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Sept. 29 – Oct 5
Total Items in Store: 2526
Items Sold: 26
Total Sales : $701
* Below yearly average of $944
Highest Price: $116 (Vintage Pilot Map Briefcase Attache Bag)
Average Price: $27
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $88
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $18
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 42I had a decent week of sales. It felt slow so I was pleasantly surprised when I did my numbers for the week. There’s not a lot to report… just finishing up on listing my huge flatware buyout. It’s funny, last week I mentioned that my flatware just hasn’t been selling like it used to and suddenly I get four or five sales for pieces that I’ve listed months ago.
We hit up a few yard sales this weekend. I’m amazed that they’re still going on in this area. My buy of the week came from a little garage sale of just absolute junk. I spent maybe 30 seconds looking around before heading back to the car. But then I spotted a mid century slat top teak coffee table that the owners had placed stuff for sale on top. It was obviously not meant for sale, but I inquired anyway and the lady thought about it and said $5. Heck yeah!
Awesome record player sales, Steven! Do you take extra measures to secure those fold up players as you would a normal record player, or are they pretty much shipping ready as-is?
I had a fantastic week of sales last week. Including this lot of ten brass elephant bells. I’ve never heard of such a thing until I researched them after finding them in a box lot. They sound really neat when they ring. Fancy ones will sell for a lot of money, but I thought I would push my luck with $100. They sat for probably a couple of years until I finally got a best offer of $70. Good enough for me. They only cost me .22 cents.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/302748486847These vintage Nutone range exhaust fan brochures were included in a pile of ephemera I got at an auction. I thought the graphics were fun so I put them up for $15. I paid $39 for the box lot (each sellable item came to $1.56) and so far I made back about $375 with a few more pieces to sell.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303028771387Another ephemera box lot contained piles of old WW2 letters and other paper items collected from a soldier stationed in Okinawa. This map, and another one similar but different, were marked ‘SECRET’ so I thought it had to be special. I was going to price them both at $80, but thought I’d try an auction just to be sure I wasn’t losing any money. They ended up selling for $100 each!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303288398266This little cardboard ring box nearly got put in the garage sale pile, but I thought I’d try eBay anyway since it had an old local store name on it. I listed it for $20 and took a $15 BO. Vintage ring and jewelry boxes are something I’ve learned to resell as they can do quite well sometimes.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303221038746I picked this contemporary 7-in-1 board game up at an auction for free when another buyer said he didn’t want it. It was really nice with just a little bit of wear. Past solds indicated that others have done well, so I listed it for $150. It took awhile but I finally got full price for it!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303047837891I’ll probably do a little of both. There are some really unique shots such as aerial views during a bombing raid. And some shots of ships where the names are easily identifiable. Also a lot of shirtless Navy men that I’m not above selling as gay interest. But the non-distinct ones that’s left will probably be lotted together.
Sept. 22 – 28
Total Items in Store: 2501
Items Sold: 27
Total Sales : $1101
* Above yearly average of $943
Highest Price: $150 (Bombay Co. Cherry Wood 7 in 1 Game Board Set)
Average Price: $41
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $63
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $771
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 14I had an awesome week of sales this time around. Hopefully this means that things are picking up again going into the fourth quarter. I didn’t do a ton of listing, but I knew I wouldn’t. We had two auctions to go to plus I’m replacing a section of wall on the side of my house so my time was limited. I’m hoping to get back on the listing train this week.
The auctions were both kinda lousy. The Thursday one was two hours away and was about 90% glassware which I have no interest in. I manage to buy some box lots but there wasn’t anything that stood out. The Saturday auction was a little better but the auctioneer stopped halfway through because there weren’t enough people there to bid. I’ve never seen that happen before. I was really peeved because there was a big box of old photo slides that I would have bid on. But my score of the week came from a set of photo albums that I paid $125 for, but are filled with a few hundred original WW2 photographs. I should make bank on those.
Tomorrow I’m going to finish siding the wall and get back to listing flatware. Flatware sales have slowed down for me these last few months, but it’s still a nice little pipeline.
I’d love to find more art, especially original stuff. But I wasn’t exaggerating when I said we have a lot of wall space. We bought a 5500 sq ft house last year and are starting to fill it up with eBay items for sale including lamps, rugs and furniture. Now with a cat, we have to be extra mindful of her scratching.
