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Great sales, Steve! Nothing over the top in terms of sales over my way. Everything remained in the double digits. Here are some highlights…

This was a surprise out of a box lot of remotes I bought for a total of $2. The auctioneer took the liberty of separating the remotes from the stereo equipment I bought earlier (grrr!) and lotting them all together, forcing me to stay until the end. But I’m glad I did! This simple, two-button remote I found out later controls a stairlift. Super specialized. They usually sell for $50-$60. I priced mine competitively and it sold in a few weeks for $54.
Bruno Stairlift Remote

Here is my biggest sale of the week. I picked this German-made Leitz slide projector up at a yard sale last summer for a dollar! I couldn’t believe it! I brought it home, tested it and it worked fine, but I noticed some mold growth on the glass. I noted that in the listing and finally took a best offer for $75. I probably could have gotten more for it, but it was taking up a lot of room and that price made me happy. I shipped it to a big-deal executive/entrepreneur out in California. I won’t say who it was on here, but let’s just say he has his own wikipedia page. 🙂
Leitz Wetzlar Prado Slide Projector

Some more hardware sold from that lot I mentioned last week. These are four antique drawer pulls. The designs on these look so cool! It reminds me of the Illuminati or something. They cost me a few cents, and I sold them for $30. When the buyer received them, she immediately messaged me asking me if I had anymore. Unfortunately I didn’t, but she then raved about how amazing they were. That made my day.
Antique Drawer Pulls

I like selling tools, but too often they don’t resell for a whole lot of money. But I’m learning by doing, and I’m adding to my toolbox the things that aren’t worth my time to sell. That being said, I’ve learned some brands to look out for. Snap-on is one of them. I picked this ratchet up in a box lot. This piece came out to cost me $3. I clean the rust off, polished and oiled it a little, and sold it for a best offer of $38. And just to let you know, there’s an easy way to date Snap-on brand tools. Just look for the specific symbol on the tool and search Google for the chart of Snap-on symbol dates. Mine were from the 1950’s.
Snap-On Ratchet

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When I posted this, the price was only at about $120. But $1200 is still probably a really good price for well over 25,000 book! I’m really curious about the titles.

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Mar. 26 – Apr. 1
Total Items in Store: 664
Items Sold: 16
Total Sales: $523
Highest Price: $75 (Leitz Wetzlar Prado 250 Slide Film Projector)
Average Price: $33
Returns: 0
Cost of Items Sold: $16
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $87

Last week started out VERY slow. Sunday wasn’t bad, but Monday and Tuesday were pathetic. Thankfully it picked up again after that, but the warmer weather must really be bringing out the lowball offerers. It seemed like I was fighting an uphill battle with people trying to get huge price cuts off of my wares.

Your obsessive customer that was interested in that belt buckle reminded me of one I had recently. I’m selling a globe from the 1940’s. I have it priced high, but am willing to take reasonable offers like most of my items. So I get a message saying would you please send me a close-up photo of Palestine. I’m like whatever, I understand that there are ways to date a globe depending on country name and borders and whatnot. So I do. Then he proceeds to request more and more photos. I should have cut him off after the first, but I was really wanting a sale. I ended up taking about 20 more photos for this guy. Then he sends me a link showing one that only sold for $26 and that that’s all he was willing to pay. Old me would have conceded and took the offer. But now I feel a lot more empowered with my business I have going here. I simply shot back a more reasonable offer and never heard back from him. I think his goal was to wear me down with these photo requests and then lowball me into thinking that I put in all this work and might as well take it. Not today, bud.

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I’m trying to imaging the time and space needed to take this one on! Still, though, I’m curious what valuable books could be in this lot.

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I wrote this out once but it must have got lost in cyberspace. If if shows up twice, I’ll try to delete it.

Not too bad of a week last week. Almost all bread and butter sales, but a lot of them. Here are some highlights…

This sale surprised me. I bought a lot of large old fishing gear last fall for $6. I didn’t really examine the lot before I bid on it, and after I won it I was really disappointed on how crappy everything in the box was. But I decided to list it all anyways. Well this set of floats sold within two weeks of listing. They were dirty, smelly and the rope was all dry rotted. I explained that in my listing but somebody really wanted it. My guess was that it will be used for decor. Sold for full price of $40.
Fishing Net Floats

This was my big sale of the week. I got this in a lot of items at an auction that I paid $4 for. There was only one box of wrapping paper that I wanted from that lot, but I’ve learned never to throw or give anything away until you’ve fully researched it. There was not other pieces by this artist listed or sold on eBay, but Google said he is apparently well received in the New England states. So I priced it high, sat on it for a few months and the right person finally found it. I took a best offer of $170.
Greg Mort Signed Prints

