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RetroTreasuresWV…I used to do the same when my son had baseball practice and games an hour away. We would stop at thrift stores on the way and I would list from the back of my truck during his practice. He would buy stuff for his store and list while we were driving back home.
I also thrift and list when we travel and ship boxes of merchandise back home from all areas of the country.
7/11/20-7/17/20
Total Items In Store: 2024
Items Sold: 28
Gross Sales: $806
Highest Price Sold: $110 (Hoover Canister Vacuum)
Average Price Sold: $28.78Returns: 1 $47
Money Spent on New Inventory: $97
Number of items listed: 30- Pretty slow week in sales and most were low dollar items. Felt like a typical summer week.
- I had a $200 sale from last week that never paid. I hate it when that happens, but better than when they pay and then cancel and you lose the PayPal fee.
- Thanks Jay and Ryanne for the effort you put in to do the podcast every week. I feel like I learn something new with every one. I’ve made a ton of changes in the way I do Ebay over the years based off what I’ve learned from you guys and others on your forum.
- I don’t know that it’s my highest sale, but one of my best sales was a double deck of playing cards from the Silver Slipper Saloon in Las Vegas. I picked them up for 25 cents at a garage sale and sold them for $500.
7/4/20-7/10/20
Total Items In Store: 2024
Items Sold: 26
Gross Sales: $1090
Highest Price Sold: $200 (Safgard Home Milk Pasteurizer)
Average Price Sold: $41.91
Returns: 0 $0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $40
Number of items listed: 71• Kind of a slow week in sales, but had a few high dollar items sell that helped my sales.
• I went to an American Legion fundraising sale this week and picked up a lot of great items. The sale had no prices listed, they just wanted a donation. When I went to check out, they only charged me $30. I ended up giving them an extra $10 because it was for a good cause and they charged me much less than I thought I was going to pay.
• I had a couple $200 sales (Home Milk Pasteurizer / Airplane Cable Tensiometer) and a $150 sale (NOS Bell Telephone) this week.
• I recently had USPS contact me about a claim needing me to take the item to the post office for review. I threw the item out after sending in pictures, so I am going to be denied on that claim. First time that has happened, so going forward I am going to have to save the item until the claim is paid.Jay…The majority of what I got came from 2 estate auctions. This particular auctioneer does hay racks first with the higher end items, then does furniture and finishes with rows of household/outdoor items in box lots. By the time they get to the box lots many people have left. Both days it was also over 90 degrees out which thinned the crowd even more.
They will generally sell multiple boxes at once to get through them quickly. I picked up multiple lots of boxes for $1-$3 per lot. At one auction they just wanted to end it, so they put several items together with about 10 box lots of kitchen items. I got it all for $30 and it included a home milk pasteurizer worth about $200 and lots of items worth $20-$50 each.
6/27/20-7/3/20
Total Items In Store: 1976
Items Sold: 33
Gross Sales: $960
Highest Price Sold: $200 (Hall-Toledo Valve Seat Grinder)
Average Price Sold: $29.10
Returns: 0 $0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $140
Number of items listed: 1• Had a decent week of sales, but slowed down near the end of the week.
• Auctions have been great for sourcing this week. Spent $140 at 3 different auctions and filled the truck at a couple of them. All of them have been outdoor in my area, but there are several indoor ones scheduled in the coming weeks. You generally see a lot of older folks at auctions in my area (a lot of farmers). I am amazed that not many of them are wearing masks.
• Had a grinding tool that’s been sitting around for a number of years sell this week for $200. That was a good boost for my numbers this week.
• Interesting conversation about letting people know you sell on Ebay. I’ve always tried to keep it under wraps. Although, I’m sure regulars at auctions have figured it out. I always show up at least an hour early with a notebook and jot down info on items I want to research before the auction starts.6/20/20-6/26/20
Total Items In Store: 2008
Items Sold: 39
Gross Sales: $1156
Highest Price Sold: $200 (Leinenkugel’s Red Canoe Rolling Cooler)
Average Price Sold: $29.63
Returns: 0 $0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $55
Number of items listed: 83• Pretty solid week of sales. As expected, I got a boost from finally getting some inventory back into the store.
• Listed 83 items this week and got my store back above 2000 listings for the first time since early May.
• Had a couple of great sales this week. One was a large canoe shaped cooler for $200 that my wife grabbed from a thrift store last winter for $10. Also sold one of the vintage rotary phones for $100 from the lot I picked up at a garage sale last week.
