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One other thing I thought about that I did wrong. When we started hauling stuff out of the basement, I had this defeated mindset and just wanted to throw everything away. There was a lot of stuff that went into the trash that could have been cleaned and saved. My main regret is not taking the time to go through and sort what could be washed and restored vs what was beyond repair. When a tragedy like this happens, you get in a dark place in your mind and have a hard time seeing anything positive. If something like this happens to you, put any potentially salvageable items aside and give it a day or two before deciding to throw it out. Give your mind some time to come to it’s senses.
I finally got to catch up on the podcasts. We’re still in recovery mode after the flood last week. We finally got our basement cleaned and ready to move back in. The gas company is coming by today to turn the gas back on. No more cold showers! I think all the hard heavy work is done. Now we’re just cleaning all of the salvaged items, and there’ll be a lot of that! Still, though, I feel like we’re about 60% of the way to being able to be up and running again on eBay. I’ve been making a list in my head of all the things that I did wrong in my situation or things that I should have done differently, and I thought I’d share them for everyone here to think about.
1. I had totes with high-value items or easily damageable items close to the floor. In the future, I’ll be sure to place those types of items higher on shelves above the ground level, or even on the second floor.
2. My shelves weren’t secured to the wall. Some of the shelving fell over during the flood and resulted in damaged to items that would have been fine if that had not happened. It takes some effort to do, especially if you have concrete walls like I do, but it’s worth it in the long run.
3. I used a lot of cardboard boxes to store items in. Big mistake! As soon as the water reached the bottom of the box, it just instantly absorbed it all and waterlogged everything in it. At least with plastic totes, it’ll need to reach the top before spilling in (which did happen with a lot of my totes anyways, but it would have been so much worse if I only used boxes).
4. Almost all of my packing supplies were in one location, right at the bottom of the basement steps. I should have had a small backup supply of packing items stored away in a closet or somewhere safe. By the way, wet muddy cardboard is one of the worst thing I’ve ever tried to handle.
5. I did some incredibly stupid unsafe things to try to rescue my stuff. I went outside to try to make it out to my garage in my flip-flops. Well I lost them in the mud and had to walk back barefoot with broken glass and debris everywhere. Then, I was down in my basement almost waist high in water and witnessed my refrigerator topple over. I could have been under that and died. Plus all the electrical items that could have shocked me. Looking back, I should have been way more concerned about my safety then I was. You can’t sell on eBay if you’re dead.
A couple of things I think I did right though… I didn’t have all of my eBay items in one location. I had items stored upstairs and in my garage as well so those are at least safe (except the things I had in cardboard boxes on the floor of my garage). It may seem convenient to have all of your items in one easy location, but all it takes is one disaster and it’s all gone.
I’m so glad I dealt with shutting off my eBay store almost immediately. Though I did have to refund three sales that occurred earlier that day, it would have been so much worse if I woke up the next morning with a bunch of more sales. Plus, with the lack of packing supplies, it would have been a nightmare even if the things that sold were safe.
I had some tarps that were safe and dry. Those came in handy with the wet totes. We just threw a big tarp down on the living room carpet and started stacking. It helped with muddy boots too. We might make it out of this without having to have our carpets cleaned.
One important thing I’ve learned is to have your insurance worked out to fully protect you. For me, I went with the advice of my agent and didn’t sign up for flood portion of my renter’s insurance. He told me that I wasn’t in a flood plain so it wasn’t necessary. Well that only worked out in the insurance’s favor because now they don’t have to give me a dime. In the future, I’ll definitely keep in mind that even though insurance companies seem like they’re there to help you, they’re absolutely mostly out to make a profit. If they can weasel out of a claim in any way, they will!
Anyways, I’ve realized that this has become my longest post ever. But I’m doing a lot better since last week. Things are looking up a little more every day. Just gotta keep my eyes on the future and move forward! I just can’t wait to be selling again!
