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02/08/2018 at 7:07 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Phono cartridge, Sony CD player, VHS re-winder, Hot Wheel set, Amateur painting #32562
Another slow week last week. Made a few alright sales. Here are some of the notables…
I picked this old R&F Coal Co. mining hard hat up at a thrift store one day on a trip to Amish country in Ohio. It wasn’t a particularly good hard hat (I’ve learned to look for the fiberglass ones). It was just a cheap plastic one. But I figured with the old coal logo it might be worth something to someone. I paid $3. It sold for $40
R&F Coal Mining Hard HatI bought a whole box of these Libbey NASA glass tumblers at an auction. I only paid a couple bucks for all of them. Unfortunately, the eBay market is flooded with them. This was the first set I sold for $16. I’ve got 2 more whole sets and a bunch of individuals. But what is really curious is that there are certain ones that will fetch a really good price because of a misprint. They made these I believe right around the time of the Apollo 14 mission. One of the astronauts wasn’t able to make it onto the shuttle, so they had to reprint all of the glasses. I guess some of the misprinted ones made it out and they’re highly sought after.
Libbey NASA Apollo GlassesMy stash of watch and clock repair parts continues to make money. The latest item to sell was this lot of used clock mainsprings. A lot of these clock parts are used by steampunk artists for cosplay and jewelry. I sold these for $25.
Used and New Clock MainspringsFinally, for the highest sale of the week. This antique mortise lockset doorknob combo came out of a box of all kinds of hardware. I actually pieced this all together from all the misc. hardware in the box thinking it would sell for a bit of money on it’s own. I was quite right! It cost me almost nothing and I took a best offer of $50.
Antique Mortise LocksetWheeling’s thrift shops are kind of a bummer. There’s the Salvation Army which is scary to walk into and the Goodwill that every once in a while will have something cool to buy. The best bet is the St. Vincent de Paul, though their prices have started going up drastically. The only time I really go thrift shopping anymore is when I take a trip to Pittsburgh. lol. I’m more into the auctions anyways.
Yes! Let me know what you think or if anything would help enhance the recipe.
Hey Matt! It sounds like we source from the same places. We’ve probably ran into each other without even knowing it. Ever drive as far as Wheeling to any thrift shops?
02/05/2018 at 11:46 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 346: Frank Discussions. Gewgaws. Storage. #32144Jan 28 – Feb 3
Total Items in Store: 1297
Items Sold: 17
Total Sales : $464
Highest Price: $50 (Antique Mortise Door Lock Set Door Knob Assembly w/ Metal Backplate and Eastlake Knobs)
Average Price: $27
Returns: 0
Cost of Items Sold: $99
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $0Ugh, what a crappy week of sales. I have more items in my store than ever before but it was like the faucet was turned off for some reason. I’m grateful I made at least one sale every day, but my store was definitely in a slump.
I’m super jealous of your storage capacity! I should do a quick video tour of my storage to show the crazy lengths I have to go through to keep anything. I told Steph that I think we’ve officially maxed out my our capacity. I’ve started storing stuff in our bedroom now… that’s not good! One day, we’ll have a bigger place with an outside shed or garage dedicated to eBay.
I’ve got a question to ask that’s been bugging me every time I go to list a new item. It’s about eBay categories vs Store categories. Is it beneficial to assign items a Store category? Obviously, eBay makes you assign an eBay category when creating a listing. But there’s that dropdown menu for Store category that just has Other by default. I’ve only ever put Other in there. Should I be putting something other than Other in there?
02/01/2018 at 8:25 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Stereo brochure, Carl Jung book, Typewriter, Bike helmet #31889I think you’re absolutely right. Oh boy. I could have sold that for a bit more I think. OH WELL! 🙂 Good eye!
02/01/2018 at 2:13 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Stereo brochure, Carl Jung book, Typewriter, Bike helmet #31860Thanks Beverly! I’m no rug expert by any means. But I do have a couple websites that I use to compare styles and I match them up to what I think it most represents. So far I haven’t had anyone message me saying I’m wrong *knocks on wood*
http://www.mattcamron.com/rug-education/
https://nazmiyalantiquerugs.com/antique-rugs/carpet-rug-styles-designs/02/01/2018 at 9:38 am in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Stereo brochure, Carl Jung book, Typewriter, Bike helmet #31820Weird, I’m still not getting the editing buttons above where I type my post. Is anyone else having that problem?
Not a lot of good sales last week. Mostly low dollar items with one high sale to bring up my average. Here we go…
This was the first vintage photograph to sell. I bought an entire scrapbook full of these old snapshots and cabinet cards for around $3. I felt kind of bad for tearing it all apart to sell the photos individually, but if it wasn’t for me it would have ended up in a landfill anyway so yeah. I got 54 different listings out of it. These photographs were a new experiment for me so I priced them kind of in the middle of the road. This snapshot of a man and woman on a train car sold for $10.
