Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
well I had a pretty good week with 12 listings. very busy week at work. I work from home and felt like I was sitting at my computer for 10 to 12hrs a day last week. I went to a few estate sales on saturday and scored a great pile of paper stuff. It was actually a few books, some old pics and some pilot and air force related items. I love looking through other peoples old stuff.
Grabbed a copy paper box lid and filled it up for 5 bucks. My almost amazing find was an envelope with about a dozen mint condition stock certificates from the Southwest Airmotive Company of Dallas. At first I was thinking maybe this was some early incarnation of Southwest Airlines…but no, no lottery ticket. Turns out they are “specimen” certificates, or samples. But good news is they still have value! and I sold 3 of them already for Twenty bucks each!!
so overall a great week of adding 12 listings and immediately selling 3 of them!
there could be a few different theories at play.
Do you want to sell 100 patches at $5 each? or Would you rather sell 10 patches at $50 each? I’d go for the quality over quantity business model
and Jay mentioned one…basically listing your hobby collection at high prices. … because you’re really not keen to sell but if someone wants to pay the high price then why not??
another is establishing a brand or pedigree. It happens in golden and silver age comics. Basically, a large high quality collection comes to market and due to the amazing condition (and of course scarcity in that condition) the collection is given a name. These comics then command a much higher price due to the pedigree.
or, the person just thinks all of their stuff is worth a lot more then what shows on Ebay and their price is their price.
great margin on those stereo’s! and that slow-mo of your cat…wow! for a minute I thought that was some sort of wind up toy and then realized it was an actual bug
how do you have listings that are over 30 days old? everything I have automatically relists at the end of 30days. Not sure if that is a box I checked somewhere?
big fat zero for me last week. very busy at work. have pics ready to go for several postings so hope to get a lot done in the next couple days. It’s time to whittle down the death pile as well/
thanks for the feedback everyone! and yep, kept those cups (and a ton of other stuff) for over 30yrs. I kept a lot of stuff. I just recently found my employee name tag from my first retail job when I was 17! (I’m currently 51)
At the moment all of this is funding a mixture of lifes adventures (I collect comic art and I have a classic car in the garage) and some retirement. I also intend for this to be my retirement gig. My plan is to make my hobby my part time retirement gig. I love looking through other peoples stuff….and if I can resell some of it and make some money even better!
I had a very successful week (considering I have a full time job). I got 22 items listed which is huge for me! The listing challenge is doing it’s job.
I hit an estate sale Sunday morning in a wealthier part of town where a lawyer lived there. I’ve had pretty good success with law books and this guy had quite a library. It was the afternoon on the last day of the sale so the estate company was offering me what came out to about 70 cents per book. I also came across a few pairs of men’s pants new with the tags so thought for $2.50 each I’d give clothing a try. I also tried making a “what sold” video. I’ve got 8 things waiting to be packed and shipped so I’m going to try again.
