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Yah, Christmas was not my first thought when I first looked at this print. More like Halloween.

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It looks like the link to that Santa Claus print got broken. Here it is.
Santa Claus Print with Frame circa 1900

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It was a pretty decent week with some higher dollar sales. It definitely feels good to be making money again. Here are some highlights…

I bought a lot of eight enamel brooches from an auction back in June. They were all by a designer named Bob Mackie and each came in their original box. I paid up for them at $100 for all 8, so they came to $12.50 each, but I figured I would make my money back and more easily enough. But I ended up losing all of the boxes and even several of the brooches in the flood. The one’s that survived got cleaned up and listed and this Halloween witch and another Angel brooch sold to the same buyer for best offers of $40 and $42 respectively.
Bob Mackie Halloween Brooch
Bob Mackie Angel Brooch

Here’s my best sell of the week. I acquired this antique century old Santa Claus print from a box lot that I paid $27.50 for. There were 10 sellable items so each item cost $2.75. This was the last item to sell from that lot, and in total I made a little over $350 after fees and whatnot. This piece immediately attracted a lot of watchers, and several half-price best offers. But I held firm for a better price, and I woke up one morning to a full-price sale! $120! It was bittersweet because a part of me didn’t want to let it go. It looked so cool. I had it on display in my living room and everything. But it was time to move it along the pipeline. I’ll let someone else have a chance to own it for a while.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/302156535436

At an estate sale last year, I bought a small pile of girl scout things for $5. Included in that pile was this girl scout sash with patches and pins. It didn’t look especially old, and others weren’t selling for a whole lot, so I listed it for $15. It took a little while, but it eventually sold.
Girl Scout Merit Badge Sash

Here’s a really cool Miller High Life mirror from 1980 that I thought would be worth a lot more than what I sold it for. I paid $15 for it at an auction. I just really liked the design and thought it was unique. Well apparently it wasn’t too unique, as there were plenty of others on eBay going for around $45. Well I priced mine as such and it finally sold for full.
1980 Miller High Life Bar Mirror

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Sept. 24-30
Total Items in Store: 705
Items Sold: 16
Total Sales (Gross Profit): $617
Highest Price: $120 (Ullman Mfg. Co. 1900 Santa Claus Print in Frame)
Average Price: $39
Returns: 1
Cost of Items Sold: $53
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $23

Aww, Oktoberfest! It’s been one of my goals to go to Germany during the festivals and experience all of that. And I can’t even fathom what it’ll be like having over 200 items to pack when you get home! Yikes!

Okay, I can finally breathe again. My sales were in the gutter for the past three weeks, but this week was fantastic! I made a couple pretty decent sales, but I think this week’s round of slide auctions really saved me. I’ve been listing a set of around 15 slides for auction once a week for the past few months. It’s mostly been one person buying them for the starting bid price, but this week there were a couple new contenders which caused some bidding wars. I was quite pleased.

We had our semi-annual garage sale on Saturday. Basically, we fill our garage with stuff from box lots that aren’t really worth our time to list on ebay. Then, twice a year, we put out some tables, dump everything onto the tables, and charge people .25 cents an item. It’s crazy! People have said that ours have been the best garage sales that they’ve ever been to. Admittedly, we could be making more if we charged more, but that’s not really the goal in my mind. I just want a clean garage, and if I can do that without just throwing everything away and even making 60 or 70 bucks while doing it, then I’m satisfied. And everything that doesn’t sell gets donated to St. Vincent’s so we really do have a clean slate to start on the next sale.

I had a return this week that just really got me steamed. It wasn’t so much the return itself (although I feel like I clearly stated and photographed the damage on the item, but whatever). But rather, I had issues with eBay. For whatever reason, I couldn’t purchase a return shipping label through eBay. It would only let me upload a picture of a shipping label that I would have had to purchase from USPS independently. I gave them a call and after some runaround, the rep told me that there was nothing I could do, that I either had to do it the hard way or just PayPal the customer the price of shipping. The problem was, I didn’t know what that price would have been exactly. It was just frustrating to have a representative of ebay not be able to explain why I couldn’t purchase a shipping label when I’ve done it several times before. I ended up just refunding the buyer in full because it was a low value item and wasn’t worth my time.

