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04/09/2018 at 3:24 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 355: We Catch Up w/ Mark Tew, Not Your Dad’s CPA #37426
April 1 – 7
Total Items in Store: 1528
Items Sold: 33
Total Sales : $1364
* above yearly average of $693
* above 2017 total week sales of $795
Highest Price: $153 (Vintage Sony FH-7 High Density Stereo Component System)
Average Price: $41
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $70
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $134
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 49Great interview with Mark! You covered a lot of good information that would have been helpful when I first started out. I’m so glad I found a CPA to take care of my taxes. I’m good at figuring out a lot of things, but tax-speak goes right over my head.
I had a great week of sales! I almost doubled what I made the previous week. These 1K+ weeks are becoming more and more common. I LOVE IT!
I tried my luck at another auction on Saturday. Same as always, the stuff at the beginning was selling for way more than I would have liked to pay. But after a few hours, half the people left and the other half spent all their money so I was buying tons of stuff for dollars. My scavenge of the week were two 100% complete high end flatware sets. I’ll have to contemplate whether I should sell them as whole sets or part them out in sets of single place settings. I also scored some vintage John Deere and Mack trucker hats for a dollar!
The lady who received an empty box a couple weeks ago opened a case in Paypal. It took a few days, but Paypal closed the case in my favor without me even having to do anything. I wonder if they ended up reimbursing her?
04/05/2018 at 3:35 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Multi-meter, Danskos, Safety Glasses, Lone scout handbook, CB mic #37167Oh good, I’m working now. It wasn’t allowing me to post anything.
For some reason, all of my links were stripped out of my post and I can’t go back in and edit them. But here they all are:
Fishing Net Floats
Coca Cola Serving Trays
Wood Stationary Box
Facial Toning Mask
Stair Lift RemoteTo answer your question about the remote, what I do to test them is to put batteries in it and point it at my camera on my phone. You’ll see the little diode flash purple indicating that it’s sending a signal. You can’t see them with your naked eye, but digital cameras will pick it up.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by
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04/05/2018 at 9:33 am in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Multi-meter, Danskos, Safety Glasses, Lone scout handbook, CB mic #37142I love grabbing vintage nautical decor whenever I see it. I bought a bag of these worn out fishing net floats for $2.00 at an auction. This was the first one to sell. I priced it high at $50 and took a best offer of $39. Unfortunately, the buyer messaged me stating that her box was empty when it arrived at her door. I thought something was fishy (har har!) so I mentioned that USPS keeps close tabs on the package weight throughout the shipping stops so they’ll know exactly where the item disappeared and told her to call eBay. I don’t think that’s entirely true, but it worked. I haven’t heard from her since.
Fishing Net FloatThese Coca Cola metal trays were some of the oldest items I had in my inventory. I bought them when I was a noob and didn’t know about reproductions. Good thing I only paid $7 for them. Original Coke trays from the 20s and 30s can bring lots of money. If you ever encounter these, look on the side of the lip. They always print on them the real manufacturing date if they’re reproductions. They finally sold for $17.50, so at least I didn’t lose anything.
Coca Cola Serving TraysHere’s my big sale of the week. I acquired this wood stationary box at an auction for $12.50. It wasn’t really old despite the nice finger joint corners. I cleaned it up and put a coat of mineral oil and wood wax on it. It didn’t take long to sale for a BO of $75.
Wood Stationary BoxThis creepy thing was a fun item to sell. I dug this Facial Toning Mask out of the bins at Goodwill Outlet. At my local outlet, all electronics are .99 cents despite the weight. The box was pretty beat up, but the inside contents have never been used. The creams and things were all sealed. The face mask was still wrapped in plastic. But of course, I had to test it out. This thing was so weird. It shocks your face. And it hurts! The things people do for beauty, I guess. It ended up selling for full price of $60.
Nightmare Electric Beauty MaskFinally, let’s talk about remotes. A lot of times, thrift stores will have the remote control death bin, and I will always dig through it looking for specialized ones. In my experience, the fewer the buttons on a remote, the more it’s worth (with the exception of heating blanket controllers, but I’ll still grab those up if they’re cheap). This particular remote is for a stairlift. It has two buttons: up and down. It sold in a week for $70.
Stair Lift Remote04/02/2018 at 2:52 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 354: The Long Game – 10 Years On eBay #36915Thanks! That means a lot, T!
04/02/2018 at 2:37 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 354: The Long Game – 10 Years On eBay #36907Great discussion about auctions vs BIN. There’s a lot to be said about which is better. But I’ll throw my opinion in the ring and see where it goes.