It’s amazing the stuff people give away/throw away. Sadly I’d have to count myself in that group up until I started reselling. Now I look at everything in my house and say to myself…do I really need that? I even look at the wife and kids stuff…do they really need that? LOL
https://www.ebay.com/itm/194220071054
Vintage Carlson 50ft crank tape measure. Found this for a few dollars at an estate sale and sold for $12.50https://www.ebay.com/itm/193730860070
Vintage Budweiser Beer stein. Got a few of these in an auction for a few dollars about a year ago. took a best offer of $9.75 on this one to move it out the door. I under estimated the shipping by $3 so if I’m lucky I made two bucks. Live and learnhttps://www.ebay.com/itm/193699617203
Vintage Whitman Publishing Pickup Sticks
Speaking of stuff that was the kids! this was passed down from a grandparent and literally never touched by anyone in my house for probably 15 years. If I thought for a half a second this would be missed I wouldn’t have sold it. Sold for $15 🙂https://www.ebay.com/itm/193933580001
2012 US Open Golf hat. Found several US Open golf hats from various years at an estate sale. All looked new and bought for one dollar each. Sold for $12https://www.ebay.com/itm/194263398483
Phillips 66 gas station advertising thermometer. Bought a Phillips 66 collection of about 30 items that i found on craigslist. So far I’ve sold 4 items netting me about Fifty Five dollars, paid Eighty for the entire collection.https://www.ebay.com/itm/194082848776
Lionel Trains Hallmark Ornament – found this new in the box for a dollar in a fairly picked over estate sale. Sold for $16.50https://www.ebay.com/itm/194001020475
Vintage 1950’s? commercial truck photo. Believe this was an advertising photo used by the company that installed the specialized equipment on the truck. I was able to buy a binder for I believe ten dollars with about 12 different photo’s inside. I sold a group of 4 of them at $12.50 each to one person.https://www.ebay.com/itm/194263585382
1985 Transformer toy – I bought this new at the store in 1985 and kept it all this time. Still in great shape except the two missiles were missing. Interestingly, I took this and a bunch of other toys to a toy show about 4 years ago and at twenty bucks no one was interested. Sold last week for $65.Overall things have slowed from a selling standpoint but I’m still a little ahead in number of sales for Aug. I did however have two people buy a total of 9 things at once, so those skew the numbers a bit.
interesting article. also mentions PWCC has their own online auction site. Perhaps for PWCC, EBay was becoming more a means of advertising their own auctions. Also mentions Ebay was only getting a 1% to 3% payment from PWCC. Maybe Ebay decided it was no longer worth it.
sorry to hear about your accident.
18 listings for me this week! this challenge thread has already helped!
really great video. I had no idea about some of the performance metrics he talked about.
My listing number for last week was 10 items. I also had a pretty good sales week selling 9 items to two people… so need to up my listing game. Currently sitting at 345 active listings.
things seemed to pickup a bit the last couple weeks. had some interesting sales. A mixture of things from my personal hobby collecting from 20yrs ago, some estate sales items and some things I bought while traveling that I thought I’d try flipping. My interests have always been comic book and toy related so while traveling for work I try to hit comic shops.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/193811328211 Danskin Delux Total Body Power Cord system. This was mixed in with a couple bins of books I bought about a year ago. I almost tossed this in the trash. Got $11.25 on a best offer.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/193863170359 Tomarts GI Joe collectibles price guide from 1993. Grabbed this at one of the better estate sales I’ve been to. All the books were at a dollar each so I grabbed every toy and collectible price guide I found. This was a big winner selling for Sixty Bucks!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/194212087670 Spiderman Lead Figurine and comic book set from the UK. This is something I picked up at a comic shop in FL and thought I’d try flipping. I got three of these for a total of Fifty dollars. Sold this one for $48. Still have the other two for sale. Should double my money after all fees, once all three sell.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/194014717955 Texas Rangers Arlington Stadium last game limited and numbered button. I was about to leave an estate sale empty handed and spotted this on a wall in the garage. Got it for one dollar and sold for $9.50
https://www.ebay.com/itm/193757671592 Missouri Jury Instructions law book. Also sold a Federal Communications law book. These are more books from my awesome online auction purchase for three dollars of two big bins of books from an estate sale. These two together went for $120.00. One day I’ll add up my total for what I’ve sold from this auction as it has to be in the mid hundreds by now.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/194195309153 Queen Mary souvenir book and Queen Mary Hotel souvenir book from the 70’s. Decided to bundle these two for a sale. Paid two dollars each, sold the pair for $24.75
Quite a few other sales for July including a couple items over a hundred dollars from my hobby collection.
and here is the video I mentioned. someone else posted this in another thread here but for the life of me I couldn’t find the thread.
I used his advise on making sure the first 4 words of my title are the best in terms of searchable. For me this meant I’ve started to revise old listings. For a quite a few this has meant taking the word “vintage” and moving it to the end of my title or removing it.
I also started taking pictures outside in the sun for certain things. Here’s a link to one of those listings. https://www.ebay.com/itm/194259271284
Its probably time for me to use a better camera but this one will do for now.
