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Dec 1 – 7
Total Items in Store: 2705
Items Sold: 49
Total Sales : $1958
* WAY ABOVE yearly average of $920
Highest Price: $280 (Michael Frances Higgins Studio Art Glass Wall Plaque)
Average Price: $40
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $42
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $83
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 57Wow, I had a fantastic week of sales! Lots of good stuff sold and my phone just kept cha-chinging all week. I’m sure my postal carrier hates us by now but that’s okay. I’ve been listing those vintage racing slides and have been making about $30 each on average. 24 have sold so far for a total of $758. I also sold another piece of MCM furniture for $250 and the piece of art I mentioned above for $280. All that combined with a slew of misc odds and ends led me to make almost 2K in a week. I wish every week was this crazy.
Thanks for answering my question on the show. I tried doing some searches on eBay for stuff that was hastily listed by sellers who might not have the knowledge or time to care about getting top dollar. I used the keyword “lot” and came up with some interesting results. Restricting my search to 15 miles from my location was even more interesting. I’ll have to play around when I have more time and see if I can snag some inventory for cheap.
Steph and I did some interesting scavenging last week. We have a pair of friends who needed to take a room and a garage full of stuff to Goodwill but didn’t really have the time or vehicle to do it. When they found out that we sold on eBay, they offered to give it all to us as long as we took everything. It was a good opportunity even though we had no idea what we’d find. Two van loads and two days of work later, we came out with a ton of sellable inventory. No treasure, but definitely over 100 items that will fetch us $10-40 each.
Nov. 24 – 30
Total Items in Store: 2685
Items Sold: 25
Total Sales : $834
* Below yearly average of $909
Highest Price: $200 (Industrial Plumbing Pipe Snake Cable Drum)
Average Price: $33
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $57
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 52Great podcast again, guys! I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit more about your online scavenging. You don’t have to give away your secrets, but are you buying things from sellers on eBay with saved searches or bidding at online auction house sites? I feel like the trend is slowly moving toward online scavenging with auctioneers going online instead of in person sales and I just want to stay ahead of the game, even though I really dislike the idea.
I had a decent week of listing and selling. Not quite as good as my average though. My weekly ASP has been dropping steadily with all the slow sales I’ve been having. I’m hoping things pick up again soon. Though I can’t complain too much since I’m still well over my comfort number.
Nov. 17 – 23
Total Items in Store: 2674
Items Sold: 26
Total Sales : $664
* Below yearly average of $922
Highest Price: $100 (Antique Willson Sunglasses Brass Metal Wire Round Spectacles)
Average Price: $26
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $36
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $55
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 40My week started off alright but then I only made one sale over the weekend. That’s really unusual since my weekends are usually my busiest time for sales. Hopefully things will pick back up soon.
I went to an auction on Wednesday at an old factory which went bankrupt. They were selling off equipment for a fraction of what it was worth. Too bad I had no use for any of it. But I did manage to score another van load of cardboard boxes for only $30. I counted them all up and it was easily $400 or more worth of boxes.
I’ve started listing some 35mm slides from a 1966 sports car race in Sebring, FL. I wanted to get them listed now because that new movie Ford vs Ferrari was just released in theaters and I thought general interest in this kind of stuff would be high right now. I even have a few slides of the very same guy that the movie is about. I already have a bunch of watchers so we’ll see how they do by the end of the week.
Nov. 10 – 16
Total Items in Store: 2660
Items Sold: 28
Total Sales : $854
* Below yearly average of $940
Highest Price: $120 (Antique Silver Lake 1905 Heisey Ruby Glass Souvenir Creamer)
Average Price: $30
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $38
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 37My sales picked up a little bit this week. And now that I’m feeling better, I thought I would be listing a whole lot more. But I was feeling quite unproductive throughout the week. Hopefully my mood will change this week.
I did spend an afternoon going back through GoDaddy Bookkeeping and my posts on this forum and I created spreadsheets for 2018 and 2017 with all kinds of useful information. I wanted some hard figures to compare to. My hunch was correct that I’m technically doing slightly better than I did last year, but the numbers aren’t showing much of an increase in relation to the growth of my store. I’m choosing to believe that this year was just a bummer for everyone and that things will pick up in the future. It’d be interesting to see the profit data from big box stores. That might show if there is an issue exclusively with eBay or if it’s a wider selling trend.
