Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
Thanks Winchester! I hope it works out for you too! I’m the same way with my debt. I paid everything off before buying our house. We could rent out a room if we really needed to. Our house used to be a bed and breakfast after all. But we enjoy our privacy too much at the moment.
Thanks, Jay. Yes I can totally relate to Peter. He gets it. I love that movie!
Thanks, Mark. Yes, my gut instincts have always been reliable in the past. I felt miserable about the decision at first, but after I slept on it I felt great. And it’s totally changed my outlook at my job as well. It’s kind of exhilarating to not care about office politics or drama or whose shoes I might step on anymore. Having a working backup plan has relieved me of a lot of stress here.
Hey Mike. I think I recall someone else on the forum many months ago come to the same conclusion. This might be a trend that we’ll start seeing with estate sales. I haven’t encountered anything like that yet, but it helps to learn the signs right off the bat so we don’t waste our time. Maybe remember the faces of the people running it. Or the advertising they use.
But I know how annoying it is to go to a sale where everything is priced outrageously. Just two weeks ago, I went to an estate sale ran by a woman whose father passed away. She literally looked up everything and priced according to how it was priced on eBay. I tried to buy a chess set that wasn’t marked hoping to snag it for less than $5. She said $100 but I can do $75. NAH.Wow. What an ordeal! I read this whole thing and now my palms are sweaty and I caught myself gritting my teeth. I can’t imagine going through all of that. I’ve been asked to sell some glassware by an aunt one time and I just said no thanks. If there’s one thing I don’t do well at, it’s being the middle man.
Oct 7 – 13
Total Items in Store: 1811
Items Sold: 26
Total Sales : $810
* almost equal yearly average of $813
* above 2017 total week sales of $412
Highest Price: $216 (Combined price of two lots of gold filled watch bands to a buyer in Taiwan)
Average Price: $31
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $26
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $20
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 56Welp, Friday was suppose to be the day I put my two week notice in to quit my job… but I got cold feet. I had set that date months ago, but as I got closer to the day I was making myself sick with worry. My heart was telling me that it would be so fantastic to be free of the corporate desk job finally. But my rational brain turned up and said look dummy, you might not totally enjoy working in an office all day, but it’s allowing you to save up for better things. I thought about all of the discussions I’ve had with my fellow SLers here on the forums. I really do think I’m at the point where I could make it going full time, but I’m right on that line. I want to be beyond that line. I’ve got a good amount saved up, but a major home catastrophe could wipe all that out in an instant. Plus, I worry about all of the unknowns with this new house. How much will it cost to heat in the winter? How much to replace the boards on the back porch? Will we need to get the roof replaced soon? (that’s a yes, BTW).
So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to continue to build up my store. I’m gonna continue to drop every penny I make on eBay into my savings. And when the time comes, I’ll just know it. I’ll know it either when Steph and I are consistently making $1K+ a week with our combined eBay sales. Or when I get too fed up with the BS at work and decide I have enough FU Money to rage quit.
Anyways, I’m rambling. I had a much better week than the previous week. I sold over twice as many items for better prices. Those gold-filled watch bands were a great sale! I took a best offer, but I priced them super high in the first place so I won’t complain. We did some scavenging on Saturday on our way to a festival. We found a rummage sale that was packed with awesome stuff, and just as many people. But following the advice I learned on this forum, I made a pile next to the cashier and kept going back for more. When I was done, rather than tally up the little price stickers, we just agreed on $15. Hell Yeah! My best buy there was a small Casio keyboard that could fetch me around $160.
You always post cool sales, SFF! It’s good to know that deer skulls can fetch some decent money. I find then around my area from time to time. I’l start picking them up from now on.
