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This might be something to consider, considering that I get quite a few Canadian buyers and lower postage would probably increase sales in the $10 to $30 range. What’s stopped me in the past has been how thin the non-machinable flats have to be. I use a cardboard sandwich around the cards to protect them, and I would be nervous about shipping them without that. I can live with an item getting lost (which happens a few times a year with international packages even with tracking) but I would hate to damage an item because I wasn’t using the best shipping method possible.
Thanks, Jay. My store growth has been so inspired by this community and years of listening to the podcast before I started posting.
You have a pretty good imagination of my setup and it’s pretty accurate to real life. I have one room of a two bedroom apartment with a well-loved table (picked up for $5 at an estate sale down the street) which has a standing desk converter (bought on eBay at auction for half price) and a scanner which I paid about $20 for after combining coupons with staples rewards. And this is my lamp which I believe was the most expensive purchase of everything, but well worth it to be able to see the flaws on the cards without straining my eyes.
I would be curious what the relative success rate is sending an offer to a buyer asking a question versus sending an offer to a watcher. I have had the occasional sale using both methods once in a while. 1 out of 10? Maybe slightly more? That seems about right, considering many buyers who ask questions are clearly lowballers (or problem buyers) and many eBay users (myself included) use the watchlist without any intention to buy the item they’re watching.
I hope no one reading this is considering end and relist as a panacea, or even a temporary substitute for regularly listing new items that buyers want. Like markdown manager, offers to watchers, and coupons, it’s merely another tool in an eBay seller’s belt.
I would be curious if you can include more details about how SixBit uses end and relist. Is it a relist (same item number) or sell similar (new item number)? I have used both in the past, so I don’t think there’s much of a difference between the two, but who knows.
Are you ending all of your items every 30 days, or only select items such as those without watchers or those in specific categories? So far, I have only used end and relist on items without watchers, so a few sales makes the process worth the (minimal) time investment.
Do you see a boost in sales on the first day after end and relist? Compare it to 7 days prior, or your average day, or whatever benchmark you like. How about the first few days after you end and relist, or the following weekend? Hopefully SixBit tracks this data for you. I don’t use SixBit so I manually keep track of all numbers detailed in these posts.
For now, I primarily sell in the same few collectibles categories, so I have a limited view into how this strategy might increase sales of vintage toasters or phone chargers. But I’ve found the Scavenger Life principles have helped improve my sales in different niches, and I suspect end and relist is the same, even if it may prove to be most effective for most sellers if it’s used once or twice a quarter.
I have also been utilizing the end and relist exclusively during eBay bucks promos. That is likely another factor in the temporary sales increase I have seen, maybe the biggest reason why. I’m not sure end and relist would be quite as effective on a random day, particularly since eBay sales are unpredictable by their nature. Almost any day of the week is randomly slow for a million different reasons. Compared to a few years ago, it’s nice that eBay gives us all these different tools which might provide a little sales increase here and there. There are other tools (most notably promoted listings) which I never use, maybe to my own detriment. But selling on eBay is all about finding and refining the processes that work best for you.
I’m glad these posts have been useful for you. I’ve been somewhat surprised at how successful the end and relists have been, but encouraged enough that I will keep trying them once a month for the foreseeable future and posting my results. I’m curious if the process will continue to lead to the same bump in sales and watchers month after month.
An increase in watchers (along with the sales bump) has been the biggest takeaway from this month’s batch — last week, before the end and relist, I had 2004 items with watchers. Tonight, as I’m typing this, I have 2,104 items with watchers — even though I didn’t list much last week! That’s a very encouraging development, particularly considering how quick the end and relist process is.
As far as the auto declines go: I’m honestly not sure that my method is the best way! But it is something I have developed over time, and my thought process today is something like this:
My lowest priced items are around $20. I used to have an auto decline on those items of $10, but over the last year I raised it to $15. The same general rule for items that are more expensive — for example, my auto decline on a $100 item is $90 when it used to be $75 or $80. I’m sure I’ve received offers that I would have accepted if only I had seen them, but there are always ways of interacting with an interested buyer, like sending offers to watchers or running a markdown sale. I have found that most offers I receive are ones that I accept, no negotiations necessary, and I prefer that to waking up to 10 or more offers at 50% of my buy it now price.
Had one of the best sales weeks I’ve ever had last week. What’s interesting is that this was a week where I only listed 36 items, when my normal number of items listed in a week is around 100. I can think of 3 reasons why sales were so high this week.