So it’s day four of cleanup. We’ve managed to get all of the water out of the basement, but we’re having a heck of a time finding a company to clean out the mud and disinfect everything. Looks like we’ll have to shovel it all out ourselves. Luckily there have been many volunteers from various organizations helping out. I got my car inspected by the insurance agency and they said it was safe to drive. I just need to get the carpets replaced. They cut me a check to do that so I’m thankful. Our garage is somewhat clean now and clear of most of the mud. Other than all that, we’ve just been cleaning off all of our stuff the best we can and storing them in there. This mud is different. It’s so hard to get off of everything. It’s like really thick and greasy or something. The one thing I’m worried about are thieves. There’s already been reports of things getting stolen from the flood victims.
I’ve got to head in to work today. There’s just too much to catch up on and nobody else there knows the technology like I do. I’ll just do a half day and hopefully they’ll understand.
And I just wanted to say thank you again to everyone who took the time to share their thoughts! It’s feels really great to read everyone’s support! THANK YOU!Thank you Ryanne! We were able to save a bunch of ebay tape and some bubble mailers and bubble wrap. And we have a good source for free boxes not far from here. I think we’ll be fine, but I’ll let you know once we set up our operation again.
Thank you! Yeah, I did lose a lot of awesome stuff. But I saved some really high-end things too so I was happy about that. But the worst is the personal items that are gone. My grandma left me her stamp collection when she passed that she collected since she was little. My grampa’s tools too. A lot of my childhood items. I won’t lie, I broke down when I opened that tote.
Good advice, Jay. And yes, that was the first thing I thought about after the initial shock. I’m glad I got the store in order. My girlfriend sells on ebay as well and she did the same thing. She’s actually new here on the forums. Her name is xxThinklinkxx. She might comment on here once everything is settled.
Thank you Mike and Susan. Yes, you’re right. Just gotta pick up the pieces and keep movin’. Stay strong, cry if we must, but trudge forward. It’ll be okey once the house and everything we’ve rescued is clean.
Thank you, everyone, for keeping us in your thoughts. I’m taking a much needed lunch break now from it all. I’m absolutely amazed at all the help we’re receiving. Red Cross is out here. Several church groups. Fire Dept and state organizations all coming together to clean up the city. I haven’t even got away from our house but I guess other neighborhoods got hit just as bad. I just keep thinking about that boy and girl. So tragic.
I haven’t listened to the podcast yet. And I’m not going to report my numbers. I just need to vent. Me and my girlfriend’s house was caught in a flash flood. Our basement, the location of 95% of our inventory, got about 4 feet of water. Everything is ruined. We spent all day today pumping out the water and tossing everything out into our destroyed yard. Apparently, the heavy rains we had caused the creek by our house to flood and overflow. Mud and debris is everywhere. Our basement still has about 6 inches of wet mud on the floor. I just can’t believe it. All that work. Everything that I’ve built for this business, just gone. My car got some flood damage too. I’m going to have an insurance agent come out to look at the damage to it. Unfortunately, our renter’s insurance doesn’t cover flood. Neither does our landlord’s insurance. We are just beside ourselves. We had family come to help fortunately, otherwise nothing would have been able to get done. I have to count my blessings though. Two people died only a mile or so from my house. Swept away in a van. It’s heartbreaking to hear.
So I put my store on extended vacation mode with the option to make it so nobody can buy anything. I had to cancel three sales. Luckily, I had the foresight to store my slides upstairs. I sold a bunch of those to that same guy in Korea. I just don’t know how I’m going to pack them with no shipping supplies. What a disaster. I just feel so defeated…July 9-15
Total Items in Store: 984
Items Sold: 18
Total Sales (Gross Profit): $621
Net Profit: $358
Highest Price: $112 (Weller Floral Carved Pottery Claywood Burntwood 7″ Flower Vase)
Average Price: $35
Returns: 0
Cost of Items Sold: $126
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $33I had an alright week of sales. Nothing too amazing to report on that front. My net profit for the week is down close to half of my gross because of some high Cost of Goods Sold plus I factored in the cost of a bunch of supplies I purchased last week. I did quite a bit of listing, including a lot of glass items. I really hate listing glass, but it’s so damn prevalent in my area that I can’t ignore it. At least this time it was more useful stuff like dinnerware and not the fancy stuff that only exists to be looked at. I’ll be doing another round of the stuff this week which I’m kind of dreading. But the sooner I list it, the sooner it’ll sell and gets the heck out of my storage hopefully.