Here is the second set of manuals to sell from my pile of them I rescued a few weeks ago. I derped on the weight and had to eat some shipping costs, but it’s still free money. These are technical service manuals for a video switch board. I took a best offer of $40.
Video Switch Board Service Manuals

This is why I won’t ignore boxes of dirty hardware anymore. They Sell! This was something I would have thrown away without a second of hesitation. But I was inspired by the What Sells videos and decided to give it a try. Pieces from this lot have been selling like hot cakes. Here’s one example that I sold this week. Just a simple cupboard latch, painted and chipped. But to the right person, this is perfect for their project. Sold for $17.
Vintage Cupboard Latch

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Those sound great! I think it’s so much fun to explore photo slides from different eras. It’s an area that I haven’t experienced much on eBay, but I’d like to get into it.

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I need to brush up on my history apparently. Though the guy did say Korean War, that wasn’t until the ’50s. These are from the early ’40s: World War II. But hey, even better!

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Mar. 19 – 25
Total Items in Store: 674
Items Sold: 15
Total Sales: $522
Highest Price: $170 (Greg Mort Print Collection)
Average Price: $35
Returns: 2
Cost of Items Sold: $35
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $50

First off, welcome to the bidet club! Hands down, one of my best investments. Changed my life!

Sales sort of slumped a little bit this week, but not too bad. Unfortunately, I got two returns. One was for a set of ball casters that were NIB but didn’t fit the person’s chair. That was $30 I had to return. But the second one hurt the most. That XM Radio I sold last week for $140 had a bad rechargeable battery. I already got it back, confirmed the dead battery and ordered a replacement. I’m confident I’ll sell it again, it’s just a pain in the butt.

I’m a week into my equipment service manual selling experiment and it’s looking pretty good. I’ve sold three so far for about $50 total after fees. My next experiment came to me last night. I was taking photos of my death pile stuff when I came across an old beat up saxophone that I was dreading listing for some reason. Then I thought, what would Steve Schultz do? I check eBay and saxophone parts were selling! It took me about an hour but I disassembled the whole thing and bagged and labeled every piece. I’ll start listing them after I get through my death pile.

I had a great buy this week. A guy listed a box full of slide from the Korean War era on Letgo and I hopped on it for $40. I brought it home and found a treasure trove of glass color slides from an American soldier stationed in Korea in the early 1940s. About 200 total. Every one of them has been labeled with the date and subject which will make it very easy to list. There are several that I’ll group in lots by subject matter, but there are plenty that I’m going to try listing individually. I’ve seen single slides of the same time, place and subject go for over $100 on sold listings. I can’t wait to get started on them!

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I had another pretty good week of sales last week. A lot of items that I’ve listed many months ago sold. Here are some highlights…

Last summer at an auction, I bought a Star Wars Millennium Falcon model from the 1970s. In good condition, these things sell for $70 to $100. Mine was far from good. But I took it apart and listed each piece individually (luckily they all have imprinted on them the individual part number). This piece sold for $15.
1979 Star Wars model part

This pair of manuals came out of a huge box of garage type manuals I bought last year. The whole box cost me a dollar. I’m kicking myself because there was another same sized box of them I could have gotten for the same price. I’ve made over $200 on that box so far. So now I know to buy things up everytime I see them. This pair sold for full price of $50.
Garage Bearings Manuals

I spent a little too much initially for this Aultman Buckeye Akron Cast Iron Tractor Seat… $45. I acquired this at one of my first auctions and was still learning. Turns out it was a reproduction of the original. But I cleaned it up and put a new coat of paint on it and took a BO of $90.
Antique Tractor Seat

Here’s a fun little sale. I get this sealed-in-package microfiber washcloth at a Goodwill Outlet. Probably cost me a few cents. I recognized the penguin character from a random YouTube video I watched years ago. I thought maybe there might be a sort of cult following of the little show. I think I was kinda right. This sold almost immediately for my asking price of $10. Maybe I should have priced it higher, but who would have known? I was happy with the sale.
PINGU Penguin!

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Mar. 12 – 18
Total Items in Store: 586
Items Sold: 21
Total Sales: $893
Highest Price: $140 (Sirius XM Home Radio)
Average Price: $42
Returns: 0
Cost of Items Sold: $148
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $0

Another good week of sales! I’m loving these high sale weeks! But I’m keeping in mind how last summer was so I don’t get spoiled.

