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My “Crazy” cleaning tip is for electronics – for anything that I can take apart and has a case (plastic or metal), or other parts that are not electrical, I put the outer case/knobs/dials/etc. in the dishwasher on cold setting.
It cleans every crevice perfectly to make it look new with minimal effort. Anything else electronic I have to use q-tips, toothbrushes, vacuums or anything else to get them clean.
The place I hate for pricing labels is Savers / Value Village. They are horrible to take off, and impossible on paper based items without tearing.
I use a bottle of 99 cent store rubbing alcohol to get what isn’t easily removed from these labels (usually a bit of paper and adhesive) and it works well. The only problem with alcohol is on printed plastics – it may eat the printing as well so you have to be careful.
02/22/2018 at 12:34 pm in reply to: When It's Freezing Outside and Your Photo Booth is in the Garage… #33675Great story and name!
We have four cats (inside) and numerous ones outside that we feed. All our indoor cats are the hard luck cases at the shelter my wife volunteers at but all are pampered now!
If any of the outdoor ones weren’t as scared, I’m sure they would end up inside as well.
Thanks for saving Gemma!
Fur (even a small amount on a collar) is very difficult to ship across borders due to various international animal/wildlife protection laws. The fur needs to be documented well on a tag, and on a customs form.
02/22/2018 at 9:44 am in reply to: When It's Freezing Outside and Your Photo Booth is in the Garage… #33643What’s your cats name?
@simplicio – somehow my body has been tuned into the “double buzz” pattern the phone makes when on vibrate and a sale comes in (vs the buzz from other messages/etc).
Getting the same here – obviously it is an issue on eBay’s end. Comes up occasionally/
Great resource! I’ve been calling a lot of the hats I sell “Fedora” hats, but I now see that they have some specifics for other styles.
Where I work we replaced peanuts with air pillows – they require an upfront investment of a machine to make the pillows (I think it was almost $2000) but after that you just need to buy cheap rolls of film.
I think the air pillows are an option if you are shipping out lots of items. They also allow control – you can make different lengths (the width of the film is the same), or add in as much air as you like to make “stiff” pillows, or fill them each with less air.
We ship out dozens of boxes of glass bottles this way a day – and have very few issues.
02/20/2018 at 4:52 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 348: Acknowledge When Hard Work Pays Off #33466@Habnab – that is the exact number I have for a store (annual) subscription…it’s one of those decisions to make if I get my volume back up to that level. I’ve been up to almost 400 active items as recently as September, and now I’m below 100 (and falling as sales are outpacing what I am scavenging lately)
That number looks like my number – eBay doesn’t charge the same fees to everyone, and offers promos here and there to us all. For example, for me to subscribe to a basic store, my final value fees will not change based on my seller level – so only the insertion fees would be saved once I cross over from 157 to 158 items a month consistently.
I can also go for the month by month subscription, where the crossover is 171-172 items. I’ll probably go that route when I have the urge to list a lot of items like I did last fall and cancel when the listings sell off and I don’t keep up.
02/20/2018 at 3:28 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 348: Acknowledge When Hard Work Pays Off #33462Makes sense if you have free listings to list as much as you can and gamble on items that may sit for awhile. In my position with only 100 free listings a month, having an item sit awhile is costing good money at 35 cents/month per listing over 100. eBay doesn’t give me the incentive to go over 100 items unless I know they will sell quickly. When I have gone over my free listings, the 35 cents/item starts to really add up over a month.
The stretch between 100 and the various store subscriptions wasn’t worthwhile for a part-time seller like myself. I can now understand how it makes sense as a full-time seller to use up every “free” slot you have, even on slow or very slow items.
I assume that at larger numbers, you are just playing the same game as I am – trying to find the best items to fit in free listings allotment you have.
02/20/2018 at 10:29 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 348: Acknowledge When Hard Work Pays Off #33441Here are my numbers for the last week (since February 13th):
Total Items in Store: 89
Items Sold: 11
Cost of Items Sold: $14.10
Total Sales: $356.96
Highest Price Sold: $56.93 (BCBG Dress NWT)
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $5.00
Number of items listed this week: 5One of my better sales weeks this year. Challenged to find new inventory this week (only went to two thrift stores). Will be spending the day Saturday scavenging in a new city and hope it will be better then the local pickings this week.
Electronics, especially video games (PS1/PS2) are very slow lately for me.
02/20/2018 at 10:22 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 348: Acknowledge When Hard Work Pays Off #33440Just trying to understand something that confuses me.
The one number that is posted in some of your weekly numbers that confuses me is “Total Items In Store”.
The statistic/number doesn’t confuse me, but the goal to increase that number does that some of you are trying to achieve.
Does eBay offer discounts/etc. if you have more items in your store? I’m just confused because my goal would be to sell through my items and have a goal of close to zero items sitting in my store inventory.
Just curious if there is benefits to having high inventory numbers that I’m not aware of, as I try to sell my items as quickly as possible (take the quick nickel vs. the slow dime) and try to keep my inventory moving; and what I’m missing out on by keeping my numbers down instead of trying to grow them.
Geoff and Jay have excellent advice.
I’ve been in and out of jobs for 20 years, and while I hope not to lose my current job, I plan on it to be secure for the future.
I would add some suggestions from my experiences:
-don’t take on any debt, and mitigate as much debt that you have. If you can’t afford something, go without for now. Jay’s advice on the car is great. There are so many good cars people ditch for something new and shiny – and if you need a loan, the payments are easy to cover.
-plan for VERY bad weeks. Make sure you have enough food/provisions for a really long week where sales are slim. We like to have a stock of canned food, cheap things like pasta, etc. on hand for when we are struggling. Buy food when it is cheap, on sale, or meat that is best before that day and is 50-75% off. Even if it is the best before date, it can be frozen for a year.
-grow your own food in the summer – some vegetables and fruits grow really easy. Just find out what grows in your area from neighbors. Some will even give you free seeds or excess food
-look at every dollar that goes out the door – find out where you can save money – water and electricity bills can be cut by just thinking about what you are doing. Like Jay, we have no TV service – just an antenna, and watch shows online on free services.
-think of other ways to make a dollar – I do odd jobs like installing TV antennas, fixing computers, yard work, etc – $20/$50 here and there quickly adds up for your time.
-plan something fun once a week to look forward to – my wife and I plan outings (usually to thrift stores out of town), go to a burger place that is 2 for $5, or other cheap yet fun outings. Usually they end up around sourcing items, but you can have fun and scavenge at the same time!
As a benchmark, our weekly bills are between $400 and $500 for everything – phone, internet, food, electricity, water, property tax, mortgage, etc. I think we can do better, and half of it is our mortgage that we will eliminate with hard work. Build a list of what you spend – and figure out if you can break even or even make a few dollars.
And there is no shame in working for someone else if a job comes around that you may like if it offers you happiness and security.
The holes on the tag were a creation of Sears – it was an early attempt at what barcodes/UPCs do today on products.
Sears used this system until the 70’s, when they introduced the SPC system. The SPC system was basically a font for numbers that was computer readable. You will see on Sears items from the 70’s to even the 90’s with a 6 to 8 digit number with a + sign in front of it in this strange font that is kind of similar to a retro 80’s computer font.
This numbering system was scanned like a modern UPC into a cash register. Unfortunately, it was slow, and difficult to scan for some cashiers, and was replaced by the UPC we all know.
Soon, UPCs will date products to a certain timeframe. RFID will take over and you don’t even need to scan RFID items individually.
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