So my second week of my slide experiment wasn’t nearly as good as the first. I listed 15 slides plus relisted the 1 that didn’t sell the previous week all the same way… auction style with a starting bid of what I was hoping to outright sell them for. I ended up selling 3 for a total of $38. Now granted, this group of slides weren’t really interesting. Some scenes of people cutting hay and such. Two of the ones that sold were to the same buyer in Korea who bought all from the first week. I’m wondering if he wants to see how they arrive and in what condition they really are before he starts dropping more money on these. This week’s batch might be more promising. There are a few slides from a leper colony and a few of a Korean wedding. I’ll continue to report on my experiment next week.
I’m curious what the restaurant mugs you found look like. Do they say where in WV they were made?
Steve, about that Crosman pellet gun in your video… did you run into any issues with listing and selling that? I have an vintage Benjamin 137 air pistol that I tried to list about 6 months ago but eBay sent me all these warnings about not being allowed to list pellet guns or even parts of them. Kinda scared me off. But now I just looked and they’re selling all over the place. I’m wondering if they’re still as strict about it, and if it’s just an instance of “better to beg for forgiveness than to ask permission.”
Thanks Brian! Yeah, I knew as soon as the guy showed them to me that I had some treasure. The fact that they were all labeled with a title, location and a year was fantastic! I have another box of Kodachrome slides that I got last year that I might toss up as a lot like you did. It’s more family and vacation snapshots. There are a few I saw of old cars that I might pick out and list individually though.
I recently started listing slides, and I can tell you how I do them. I won’t claim that it’s the most efficient way, but it feels right to me. I use a flatbed scanner, the Epson V500 to be exact. It allows me to place 4 slides down at a time. It scans them fairly quickly as long as you don’t choose the extra options like color correction and unsharp mask (I wouldn’t do any of that anyways because it can be misleading to the person who wants to buy it). After I do a mass scan, I’ll take those digital images and run an automated macro in Photoshop which places a watermark on all of them. Is this necessary? I don’t know, probably not. But I do it anyways. I then take a normal front and back picture of the whole slide to show condition. I created a template on eBay for slides where all I have to do is enter some basic information and then list. Admittedly, this method will take more time to do than taking a picture of the slide held up to a light source. But you get the advantage of letting the buyer see all the details in the photo, including clarity and color which may be hard to determine in a picture of the whole slide itself.
So what it comes down to is this… Would you be ok with spending around $80-100 on a scanner? And how much time would you be willing to spend to prepare the listings? For an example, I recently scanned in almost 200 slides to my computer. That took about 5 hours total after I got the routine down. Plus another hour taking the front and back photos, and maybe another hour cropping those and doing the watermarks and general stuff. And it took me another hour or so to make a spreadsheet of all the information that was written on each of my slides, but that isn’t something that I would do every time. So 8 hours total I spent on this box of slides. But the hard part is done and now all I have to do is list them, which takes about 30 seconds per listing. So the big questions is, would I have sold the slides that I’ve sold had I not gone through all that trouble? There’s no way to tell. But I’m happy with the way I do them and it works for me.
By the way, that’s great that you have access to a pipeline of these! I’ve been playing around with the idea of putting out a want-ad on craigslist for old slides. Maybe offer a flat price of .20 cents per slide or something like that.