Sept. 15-21
Total Items in Store: 2615
Items Sold: 24
Total Sales : $644
* Below yearly average of $934
Highest Price: $80 (Vintage Walz Lens Hood for Leitz Leica Summicron Lens)
Average Price: $27
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $26
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $388
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 44I have some good numbers to report this week considering the time of year. Sales were fairly consistent with a bunch of lower priced items. I made enough to let me sleep soundly at night and that’s fine with me. My listing number was lower than my goal because we spent extra time scavenging. We went to a weird auction on Wednesday. There was a lot of good stuff but the bidding was going high, at least at the beginning. But we managed to get a bunch of cool stuff. My scavenge of the day was a giant box of old radio and television Photofax service manuals. They’re each just little 4 page or more pamphlets, but they’re going for $10 a piece on eBay and I’ve got hundreds. I also bought a parts bin full of old capacitors. I don’t know exactly what I’ve got, but if you look up vintage capacitor under Solds, certain ones can go for hundreds of dollars!
Regarding the storage of artwork, our solution is to hang them around the house. We have a lot of empty wall space so it made sense to use the pictures until they sell. When one does sell, it just gets replaced with another piece of art from a little stack in my storage. It’s like a rotating art gallery.
I have a feeling I won’t get a lot done this week. We just adopted our first kitty cat yesterday and we’re working to get her used to the house. That and we’re going to auctions on Thursday and Saturday. It’s funny how worried I was that the auction scene was drying up around here. Now it’s exploding.
Those are some crazy shoes! I’ve never heard of Z-Coils. I probably would have passed over them before now just thinking they were some novelty thing. Thanks for the new info! I had a pretty good week of sales. Here are some highlights…
This may not have been the highest priced sale, but it was entertaining. These old wooden ice cream spoons were found on the bottom of a box lot of random goodies. I paid a bit up on it, so each sellable item cost me $1.50. They sat in my store for quite a while but finally sold for $10. The buyer gave me a great review too.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303031944380Here’s my favorite sale of the week. This really old Stanley tape measure came out of a box lot of old tools. Each sellable item was $1.10. I didn’t think much of it at first. It was an obscure tape measure so it was hard to research. But one did sell close to a year ago for over $100. So I gave $130 a shot. And it sold in less than a day! Maybe I should have priced it higher, but I’m happy with that price regardless. So be on the lookout for these manual push-pull style measurers.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303279807683This was one of those sales that I thought would sell much faster than it did. I saw this awesome looking Sanko Ware tea kettle at a rummage sale and paid .50 cents for it. But when I went to list it, I found that the market was somewhat flooded. I gave it a $30 price and it finally sold after many months.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/302967588344My big sale of the week came in the form of an industrial gravity convection oven for use in labs and such. This was being thrown away at my dad’s former place of employment and he bought it for scrap price, probably just a few bucks. It worked just fine, just needed cleaned up. It sat in my inventory for quite a long time until I finally got a best offer of $300. I couldn’t push the accept button any faster. It was a pain in the ass to pack but it arrived and I haven’t heard any complaints.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303094071255Sept. 8 – 14
Total Items in Store: 2593
Items Sold: 16
Total Sales : $704
* Below yearly average of $941
Highest Price: $300 (Quincy Lab Gravity Convection Oven)
Average Price: $44
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $12
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $13
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 47I had an okay week of sales. The $300 lab oven really saved me. I’m really glad to get that thing out of storage too. It was huge and heavy.
Regarding your customer issue with the international INAD, I had a kind of similar issue happen to me a couple months ago. I sold one of those metal bartenders drink recipe contraptions to someone in the UK. The buyer opened an INAD saying that it wasn’t vintage. I argued with her that it was indeed vintage, that maybe her idea of the word differed from mine. That’s when she got nasty. So I called eBay and explained that the buyer was essentially lying to avoid paying for return shipping. The ebay rep just told me to refund her or pay for shipping somehow, that there were no other options for me. I didn’t know how else to fight it, so I just refunded her to avoid the headache. eBay needs to come up with some better way to deal with this because I can see how overseas buyers would easily be able to abuse the system.
We went to a few yard sales on Saturday but I didn’t find much worth mentioning. The yard sales are drying up expectedly, but the auction scene hasn’t boomed yet as it usually does during the fall season. I was really hoping to stock up my inventory for the winter months, but it doesn’t seem like it’ll happen.
