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Nov. 19 – 25
Total Items in Store: 928
Items Sold: 16
Total Sales (Gross Profit): $415
Highest Price: $115 (Brown & Sharpe Micrometer Model 55 2″-6″ Set)
Average Price: $26
Returns: 0
Cost of Items Sold: $32
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $341

Business really dropped off for me at the beginning of last week. I only sold three items up until Thanksgiving day. Then it was like the floodgate of sales opened up. But that’s not been unusual in my experience. It’s always dead right before a major holiday, but sales resume just like normal right afterwards.

We had a nice time off from work and went to a huge auction about 1.5 hours away from us. I ended up buying lots of glassware…one of the things I dread selling. But there wasn’t really much else to buy at this one. But my score of the week came that same day when I bought a box lot of almost 200 glass plate negatives from around 1910. I spent more than I anticipated – $155. But I think I’ll make my money back pretty easily enough judging by my sold item research.

In regards to your denim jacket sale, I truly believe you made the right call and it’s what I would have done. If I sold an item and I found that I underpriced it by $40 or $50, then yeah I would just consider it a lesson learned and forget it. But as in your case where it was over a grand, I would have lost some major sleep! From a business point of view, we’re in it to make money and I’m sure that customer would understand despite their anger for not getting a steal. Even a corporation like Walmart wouldn’t sell a 72” HD flat screen TV to a customer for $50 if there was a mistake with the price tag.

By the way, if you’re looking for more wool socks, I’ve had pretty good luck at TJMaxx and Marshalls. They’re usually “seconds,” but I’ve never had any issues with them. And I’ve found them for over half off the retail price, sometimes only $4 or $5 a pair. I usually don’t focus on name brand, but instead look at the wool percentages written on the package. I steer clear of anything less than 75% wool, but that’s just personal preference and depends on what you want to use the socks for. I’ve found SmartWool, Darn Tough, and Cabot and Sons for way cheap.

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Nov. 12 – 18
Total Items in Store: 877
Items Sold: 22
Total Sales (Gross Profit): $558
Highest Price: $50 (Vintage Walt Disney World Hat)
Average Price: $25
Returns: 1
Cost of Items Sold: $38
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $48

It was a pretty average week for me as well. I sold a lot of lower dollar items at the beginning of the week, but then sales slowly dried up at the end of the week.

Went to an estate sale on Saturday. It was a bust. Barely anything that interested me. I ended up buying a couple electronics that I can probably make 10 or 20 bucks off of. But instead of calling it a day, I decided to try my luck at my favorite Goodwill outlet store. I did a lot better, finding all kinds of cool stuff including a brand new digital picture frame and a practically unworn vintage wool overcoat. I reckon I’ll make an easy $400 profit from everything.

I had one return this week. I sold an old metal fishing net float for $75. I got a message a few days after they’ve received it saying that it was made out of aluminum and not steel. Well (A) I never said it was steel. And (B) when I got it back, I did a magnet test and it was indeed made out of steel. I think they just had buyer’s remorse. Luckily, they didn’t try to cheat the system to get me to pay for shipping.

Have you tried Instant Pot Steel Cut Oats yet? They’re really easy and so flippin good! It’s just 1 part oats to 3 parts almond milk. Then add in whatever toppings you prefer. Pressure cook for 3 minutes and do a natural pressure release. Though if you’re trying to eat low-carb meals, they’re probably not something that you’d want to make often.

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Those Monroe photos were an awesome sale! I did pretty well last week too. One of my few +$1K weeks, but they seem to be happening more often so that’s great news. Here are some highlights…

More hardware sold. I’ve really became a fan of hardware lately. I see it a bunch at auctions and usually buy it in lots for relatively cheap. Here’s a set of painted wooden knobs that were in pretty good condition. I knew someone would be looking for something like this for a restoration project or something. I paid about $12 for the whole box of handles and drawer pulls and etc., so each sellable item came to $.40 cents. These took about 3 or 4 months to sell, but they finally did for full price of $37.
Red and Green Wood Drawer Knobs

I acquired this Benjamin Franklin Target Pistol from an auction last year. I paid way too much for it at $75. Alas, I found out it wasn’t functional after I bought it. This particular auctioneer is known to not disclose damage before auctioning off items. I was a little disheartened about it and sat on it for a while. Then I finally decided to list it at $140 for parts or repair. It didn’t take long for a Best Offer of $120 to come in and I took it. I figured that was the best I would get for a broken air pistol.
Benjamin Franklin Target Pistol