1. I sold 12 items over $100 and 6 of those items sold for over $200. A few years ago, I probably didn’t have 12 items in my entire inventory priced over $100, and I certainly didn’t have more than a few priced over $200. It has been a slow and steady grind over a few years to building up the inventory in both quantity and quality, and there is also a huge difference between pricing an item high and actually selling an item for a high price.
2. I did an end and relist batch last week. If you’re curious, more details in this thread. While end and relist isn’t a substitute for listing regularly, it does seem to lead to a brief sales boost. I was having a nice sales week before the end and relist batch, but had a massive sales day (over $1000) two days after it.
3. I listed heavily (over 100 items) two weeks ago. My sales that week were middle of the road, but this week was a reminder that you never know what’s around the corner in a week or two if you keep at it.
Hoping this is the first sign of a very busy holiday season for everyone.
10/10/2021 – 10/16/2021
Total items in store: 3425 (down from 3438)
Items sold: 72 (49 via best offer, 5 via seller initiated offer, 1 repeat buyer)
Gross sales: $4680.52 (up 229% from one year ago)
Net sales: $3322.27 (up 280% from one year ago)
Lowest price sold (net): $2.97 — Edmonton Oilers triple jersey card
This card is a nice example of what modern trading cards can look like: it contains small pieces of jerseys from multiple players on the same team. It’s not hard to understand why a fan of the team or one of the player would pay a few bucks for the card. The sale price ($8.39 + shipping) is an example of how common these types of cards have become, though cards like this get more expensive if they contain memorabilia pieces of legendary players, particularly those who played many years ago and have less memorabilia available to put into cards.
The low net sales price on this card is a reflection of how long it had been in my store. Shipping to Canada has gone up almost $5 since I listed this card! I would have kept a few more bucks in profit if I went back and edited my shipping prices to reflect today’s higher rates, but I’d rather use that time to list more.
Highest price sold (net): $337.44 — John Titus 1909 tobacco card graded SGC 4
The T206 set is one of the earliest tobacco card sets and the Titus card is particularly desired for a number of reasons, one of which is his mustache. This was one of two T206 cards that I sold this week. My knowledge of vintage trading cards is low compared to a lot of collectors, but I have been trying to educate myself more about them as the modern card market (and card prices in general) became very volatile over the last 18 months. The card market has stabilized, but my education on vintage cards paid off with these sales and I’m sure there will be more like them in the future.
I had a few other nice high dollar sales this week:
a Cale Makar hockey printing plate rookie card — printing plates are used in the making of the card, and this one was unusually valuable because it’s a desirable rookie from the most desirable hockey set, The Cup. Like many of the hockey cards I sell, this one went straight to Canada and like a lot of my inventory, it was purchased for much less than its sale price because of a poor (misspelled) title. I thought I might have overpriced this one, but there is a huge speculative market around young athletes rare cards, especially their rookie cards from the most expensive sets.
a jersey card of the late football player Sean Taylor — Sean Taylor was a very talented defensive back whose career was tragically cut short when he was murdered in 2007. Taylor’s cards have a fanatical collector base because his career spanned just before the years when companies began to make lots of autographs and jerseys for every new rookie. I had purchased this particular card from a poor listing where the seller only mentioned his last name in the title, and immediately priced it high and stayed patient through a lot of watchers and lowball offers. It took almost two years for it to sell, but the card is finally on its way to one of those fanatical Sean Taylor collectors.
It makes me nostalgic for the days when eBay allowed for Boolean searches and you could add an asterisk to the end of a word and get all sorts of variations and misspellings! But there are still ways of finding those listings that slip through the cracks of eBay’s Cassini search engine, and I think it’s much easier for an amateur seller to use eBay now than even a few years ago. So it is probably a net positive overall: more listings to search through, and more sellers who are selling things for under value. We just have to adapt our searches to find the hidden gems.
Really interesting anecdotes and observations. All things to keep in mind if/when I start seriously sourcing at estate sales. The odd ones I’ve gone to here and there have never led to any major scores, certainly nothing like what you detailed. But it’s almost certainly a numbers game. And I have a lot more knowledge now than a few years ago when I was indiscriminately stopping at any thrift store, library sale, rummage sale or yard sale. Desperate scavenging is not profitable scavenging, in my experience.
Day 1 update: I sold 6 items today from last night’s end and relist batch, in addition to the 1 item detailed in my previous post which sold last night. 5 out of the 6 items from the end and relist batch sold for between $10 and $30, and all 7 sales were under $50.
A nice sales boost for very little time investment. For comparison’s sake, I sold 7 other items today which previously had watchers and were not part of the end and relist batch.
