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It probably affected me more than some because pretty much ALL my listings were first class with just a small percentage set to retail ground or priority mail.
Oh you are right, my mistake. I had decided that I was going to ditch priority mail and make everything consolidated ground so I guess I just had that in my head because I was getting rid of it.
I got busy earlier this week and didn’t have time to update my business policies right away. My sales absolutely tanked, zero sales! I normally sell around 10 items a day. Tuesday night I went in and updated the shipping on my policies from First Class and Priority Mail to the new consolidated ground and within an hour sales started happening again at the normal rate. If you have listings that still have the old First Class or Priority Mail on them you may want to fix them ASAP. I obviously can’t confirm but I suspect that listings that have not been updated are not getting placed in search.
I got started on ebay selling used video games almost 10 years ago. I don’t sell that stuff any more but I still follow the retro games industry a bit. There was a huge boom in people buying old video game systems during the pandemic shutdowns. Prices went sky high. I think a lot of that is dying down now and maybe there are some of those “pandemic systems” showing up at yard sales or people just have them sitting around not being used. Might be worth asking about them more frequently at yard sales these days. I doubt you’ll score a whole box of stuff for $20 like back in the old days but even for a bit higher price they are always a quick flip.
If you ever get it processed I’d love to know. The few times I’ve tried to file an insurance claim with USPS or FedEx it’s always denied on some technicality. I ship mostly first class these days and most of my sales are under $30 so I have not worried about it much but I dread the day a high dollar item gets lost or damaged.
I believe this has actually been a feature for a bit now where you can choose to pay right away if the seller accepts the offer, it might even be turned on by default for newer accounts. If you review offers on the PC I think it even tells you that the buyer has pre-selected a payment method so you get paid right away if you accept. Of course, this is only on buyer initiated offers, not seller initiated ones.
Total Items in Store: 923
Items Sold: 61
Gross Sales: $2,207.12 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $1,444,74 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $700.00
Cost of helpers: $125.00
Highest Price Sold: $300 (N Scale Steam Locomotive)
Average Price Sold: $36.18
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $80.00
Number of items listed this week: 60Selling new merchandise means big gross sales and tiny profits were the theme of the week. Some highly anticipated locomotives that were announced, and ordered, last year finally shipped. I had 3 of them on order from my distributor at $209 cost per item. I was glad to sell all 3 right away for about $280 each but not so thrilled about the tiny profit margins. If I was selling through my own website then $70 gross profit on a $210 item probably isn’t too shabby but once eBay takes 12.35% of the gross in fees it makes things a lot less appealing.
I also went to a train show on Saturday that was about a 2 hour drive away. I’ve been experimenting to see if i can find some sort of symbiotic relationship between train shows and ebay where I sell certain things on ebay and then other items that don’t sell well on ebay get sold at train shows on the cheap. Unfortunately I’m starting to think it just does not work that way. Stuff that sells well at train shows also sells well, and for more money, on ebay and stuff that does not sell well on ebay you can’t give it away at train shows. Long-term I think train shows are where I will go to sniff out buying opportunities not to sell.
I set all my listings to 2.1% promoted. There are a lot of old-school ebay sellers in my category and I think just doing promoted listings at any amount puts me at the top of the pack. The extra .1% is just a little extra insurance in case it’s a competitive item and there are a bunch of people doing the minimum, I still come out ahead. I also agree that the suggested amount seems to be going up in my category. I have no idea how eBay comes up with that number, if it’s anything like their suggested sales price then it’s way off.
Total Items in Store: 917
Items Sold: 62
Gross Sales: $1,352.07 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $765.23 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $97
Cost of helpers: $125.00
Highest Price Sold: $47 (4 HO Train Cars)
Average Price Sold: $21.81
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $628.41
Number of items listed this week: 70Overall sales continue to be sluggish. I’m taking lots of low offers and mostly selling cheap $10 train cars so even though sales volume has been about normal the total dollar amount is down. I’ve been told this is normal for this time of year for the model trains business so crossing fingers that things pick up toward the end of the summer. The good news is that my IT business has been growing and I’ve been very busy on that side of things.
As for Facebook Marketplace I don’t even bother. Both on the buyer and seller side of things people love to waste your time. I think the platform has real potential but needs to mature a lot. The biggest issue is that most transactions are too informal with no commitment to purchase until you meet face-to-face. This gives people lots of opportunity to flake out and bail on the sale at the last minute. This also invites a criminal element. We’ve had people mugged and even killed in my area over transactions that were organized on FB marketplace.
Total Items in Store: 910
Items Sold: 62
Gross Sales: $1,793.40 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $1,178.15 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $400
Cost of helpers: $125.00
Highest Price Sold: $270 (n scale locomotive)
Average Price Sold: $28.93
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 70We are definitely getting into the “slow” season for model trains. My sales were ok this week but I found myself taking lower offers and really having to coax the sales to keep them flowing. I sold two expensive steam locomotives for $250+ and that really helped gross sales but one was brand new merchandise so my margin was very low and the other was on consignment for a friend hence my high cost of goods in relation to total sales this week. I’m going to try a 20% off sale on a bunch of the n-scale rolling stock I listed that isn’t moving very fast and I’ve switched up the items I’m listing to focus more on HO scale which I think sells better. If I can maintain sales numbers around what they were this week for the next couple of months I’ll be satisfied that I weathered the slow season without issues but I really don’t want my net after fees and shipping to be much below 1k per week.