• Ryanne, thank you for posting the coupon codes. I never got an e-mail from Ebay on the extra coupon. When I called Ebay about it, I was told not everyone got the extra coupon and if I didn’t get an e-mail I wasn’t eligible for the free supplies. Anyways, I tried the code and it worked.
• I also can’t believe that Ebay has never added additional listing tiers for stores. I think I figured awhile back that I would have to get to over 3400 listings before it made sense to switch the next level. It’s a huge jump dollar wise to go to the next level of store.6/13/20-6/19/20
Total Items In Store: 1957
Items Sold: 27
Gross Sales: $555
Highest Price Sold: $60 x 2 (Cream Rose Lace Wedding Victorian Fabric and A Strand of Ceramic Artichokes on a Rope)
Average Price Sold: $20.56
Returns: 1 $30
Money Spent on New Inventory: $125
Number of items listed: 25• Very slow sales this week, but picked up some good inventory this week which should boost sales next week as it gets listed.
• I think thrift stores in our state get to open up on Friday the 26th, so I am interested to see the impacts of the pandemic on what they have available and prices.
• Scavenge of the week: A lot of vintage rotary Bell telephones new in the box from the 70’s at a yard sale. He wanted $10 for one and I asked how much he would take for all of them (7 total) and a bunch of accessories that went with them. Ended up getting him down to $35 for all of it.6/6/20-6/12/20
Total Items In Store: 1959
Items Sold: 30
Gross Sales: $735
Highest Price Sold: $80 (Trout Trap Fly Fishing Float Tube)
Average Price Sold: $18.85
Returns: 0 $0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $50
Number of items listed: 61• Sales were still a little low for me this week with a lot of low dollar items selling. Seems like the normal summer slow down.
• I was able to pick up some new inventory from some garage sales this week. Also attended my first live auction since February and scored a nice chunk of inventory to work with this week.
• My high sale this week was a fly fishing float tube. It was actually given to me as a wedding gift 25 years ago. I used it quite a bit when I lived in Colorado, but haven’t used it in 20 years since we moved to Illinois. Funny thing is that it sold for $80 and my friend paid less than $50 for it back in the mid 90’s.5/30/20-6/5/20
Total Items In Store: 1930
Items Sold: 24
Gross Sales: $546
Highest Price Sold: $100 (General Electric Contact Kit)
Average Price Sold: $22.75
Returns: 1 $60
Money Spent on New Inventory: $90
Number of items listed: 0• Didn’t post an update last week as I was in California visiting family. It was interesting to see how open CA was compared to Illinois. Nice to be able to attend some estate sales.
• Sales were very light this week with my extended handling time. Had a $100 and an $80 sale that kinda carried my week, otherwise all very low dollar sales.
• I use business policies on my listings, but my son does not. When we edited his handling time for the trip to CA, it allowed him to edit 750 listings at a time instead of only 500. He was able to change his entire store in one edit. I don’t know how new this is, but its new since the last time we used it.
• A friend arranged a private showing for me at an estate sale that wasn’t starting until next week. I was able to pick up over $1000 worth of inventory for $50. Unfortunately, it cost me $100 to ship it all back to IL. That made my cost of goods much higher than I like, but at least it’s a good size chunk of inventory to list when it arrives this week.
• I’ve been experiencing the same online auction issue…prices way to high. I’ve kinda given up on them for now. Last one I made bids on I won 1 item of the 20 or so I bid on and had to drive an hour one way to pick up a single item. I can’t wait until in person auctions start back up again.5/16/20-5/22/20
Total Items In Store: 1971
Items Sold: 42
Gross Sales: $967
Highest Price Sold: $100 (Bottle of Forever Krystle Perfume)
Average Price Sold: $23.03
Returns: 0 $0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0
Number of items listed: 10• Sales are right around average and I am back to listing with the inventory I picked up last week.
• After hearing the managed payments discussion from the podcast a few weeks back, I broke down and signed up for it this week. I added a new checking account to my accounts so I can keep it separate and transfer money to my personal accounts when I want, similar to the way I used PayPal.
• On a side note, I highly recommend using Charles Schwab online checking account for banking for anyone that doesn’t need a brick and mortar bank for their checking. Everything is free. You can order checks for free and they pay you interest on your checking balance. The best thing though…they reimburse you every month for any ATM fees you were charged if you withdraw cash from anywhere. This will be one nice thing about changing from PayPal to a normal checking for my deposited Ebay funds.5/9/20-5/15/20
Total Items In Store: 1992
Items Sold: 49
Gross Sales: $1030
Highest Price Sold: $130 (BioComfort Pedio foot massager)
Average Price Sold: $21.04
Returns: 1 $10
Money Spent on New Inventory: $211
Number of items listed: 1• Pretty steady sales all week. Average price sold was low this week as I had a lot of low dollar items sell.