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I had a similar experience with an estate sale, but with photography equipment. It was advertised as being a crazy sale with tons of cameras and lenses and stuff from a professional photographer that could be worth lots of cash. But they knew it and priced accordingly. Still though, I found plenty of non-photo stuff to make it worthwhile.

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Thank you, Steve, for your awesome videos! I’m now on the lookout for model cars and Coleman lanterns. I didn’t make a whole lot of good sales last week, but here are some notable ones.

I got this green glass ball in a box lot. There were three sellable items from the lot that I paid $30 total, so this came to $10. I brought it home and did some research and found out it was a glass fishing float. It was missing the rope or twine that was normally wrapped around it, but it had a cool makers stamp on the bottom. So I listed it for $50 and took a best offer of $40.
Green Glass Fishing Buoy Float

I’m always on the lookout for Tumi brand bags or luggage, and when I spotted this leather luggage tag at a thrift store for .50 cents, it was a no brainer. Unfortunately, it was one items that got caught in the flood but I was able to clean it up alright. It had a bit of wear afterwards, so I listed it for $20 and it sold overnight.
Tumi Luggage Tag

Here’s a unique little thing. It’s a brass nameplate off of a piece of heavy equipment in an old paper factory. It came in a box lot of all kinds of metal goodies. It was one of those buys that you don’t really know the value of the stuff in the box, but it looks fun enough to gamble. I paid $12.50 for the lot and this came out to be $1.56. It took maybe two weeks but it sold for $20.
Brass Paper Company Machine Nameplate

Here’s a bit of a BOLO that you may or may not know. People love old hardware.. I always buy this kind of stuff if it’s cheap enough. When people are restoring furniture or whatnot, they want the real thing, not some old-looking new stuff from Ikea. And I’m happy to provide, for the right price. And often enough, it’s the old, weathered looking pieces that sell the fastest. Here’s an example that I sold on Saturday. Before I was a believer, I would have thrown this away if it came in a box lot. But it was the first piece to sell from the huge lot I listed a few days earlier. Just a simple spring latch that looked like it spent most of it’s life outdoors. But it’s authentic, and that’s what they want. I paid .23 cents for this particular piece (the box lot came to $12.50) and I sold it for $17.
Weathered Spring Latch Hardware

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Sept. 17-23
Total Items in Store: 657
Items Sold: 10
Total Sales (Gross Profit): $222
Highest Price: $40 (Vintage Hand Blown Green Glass Fishing Buoy Float)
Average Price: $22
Returns: 0
Cost of Items Sold: $24
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $77

ANOTHER bummer of a week! I thought it was going to be better with some quick sales on Sunday and Monday, but they rapidly died off after that. I don’t know what’s going on. But all I can do is keep listing. And boy did I! I listed close to a 100 items last week. Mostly small things like hardware and photo slides. I just can’t wait to get my numbers up to what they were before.

I went to an estate sale on Saturday. We don’t really have those a lot in my area, so it was sort of a special treat. Too bad they wanted top dollar for everything. But I managed to get a few items, including one of my holy grails of a portable CD player, the Sony Discman D-88! It was in a blank box and wasn’t priced, so I suggested $4 and she shrugged and said sure! I was ecstatic! I went back on Sunday and got a few other little things for the half-off sale, but afterwards I got to thinking about what they were going to do with everything that didn’t sell (and believe me, there was a lot still there)? That’s when I thought it would be cool to have a simple business card that I could give out in certain circumstances such as these where I would offer to buy the leftovers for a cheap price. Has anyone ever done anything like that?

Keep enjoying your trip, Jay and Ryanne!

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Well I’ll be damned. You just solved a mystery for me. Even though the bowl was Federal glass, I couldn’t find that logo when I searched their name. I didn’t even think that it was a promotional item for another company. Maybe I should have priced it higher, eh? Oh well! I’m just happy it sold.

