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What an interesting saga…the tale of the binding machine…seems easier (?) to just sell $85 T-shirts (!!!) and $980 leather jackets (Fonzie would be impressed) but at least you get to say you packaged a 67 pound beast!
It’s so interesting that you can find a bookbinding machine out in the wild…very cool item! I always want to know what the buyer’s whole deal is with an item like that…
You can buy 1980s baseball cards by the still-sealed cardboard box? If I was an environmentalist I’d be appalled. As a scavenger, it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling
There’s a toy store in my New Jersey town which runs an annual outdoor collectibles fair (coming up in a few weeks, I believe) and every year, without fail, there are a few junk wax hoarders with sealed boxes of these worthless 1980s and early 1990s cards. Even at $5 a box, they wouldn’t get takers, but of course they’re priced well above. Early in the pandemic, when modern cards went through their bubble and demand far exceeded supply, even junk wax boxes were selling for good money. Mostly to the speculators thinking they were going to make a lot of money without any knowledge whatsoever…dare I say, just like the 80s!
Should I come across a stash of sealed 80s wax, I will bury it in a flipper’s time capsule with a Black Diamond Disney VHS and one of those Precious Moments figurines.
I just knew that Billy would bring back childhood memories for you! I’m so glad it did, because I don’t think I knew about the whiteout variation. You’re totally right about its value.
This card is so interesting to follow because it seems every eBay seller tries different keywords so buyers can find it. FF, F**k Face, F Face, No F Face, Not Whiteout, No Black Box, Scribbled Out in White, and the list goes on. :p
Kept tracking of my daily listings last week for the first time in a long time (maybe ever), and it was definitely a nice little motivator for a few days! 86 new listings is double, maybe even triple, my usual weekly numbers. I haven’t been nearly as motivated to list this week, so we’ll see if I keep tracking the numbers. But eBay is a funny organism. One really strong week of work can pay off for you over months and months.
A few weeks ago, what motivated me was going through the store and ending all my listings over a few months which had zero watchers. I repriced, removed, edited. Then I did sell similar with my normal promoted listings rate (5%) and watched a lot of items sell which hadn’t been selling. That carried me through the dog days of August. I would recommend you do the same on 6+ month old listings if you haven’t recently. You want to give your listings the best chance to sell during busy Q3 and Q4.
8/11/2024 to 8/17/2024
Total listings: 338 (up from 277 two weeks ago)
New listings this week: 86
Items sold: 26 — 14 via best offer, 8 via seller initiated offer, 20 via advertising
Gross sales: $1105.35 (down 40% from one year ago)
Net sales: $710.46 (down 40% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $42.51 (down 44% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $87.41— Maxx Crosby auto autograph card /50 2022 Panini Chronicles Paramount Raiders
Lowest price sold (net): $9.23 — David Ortiz 1/1 green proof card 2023 Leaf Vibrance Global Graphs Boston Red Sox
No big dollar sales for me this past week, but a decent enough week for late summer and I love the way my numbers broke down by category: 50% of my sales were my custom trading card lots (mostly 10 card lots organized by team), 25% trading card singles and 25% other items. This week, the bulk of those other items were signed, full-sized jerseys, something I’ve only started selling in the past few months and a category that I listed in quite a bit over the last few weeks. I have a few more jerseys in the to-be-photographed bin this week. I’m looking forward to getting them listed so they show up in a future numbers thread.
8/4/2024 to 8/10/2024
Items sold: 31 — 18 via best offer, 7 via seller initiated offer, 27 via advertising
Gross sales: $1270.74 (down 61% from one year ago)
Net sales: $793.84 (down 64% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $40.99 (down 13% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $72.18— Gabriel Batistuta 1/1 printing plate set 4 card lot 2022 Leaf Steel Fiorentina
Lowest price sold (net): $11.31 — Brian Burns auto autograph card /50 2016 Leaf US Army Bowl blue New York Giants
Out of those 300 items, is it still mainly trading cards?
Yes, but it’s starting to shift somewhat. Basically my eBay inventory is 33% “best of the best” individual cards from my consignment port and weekly purchases, 33% my curated card lots and 33% other stuff. Most of the “other stuff” is sports-related, right now, since 99% of my scavenging this year has come from searching the big card consignment sellers auctions every week. It’s still cards that make up the bulk of my business. But sometimes these big sellers list other items, and if the value’s there, I’ve been buying them. It’s nice to branch out a little bit, and gives me confidence for how I can continue to grow my business. Lately, I’ve been doing well with signed full-sized sports jerseys. I wouldn’t call myself an expert by any means, but I’m learning.