@Sharyn – Yeah I’ve learned to roll with the punches on eBay over the years. Until I started selling model trains I really didn’t worry about multiple-item purchases or repeat customers much and I have to say those two are definitely some of eBay’s weak spots.
Total Items in Store: 886
Items Sold: 64 (ebay) + 225 (train show)
Gross Sales: 2,117.95 = 1,417.95 (ebay) + 700 (train show)
Net Sales: 1,505.63 = 880.63 (ebay) + 625 (trian show fees were 25 table and 50 gas)
Cost of Items Sold: $260.00
Highest Price Sold: $340 (bankers box full of n scale train cars sold to another dealer)
Average Price Sold: ~$22.16 (ebay)
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $5
Number of items listed this week: 60eBay sales were definitely a bit sluggish this past week, I think it is a combination of time of year and the n-scale train cars I’ve been listing for over a week just are not moving unless I practically give them away. Thank goodness I did decent at a train show I went to. I’m firmly of the opinion that train shows are more valuable as networking events than they are as a means to sell inventory but you have to be a vendor to have the most opportunities so I was there with a table of trains to sell. As a result of being at the show I will hopefully be visiting a lady to purchase her recently-passed husband’s collection on Thursday. I did sell several large items that would have been annoying to ship but I had to sell them at a deep discount vs what I would have gotten on eBay. I also unloaded about 200 lower-end n-scale train cars by selling them to another dealer. They just are not moving well in my eBay store and this dealer only sells at trian shows. My cost was less than $0.50 per car and he paid me $340 for all of them so I still made money and he’s going to try selling them for $5-$7 each so he will make money too, win-win.
New challenge of the week, combined shipping on an international sale. All my listings are eligible for ebay international shipping program and I also advertise in the listing description that I will combine shipping on multiple items to save on costs. I don’t require immediate payment on my items so that gives the buyer time to “commit” to buying multiple items and then send me a message asking for an updated invoice with combined shipping. Well I had a buyer do this that was outside the country and it does not seem that ebay allows you to send a revised invoice on orders that are part of their international shipping program. I suspect this is due to all the extra fees and taxes that ebay tacks on but kind of hides from the seller. We got around it by canceling the order and creating a new custom listing that was the dollar amount and shipping specifics for all 5 items this buyer wanted but that sure was a pain and I’m glad the buyer spoke decent English (or had a good translation app) and was willing to work with me to get the sale done.
@Sharyn if it’s a complete set with a transformer and track then I would recommend hooking it up and testing it. Make sure the locomotive goes forward and reverse and the headlight works and test the whistle/horn. I actually don’t sell Lionel sets complete on eBay due to the huge shipping costs, I part them out. The most valuable items are the locomotive and transformer, but only if you can verify they work. That being said, vintage post-war Lionel starter sets are not worth a ton unless there are lots of accessories that come with it. I get phone calls from people all the time wanting to sell me their old Lionel set thinking they have something super rare. As a dealer I only pay $20-$40 for those old sets and hope to get maybe $100-$150 for everything once it’s all tested and parted out. The paradox with model trains is that everybody thinks old=$$$ but in reality the newest stuff is the most valuable because it has the latest and greatest technology and superior detail.
Total Items in Store: 900
Items Sold: 79 (ebay) + ~50 (private sale)
Gross Sales: $4,559.08 = $2,459.08 (ebay) + $2,100.00 (private sale)
Net Sales: $3,700.80 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $471.00
Highest Price Sold: $160 (N scale passenger car set)
Average Price Sold: ~$35.00
Returns: 2
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 80Definity a big week for sales thanks to a private collector buying a ton of stuff from me then coming back for more 2 days later. Also driven by the type of item I was feeding my store. In model trains locomotives are one of the best selling, high dollar items and nice used ones pretty much sell right away if the price is right. About 50 used n scale locmotive listings went up last week and a lot of them sold. I did get two return requests for locomotives but so far neither has been sent back. I test all my locomotives before listing them and write detailed descriptions of what is wrong. As with all things with flaws on ebay, you get a few buyers that dont read the description, or even the title, and just buy that half-price broken item thinking they somehow found the deal of a century. For this reason I always request the item be sent back and more often than not the buyer admits they didn’t read the description and keeps the item.
On the topic of returns, I really dislike this trend of online retailers allowing the customer to keep an item when they initiate a return. Over the past year I’ve had a few buyers who raised an absolute stink with all manner of insults and crazy threats simply because I wouldn’t give them a refund until the item was sent back, at no cost to them of course. In all cases it was very much “buyers remorse” and the items were quickly resold once I finally got them back but man, if I had to deal with that nonesense on a weekly bases this job would be a lot more stressful.
There are some younger guys in the hobby but the majority are retired. The person who bought $1,600 worth of stuff yesterday was in his 40’s but I get the distinct impression he is semi-retired and has money in real estate. I know the prevailing theory is that model trains is a dying hobby because it’s only old guys who do it but the reality is that time, not nostalgia, is the major reason most people in the hobby are older. The boomer generation is mostly retired and Gen-X is heading there too and a lot of those guys are picking up the hobby once they retire because they have the time. I see them posting in the facebook groups every day saying they just started their model train layout. Maybe in another 20 years things will be different, once it’s millenials who are retiring who were never exposed to the hobby but overall I don’t think model trains are going away anytime soon you just have to understand who your customers are.