Not much else to report. No scavenging again last week. This Wednesday, I’ll be checking out an industrial business liquidation auction. I don’t know what I’ll find, but it’ll be interesting.
Great sales on that Iroquois pottery! I’ll need to keep my eyes open for that brand. I made a few pretty decent sales last week. Nothing to write home about, but I can’t complain.
I spotted this cool sputnik style eyeball lamp in a box lot and knew I had to have it. I paid $32 for the lot but it was a few large boxes of good stuff so I made out well. I cleaned it up nice and put a new bulb in it. It took a couple months to sell for full price of $65.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303283076186My dad brought home a bunch of these old Detex watchclock station boxes from work that were being thrown out. For those who’ve never seen them, they’re basically made to hold a key which was used to log a security patrolman’s rounds. This one was the nicest of the few and it sold for a best offer of $27.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303085916764At an auction recently, I purchased a flat of Asian souvenir stuff from the early 40s and 50s. The lot cost me $25 (each sellable item came to $2.27). Inside was a long box with a dozen of these hand painted watercolor panels. It was all in Chinese, but my Google Translator app sort of told me they had something to do with the months of the year. I listed them high since I didn’t really know a good value and took a best offer of $65.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303343373838The Christmas season is upon us, and now’s a good time to be listing that Xmas decor. And I had a lot of it! This little reindeer figure came from a box lot that I kind of paid up for at $25 ($4.17/item). I only priced him at $10 because his base was broken, but he sold overnight! I’m hoping I didn’t let something rare go for nothing. Oh well.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303353361022Out of that same box lot came this old plastic Santa Claus. If you look, there’s a ton of these listed, but none that had the two reindeer like mine. So I put a way higher price than all the others. It only took a few days, but it sold for full price of $60.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303354751628Nov. 03 – 09
Total Items in Store: 2653
Items Sold: 24
Total Sales : $674
* Below yearly average of $942
Highest Price: $65 (Set of 12 Japanese Watercolor Painting Panels)
Average Price: $28
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $79
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 63Well I survived the week of being sick. And I got a lot more done than I expected, pumping out over 60 new items to my store. Not bad, though I wish my sales were a little better.
Regarding the general climate of eBay discussed in this week’s podcast, I felt like my sales have been on par with how much I’ve made last year, but they don’t reflect all of the extra hard work I’ve been putting toward the business this year. Since going full-time, I’ve been regularly listing 40-50 items a week and my store is growing quite nicely. So then why aren’t I seeing more of an increase in sales every week? I know it’s been discussed here about the plateau effect in this business, but I don’t believe I should have reached it by now at 2600 items. My conclusion is similar to yours, that this has just been a soft year for all kinds of reasons. One reason that wasn’t mentioned on the podcast is the nation’s political climate. I think the general uncertainty in our nation’s government is causing people to not want to shop or spend money no matter what side they’re on.
This week I’ll be getting back into the swing of it. Good thing I’ve got a room full of inventory just waiting to be listed and waiting to find a new home soon.
Oct. 27 – Nov. 2
Total Items in Store: 2613
Items Sold: 23
Total Sales : $1114
* ABOVE yearly average of $950
Highest Price: $150 (Cardboard Electric Light Up Christmas Fireplace)
Average Price: $48
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $46
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 26Wow. I really kicked butt with sales this week. It’s been a mix of a few higher priced items and a bunch of mid-ranged ones. Hopefully this means that 4th quarter is starting to kick off finally. I didn’t get a lot of listing done but for good reason. I spent a couple of days stocking up on shipping supplies. There was a moving company auction on Tuesday which advertised a brief description of stuff including boxes. I figured I’d check it out to see if I could score some cheap supplies. I sort of went overboard… I only spent $130, but I got so much packing paper and boxes that I had to make three trips in the van to haul it all back. I spent several hours the following day just getting it all from my garage to my basement. I think we now have enough newsprint sheets to last us 10 years or more. I was pretty ecstatic to say the least.
I have a feeling I won’t get much done this week either. Steph and I both caught a nasty bug. Just a cold virus, but colds seem to really hit me harder the older I get. I’ll see what I’m able to do. I’m just thankful that I can take a few days off without the repercussions I would have otherwise faced if I were still working a normal day job.