I’ve heard it a hundred times that the best way to sell is to list as an auction with the starting price of what you want to realistically sell it for. My girlfriend’s dad will argue with you until he’s blue in the face that it’s the only way to sell. It sounds good and logical when spoken out loud, but there’s a lot of things behind the curtain that being unaccounted for. As Simplicio mentioned above, it adds another layer of work involved with a chance of losing listings in the clothes dryer that is eBay. Perhaps it might make more sense if you’re store is small, like under 20 items at a time. If your model is quick nickel over slow dime, then yeah auctions are perfect. But for larger, 500+ item stores, the benefit doesn’t outweigh the extra work (in my opinion).
I don’t think it’s been discussed yet, but let’s talk about human psychology and eBay. In the beginning when God said let there be eBay, there were only auctions. And people rejoiced and it was good. But as online marketplaces started becoming the norm, the auction format grew stale. Amazon convinced us to eat the forbidden fruit of instant buying gratification and it’s never been the same. (Okay, enough Biblical analogies) We’ve become accustomed to finding what we want, buying it and having it come right to our doorsteps 3-4 days later. When you run an auction, you’re forcing people to wait. You’re saying you can only buy this item on this day at this time for a currently unknown amount of money. I don’t know about you, but that turns me off. Sure, there’s max bidding and watch reminders, but it’s a hassle and we don’t like hassle. After 4 or 5 days of waiting, you’ve suddenly changed your mind, your passion fizzled, or you’ve even completely forgotten about it.
Now I would be hypocritical if I said that there is no place left for auction style selling. I’ve used that format a bunch in the past, and I will continue to do so in the future. But there are certain criteria that an item has to meet before I attempt it.
1. The item has to be highly desirable
2. The item has to be rare
3. The item has to have a large, even fanatical fan base.
You might have a home run if your item meets all three of these points. But it takes a lot of research to figure these out. I’ll provide an example… antique Korean history items. I found out about this by accident, but I’ve since learned that it potentially meets all three criteria. Those buyers are crazy and I love them! A lot of those Korean War slides sold for 4x or 6x what I realistically wanted to sell them for. But those kinds of items don’t come my way very often. Probably 99% of my store consists of stuff that meets 0 or 1 of those points. A few might have 2. But to think a bidding war might happen on everything in your store is a bit overconfident.NOW HAVING SAID ALL OF THAT… I could be completely wrong about 100% of what I just wrote. I could switch every item in my store to 7-day auctions with their current price as the starting bid and make 7 thousand dollars next week. I would not be a happy camper packing all that stuff. But before I do something that drastic, I’m going to need hard evidence that it works that way, more than just a few home runs among a ton of strikeouts. Like Jay & Ryanne, I’m open to new ideas and won’t discount any idea or opinion as long as there’s proper proof or logic to back it up. Anyway, that’s my stream of conscious opinion. Take it or leave it and sell however makes you happy. 🙂
04/02/2018 at 12:49 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 354: The Long Game – 10 Years On eBay #36898March 25-31
Total Items in Store: 1515
Items Sold: 21
Total Sales : $774
above yearly average of $676
above 2017 total week sales of $477
Highest Price: $75 (Vintage Pine Wood Finger Jointed Dovetail Stationary Box)
Average Price: $37
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $82
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $43
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 49Sales were sort of slow last week, so I was surprised when I just finished my numbers and saw that I made more than I thought. Only half of what I made last weed, but still above average.
I had a few interesting things happen to me last week. I got my first complaint about a box arriving empty. The lady began sending me irate messages asking me if I thought this was a joke. I was driving home from an auction so I couldn’t respond, but her messages seemed to have calmed down by the time I got home. I remained professional and told her to send me pictures of the box with whatever was left inside. She then sent me photos showing only packing paper left inside. I proceeded to tell her that I would be filing a report with USPS and they should see where the weight change occurred. I called eBay and they said to just tell her to call them, which I did. I haven’t heard back from her since. So whether she was trying to scam me, or if somehow the package got opened, the item removed and taped back together, I don’t know.
I went to another auction on Thursday. Another BUST! I have a theory about this and I wanted to see if anyone agrees. I think resellers flock to auctions at the beginning of the year, driving prices way up. It seemed the same way this time last year. Someone mentioned that it had to do with taxes and end-of-year inventory. Sellers offload as much of their inventory in Nov. and Dec. so they don’t have to pay as much tax. But then they’ve got to grow their inventory fast at the start of the year. All I know is I wouldn’t even think about paying some of the prices that stuff was going for at this place. I think starting next year, I’ll skip the auctions January through April and just focus on listing.
My buy of the week was actually one of the few things I could get at that auction. I got a whole box lot of over 50 new-old stock 10K gold-filled watch bands for $10. Still in their original cases. I guess nobody was paying attention. They should sell for about $20 or more apiece on eBay.