For the kind of stuff we’re selling, I just cant ever imagine having that kind of sell through rate no matter how much we lowered the price.
Your podcast taught me that long tail items are always worth holding if you have the space, and part of having a successful business is learning to make the space to hold onto something for a while. Some items you will just have to wait: not only for the perfect buyer to find your listing, but for the time when they have enough fun money to spend on your item. Sometimes that will take six months, a year, even longer. But some profits are worth waiting for.
Even with long-tail items, I think it makes sense to end your old listings every few months. Make sure they look good and they’re priced right, then put them back into your inventory with sell similar so they get a new item number. After a few months, it seems like a lot of listings can fall into this eBay void where they only receive 1 or 2 views over a thirty day period. I’ve noticed it in my store in every category I’ve sold in. Having a small space for storage, and finally starting to get a handle on consistently keeping myself organized, has made me get more analytical about my business. Why do certain items end up in my death piles, and how can I keep that from happening? How much space will certain items take up, what’s worth the space and what isn’t?
I’m still figuring out the answers to these questions. This type of thinking always felt very overwhelming to me. All I could ever really think about was: how do I keep the pipeline flowing so sales keep coming in? But I guess I have gotten to the point where I can start to focus a little more about the bigger picture and how to improve my processes. I didn’t plan to start thinking about this stuff, it just started happening naturally.
I have realized this year that I would rather sell something today for 66% of my target price, even 50%, than sit on it for a year and maybe sell for full price, maybe for a best offer at 75% of my BIN, or maybe it won’t sell then either. But that equation is not set in stone. It’s going to change as my goals for my business come into focus. I have a lot of nice items somewhere in the listing pipeline, and all my organizing means I will have some nice flat rate sized boxes of stuff to sell as well. Mainly boxes of cards, but some other stuff like books and bobbleheads too. I’d love to get to 500 listings in my store by end of September, and then we’ll see how high my sell through rate can go in Q4.
My numbers this week are mostly the result of cleaning up my listings last Sunday. For the first time in almost four months, I took a good look at my inventory and really went through all of the 300ish listings in my store. Here was my whole process, which took about an hour total.
I ended about 200 of those listings (most had 0 or 1 watcher) and did sell similar on 150 of them. I lowered prices on about half of these listings. Raised a few prices and kept the others the same. Changed around a few keywords in titles and made sure I had promoted listings on for all of them. I filter my store by current price and end all the 19.99 listings in one batch, all the 29.99 listing next and so on. That’s the key step which speeds up the whole process.
I sold 48 items last week and my net sales were slightly higher than my normal weekly total. I was away at this time one year ago so my numbers look great in comparison to last year, but it doesn’t make sense to compare a time away week to a regular week. But this was a strong week for my store in late July, and I’m happy about the time spent. Before my regular numbers, here are my end and sell similar numbers.
I sold 21 items over the course of the week which were part of the end and sell similar batches, and then I stopped keeping track on Friday because I got tired of it! 15 of those 21 sold were under $30, and 10 of them were listings where I cut the price, usually by $10. 18 of the items either sold for full price, or through an offer I sent to interested buyers at 20% off. I had just one repeat buyer all week when I usually get three or four, but I’m not sure if that’s important or not.
What I am sure about is that I need to make end, reprice, and sell similar a regular part of my eBay practice once every few months. So now I have a reminder in my calendar to do this again in November. If you do the same, let me know how it goes.
7/28/2024 to 8/3/2024
Items in store: 277 (up from 259 two weeks ago)
Items sold: 48 — 25 via best offer, 16 via seller initiated offer, 32 via advertising
Gross sales: $2038.33 (up 116% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1297.04 (up 140% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $42.47 (down 1% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $128.34 — Maxx Crosby auto autograph jersey card /99 2022 Panini Rookies & Stars Raiders
Lowest price sold (net): $8.03 — Mitchell Parker auto autograph card 2020 Panini Prizm Draft silver EX Nationals
I have been in a decent groove for the last month now, and I’m feeling really good about my business. I have been improving around the margins lately, particularly in terms of keeping myself organized and tackling specific eBay tasks that I usually procrastinate on.
Turns out that photographing one or two weird items, even listing them only takes a few minutes. Especially if I set my mind to “just get it done” instead of “get it done perfectly.” If I really focus for an hour or so, I can start to tackle bigger problems like organization and storage.
This has been a bit of a breakthrough for me, so I’m excited to see what my productivity is like over the next few weeks. This week has been a good one so far, and I always get my best work done on the weekend.