Another point worth mentioning: 90 items from the end and relist batch already gained watchers. So in the first 24 hours after this round of end and relist, almost 100 items (out of 1400 total ended and relisted) either sold or were added to someone’s watch list.
Regardless of how many more sell over the weekend, I’m going to give this a try again next month. The early results are even more encouraging than I might have expected.
brief update before I go to sleep:
It only took 20 minutes to receive my first offer from this batch of newly relisted items. $45 on an item listed for $50 which of course I accepted. Even if that’s the only sale I make from this end and relist batch (and it won’t be), it was worth the 30 minutes.
I set my auto decline prices high (anywhere from 75% to 90% of BIN price) and I bet I would see even more offers if I lower that threshold. Might be something to try next month.
Also, about a dozen of my newly relisted items have watchers when they had none prior to the relist. Whether that means those items will sell faster (or at all), who knows, but at least I know there are eyes on the listings now.
It’s kind of amazing how quickly all this happened. It’s been less than an hour since the end and relist! Just another reminder how many buyers are on eBay all over the world every minute of every day…
I went through this in my main niche (sports trading cards) earlier this year. Prior to eBay’s “helpful” changes, each sport (baseball, basketball, etc) had their own individual subcategory. Now the only categories in Sports cards are individual sports trading cards and sports trading card lots. However, I would be lying if I told you I didn’t like the changes. In fact, it was one of the best things to happen to my store in the last year.
The first reason is that my listing flow was streamlined. Instead of having to hop from category to category, everything goes in individual cards and then I check off the item specifics for the individual sport. This prevents accidentally listing something in the wrong category, which as we all know is one of the most important factors in finding the right buyer.
The second reason is that making the changes to old listings was really quick and easy to do in the bulk editor. I had about 2500 listings and it took me maybe an hour and a half? And I get distracted a lot during the data entry parts of eBay selling, so it can probably be done even faster.
The third and most important reason is that this led to tremendous buying opportunities in the few weeks leading up to the category consolidations and new required item specifics. I added the required item specifics early after the announcement, but many sellers did not and I found some incredible bargains. Among other reasons, I think eBay’s Cassini search was harsh to sellers who were slow to input the required item specifics.
I also believe that these changes make it easier for casual sellers to list. This is only a good thing in terms of finding items to buy at far below their actual value. I used to have the same saved search in five or six different subcategories that sellers might list cards in. There are still a few odd categories out there but I’m sure eBay will consolidate those within the next 6-12 months as well. And I think that’s a net positive.
I had a few dips in the last few days (and weeks) as well, where it felt like there were no buyers out there at all, or at least if there were, they didn’t want anything I was selling.
Then yesterday I had a $700 sales day. There was one big $200+ sale in there, but a whole bunch of smaller items too.
For whatever it’s worth, I’ve never used promoted listings once.
this thread by @popeyespostcards details a number of useful methods for creating a short-term sales boost for your store. I like the end and relist (or end and sell similar) most, but there are other great suggestions in the thread as well, such as “touching” all your listings by raising all the prices by $0.01 or $1.
@Timo was kind enough to post a heads-up that there is a new 5% ebay bucks promo which ends tomorrow. So I’m going to try a new batch of end and relist tonight and will create a new thread sharing those results. Since I did my last end and relist almost exactly a month ago, it will be interesting to see if doing it again so soon will lead to a similar boost in sales.
Something I noticed tonight to put a bow on this thread. When I did the end and relist last month, it gave me a little boost of sales in the first few days which my posts in this thread go into detail about. I noticed tonight that I have about 200 more items with watchers than I did a month ago. ~1800 listings with watchers last month, 2004 tonight before my new end and relist. I have been listing frequently (which is always the most important factor for any store) but I’m sure the end and relist helped bring in some new watchers as well.
Thanks so much for the heads up! I didn’t receive this eBay bucks offer on my buying or selling IDs, so I wouldn’t have known about the promo without your post. I’m going to try a new round of end and relist tomorrow afternoon (nice timing since I was planning on taking the night off) and I will report back my results over the weekend. I will be curious if this batch of end and relist leads to a boost in sales like it did for me last month. Maybe end and relist is most effective if it’s done once a quarter, or once a month, or maybe the sweet spot is somewhere in between. It will be interesting to see if we can accumulate enough data to develop a guess.
Incredible score on the shoes! To buy in such large quantity, do you typically go to sales as early as possible on the first day or to a preview? Or do you focus on the types of items which other sellers don’t see?