A couple weeks ago, I sold a girls scout sash that I got at an estate sale. This week I sold the other item I bought with it. This is a YMCA Indian Princess outfit. I paid $2.50 for it on a whim. It took a little while but it finally sold for $25. It went off to someone in Canada.
YMCA Y-Indian Princess Dress

Here was my biggest sell of the week. This is a studio audio module. It’s use is really beyond me. But after I did some research, I found that this brand is pretty expensive. It came in that box lot of equipment I bought a while ago for $20. I’ve probably made almost $2,000 from that already! This sold for full price of $280.
RTS Systems User Station

Here’s a great sale, and a reason why I love my nearest Goodwill Outlet store. I found this Parker fountain pen in one of the bins at the outlet. Upon closer inspection, I saw that the nib was inscribed 18K. I knew these gold fountain pens could bring a lot of money. My total cost was $1.53. Listed and sold for full price of $130! Not a bad return of investment! 🙂
Parker Sonnet Silver Plated Gold Nib Fountain Pen

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Thanks, T! Yeah, it’s a pretty big burden off my shoulders. Especially when we’ll be starting house hunting next year.

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I’ve owned my Instant Pot for a couple weeks now and love it! I made a fantastic pork roast last night. I plan on getting one for my mom for Christmas. She wants the 9 in 1 Duo Plus like mine, so I set up a watch with camelcamelcamel in hopes that Amazon will drop the price soon.

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Nov. 5 – 11
Total Items in Store: 815
Items Sold: 22
Total Sales (Gross Profit): $1,413
Highest Price: $280 (RTS Systems MRT327 User Station and Mic)
Average Price: $64
Returns: 0
Cost of Items Sold: $118
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $50

It was a fantastic week for me! I know I was just complaining about it being slow in last week’s post. It’s funny how that happens.

I hit a huge achievement on Friday… I made my final student loan payment! So now instead of paying an extra $175 to the Man every month, I’ll be throwing that amount right into my savings account.

Not much else is new except I’ve really kicked it into high gear in terms of listing. And it shows! I’m constantly selling items that I’ve listed just the day before.

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Wow, Christine. You weren’t kidding. And what I like about it is the number of sold listings. Nearly 7000 sold pieces of glass in the last 90 days. So it’s an item with a big collector base. I know what I’m doing the next time I’m at the beach! I wonder if there’s a method for determining if a piece is authentically sea tumbled or not?

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I second what Inglewood said, but also would like to add that my sales never let up even after Christmas last year. All through Jan and Feb, people were still buying like crazy. Also, if you have any Christmas stuff in your backlog piles, list them now. Decorations are great sellers.
Good luck and have fun!

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Yes, I’ve been having that problem too lately. As well as Steph. We both are using Chrome. I’m on a Mac while she’s on Windows. Recent pictures too, one’s that I’ve just taken a day prior. I end up saving the listing as a draft and going back in to finish uploading the photos. It works, but its annoying.

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Thanks, Mark! I saved a copy to my Drive. I’m not at the point where I’ll use this yet, but I’ll get there one day.

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The paint can link and the fire truck link died in my post above. Here’s the links…
Sherwin Williams Paint Cans

Trumpeter Fire Truck Model

• This reply was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by Doublythumbs.

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You had some awesome sales, Steve! That Walkman made me super jealous! Here’s some of my sales I made last week…

Coming back from an auction last summer, I decided to try my luck with some end-of-day yard saleing. I expected all the good stuff to have been bought up but I knew good deals could still be had. At my first stop, I noticed a whole box of these old football pennant flags with a sticker that said $2 each. There were 32 total. Well since the owners were literally packing up everything, I said I’d take the whole box off their hands for $5. I think they were more excited to get rid of them than I was. I sat on them for a while and just listed them last month for $16 each. This was the first one to sell. Go Jets, I guess.
VTG NFL Jets Pennant Flag
BTW, if you plan on selling these, serious collectors will prefer you ship these flat instead of rolled or folded. What I did was I took two USPS 1095 Priority Mail Boxes (that’s the ~15x12x3 in ones) and slipped one inside the other to make an extended box, then made it flat and taped it together. Worked like a charm.