This week I’m starting my service manual experiment. I acquired a cache of about 120 audio and video equipment service and operator manuals. These aren’t for cheap home equipment either. Professional recording studio stuff here. The service manuals all have these really intricate diagrams and schematics of circuits and things. I rescued them all from the trash bin at work. So far I’ve got them all photographed and cropped. Tonight I’ll start listing. Should be fun.

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I had a pretty good week of sales last week. Lots of lower to middle priced sales that when all combined made for quite a nice profit. Here are some highlights…

I bought an occupational shaving mug at an auction in a box lot for what amounted to $17.55. I’ve learned to pick these up whenever I see them, especially if it has someone’s name printed in fancy script on it. This one had that and a beautiful illustration of a train. I priced it high for $160 and it sold within a week for Best Offer of $135.
Ocupational Shaving Mug

I sold two copies of the same exact book to the same buyer. It was an out of print book about duck decoys. I messaged the buyer explaining what they did and they said it was intentional. So that was awesome. The combined price I paid for these was $23. I sold one for BO $65 and the other for BO $100 (because it was signed by the author).
Waterfowl Decoy Book

I bought a box of old hardware as an experiment last fall and just recently sorted and listed the pieces. This group of old painted brass hinges cost me about 30 cents out of that box lot. They sold for $25! That paid for the whole box and then some, and I’ve still got plenty to sell from it.
Old Brass Hinges

This tramp art picture frame came in a box lot of small oil paintings. I paid $35 for the whole lot, so this individual piece came to $7.00. I listed it for $40 and to a BO of $35. I love when a single item from a box lot sells and pays for the entire cost of the lot! Now everything else that sells is pure profit. This was the item that I received a rude comment about how the shipping should have been free even though he accepted my counter-offer. I’m still waiting for him to leave feedback.
Tramp Art Picture Frame

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I’ll update if anything happens. It was delivered two days ago with no complaints yet. I’m crossing my fingers. And yes, I was ecstatic when I saw those mugs. There’s a set of 8 kiwi colored ones that should fetch a pretty good price. Funny story too… as I was inspecting them prior to the start of the auction, some buyer came up and said I shouldn’t bother bidding on the box because they’re worthless. He knew what they were… but he must have been at the other ring when the box came up.

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Mar. 05 – 11
Total Items in Store: 570
Items Sold: 15
Total Sales: $662
Highest Price: $135 (Vintage Occupational Shaving Mug)
Average Price: $44
Returns: 0
Cost of Items Sold: $84
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $371

I, too, had a nice week of sales. Mostly bread and butta’ but I did sell a couple $100+ items. One was a signed copy of a duck decoy book that’s been out of print for a while. I’ve learned to be on the lookout for “old and wealthy” hobby things and duck and waterfowl items often fit that bill nicely.

I went to my first big auction of the season and really went hard… and unfortunately so did everybody else there. I bet there was easily 800K or more spent total. I made out with lots of glassware (which I don’t have too much interest in but is very prevalent in my area so suck it up buttercup and make that money). And thanks to your “what sells” videos, I bought a box full of Waechterbach mugs for $15, some even made in West Germany!

I had a slightly rude buyer who could potentially cause some problems when he gets his item this week. He sent me an offer of $35 for a $40 item, but in the comment box asked for free shipping. I sent him a counter offer with the same $35 price but wrote that I don’t do free shipping. He accepted and paid but made a curt little comment about how if I was going to accept a lower price, than I should have been fine with giving him free shipping as well. Wow. Well I’m expecting at least some neutral feedback there, but I know I have a good case to get it removed.

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I love this post, though I’m saddened to think of all the electronics I’ve thrown away in the past that I could have totally parted out and sold. I have several pieces of audio equipment in storage that I acquired in non-working order. On a whim, I checked out a Sony turntable I have on ebay. A working one is going for about $40 on average. But the individual parts were going for around $10-$15 each, and it looks like I can get about 8 or 10 individual parts listed.

That’s a great tip about appliances too! I wonder if vacuum sweepers would be profitable to part out? I’m always seeing them out on the curbs for trash pickup.

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It really does happen more often than people realize. I, too, recently saved some nice audio equipment from going into the trash. Where I work, they needed to clear an old videography classroom to make room for more offices. The maintenance crew were given the orders to just throw everything in the dumpster. I’m lucky to have caught wind of the order before they could give it the ol’ chuck. You should have seen the looks they gave me as I was digging around in all the big black trash bags full of equipment. A lot of the stuff didn’t work after I brought it home and tested it. I’ll still part them out and make a killing. But my prize was an Otari reel to reel player that works perfectly! I’m probably going to hang on to that for a long while.

But that was really swell of your neighbor to let you in on all that equipment. Every now and then it helps that people know you’re a scavenger.

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