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I see those Halloween masks from time to time, but never in such good condition. I had a really bad week of sales this time. A few interesting items sold, and here they are…

I bought this lot of old photographs from this online auction house that I no longer do business with. It’s too far of a drive and it’s always a gamble with their one-picture-only listings. Anyways, I won this auction for a pile of old black and white photographs for about $30 total. I brought them home and was disappointed that they were relatively new photos from Gettysburg Memorial park, maybe from the ‘60s. They were snapshots of all the statues at that memorial, and I didn’t think they were really worth that much so I listed them as an auction with a starting price of $40. They shot up to $90 at the last second so I guess some people really wanted them. Maybe the whole tearing down statues ordeal in recent news really increased the interest.
Gettysburg Memorial Photographs

Another piece from my vintage kitchen glass lot sold last week. This is a Federal Glass mixing bowl. I guess I don’t mind selling this kind of glassware since it more hardy and can store and pack a lot easier. I paid up for this lot at almost $50 for everything. So this piece came to $7.00. I listed it for $25 and it sold within a couple weeks.
Federal Glass Mixing Bowl

Here’s my sell of the week. I got this old WW2 compass out of a box lot of random odds and ends that I paid a total of $60 for. A lot of cool stuff came out of that box, but this was the first to sell. Each sellable piece came to about $4.00. I was surprised when I discovered how desirable these compasses were. And mine came with the original leather case. I priced it high at $115 and took a best offer of $100.
WW2 Compass and Leather Case

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Sept. 10-16
Total Items in Store: 578
Items Sold: 6 (yikes!)
Total Sales (Gross Profit): $290
Highest Price: $100 (W. & L.E. Gurley WW2 Era Metal Compass)
Average Price: $48
Returns: 0
Cost of Items Sold: $40
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $314

Not a great week for me at all! Six items sold. That’s a bummer. But at least a few were higher dollar amount items which brought my profit up a little bit. Oh well. As much as I can’t wait to go full time with this business, I’m glad I have my day-job paycheck to fall back on with weeks like this.

I think the topic of this week’s podcast is an important one. As unpleasant as it is, stress and anxiety is something we all have to deal with one way or another. And we all deal with it differently. Myself for example, I tend to shut up inside myself and I’ll sort of shut down until I find a way to deal with it. And my best way of dealing with stress is to write a list of causes and solutions. When it’s broken down visually like that, my brain isn’t so convoluted and I’ll begin to unwind myself. But of course there are other types of stress that aren’t so easy to deal with. Death in the family, natural disasters, unexpected medical bills, etc. With these examples, a simple list isn’t going to work. That’s why a good partnership is almost necessary during difficult time. Even if it’s just a comfort knowing that you’re not in it alone. I don’t think I would have been able to get back up after the flood if it wasn’t for my partner. And having someone there for you, not just someone to talk to but to truly help lift you up when you’re down, is so wonderful.

But stress isn’t all bad. Just like the physical stress of doing manual labor will build calluses on our hands and feet, mental stress builds them on our mind. It hurts a lot at first, but if you invite it in enough, we become more and more immune to its adverse effects. It will even get to a point where you can easily look past the negative stress and focus on the positive outcomes. But like too much manual labor may turn our hands ugly, too much stress may make us bitter and jaded. That is why we must “moisturize our minds!” Vacations, relaxing hobbies, deep friendships, exercise…taking a little break from the stress, whether it’s a daily jog, or a yearly big vacation, is so relieving!

I see that I’m kinda rambling on here, but it’s a subject I’ve had to deal with heavily these past couple of months. We both reached a very low point in our lives with the flood. But that which does not kill us only makes us stronger. And we’ve got a vacation to Savannah in a few weeks to look forward to.

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Not very many exciting sales, but I’ll share some highlights…

I got this old Choke Thermostat Housing part from a box lot that I overpaid for. It was an online auction that only posts one picture of everything they sell, so it’s always a gamble. I forget what I even saw in the photo that I wanted, but it was all junk except for this part. Paid $5. But I listed it anyways and it sold within hours for $16. So I made my money back and then some.
Old Ford Choke Thermostat Housing

Estate sales aren’t too common where I’m from, but I did manage to go to one last spring. I found a few goodies, including this Sony Walkman for $5.00. It was in very good condition and worked beautifully. Came with Sony earbuds too. I priced it for $50 and someone bought it for full price.
Sony Walkman