Awesome sales, Steven! That tackle box was really cool. And I laughed out loud when your dog walked right into that spider! I didn’t have a very awesome week. But here are some highlights regardless…
First up was a particular sale. I received a message with an offer for this cast iron mortar and pestle set for $35 with free shipping, but they only wanted the pestle portion. Well, seeing how the mortar was cracked and essentially useless outside of decoration, I looked into how much it would cost to ship a 3 pound pestle to her. I sent back a counter offer with the increase to offset the shipping and she accepted $42. I paid $22 for the whole thing, but sadly it broke when I got flooded last year. I’ll see if I can sell the mortar as a planter or something. LOL
Cast Iron PestleI bought this really cool mid century tartan plaid clothing travel bag at an auction for a dollar. I really thought it would do well when I listed it, but that was 2 years ago. I ended up taking a half price offer of $30 just to get rid of the thing. The buyer said it will be used to carry rocks in a plaid race. Whatever that means…
Plaid Clothes Travel BagI acquired these three small melamine Florence art trays in a box lot. They cost me about $3. I priced them rather high just because I thought they looked cool. It took awhile, but they finally sold for full price of $35.
Melanine Trinket TraysHere’s my highest sale of the week. I never pass up an opportunity to snag up vintage aluminum kitchen canisters. They always sell well for me. This particular set is made by Kromex. There are a ton of them up on eBay already, but mine included the grease container with the strainer. I priced it high at $60 and waited patiently. It took about a month, but it sold for full price. I paid $2 for it.
Kromex Kitchen Canisters10/09/2018 at 3:55 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 380: What Do Lifetime Sales Really Mean? #49884Good advice, Inglewood! I like how you’ve figured out how much it would cost daily to get by. Right now, every penny of my net income from eBay (profit minus COGS/supplies/mileage/fees ect.) has been put in a savings account from day one. I only touched it recently for the down payment on my house. And I have a spreadsheet which shows exactly how much net profit I’ve made each month (sans income tax). So going by that data, last year would have been impossible to live off of my eBay profits. This year would have been do-able but tight. But my profit trend is going upwards. I’ve predicted that my eBay income will match my current income next year. Perhaps even surpass them.
After some thought, I’ve decided to treat this as more of a year long experiment rather than a major career change. I’ve got safety nets to fall back on if it doesn’t work (savings and two very giving families). If it doesn’t work out the way I expected, I’ll go back into the tech support industry begrudgingly. If it does, then I’ll be happy as a clam doing what I love to do!
10/08/2018 at 12:45 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 380: What Do Lifetime Sales Really Mean? #49770Thanks, Troy! All very good points! Number 1 is easy, and I feel like I have a good handle on number 2. Number 3 is where I have trouble with. It’s just my personality and kind of the way I was raised. It’s been ingrained in my head to always play it safe and I’ve never really been taught how or when to take risks. So the feeling of not being in full control puts me in a bad way. I feel like a cliff diver getting ready to jump knowing that there’s a chance things could go terribly wrong. But I’m trying. I know that taking acceptable risks is a part of being successful sometimes.
10/08/2018 at 11:16 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 380: What Do Lifetime Sales Really Mean? #49759Sep 30 – Oct 6
Total Items in Store: 1784
Items Sold: 15
Total Sales : $362
* below yearly average of $810
* below 2017 total week sales of $610
Highest Price: $60 (5-Piece Kromex Aluminum Kitchen Canister Set)
Average Price: $24
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $51
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $166
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 27It’s been a very soft week of sales. The dread started setting in towards the end and those negative thoughts began creeping up on me… what am I doing wrong? Why has eBay forsaken me? It’s only natural to feel that way I guess. My numbers aren’t that great, but I do have the data to show that this is historically my slow period. The tail end of 3rd and the tip of 4th quarters have always been pathetic in terms of sales. It it wasn’t for one huge sale this week last year, I would have made less then than I did now. I just need to breath and have faith in my business. It’s hard, though, especially when I’m on the verge of quitting my day job and making a go at it full-time. It’s weeks like this that give me cold feet. I might consider holding off on making the jump for another month just to see if my store picks up again.
But in more optimistic news, Steph found a boombox at an auction that is the same exact brand and model as the one used in that Lonely Island music video “Boombox.” I guess it’s sold in the past for almost $600. She only paid $35 for it. LOL.
10/04/2018 at 3:53 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Rustic mailbox, Holy Bible, Car spotter guides, Ericofone, Lava lamp #49611I forgot to post last week, so some of these may have been sold a couple weeks ago.