Nice sales as always, Steven! I had a pretty decent week last week. Here are some highlights…
My top sale of the week came from this Fisher brand 8-track player. I bought it at a shady estate sale. The house was condemned and was scheduled to be demolished but was jammed packed full of stuff. The guy selling the stuff was a real creep so we grabbed a handful of things and got the hell out of there. I paid $5 for this unit, but it didn’t work quite right when I brought it home. But I took a page out of your book and I opened it up to see what the matter was. It just needed some lubrication on the gears and joints. Got it working fine, took a video for the listing and it sold in a few days for $65.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303326795528I recently listed a bunch of keys that I got at an auction. I didn’t have a lot of knowledge about selling keys in general, but I did recognize the CAT equipment logo on this one. Some research showed that these keys weren’t keyed for one specific machine, but could be used with any ignition with it’s key number. I listed it for $35 and got full price in a couple of weeks.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303312004821I bought a neat little box lot for $5 that was full of old pushback pins. Out of it came this Oldsmobile pin. I didn’t have any indication of an age, but it looked old. I sold it for $15.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303302871676I don’t mess with postcards very often – only when they are included in a box lot or something. This neat one actually came out of a scrapbook which I bought for the old photos. It really caught my eye, so I did some research and the tall gentleman was a famous giant who married a woman even taller than he was (the woman in the picture wasn’t her, but his second wife). Anyways, this took a few months to sell for $45.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303047323099I don’t know if a nose-dive is the right term. My sales have been pretty lousy since August, but they’ve been very slowly on the rise. Here’s a screenshot of my impressions over the last 3 months. There’s one day in September that my impressions spiked for some reason, but on average they’re consistent. They’re not as wildly contrasting as yours. Maybe because I don’t sell very much clothing.
https://imgur.com/a/tpDiVPROct 20 – 26
Total Items in Store: 2609
Items Sold: 23
Total Sales : $657
* Below yearly average of $945
Highest Price: $65 (Fisher 8-Track Player Recorder)
Average Price: $29
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $39
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $178
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 41My sales started out terrible this week, but on Friday it was like something turned the faucet on finally. Steph and I both sold more stuff on that one day than the whole week prior combined. Weird.
I don’t have too much to report this week. I’ve just been hunkering down and listing. Went to a quick little auction on Saturday and bought some great stuff. My best buy was a large box of photo slides for the opening bid of $2.50. I just got a chance to go through them today and I’m very happy with my little purchase. These photos were taken by a race car enthusiast in the 1960s. There are tons of pictures of old Ferraris, Porsches, Cobras and GT40s on various tracks, including some from a very controversial race in 1966 at Sebring. I have a lot of research on my hands here, but just based on some quick past sold searches, I should be able to add a few zeros to that $2.50 investment.
That’s too bad about the lamp cover sale. I haven’t had to cancel a sale yet, but It’s bound to happen sometime with the amount of stuff I’m trying to cram on my shelves. I had a pretty soft week last week. But here are a few of the more interesting sales…
I got one of those cast metal meat grinders in a box lot which I paid $5 for (each sellable item came to .63 cents). This one was made by Enterprise. Unfortunately, they’re not super desirable anymore, at least not worth what it would cost to ship something this heavy. But the individual parts will sell for almost just as much as the whole thing. This cutter blade was the first part to sell at $10.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303252490489My flatware has been selling quite well lately. I’m glad because I’ve got four bins full of the stuff. This pair of Towle stainless salad forks went for $15. I paid $2.50 at an auction for a whole box of random flatware and so far I’ve earned back $212 from it! Flatware can be pretty arduous to research and list but it can pay off if you find the right stuff.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/302836548919When I pulled this object out of a box lot, I had no clue what I was looking at. But with the power of Google, I was able to identify it as an old corn shucker. The metal was a bit corroded but the leather was still in excellent shape. It sold for $15 after over a year. A long tail item, but it was worth listing.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/302836548914My sale of the week came from an old camera lens. I bought a big box lot of old camera equipment for relatively cheap. The top layer of stuff was crappy film cameras, but what people didn’t realize was below all that junk was the good stuff. Leica accessories, German made lenses, absolute gold. This lens was hard to identify since there were no makers mark on it. But with some research, I was 90% sure it was a Dallmeyer. And if you look that brand up in solds, you’ll see some crazy prices. Since I wasn’t absolutely sure, I put a meager price of $150 on it, and it sold quickly for full price.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303302864740Oct 13 – 19
Total Items in Store: 2592
Items Sold: 17
Total Sales : $498
* Below yearly average of $948
Highest Price: $150 (Dallmeyer 20mm C-Mount Camera Lens)
Average Price: $29
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $31
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $568
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 30It’s been a very soft week on my end, so I was surprised to see that I made almost $500 in sales. Good, not great, but I can live with it. I’ve been slow to list last week as well. I pumped out a bunch of winter clothing and coats which brings me no joy at all to photograph and list, so at least I’ve got all that out of the way. I’ll be happy to get back to random hard goods which make up 90% of my store.