03/30/2018 at 9:37 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Converse all stars, Tobacco pouch, Akai amp, Canoe seats, Step basket, Jean jacket #36789Nice bunch of sales, Steve! I need to keep my eye out for vintage car parts apparently. I just bought some old Oldsmobile parts at an auction on a whim and was shocked how much they were worth. I had a bunch of good sales last week. Here are some highlights…
I’ll start with my big sale of the week. I love finding old Sony walkmans and Discmans at yard sales because they are always priced for a few bucks and can sometimes be worth quite a bit. Well I found my white whale a few months back. It’s a Sony D-88, one of the most unique and sought-after portable CD players made. It was designed to be smaller than the size of a CD. The disc would stick out of the sides kind of like those small portable record players. Not a very good design, but I guess so few of them remain out in the world that they’re quite valuable. Mine needed some work done. It wouldn’t output any sound. So I listed it for repair/parts and it sold within a week for $155. I only paid $4 for it originally.
Sony Discman D-88I acquired this Tupperware salt and pepper donkey caddy from a box lot at an auction last summer. I paid a hefty price for the lot, so each sellable piece came to about $2. Of course everybody bidding against me came up afterwards wanting to buy this piece from me, so I knew it had to be good. I listed and sold it for $30.
Tupperware Donkey CaddyThis vintage car alarm system came from a box lot of old electronics that I bought for $4. I really didn’t think it would sell. Outdated vehicle security just didn’t seem like something someone would want to install in their own car. I guess I was just banking on the fact that it was unopened and maybe a car alarm enthusiast would come along one day and buy it. It took a long time, but I finally took a best offer of $40.
Vintage Car AlarmI love selling original art because art is so subjective. I don’t even have to like it for it to sell. Case in point, I thought this piece was VERY ugly. Not so much the style (I can appreciate the abstract), but the colors were just unappealing. Maybe that was what the artist was going for? I don’t know, but it sold for $70. I paid a buck and some change for it.
Small Original PaintingMarch 18-24
Total Items in Store: 1483
Items Sold: 38
Total Sales : $1408
above yearly average of $672
above 2017 total week sales of $552
Highest Price: $155 (Rare Sony Discman CD Compact Disc Player D-88)
Average Price: $37
Returns: 1
Cost of Goods Sold: $71
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $168
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 88It’s been another fantastic week of sales on my part! Every night I was packing stuff up, getting annoyed every time my phone went cha-ching. But I loooove seeing my total sales at the end of weeks like this. I started using Promoted Listings on the 15th this month on my entire inventory, and it was about that time that my sales started to take off. I have my ad fee set to 5%. In the last week and a half, I made 26 sales through PL for a total of $1087 and accrued $54 in ad fees. I have to wonder if these items would have sold eventually without the PL program, but I do like that I’m selling things that’s been in my store for forever.
We went to an auction on Saturday and it was almost a total bust. It was probably the largest auction I’ve ever been to, but it was about 90% glass stuff. And it was all going for insane prices. Like, lots that I wouldn’t pay more than $10 for were selling for hundreds! I did manage to score a flat of vintage German drafting tools for cheap. But my scavenge of the week was actually on Friday. I went to an estate sale and bought a huge bag full of old 8mm home movies for $6. Mostly vacations and Christmas stuff. I’m going to keep an eye out for a cheap 8mm viewer so that I can check these all out.
Is that shag carpet ceiling in the wood paneled room? You’ve gotta admit, that’s one unique house.
I was surprised that your L.L. Bean didn’t sell for more. That was a really nice jacket. But awesome job on those Sansui speakers. I had a terrific week of good sales last week. Here are some of the notable ones.
Last fall on a walk, we came across a huge pile of stuff on the curb on the night before trash pickup. Someone must have been cleaning out their garage. So we picked through it all and pulled out a bunch of things that we thought we could either use or resell. One of them was this brand new refrigerator ice maker unit. Still in box. I listed it for $45 and it sold within a week. I love free stuff!
Whirlpool Automatic Modular Ice Maker KitI’ve been getting into dinnerware a bit more now that I’ve been becoming more educated on expensive brands and more sought-after patterns. I was really excited when I got two large totes full of Blue Danube China for $70. That may seem a lot, but it sells very well on eBay. I just sold this set of six small bowls alone for a BO of $44. I’ve already doubled my profits on the few other pieces I’ve sold out of it all, and there’s still so much more left!
Six Vintage Blue Danube Onion Pattern Fruit Dessert BowlsHere’s another curbside garbage find. I spotted this small industrial Patton fan outside on garbage night out near my house. I thought it looked really cool, so of course I casually picked it up and pretended that I normally walk around with a fan. Brought it home and plugged it in only to find out that it didn’t work right. Too bad too, cause these things sell sometime for over $100. Well I listed it as For Repair and it sold for full price of $60. The guy messaged me afterwards telling me that he got it working, so that’s cool.