My big sale from the previous week was this set of five new Technical Drawing Pens made by KOH-I-NOOR. They came in a box lot of various drafting instruments that I paid $15 for (each sellable item comes to .60 cents). They took a couple months to sell, but I got a full asking price of $110 for them.
Koh-I-Noor Technical Drawing PensHere’s something intriguing. I scored a huge pile of stuff at the end of an auction last January for only a dollar. Most of it was junk that I just left there, but I did grab a stack of these brand new, still in box brass oval picture frames. I listed all of them (quantity 5) back in early summer with hardly any interest whatsoever from anyone…until now. I ended up selling all 5 of them over the last two weeks, all to different people! There must have been a popular article or decorating segment about them recently. $20 each = $100 total!
Brass Oval Picture FrameHere’s the first of my massive pile of slides to sell. I know old train stuff is very popular right now, so I was very pleased to find these from an estate auction of a fellow who’s primary interests were photography and locomotives. I grabbed up all the slides that I could which was easy because almost nobody else wanted them. I ended up spending around $100 for probably 10,000 slides. Now not all of them are train related. There are a bunch of vacation stuff to sort through. But from the small sample of slides I’ve listed just last week, I’ve already made my money back. This lot of 14 slides show some shots of the Cass Scenic Railroad in West Virginia from 1981. It sold within an hour for $40.
Locomotive Photo SlidesAnd here is my big sale of last week. Another part from the industrial drain snake sold. I bought the whole thing for $50 as an experiment. When I realized that more people were interested in certain parts rather than the whole thing, I took down the listing and spent an afternoon dismantling it. I ended up with 7 sellable parts. This Line Feeder sold for a best offer of $170.
Drain Snake PartI’ve found that the shots that are too good to be original usually aren’t. Bu you never know. People still find original Ansel Adams photos. If you take a strong magnifying glass, look and see if the picture is more grainy than normal. An original slide will be really clear as long as the camera was properly focused. Otherwise, you’ll see the little “pixels” indicating that it was a picture of a print.
I have a technique that suites me well enough. First, I scan a bunch of slides in using my Epson V500 scanner. It’s kinda a slow process as I can only do 4 at a time, but I may upgrade to something faster later. Next, after I have a bunch saved on my computer, I run a batch process in Photoshop that puts my watermark on all of them. This might not be necessary if you’re uploading a low resolution picture as the preview, but I like to use high res to let people see the details. Then I use a slide sorter to take pictures of the front and back of the slide. For sets of slides, I line them up. That’s pretty much it. Here’s an example of one I sold last week…
https://www.ebay.com/itm/302899312542
Military and war slides are amazing! I’ve made over $2600 so far on a little box of Korean war slides that I acquired last year. It’s sometimes tricky to know whether they’re original or reproduced. Are they labeled in any way? I’ve listed some mass produced magic lantern slides from Egypt that I can’t seem to even practically give away.Sep 23 – 29
Total Items in Store: 1770
Items Sold: 22
Total Sales : $657
* below yearly average of $814
* above 2017 total week sales of $600
Highest Price: $170 (Marco Powerfeed 70 Drain Plumbing Pipe Snake Cable Line Feeder Part)
Average Price: $30
Returns: 1
Cost of Goods Sold: $26
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $46
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 20Slow sales at the beginning of the week, but then they exploded on Wednesday and Thursday only to slow down again over the weekend. Weird, this is not the normal trend for me. But as long as my numbers are steady, I’m alright with it. I started listing some of the 35mm slides that I’ve spent the previous week sorting. I sold one set within an hour for $40 and I’m wondering if I should have auctioned those. They were a set of 14 of a railroad locomotive from the 70s. Well, I’ve got tons more so I can afford to try different experiments in selling them.
Steph and I spent the weekend in Amish country, Ohio. It was a fun little trip. There’s a little thrift store there that we love to visit whenever we go. We shopped there for 2 hours! But I found so much good stuff, including my buy of the week… a beautiful mid century hanging brass lamp. It only cost me 6 bucks, but I know I can get at least a couple hundred for it. A couple other notables are a rare Ohio State throwback football jersey and a vintage Air Force wool overcoat. We also filled up a couple coolers with meat and cheese and bought several bottles of wine. You can’t visit Amish country without doing so.
-
AuthorPosts