I don’t envy your upcoming inventory task at all. I would absolutely dread having to set up an inventory system from scratch with my current store, and yours is 4 times as large. I hope it goes easy for you! What I’ve done from almost the start goes like this: every item that I buy, whether from auctions or thrift stores or whatever, goes into a spreadsheet as soon as I bring it home. Then it goes into the “To List” room. I’ll work on listing in order chronologically from purchase date (unless there’s a holiday or season coming up such as for Christmas items). Whenever I’m done listing a small pile, I’ll put them in bins which I’ve labeled with a marker “AA”, “AB”, etc. and that goes right in the spreadsheet. Larger stuff I just label “Out” but it’s easy to find usually. Clothing is easy for me since I rarely buy and sell it, but your idea about storing it in alphabetical order by brand is what I would do too.
My scavenge of the week came from an auction that we went to on Saturday. It was very chaotic and I think I overspent on some things, but I did score some almost new Chanel and Revillon perfume that I can probably resell for $100 or so each. I also got a box full of designer sunglasses and eyeglasses for pretty cheap which may earn me back the total that I spent there.
Looks like its getting plenty cold up where you live. I had to finally bust out my hoodie this morning here in Ohio. It’s been kinda slow for me recently too, but here are some interesting sales to share…
From a box lot of ephemera came this little group of Bazooka Joe bubble gum prize catalogs from many decades ago. They haven’t received much interest over the months so when a $40 best offer came through, I jumped on it. Easy money for something that I only paid around a dollar for.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303028738866I always have my eye out for new-old-stock bed sheets because I can usually buy them really cheap and they always do well for me. This single plain white Dan River bed sheet came from a box lot full of similar NOS items that I bought for $6 total (each sellable item came to .71 cents). It took a few months but these and another similar one each sold for $20. The ones to look out for are the ones with vintage patterns obviously, but it’s good to know that plain white will sell too.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303065665955My big sale the week before last was this old pilot’s briefcase. I bought it at an auction for $45 because it was filled with all kinds of pilot maps and interesting goodies. I organized and listed the contents separately and this was the first thing to sell… and for full price too! $116.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303153536099Here’s a great item to be on the lookout… vintage Christmas toy catalogs. The older, the better. This 1976 Sears Wish Book wasn’t too relatively old, but I still priced it high and stuck to my guns for the upcoming Christmas season. It sold for full price of $130! I had about .50 cents into it. Great sale!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303245451381Finally, my big sale of last week. I purchased three mid century coffee tables at an auction all for $5 total. They were in rough condition, so I spend a few hours cleaning, oiling and waxing the surfaces to bring them back to life. This Lane Acclaim table was the first to sell. I took a best offer of $225. The gentleman came by and picked it up exactly when he said he would too. It was nice not having to deal with a third party carrier service like the last couple of “local pickup” sales.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303162686125Oct 6 – 12
Total Items in Store: 2576
Items Sold: 15
Total Sales : $860
* Below yearly average of $953
Highest Price: $225 (MCM Lane Acclaim Dovetail Walnut Coffee Table)
Average Price: $57
Returns: 1
Cost of Goods Sold: $19
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $186
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 68Another good week on my end. I had fewer sales but the things that did sell were higher prices items. I spent most of my week listing old keys. I bought a box lot of them as an experiment for around $90. There were probably close to 150 keys in there. I cleaned most of them up and researched the brands and styles and got them all listed. I immediately sold two bunches of them and made back 2/3 of my cost. I’m sure the other 66 listings will slowly sell eventually.
This week I plan on listing a ton of winter clothing that I’ve stockpiled for the upcoming cold season. I’ve also got to find time to fix some grout cracks that have been neglected in our stone outer walls. It should be a fairly simple task, but I’ve learned since becoming a homeowner that projects will usually take at least twice as long than expected.
