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GewGaws, tchotchkes, thingamabobs, knick knacks, doohickeys. I have used all those words on occasion. Mostly when going to garage sales in a 55+ community to describe about 50% of the items the old ladies are selling there 🙂
We are actually staying just south of the city in Rhode Island, can’t remember the name of the town but my sister and her boyfriend have a house there.
Wow, you got lucky with that coffee pot sale. I listed the exact same one and eBay pulled it down last week. I thought it was just the electric ones that had the recall but I guess not.
Wow I kinda forgot about Craigslist, thanks for the tips! We are driving up with a camper trailer so hopefully I’ll have a little bit of space in case I find some larger items I want.
Do you have any knowledge/interest in electronics? I noticed you don’t have much of that in your store. I know not everybody feels comfortable selling that stuff but if you are knowledgeable enough to hook up things and test them before listing them the profits can be great. They don’t even have to be super “vintage” items. Some of the things I find frequently for cheap and sell well are Sony VCRs and DVD/VCR combo units (always with the remote), Texas Instruments graphing calculators, anything official Apple branded.
Jawa,
I understand your challenge but be careful about moving to a big city just for sourcing. I’ve found that in the cities there is lots more stuff and also much higher prices. I actually take trips to smaller towns here in FL just to get away from the crazy high prices that you see in the city.Linda,
Even if I can use USPS boxes I’m not aware of any that fit the dimensions I’m looking for. Retro, I know I can “scavenge” larger boxes since that’s what I’m doing now but I really just want nice clean ones that are sturdy and already match my desired dimensions and I’m willing to pay a bit to get them. Since I’m working full time again TIME is my most valuable asset here so anything that can save me time on packing is valuable.After the item is delivered I would definitely block that person on eBay. As for the emails, add them to your SPAM list. I’ve never had a buyer be quite that stalkerish but I certainly wouldn’t engage them or sell anything to them again if I did get one.
Wow over a week and I just got back to this thread, sorry about that. I appreciate everybody’s comments. I think the main point I was trying to make is the effort vs reward on those types of feedbacks. In one case the buyer said the item didn’t work and in the other case the buyer questioned the “like new” eBay condition rating on an item (I hate that eBay makes you pick from a drop down list of condition ratings on video games). In both of those cases I know the typical drill. I call eBay, eBay rep instructs me to reach out to the buyer, I contact the buyer and either get no response or, rarely, they reply and agree to a refund. In both scenarios, refund or none, the buyer never responds to my pleas for a feedback revision. I call eBay and eBay says they can’t change the feedback because it’s the buyers “opinion” on their overall experience. So..that being my general experience with how things go I started saying, why bother? 99% of people are happy or willing to work with me when there is a problem and the 1% that aren’t are just a waste of time and money to try to make happy.
I always wipe down shoes with a wet rag if there are any signs of dirt. Some dress shoes I’ll polish if they look very dull or have scuffs that need attention. On athletic shoes I’ll use cleaner, especially the ones with the white foam soles as those tend to get really dirty.
As for brands, I’ve had good results with Naot and the Gold Cup series of Sperry shoes. Merrell hiking shoes and Doc Martins boots have sold well too. Expensive Nike shoes like the Air Jordan line can be good sellers, especially the vintage ones.
Thanks a lot Retro, I was selling used shoes and blissfully unaware of this “well worn” thing but then after reading this post curiosity got the best of me and I had to google it. I guess there are a lot worse things people can be into but now every time I sell a pair of used womens shoes I’ll be thinking in the back of my head….”I wonder what they intend to do with these” haha
Mark,
Just ordered those boxes from my post office, going to try your method. I just finished making yet another custom box for a board game and came on here to post if anybody had any better ways to do it. I like selling board games but cutting up a box to make a custom one every time is for the birds.Not to pry but I’m guessing the no camera thing is some sort of work requirement? The podcast part is easy, any older iPod will do that and lots of them don’t have cameras like the shuffle, older nanos or the classic. The Spotify part is much harder since it usually requires you to have a device that supports “apps” and these usually have cameras since they are often just stripped down smart phones without the cellular radio.
Haha, funny it gained enough attention to even warrant an article on snopes. When events like this happen I’ve often wondered how feasible it would be to “corner” the market on ebay of some vintage item that is no longer made. There is some evidence of this in the retro video game community. Basically a guy picked an old game that wasn’t super common but also wasn’t worth much and over the span of a year was able to successfully shift the average selling price from $3 to $25 by simply buying up any items worth less and only starting new listings at higher prices.
Here are the statistics to back it up – https://www.pricecharting.com/game/gameboy/rampart# He broke the news of his experiment in June of 2015 and said he had stopped buying/selling the game. You can see that the hype from his announcement only drove the price higher before it fluctuated wildly over the last year and has finally settled back down to near the original value.
Wow I’ve never heard that one before. I sold on eBay for a couple years without a store subscription and then about a year ago I got one and I honestly didn’t see any change in my sales one way or the other. For me paying for the store was not so much about the “store” part as it was a financial decision because you get a discount on listings when you pay for a store subscription.