Sometimes I’ll go to the Goodwill Outlet store outside of Pittsburgh. It’s a hit or miss really, but I’ve learned to be creative when perusing the bins. I found an old electric coffee percolator, but it was really beat up and virtually unsellable. But from past experiences, I’ve learned that the inside stems often need replaced. And this one’s stem was in great shape. And since the outlets have really loose rules, I took just that part and left everything else. Listed it and it sold within a week for $13. I probably paid approximately $.50 for it.
Farberware Percolator Replacement Stem

I wanted to talk about these Rubbermaid Lazy Susan turntables just because of how much of a pain in the ass they were to pack. I got these in a box lot of other kitchen container stuff for $3. Mainly, I just wanted this set of push-button airlock canisters that I already sold for $32, but I saw that people bought these so I listed them for $16 each. Well someone came and bought both for a total of $32. But since the flood destroyed all of my packing supplies, I didn’t have a box big enough to accommodate these. It was getting late and I was dead tired, but I managed to Frankenstein three priority mail boxes together. It looked horrendous, but it made it to it’s destination and I haven’t heard any complaint yet.
Rubbermade Lazy Susan

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Sept. 3 – 9
Total Items in Store: 557
Items Sold: 15
Total Sales (Gross Profit): $452
Highest Price: $50 (it’s a tie between a Sony Walkman and several slides that sold for $50 each)
Average Price: $30
Returns: 0
Cost of Items Sold: $22
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $130

That’s so awesome that you got to see LCD Soundsystem on your trip. I’d love to see them live! I became a fan right before they disbanded, so I never had the chance to see them perform. I’ll need to check out their new stuff.

I had a pretty average week in terms of sales. Still trying to get my numbers up again, and I’m really putting a lot of effort into it lately. My slide experiment continues to pay off. I can’t help but feel like it’s a fluke though… they keep selling to the same person with nobody else bidding on them. I’m tempted to just put them up as buy-it-nows and get it over with.

Just like your caller on this week’s podcast, I also had a chargeback issue stating that the buyer didn’t authorize the purchase. It was for a $15 plastic camping lantern, but PayPal wanted me to state my case as to why they should side in my favor. I just simply gave them the tracking info and they ended up siding with me, but I just thought it was odd. First time that’s happened to me.

Keep enjoying your trip. We love hearing your updates!

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Thanks, Beverly! Yeah, I knew I had something special. There weren’t any others on eBay, but others with similar styles were going for a lot.

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Things kind of picked up for me last week. Here are some of my highlights…

I was at my favorite thrift store when I came across a box on the ground that had written on it $5.00. I took a peek and it was full of this melamine plastic camping dishware. I’ve dabbled in camping a while ago, so I know this kind of stuff sells. I bought it and sorted the box when I got home. It was full of plates, bowls and mugs in three different colors. I listed like items in groups of the same color and this was the first to sell for $20.
Melamine Camping Mugs

I picked this pair of brass candlesticks up at a yardsale for a dollar! I recognized the brutalist style and noticed that they were made in Israel. I’ve never had an item with so many watchers. I think at one point I had 38 watchers. It took a while, and I had plenty of low-ball offers, but I held out and finally sold them for full price of $90.
Brutalist Brass Candlesticks

Here’s my high sale of the week. I got this cast iron monkey candle mold in a small box lot that I paid $25 for. So this item equaled out to be almost $7. I sat on it for a while because I was feeling lazy with researching. But I’m glad I finally did. Priced it high for $146 and took a best offer of $125. A candy company in Maine bought it!
Thomas Mills Monkey Candy Mold

Finally, I sold an electronic Royal typewriter. I bought this in pristine condition at a thrift store in Pittsburgh for $10 after I saw that others have sold for over $100. Brought it home and tested it, but it wouldn’t type. All the electronics worked great, but the striker (or whatever that part is called) just wouldn’t do it’s job. I’m usually pretty good at getting things to work, but I spent way too much time trying to fix this. So I listed it as for repair or parts with a video demo. I had one guy a few months ago message me wanting me to just sell him the keys. Heck with that. Finally, someone came along and offered a price of $35 and I immediately took it. I was glad to get this thing out of storage.
Royal Alpha Electronic Typewriter

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Thank you! It feels great to get back into the swing of things.

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