavenger Life a few years ago, I was selling cards here and there, but also CDs, DVDs books, records, and anything else I could find at the local thrift stores and flea markets. I did auctions a lot of the time because I was familiar to eBay pre BIN/BO. Also, I needed the faster sale from an auction because I needed the cash ASAP!
But this podcast changed my thinking. It didn’t hurt that many of my auctions ended for lower prices than I expected. It was still hard to switch to all BIN/BO listings because sometimes I needed that cash infusion, especially if I won some auctions that I didn’t expect to win. Which…in the card world, happens a lot more than I ever thought it would! I spent a couple years reinvesting most of my profits back into new inventory and a “real” setup (printer, desk, shelves, quality supplies).
It’s nice to have the option to run auctions if I ever want to reduce the size of my inventory or raise a lot of cash in a short amount of time. But now I try and focus on cards that are more unique because of their serial number, set design or a valuable player, and I prefer to wait for the right buyer or right time to sell. I’m fortunate to have that luxury. But this is also the culmination of a lot of years of learning from mistakes and experimenting to see what leads to more sales and a larger inventory.
Happy November, everyone. I hope that holiday rush is right around the corner for all of us!
I am planning to list a lot of items over the next few weeks, so it only feels appropriate to dig into the back catalog of the podcast. If anyone has suggestions for old favorite episodes which specifically get you motivated to list, please share them.
10/24/2021 – 10/30/2021
Total items in store: 3502 (up from 3445)
Items sold: 71 (43 via best offer, 19 via seller initiated offer, 3 repeat buyers)
Gross sales: $2899.18 (up 142% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1970.61 (up 153% from one year ago)
Lowest price sold (net): $3.71 — Tommy Byrne Historic Autographs cut auto
I sold two autographs from this set (an unlicensed set which only features autographs of 1950s players from the New York Yankees, New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers) to the same buyer for $10 each. According to my sales report, the net sale on Bob Cerv was $6.80. Not sure why there’s such a large difference between the two net sale prices in the sales report.
These are oversized items, so I’m happy to clear the space regardless of whether the profit is $6 or $3. Items like these are how I built up my inventory from a few hundred items to 1000 and beyond. But I am able to put that inventory space to better use now.
Highest price sold (net): $166.73 — Jose Urquidy 1/1 black prizm autographed rookie
This card sold just before Game 2 of the World Series, about an hour after Urquidy was named the starting pitcher for the Houston Astros. He pitched extremely well, and the Astros won that game, but ultimately lost the series to the Atlanta Braves.
This card is from one of the more popular brands (Panini Prizm) and the black prizm is their most desirable parallel version as it’s always numbered One of One or 1 of 1. A less desirable 1/1 rookie black prizm might sell for $20, even with an autograph, while more popular players regularly sell for hundreds and maybe even thousands if it’s a particularly valuable rookie or superstar player like Mike Trout or Shohei Ohtani.
I bought this Urquidy card at auction a few short months ago. The seller spelled Urquidy’s name wrong, which is more common than you might think for a niche that revolves around specific players and sets. I would have been happy with a $100 sale before the Astros advanced in the playoffs, but had a hunch to raise the price and the hunch paid off.
This was my only sale that netted over $100 this week. Sometimes doing the work means packing and shipping a lot of $20 and $30 items. But those weeks can be just as satisfying as the big sales. It’s nice to clear space for new inventory and for sales to stay consistent even without any big $250+ sales.
I agree with you. Immediate payment of best offers (or auctions) also presents a huge downside for those in collectible niches where buyers will often buy multiple similar items from one seller and combine shipping. It’s easy to do that now, from both buying and selling perspectives, but the entire process would become unnecessarily complicated if immediate payments are required.
My hope is that eBay treats instant payment on offers the same way as the global shipping program — recommended for many, particularly less experienced and smaller sellers, but a program where more experienced sellers can easily opt out with no penalty.
I got a notification on my buying ID that there is a 5% Bucks promo running through 10/27. I figured I would let you know, and also, any excuse to bump this great thread for others to get inspired.
Maybe this is a sign that eBay will be pushing the bucks promos heavily during the holiday season. I miss the days of 10% Bucks like anyone else, but I’ll happily settle for 5% twice every month and hope they keep it up.
I’m so glad this has been useful for you, especially with a smaller store as every sale brings so much more potential since it’s not only cash in your pocket but also the chance to invest in new, quality inventory.
Modifying the listings in a small way is particularly smart considering you have smaller relist batches. “Touching” the listings was something that @popeyespostcards recommended in his thread about experiments to improve sales, which was what inspired me to start these threads.
I sort of like that eBay gives the listing a new date when you end and relist (or end and sell similar) since that’s made it so much easier to see that this is working well! I suppose I could have found the data if I used SixBit, WonderLister, or exported to Excel, but I have always been a little bit of a creature of habit in how I use eBay, and I like doing everything directly in seller hub.
Also, a heads up: I received another eBay bucks promo on my buying ID last night which ends 10/27. I am leery of doing another end and relist batch since I just did it two weeks ago, but I will probably talk myself into it by the end of the night. It’s such a quick and easy process that even a few extra sales make it worthwhile.
User A had emailed me about book A, bought, but not paid. So I saw the sold book B, assumed it was user A and freaked out he bought the wrong book. I sent a long email to clarify, re-read everything, realized user B had bought book B, had to send a spate of emails apologizing, then spend the evening worried I put the wrong labels on the wrong boxes. I don’t know how you guys with big stores keep everything straight!
I had a similar shipping near-mishap a few weeks ago, I had two buyers in the same town and put the wrong label on the wrong package. Fortunately I caught the mistake basically in real time. That was my first mistake like that in at least a year.