This was my big sale of the week. I acquired this Moog Brushing Resolver do-hicky in the same box lot that I got those keypads from a couple weeks ago in for $20. I still don’t know what this thing is for, but I know it’s never been used and the company sells some expensive stuff. So I priced it high at $260 and it sold at full price!
Brushless Resolver Thingy

This was a fun sale. I bought a box lot of old paint cans and advertising tins for cheap. I paid $7 total for the lot, so each sellable item only came to $.50 each. I was going through an advertising tin phase (I still like them, but only get them if they’re cheap enough). In that box were these three old Sherwin Williams Kem-Glo paint cans. Other than a little paint on the edges, they looked almost new though they were dated in the ‘60s. They were all even almost full. Listed and forgot about them until someone sent a $25 offer. Sounded good to me. I don’t know if he wanted them for the cans or for the paint inside.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/302312526959

I’ve never taken an interest in model cars and such until I started watching Steve’s what-sells videos. Now I pick them up if they’re in good enough condition and cheap. I’m still learning which brands sell better than others. Here’s a good example of a decent brand to look out for. This is a fire truck model kit made by Trumpeter. It was open and the previous owner started painting some of the pieces, but I went through and thoroughly checked the inventory list to make sure all the parts were there. I paid $3 for it at a yard sale and sold it about a week after listing it for full price of $53. The guy was really happy about it too and left great feedback.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/302504784916

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Oct. 29 – Nov. 4
Total Items in Store: 778
Items Sold: 12
Total Sales (Gross Profit): $576
Highest Price: $260 (Moog Brushless Resolver)
Average Price: $48
Returns: 0
Cost of Items Sold: $9
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $21

Another alright week. It would have been really bad if it wasn’t for a really great sale plus my slide auctions. It’s been surprisingly slow these past couple of weeks. But like you just mentioned in the podcast, I’ve got to look at the larger picture. Earlier last month I had my highest earning week ever. It all evens out one way or the other.

I feel like I’m really getting back into the swing of things again. October is usually one of my busiest months in my personal life. My and my partner’s birthdays both occur plus we usually always plan vacations in Oct. That and all the fall festivities that I love so much means not a lot of time left for eBay. But now I’m really going to hunker down and start listing again. If I can reach my goal of 1K items by the new year, I’ll be shocked. I’m not counting on it, but I’ll be close.

We took an impromptu trip to the Goodwill Outlets again on Saturday. Steph is really going all in on the shoes, which is fantastic because shoes just don’t interest me. My scavenge of the week… I pulled out a ziploc bag full of Tiger 2-XL talking robot cassette tapes. I remember the toy from when I was a kid, so I put them in my cart for further research. When I had time to go through everything, I found that these cassettes are rather collectable. Some even sold for over $100! But the average prices are around $20 each, so I’ll make out regardless. We’ll see how that pans out after I list them.

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Well, I just had a so so kind of week. Not too many sales. Still waiting on 4th quarter to kick into high gear. Here are the highlights of my week.

I acquired this plastic travel mug out of a box lot that I paid $11 for total. This individual piece cost me .52 cents. I nearly tossed it in the yard sale pile, but it was in pristine condition like it’s never been used. I thought what the hey and listed it for $14. It took a while but it sold for full price. Goes to show that even the simplest things will sell to the right buyer.
Thermo-ware Wheat Travel Mug

Here was an interesting sale. I bought a steel box full of vintage Erector set parts at an auction for $3. I didn’t have any knowledge on these things at the time and nobody else seemed to want it, so I took a chance. Turns out, they were all kinda rusty and dirty and I assumed undesirable. But I cleaned them up anyways. They sat in my death pile for a long time but I finally listed them a couple weeks ago in lots of like-parts. This bag of gears and wheels sold really quickly for $35. The other lots quickly accrued a ton of views pretty fast too. So I’ve learned that, while they’re not super valuable, old Erector set stuff is quite collectable.
Erector Set Parts
Here’s my high sale of the week. Unfortunately, not a very high ROI. I paid WAY up for this Griswold cast iron waffle maker at an auction at $95. I guess I just got caught up in the bidding war and thought it was worth way more than it was. But at least it was in good condition and just needed a little bit of restoration. I ended up selling it for a best offer of $130. I was just glad to get it out of my storage.
Griswold Cast Iron Waffle Maker

I was just saying last week that I don’t sell these microwaveable cookware items very often despite picking them up whenever I see them. Well one sold again this week, so maybe I was wrong. This was a bacon cooking tray that I bought at a thrift store for a dollar. I now try to only grab the ones that are in good shape without too many scratches. It took a few months, but this sold for $15. Not a huge amount, but I guess I like them because they’re virtually indestructible and you can store them anywhere. We actually have one of these trays that we use in our own kitchen and they’re so nice!
Microwave Bacon Tray

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It was one of those things where a little research gave me some better keywords to use. I’ve never even heard the word until I looked up other sold examples.

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