07/14/2024 to 07/20/2024
Items in store: 259 (down from 333 two weeks ago)
For the first time in about three months, I did end and sell similar on my store. More about that in next week’s numbers thread. As always, I recommend doing this on your store quarterly at a minimum, especially on those 6 month and older listings with no watchers or lower priced competition. Give your listings the best possible chance to sell!
Items sold: 28 — 20 via best offer, 9 via seller initiated offer, 20 via advertising
Gross sales: $2070.22 (up 26% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1409.39 (up 24% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $60.89 (up 22% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $292.71 — Reggie Miller 2017 Panini Chronicles V-Team autograph jersey card
Lowest price sold (net): $14.67 — Texas Rangers 10 card modern baseball cards lot
I was locked out of the forum for a few days as well. Something called Wordflare was blocking me. But I was able to get back in just now. I’m honestly not sure what I did differently, if anything, but you might try clearing your cookies and cache to see if that helps.
Q4 coming up — keep the faith! You’ve got some big sales numbers coming, I’ve got a good feeling.
I’ve been grinding a little harder with eBay almost every day, taking a few more pictures, spending a few more minutes keeping myself organized, thinking ahead more to what I can accomplish over the last four months of the year and what I want to accomplish. It paid off this week with an astonishing 52 items sold. I would love to keep up this level of sales most weeks of Q4, but I’ll need to keep grinding because this sell-through rate is probably not sustainable. But weeks like this help solidify the foundation of my business. I don’t expect another week like this until Q4, but this week will definitely motivate me to keep pushing through the dog days of summer.
7/7/2024 to 7/13/2024
Items in store: 333 (up from 307 last week)
Items sold: 52 — 28 via best offer, 10 via seller initiated offer, 29 via advertising
Gross sales: $1974.83 (down 26% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1256.27 (down 34% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $37.98 (down 18% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $134.68 — Paul Skenes 2023 Onyx Nero silver ink autograph /45
Lowest price sold (net): $10.24 — Bill Clinton 1993 presidential inauguration ticket
Sometimes the card consignment sellers who I buy from list random oddball items. About half the time, they know what they have or they at least know enough that some of their potential buyers find the item. I like to be the winning bidder the other half of the time, when no one’s bidding or it’s just me and one or two other flippers. I don’t get rich off items like this unless it’s a real fluke item, but it keeps life interesting and makes me $5 or $10 here and there.
Appreciate the heads-up on Bass Weejuns. I had never heard of that brand and I would like to own a well made pair of shoes someday.
That dinner chime is wild. I was shocked at the sold price, then I saw the pictures and felt like at least I could see some value from the construction of the instrument and its condition. Your sold price is great compared to comps. How did you figure out pricing?
Curious about the pager system, too. $200!?
I have been trying to learn about Pokemon and other TCG items, but it is slow going. I have a hard time retaining what is valuable and what isn’t, probably because it’s all new to me and there are a lot of small differences to keep track of. But one of my favorite things about reselling is that there are always new things to learn.
Volker Pawlowski is an interesting guy, talk about a scavenger and taking advantage of an opportunity. One of his wall hunks must be enough for hundreds, maybe thousands of Berlin Wall cards, which makes me happy (and a little surprised) that the manufacturers haven’t made thousands of these cards!
I’ve been checking this link every few days to see if it sold yet…often when you get a big early offer on something, it sells for full price or close to it a few days (or weeks) later. Some things are worth holding out for the right buyer and the right price. I’m hopeful that you’ll make an extra $1000 from these this week…
Some interesting brand names to keep in mind on your list…I’ve heard of Jimmy Choo and Louboutin but the smaller brands are the ones that I really file away for possible future reference. However, that doll is terrifying and I regret clicking on the link to your listing. I can’t believe someone would willingly buy that for any price. I will NOT Google image search Corky dolls before bed tonight…
Thanks man, I really have started to enjoy the process of making these lots more and more, from finding the cards to keeping the inventory organized to putting them in hard cases and spending an hour in front of the scanner every few days to get the photos done. Creating the listings is the easy part. It has taken me the last couple years to build up a knowledge bank where I don’t need to constantly have Google open to know which players are good and which ones are the bust players whose cards should be avoided add all costs. Just have to keep an eye on the sports news for who is traded, who is sent to the minors, who is the star player this week. And of course, the quality of the cards matters most of all.
Clint Frazier had some HYPE behind him a few years ago when he was on the Yankees. Glad to see he’s still out there chasing his dreams and rocking some nice kicks. Minor league games are a fun experience, especially for young kids. I went to a game at the Somerset Patriots, a Yankees minor league team, a few weeks ago. $10 for a seat about twenty rows behind home plate, talk about scavenger’s prices.