Vintage Snapshot PhotographMy big sale of the week sold that same day. I bought a bunch of old wool rugs at an auction last summer. They were going relatively cheap. I paid $5 for this particular one. It was one of my smaller ones too at 2 1/2×4 feet. It had plenty of distress and wear, but thanks to Jay and Ryanne, that’s what I look for now. It took a few months but it sold for my original asking price of $400.
Distressed Wool RugI also tried an experiment last week with old used Valentine cards and birthday cards. I know the really fancy German made die-cut cards can bring really good money, but these were all just lower end cutesy cards for kids. I didn’t know how the market would feel about them, so I ran them all as auctions starting at 8-10 bucks each. Well only two sold for the opening bids of $10. I had no expectations so I wasn’t disappointed.
Vintage Valentine CardSo it doesn’t happen very often that I lose money on a sale. But in my earlier days of buying inventory, I would get overzealous with my bidding at auctions and spend way too much on items. This is one of them. I knew about Bryce Brothers glassware from my gf’s grandmother who knows everything there is about glass. She said to always buy it because it’s worth a ton. Well worth is subjective I guess. I spent $74 on this set of cordial glasses. Brought them home and realized that they were going for about what I paid for them. I listed them and they sat for months and months with zero interest. I finally took a best offer of $75 just to get them out of my storage and to make back what I spent. After fees, I ended up $10 in the hole. So the lesson here is… Bryce glassware is really nice to find and sell, as long as you get it cheap!
Bryce Bros Cordial GlasswareThat’s a real bummer, Steven! I’m always so paranoid about a return of anything high dollar.
So with an account suspension, what happens? Does your store just not exist for a day? No listing and no selling?Jan 21-27
Total Items in Store: 1231
Items Sold: 19
Total Sales : $851
Highest Price: $400 (Antique Distressed Red & Blue Wool Hand Knotted Persian Serapi Heriz Rug)
Average Price: $45
Returns: 0
Cost of Items Sold: $38
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $625 (woof!)Another average week of sales. I had the same issue with slow sale days and I think you’re right about all the changes making people shy away from buying this week. It it wasn’t for my awesome rug sale, I would’ve had a louse week. I focused this week on photographing and listing antique photographs. Mostly snapshots and cabinet cards from the ‘20s. There was some pretty cool stuff, but they don’t seem to be getting a lot of interest. I think I priced them reasonably, but they may just be long tail items.
I went to an auction on Thursday with the intent to not spend a lot. HA! Over $600 later and I’m wondering what the hell happened! I think I got some pretty cool items though. My buy of the day would be a whole six-volume set of Keystone View Co Stereographic Cards along with the electric viewer. That alone was $250 (double woof!) but I think I can sell it for around $500. It’s part of my resolution to start buying more expensive things for bigger profit margins. And now I have the capital to invest in these bigger purchases without worrying (too much).
An interesting thing happened last week. I came home to find a box at my doorstep labeled Return to Sender. Inside was a set of camping mugs that I sold back on Dec. 22, over a month ago. I don’t make it a habit to track all my packages unless they’re over $100. There was no contact from the buyer saying hey, where’s my stuff? The tracking said that there wasn’t any secure location to place the item and the buyer didn’t come to the post office to pick it up. I called eBay just to get a clear understanding of my options. They said to contact the buyer to see if he wants a refund or to pay to have it reshipped. So I did, but haven’t heard back. Would you automatically refund the buyer in this instance, or wait for a reply first? And what if he never replies? I’m wondering if maybe he passed away or had to leave the country right after ordering the mugs.
T-Satt, That list seems pretty small. I’ve always shipped using GSP and I know I’ve shipping to Australia, Norway, Ireland, Korea, Japan, Chile just to name a few. I’m wondering if the shipping location restrictions are specific to each item category. For instance, I have a Zippo lighter for sale and a guy from Russia wanted to buy it but couldn’t through GSP. I know I’ve shipped to Russia before. I called eBay and they said something about certain items not being allowed shipped to certain countries.
Maybe I should chime in. It was my customer that you’re talking about who asked for a refund for the difference in shipping costs. The message I got from eBay didn’t insinuate to me that they would force a refund. It just said that my customer has a problem and I should work it out with him. I feel like I could have gotten away with not refunding the guy, but it would open up a possible negative feedback that I wouldn’t be able to fight.
Mike, your comment about free shipping weighed on my mind for the past day. So I decided to run my own experiment. I chose my oldest ~400 items under a pound and applied free shipping while bumping the price of each by $5. It’ll be interesting to see how the free shipping will entice the buyers… or not. I’ll create a new post to report my outcome after a couple months.
That’s my feeling too. Grumpy buyer would have found something to harass me about since he didn’t get his way initially. A part of me wanted to fight it, but I suppose $3 was a small price to pay to not have to deal with his crap.
01/26/2018 at 3:03 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Mushroom mugs, Car books, Lineman belt, Sansui amp, Columbia snow shoes, Native Barbie, Gun case #31354Thanks, Beverly! Yeah, I’m always an the lookout for 48 stars, so I couldn’t believe it when I counted 46.
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