• Flatware has been selling very well for me through this shutdown. I’ve done very well over the years buying sets for cheap and breaking them up into small lots. Pattern research is time consuming at times, but the profit is well worth it.
• Visited family in Nebraska this weekend. Life is quite a bit different there than here in Illinois right now. Spent the morning Saturday going to garage sales and did fairly well.
• Also found an online auction while I was there and picked up a nice chunk of inventory to work with this week to get my listing count back up. Part of the auction was a bunch of lots of farm trucker hats that were part of a collection. I was able to win 12 of the lots for about 150 hats. Averaged less than $1 a piece on them.
• I’m just over a year now doing full time Ebay after leaving the Company I was with for 28 years. It still feels very strange to me to just do whatever I want on any given day.5/2/20-5/8/20
Total Items In Store: 2039
Items Sold: 40
Gross Sales: $1121
Highest Price Sold: $90 (Allen Bradley Industrial Switch)
Average Price Sold: $28.04
Returns: 0 $0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0
Number of items listed: 11• Pretty steady sales all week, back over $1000 after a small drop last week.
• I’m still struggling to find new inventory to list, although I didn’t work too hard at it this week. My teenage son (who also has an eBay store) did buy $300 of inventory from an online auction that was 2 ½ hours away. He underestimated the size of some of the lots he bought and had to make 2 trips to get it all.
• After hearing the info on this week’s podcast, I am also considering pulling the trigger on managed payments. I need to call the bank this week and add a separate checking account to my accounts, though. The nice thing about PayPal was having the business account separate from my normal checking accounts.ChristineK, I applied for the EIDL only back in mid-April. It offers up to $10K that did not have to be paid back if you qualified. I never heard anything back and then the program ran out of money. It was funded again last week with additional money. I called the SBA last Tuesday and a rep told me my application number was still active and I would only get an e-mail if they got to my application in the order it was received before funds ran out again. He told me that if I qualified, I would get $1000 right away and then my application would be reviewed to see if I qualified for any additional funds. I got the $1K, but have not heard anything else back at this point.
My application also included lost revenue from rents, so I don’t know if that made any difference. I really did not expect to get anything, so I was pretty surprised to just have the money show up in my checking account.
WabashValley, if you still have the number that was given to you when you originally applied, you can call the SBA and they can check to see if it is still active. The number I called was 800-659-2955.
4/25/20-5/1/20
Total Items In Store: 2065
Items Sold: 32
Gross Sales: $896
Highest Price Sold: $100 (Apple Mini Mac)
Average Price Sold: $28.02
Returns: 1 $40
Money Spent on New Inventory: $4.30
Number of items listed: 10• My sales this week dropped back down to a little less than normal after a few weeks of very high sales.
• I was also notified this week that Ebay is rolling me into managed payments by the end of July. Looks like my holdout is about to end. Great idea Jay and Ryanne to wait to enroll. I never thought about them starting me up early.
• Sourcing inventory continues to be a challenge. The online auctions in my area all ship nationally, so the prices go very high. Still finding a few RA items to list. Been keeping an eye on FB Marketplace, but I haven’t seen much in this rural area worth going after yet. I’m keeping an eye on the next state over from me for possible sales or auctions. They are in the process of partially opening a majority of their counties.
• Still working on household projects…organizing garage, basement and attic. This has led to some extra income by selling some large items on the FB Marketplace.
• I’m kinda envious of those of you with death piles to attack. I usually hit an auction and then try to list everything possible as quickly as possible before going to another auction. I might have to adjust that strategy and load up on more than I can list this summer in case we go through this again in the fall/winter.
• Oh, and I got $1000 deposited in my checking account today from the EIDL disaster grant that I applied for last month. I’m pretty shocked that I got anything. I’m setting it aside for inventory purchases once we open back up.4/18/20-4/24/20
Total Items In Store: 2103
Items Sold: 53
Gross Sales: $1570
Highest Price Sold: $200 (Electric Water Feeder Pump)
Average Price Sold: $29.63
Returns: 0 $0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0
Number of items listed: 0• Another great week in gross sales.
• Still working on projects around the house to stay busy.
• Our governor extended the lockdown until the end of May and our city cancelled this year’s town wide garage sale days. Sourcing new items to list has been an issue and local online auctions prices are running very high.
• Once restrictions are lifted, I would imagine there will be some great buying opportunities with the market getting flooded with inventory that people have not been able to get rid of.
