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craig rex wrote:
Jay mentioned in another post that he and Ryanne are traveling this week, so I figured lets get a numbers thread up while they are enjoying some time together and, no doubt, planning their next project. Halloween coming up…hope everyone’s been having a spooky week of sales!
In last week’s post Jay mentioned a return because of a “renter” and I thought it might be interesting discussion to think about the opposite of that. Anyone have any customer stories where it looked like things would go sideways but they didn’t — and maybe you even ended up with a big sale or repeat customer?
10/1/2023 to 10/7/2023
Items sold: 26 (5 via auction, 15 via best offer, 5 via seller initiated offer, 16 via promoted listings)
Gross sales: $816.83 (down 41% from one year ago)
Net sales: $519.73 (down 43% from one year ago)
Average sales price: $40.84 (down 14% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $126.03 — Glenn Gould Complete Columbia Album USB stick
Check out this week’s Sale of the week thread for the story behind this way and other tales from @retro-treasures-wv and @ChristineR among others.
Lowest price sold (net): -$12.39 — Jauan Jennings Panini Contenders wild card autograph rookie card
My main niche is trading cards and sports cards, and a lot of people’s gut reaction to that is “scammers” “returns” “picky buyers” etc. So you see a return like this and think…wow he must deal with this a lot.
But it’s very rare. This is my first return in months, and it wasn’t about condition or a scam or anything else — the buyer’s reason was found better price. I received the return yesterday and the card was perfect…the buyer even sent back the little extra (a $0.50 card of the same player) as well. So I will relist and sell it to someone else. It’s annoying, I guess, but if this is the worst thing that happens all week, it’s been a good week.
(I might have accidentally delted the weekly thread Craig started this week. We’re looking for it!)
These are the kind of adventures we love. Scavenging while traveling is the best. We now often travel with a small label printer so we can ship from anywhere.
I know about reluctant sellers who seem to change their mind in the middle of a deal. Back in 2015, I found a big load of old heart wood pine flooring on Craigslist. It was a photo of a big pile for $300. It was in North Carolina which is a six hour drive. I took a chance and told the guy I’d take it.
When I arrived, all the flooring was in a back shed that he wanted to clean out. I gave him $300 and we started loading my truck. As my truck was filling up, he started having second thoughts as he saw how much he had. Amazing quality old flooring from old growth pine.
I saw him wavering and kept asking him to tell me about what he planned to do with all the extra space he’ll have. Keep him talking. I didn’t stop and kept loading. Once we were done, he said “Gosh thats a lot of wood.” and I said thanks and drove away.
We’re traveling this week so its a good time to try these experiments you guys are suggesting. We’re going to end and relist our whole store.
Trying to convince Ryanne to run expensive promotions will be harder!
I will say that selling on eBay was a good way to learn about business. Nothing we do now is really any different from what we are all doing: offering a wanted product, building systems, offering good customer service.
Building our eBay store gave us the confidence we could do what we do now.
at this point it’s a few large companies (wholesalers and box breakers) buying up most products.
That’s an interesting fact.
One joy of scavenging is the art of researching. If someone doesnt love it, I usually predict they wont sell used items for long. I love how you figure out about art work and antiques you find.
Thats a very cool wood block print! I would have snagged it as well!
Have you noticed any change in the rading card market now that COVID buying is over?
Does MAxSold come take all the photos and list them? Or do you do that work and the $1250 is just to post to their site?
Owning your time really makes you feel like a millionaire when you can be there for your family or just for yourself. That job/career will always be there. Easy to get work where you clock hours. But never a way to get this time back once its gone.
Your kid will make it through. I see the same issues in our cafe staff in their late teens and early 20’s. They missed a couple years of socialization because of COVID.
It’s the perfect score for you. Always weird coming across these people had some kind of hole in their life where buying was the solution.
My grandmother spent the last year other life buying junk off the Home Shopping Network. After she died, there was a steady stream of packages for several months afterwards.