July 2 – 8
Not a bad week of sales. As I mentioned on Monday, my photo slide sales saved me a lot. Here we go…
The first saxophone part sales started coming in. A little back story… I bought this saxophone (Selmer Bundy II Alto Sax) at an auction for $45. I thought I got a good deal until I got to looking at it. I should have checked it out before I started bidding, because it was all bent and beat to hell. It sat on the death pile shelf for months until I got the idea to disassemble it and sell each individual part. I found an labeled parts guide online and went to work. I sold three pieces this week at $15 each, so I just about made my money back after fees. So keep that in mind if you ever run into the same situation.
Selmer Bundy II Saxophone PartHere’s the highest individual sale of my week. I acquired this Sony Minidisc Player at a thrift store for $5. I didn’t know how well it worked at the store but I took a chance on it. I had to buy a minidisc on ebay in order to test it (that cost $6, more than the player itself). It tested out perfectly! I sold within a couple weeks of listing it for $116.
Sony Minidisc PlayerHere’s a good thing to look out for while scavenging for items. These OXO brand plastic food storage containers with the sealing buttons are always super expensive brand new for some reason. Well I found that they hold their value pretty well on eBay. This set of four I got in a box lot. I paid .46 cents for these and sold them for $32.
OXO Food Storage ContainersFinally, I’ll end on one of the eleven slides I sold on Friday. I was browsing Letgo and saw a guy selling a box of these Korean War slides with no price, but “negotiable.” I just threw out a $40 number to see what he would throw back at me, and I was surprised when he said “that sounds good.” After the easy transaction, I brought them home and counted 199 of these glass slides all taken in 1953 by an American soldier in South Korea. A majority were just scenery photos or snapshots of his friends (kind of uninteresting). Some, though, were pure gold! I think I spent about 6 hours or more so far on these… scanning them in, typing up what is written on each slide, taking photos of the whole slides, etc. But now that I’ve got all the hard parts done, I just have to list them. I’m going to list them in order at about 15 a week auction style with a starting bid of what I optimistically hope to get according to condition, clarity and general interestingness. The first week’s experiment was a huge success. I listed 12 and sold 11 for a total of $359! Hopefully, I’ll continue to have the same luck this week and the rest of my time selling these.
Korean War SlideJuly 2 – 8
Total Items in Store: 943
Items Sold: 28 (11 of which were slides to the same person)
Total Sales (Gross Profit): $782
Net Profit: $592
Highest Price: $116 (Sony Minidisc Player/Recorder Deck MDS-JE520)
Average Price: $28
Returns: 1 (pair of cheap $12 opera glasses that must have broke in shipping)
Cost of Items Sold: $26
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $9I had another successful week, but it was my slide auctions that saved me. More on that below. I kind of took it easy with listing last week. I focused more on getting things done around the house. I took an impromptu road trip to upstate New York for a couple of days for a getaway. Stopped by a few thrift stores in Syracuse but they were all pretty bleak. Then spent most of my weekend catching up on eBay and getting my numbers ever-higher. I’m hoping to hit 1K here soon!
So now onto my slide auction experiment. I consider it a fluky success. And I only say fluky for one reason… all but one of my 12 slides that I listed were bought by the same person (and that last one didn’t sell at all so I’ll try listing it again). I listed them for the starting bid of what I realistically wanted to sell them for BIN based on interestingness, clarity and condition of each individual slide. I had a watcher or two on each one throughout the week, but there didn’t seem to have been much interest. That is until the last few seconds. All eleven sold for the opening bid except two which had a very small bidding war driving the price up a little bit. The winner of all was a person living in Korea. I checked out his feedback history and it looks like he’s a major collector of historical Korean items. So in conclusion, if it wasn’t for that person, I would have probably only sold a couple instead of 11. Total amount sold: $374. I’m going to try again this week with another round of slides from the same lot. Maybe I can get lucky again. I’ll report back next week if anyone is interested.