Oh man, sorry about your fence. Hopefully it’ll be easy to put back up. Nice sale on that radio though! I had a pretty productive week with my largest net profit sale of all time. Even without that sale, it was still a pretty good week for this time of year.
I was given this Patterson Kelley materials blender by my dad earlier this year. He got it from his former employer when they updated their machinery. He paid scrap price of around $10. I was reluctant to even list it because of how massive it was, but decided to humor him since he was excited for me to sell it. It took a while and I got a ton of low-ball offers, but I finally got a decent BO of $1200. I almost lost the sale, though, because the uShip carriers wanted to pick it up a day early when I wasn’t home. But we got it sorted out and the buyer hasn’t said anything negative so I think I’m in the clear!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303152519535These two plastic lady figurines came out of a box lot that nobody else seemed to want. I paid $2.50 for the lot. Each sellable item came to .36 cents. They weren’t marked, but I had a suspicion that they were Marx. Some quick research told me that they were part of the Bathing Beauties line. A complete set would have fetched me a nice price, but even these two sold for $15.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303257279227This leather blacksmith apron came in a box lot full of nautical fishing floats for $10. Wooden floats have always done very well for me, so it was a no brainer. The apron, though, was really worn and stained, but the material was top quality. So I listed it for $30 and it sold after a long while for full price.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303182153330I grabbed this old shovel at an auction for $7 only because I liked how the handle and shaft were all solid wood and thought it unique. My intuition was correct. Some research showed me that these were used to shovel coal on old locomotives. I cleaned it up and put a few layers of mineral oil on it and it sold rather quickly for $60.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303261524735Sept. 1 – 7
Total Items in Store: 2462
Items Sold: 19
Total Sales : $1772 ($572 before big sale)
* Above yearly average of $948
Highest Price: $1200 (Industrial Liquids/Solids V-Blender)
Average Price: $32 without the skew
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $27
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $275
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 3We got back from our vacation last Wednesday and I took the rest of the week off from listing on eBay to catch up on indoor/outdoor chores, hence the low number of new listings this week. But I hit the ground running starting yesterday and hope to start making some real progress again.
I mentioned last week about an industrial blender that I took a best offer for $1200. The buyer set up a uShip pickup, but again there were issues which almost jeopardized the sale. The buyer called me on Saturday evening telling me that the deliverer wanted to pick the item up in 15 minutes, even though we agreed to a Sunday pickup. Problem was, I was far out of town. Luckily the carrier later agreed to uphold the Sunday pickup, but it put a damper on my night thinking that the buyer might cancel the transaction if the carrier didn’t cooperate. This is the second time that a uShip carrier has caused problems. Now I’m just hoping that the buyer is satisfied with the blender, because I don’t know what I’m going to do if he wants to return it.
My scavenge of the week came from a last minute auction that we decided to check out. There wasn’t much there that I was interested in except for a 1950s Formica diner table with matching chairs. It came in a cool red swirl design with mica dots all over. Very nice condition too. I wanted it, but so did someone else. I bid it up to $275 which was way more than I wanted to pay for it, but I know I can make double that at the very least and probably more.
I have a semi-permanent solution (at least until eBay updates their code) for keeping the classic label page without having to change the URL every time. I use a browser add-on called Redirector. It’s available for both Firefox and Chrome. It basically forces your browser to redirect to a specific URL. I’ve been using it for several months without any issues. Here’s a brief direction on setting it up:
Search for the Redirector extension for your browser and install
Open the extension settings (the icon is an “R” made from an arrow)
Click Create New Redirect
In the boxes, copy and paste these following texts exactly as they appear here in their proper boxes:Description:
eBay Classic Shipping Label
Example URL:
https://gslblui.ebay.com/gslblui/new_label?transId=987654321&itemId=123456789012
Include Pattern:
https://gslblui.ebay.com/gslblui/new_label?*
Redirect to:
https://gslblui.ebay.com/gslblui/back_to_classic?$1
Pattern Type:
Wildcard
Pattern Description:
Exclude pattern:
https://gslblui.ebay.com/gslblui/back_to_classic*
Process matches:
No Processing
Apply to:
Main Window (address bar)I just came back from a long vacation. I didn’t make a whole bunch of sales to share, but here are a few interesting ones at least.