Ironically when my store was smaller, I mixed things up more frequently. It is pretty easy to make mistakes in my niche since I have some listings like this and this which are the same card, player, set, etc and different only in their serial number.
But those past mishaps made me more deliberate, and careful, when listing and shipping. If it is something I might mix up, I take a few extra seconds to make sure I pull the correct item from inventory. Or, my new process after a few weeks ago: if buyers have similar names or addresses, I make sure to print buyer A’s label on Monday night and buyer B’s label on Tuesday.
Anything to avoid that anxiety of shipping the wrong items to two buyers!
I had a spectacular sales week two weeks ago, one of my best ever. Wary of a letdown, I listed enough at the beginning of last week that my sales remained strong throughout the week. Nothing particularly expensive, just a steady stream of $20 to $50 sales which I think is right in the sweet spot of where us small-time scavengers can get our piece of the eBay pie.
I should finally get over the hump of 3500 listings this week as long as I have two or three solid listing days. The better question is how close I can get to 3600. I feel as though I’ve been improving my processes a lot in the last few months, so I should be able to go from 3500 to 4000 a lot more quickly than I went from 3000 to 3500. Not that those numbers really mean all that much in the grand scheme of things. But a large store gives you a lot more options and makes it easier to be flexible about marking some items down or accepting lower offers.
10/17/2021 – 10/23/2021
Total items in store: 3445 (up from 3425)
Items sold: 66 (43 via best offer, 6 via seller initiated offer, 5 repeat buyers)
Gross sales: $3361.92 (up 157% from one year ago)
Net sales: $2418.53 (up 162% from one year ago)
Lowest price sold (net): $10.76 —Â Eddie Rosario Topps Vault 1/1
Eddie Rosario is a fairly nondescript outfielder (in sports language, a journeyman) in the middle of a hitting tear that propelled the Atlanta Braves to their first world series in over 20 years. This was one of a few of his cards that I sold this week, and all of them went to Georgia. It is impossible to predict the highs and lows of sports, and who’s going to be the hero in the next game, and I can understand wanting to have something to remember your team’s biggest moments of glory. Some of his rare cards jumped into the hundreds this week, which is most likely silly, but maybe he leads the Braves to their first World Series victory in a generation this week, and then those buyers will have the last laugh as long as they sell right away to the hordes (dozens?) of impulse buyers with deep pockets.
Highest price sold (net): $145.29 — Rickey Henderson printing plate
Rickey Henderson was one of the best hitters and base stealers in baseball history, such a legend that he referred to himself in the third person and everyone was cool with it. These printing plates are used to make the cards and particularly coveted by collectors who focus on collecting as many cards as they can of an individual player. However, printing plates have been part of card collecting for 20+ years now, so they’re not nearly as valued as the hot new insert design, or rookie card or autograph, and most players basic printing plates (without an autograph or jersey piece) sell for less than $20.
Rickey is different though. Rickey has such a fanatical and competitive collector base that his rare cards sell for hundreds. This listing sold in less than a day, so I might have been able to get $50 more if I priced the card higher and waited for the perfect buyer to come along. But I had purchased it in a huge lot of nearly 100 printing plates, and this sale paid for 1/3 of the whole lot, which is what you really wanted/need when purchasing a large lot and breaking it down to sell individually.
Your post makes me slightly more confident that relisting a large number of items at the same time is what’s behind the small sales boost that some of us are seeing in the few days after an end and relist.
I’m not sure how easy it is to customize within SixBit, but I’d be curious to see what would happen if you set the relist timer to the same date for 500 or 1000 items.
First things first: don’t panic! Every other seller (small and large) in your categories is going through this issue at the same time. You will get through it, and once it’s done, you can just get back to the normal routine of buying, taking photos, listing and shipping.
I went through all of these problems six months ago in my main niche, trading cards, which affected about 3000 of the 3400 items in my store. All 25+ subcategories in sports trading cards were consolidated into just two — sports trading cards and sports trading card lots.
Here are my tips to get through the editing process as quickly as possible:
1. Use bulk editor to make changes in batch. It is easier to stay organized if you do every listing (or 200 at once) in an individual category at once. If you have well organized store categories, that will make your process even easier. You can change the main category of 200 listings at once using bulk editor. You can also add a particular item specific.
2. Only add the required item specifics and then move on. Don’t worry about recommended, or getting every little detail moved over perfectly. I can’t stress this enough. Perfect is the enemy of good with eBay.
Once you’ve finished the first two steps, here are a few more that might be helpful.
3. Polish your titles. Use every relevant keyword that a buyer might use and include basic descriptors of the item. For example, every one of my trading cards has the word ‘card’ in the title even though that should be self-evident by the category it’s in. But I want to catch those casual buyers along with the expert collectors.
4. Use this period to start scavenging on eBay if you don’t already and you will find listings that fall through the cracks and sell for less (sometimes much less) than you might expect. Whether it’s listings from small time sellers who grow frustrated by the “new” changes or large-scale wholesalers who don’t have the time to bulk edit 20,000 listings, you will find bargains during this period of change. Because of the category changes, old saved searches are less useful as well, so buyers are affected by the changes, too.
But as a scavenger, you can take advantage. I added a huge amount of inventory — probably 2-3 times what I usually buy — in the month leading up to these category changes (after they were announced but before they were required after) and the month after the changes. I am certain that sellers who were slow to make the changes to item specifics, or went through the motions by putting in keywords like SEE TITLE or NA, were lower in search rankings.
This isn’t the first time eBay has made seemingly weird changes, and it won’t be the last. Six months after these changes, I can say with confidence that my store is better off for them. My listing flow is a few seconds faster because I don’t have to switch between 20 different subcategories, and the listing process is easier for casual sellers to find the most relevant categories for their items. That’s why eBay made the changes now.