Patton Industrial High Velocity Air Circulator FanThis was an unexpected sale. I bought a box full of these blank record labels at an auction for $2. They’re from an out-of-business recording studio here in my hometown. I’ve had them listed in sets of 10 for a looong time with not a lot of interest. So I was thrilled when a got an offer for nine sets at $9 each. A $90 sale! I wonder what they’ll be used for?
Wheeling WV Black Crest Records Blank Peel and Stick Record LabelsAnd finally, my big sale of the week. I acquired this Holland bench vise at an auction for $17.50. It wasn’t a particularly rare brand, but it was heavy! Made in USA too which is always something to look for. It sat out in my garage almost forgotten for about a year when finally i remembered to list it a few weeks ago. I priced it higher than I thought anyone would pay and took a best offer of $140. This thing was a beast to pack! It alone weighed over 33 lbs. But I’ve learned to double pack heavy stuff like this to keep the weight centralized in the box. My mailman was impressed with the Caution Heavy stickers that I finally was able to utilize.
Hollands 13 1/2 H Iron Bench Vise03/19/2018 at 8:32 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 352: Scavenging is The Alternative Early Retirement #35617That’s a great question. I just ran some dirty numbers. The flood occur on July 23. It’s been 38 weeks since the incident, so I’ll go 38 weeks prior to the event and average that way.
Pre-Flood weekly average: $477
Post-Flood weekly average: $624So the numbers seem to show that I’ve been doing better, though I think a lot can be attributed to that. I’ve listing and sourcing skills have improved since a year ago. And I’ve probably doubled my effort in working on my eBay business. And mayhaps the flood helped by eliminating a lot of my bad buys, though that’s a sick way to go about it. 🙂
Here’s a graph from GoDaddy showing my sales since the beginning of last year. You can immediately see when the flood happened.
Graph of Sales03/19/2018 at 2:06 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 352: Scavenging is The Alternative Early Retirement #35581Thanks, Brian. I started doing that last week for that very same reason. It’s so simple to do in GoDaddy too. Just take the total sales from the last 365 days and divide by 52. I don’t know if that’s 100% accurate, as I’m not a numbers guy. But it’s close enough for me.
03/19/2018 at 2:01 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 352: Scavenging is The Alternative Early Retirement #35580That’s unfortunate that eBay won’t remove a feedback after a seller already made a response comment. I already commented on the feedback right after I saw it. I just made note that there were four pictures showing the inside. Of course I had a lot more that I wanted to say, but they only give you like 120 characters or something so I had to keep it super short.
03/19/2018 at 12:04 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 352: Scavenging is The Alternative Early Retirement #35552March 11-17
Total Items in Store: 1435
Items Sold: 26
Total Sales : $1,178
above yearly average of $662
above 2017 total week sales of $918
Highest Price: $140 (Heavy Duty Hollands 13 1/2 H 33lb Iron Bench Vise)
Average Price: $45
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $178
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 52It’s been a great week of sales here on my end! Nothing crazy high dollar, but I kept selling above average priced items, and they add up quick. I tell you, I’ve been feeling pretty glum these past few weeks with the amount I was able to sell. eBay even sent me a survey and one of the questions was why do you think you’re not selling as much as you did last year? I don’t know, eBay, you tell me! But I’m glad that the bigger picture shows a more positive outlook. It’s easy to look at our weekly numbers and feel the roughness of “soft” weeks. My monthly numbers are always more to my liking.
I had a comment about a question your caller asked about a package being returned undelivered with no contact from the buyer. The same thing happened to me back in January. While I was tempted to pretend like nothing happened and relist the item, I eventually sent the buyer a friendly message asking what the deal was. He was very nice about it, telling me he forgot to update his new address on eBay and just forgot that he ordered the mugs. So I created a new custom listing for him for the amount that it would cost to ship and he paid to have them reshipped. While I probably could have just had him send me the money through PayPal only, I wasn’t sure if that would violate some rule on eBay. So while I lost a few cents from eBay fees, at least I felt better knowing I left a trail and he won’t do a charge back for items not received.
I got my first neutral feedback this week. While I know it doesn’t matter much because it doesn’t affect my feedback score, it still bugs me because what the lady said was totally false. She said I should have shown picture of the inside of this cake pan. But I clearly had four different pictures of the inside. Is it worth trying to get a neutral removed? Here’s the item in question: https://www.ebay.com/itm/302441950218
03/15/2018 at 5:48 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Rolodex, Owl bookends, Clocks, Desk lamp, MCM trash bin, Zenith Trans Oceanic radio #35308Thanks! I love posting my sold items and starting conversations as much as I love seeing what other people sold.
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