My big sale of the week came from this nativity set made by Martino Landi. It’s made from a hard plastic resin and didn’t seem relatively old. But it had really nice detail and appeared complete except for the barn backdrop. I listed it for a high price of $120 hoping for a reasonable best offer, but the buyer bought it for full price. It came out of a box lot which I paid $1.50 for (each sellable item was .30 cents).
https://www.ebay.com/itm/302940120430I thought that this ornately hand carved wood book rest would have sold for a lot more, but the market was flooded with them for even cheaper than what I sold mine for. I managed to get $20 for it after several months. Thankfully I didn’t pay a lot for it… $.75 cents at a rummage sale.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303207785762This last item was something that I nearly threw in the garage sale pile, but reconsidered at the last minute. It’s a hand-made tool box. Very rough cut with not a lot of dazzle. But I thought maybe someone would need something this specific size and didn’t care what it looked like. It took quite a while, but it finally sold for $30. When I bought it at an auction for $15, it was full of 8mm home movies which is what I was really after. So at least I made my money back and then some.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/302880834780Aug. 25 – 31
Total Items in Store: 2477
Items Sold: 10
Total Sales : $388
* Below yearly average of $932
Highest Price: $120 (Martino Landi Christmas Nativity Set)
Average Price: $39
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $15
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 0I’m a little late in posting this week. We got back from our vacation to Georgia a couple days ago and I just now had some time to catch up on the podcasts. Last week was a very soft week for me, but I feel that that happens when I put my store on vacation mode. Things still sell enough, but I have to wonder if my sales would have been better if not for that.
But I have no regrets because Steph and I had a fantastic time! We went to this huge comic/geek convention called Dragon Con (apparently the largest in eastern US). We spent some time with some friends and even made some new ones. We’ll probably do it again next year.
I made a great sale this last Sunday. I sold an industrial chemical mixer that my dad picked up for scrap price of around $10. I took a best offer of $1200. Unfortunately, I don’t think the buyer realized that it was for pick-up only even though it was in all caps in the title! But he seems to be still interested so I’m going to attempt to help him with setting up a uShip delivery. Hopefully he’ll be understanding enough.
Hey Mike. I see what you mean. That way if I don’t win anything, I don’t have to drive there in the first place. It was all a psychological trick though. For the whole week that the auction was live, and for the first couple hours of the closing of the beginning items, nothing was being bid on. It kinda made me feel like I would get the stuff I wanted at the end of the line for cheap so why not grab a few of these mystery boxes in the beginning for a few dollars? So I felt kind of foolish when the prices of the good stuff at the end suddenly shot up beyond what would be a good deal. But hey, lesson learned. No more online auctions for me.
Aug. 11-17
Total Items in Store: 2452
Items Sold: 21
Total Sales : $438
* Below yearly average of $938
Highest Price: $40 (Welby Kundo Anniversary Clock FOR PARTS/REPAIR)
Average Price: $21
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $44
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $48
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 33Congratulations on completing another rental! It looks so nice! It’s been another soft week for me. But this was expected. August is historically my least profitable month. I just see it as less time having to pack and having more time to list.
Last week I tried my hand with an online auction… and I suddenly remembered why I hate online auctions. I won a few crappy lots right off the bat, but the items I really wanted went way beyond what I would ever be willing to pay. So I had to drive an hour just to go pick up junk. And it really was just junk. I’ll be lucky to even make a couple hundred bucks out of the whole thing, which isn’t bad but it was a lot of work. While I was there, I overheard a conversation between the workers and a guy who was apparently responsible for buying most of the stuff (and driving up all the prices). From the sound of it, he was in way over his head. He didn’t really even have a way to transport or store everything that he bought. It reminded me of the amateur storage auction buyers who dream of making tons of money but don’t know how much extra work goes into it once they’ve won the units.
So after putting it off for so long, I decided to set up my business policies on eBay. It wasn’t as confusing as I thought it would be once I understood what I was looking at when it pulled all of my different shipping methods. I managed to concentrate it down to about a dozen policies. The whole process took a couple of hours, but I reckon it’ll take me about 5 minutes to put my store on vacation mode with extended handling as opposed to the 30-40 minutes it usually takes.
