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Week Ending 1/6/24
Gross Sales: $753.30 (eBay $599 / Etsy $155)
Net Sales (minus shipping, taxes and fees): $420.31
Total Items Sold: 15 (eBay 10 / Etsy 5)
Total Items in eBay Store: 1116 / Etsy: 533)
Cost of Items Sold: $49.44
Highest Price Sold: $115.00 Lamp
Average Price Sold: $34.43
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $80
Sold via promoted listings: 7
Average Days Listed: 379
Longest Listed: 1230
New items listed: 0
New Listings Value $0.00Wow, all of you are having a heck of a start to the new year. Congrats.
Not too busy here. Best sale of the week was a mid-century “Crazy Legs” lamp. I had it up for $150 but took a best offer of $115. Another nice sale was a $100 for a reloading die for bullets for a .38 Special that I got in a large lot earlier in the year.
Had my first good run through a thrift store in ages last week. Went to a Goodwill that I haven’t been to in years. Used to be very mediocre. Last week I walked out with a grocery cart full. Most exciting find was a cool tiki mug that should sell for $80.
Mostly offline this last week of the year. Spent time with family and took a short trip up to Philly for a few days. Ended out the year with a wimper. Strange statistic from my store. I sold the exact number of items this year and last: 634. Hard to imagine that happening, but it did.
Week Ending 12/30/23
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $602.16 (eBay $550 / Etsy $52)
Net Sales: $491.88
Total Items Sold: 13 (eBay 11 / Etsy 2)
Total Items in eBay Store: 1114 / Etsy: 531
Cost of Items Sold: $41.06Highest Price Sold: $225.00
Average Price Sold: $46.32
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Sold via promoted listings: 8Average Days Listed: 323
Longest Listed: 1317
New items listed: 0
New Listings Value $0.00Looks like several of you had a great week. Congrats. Less so in my store. Haven’t had much time to work on eBay, so shouldn’t expect much more.
Week Ending 12/23/23
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $581.11 (eBay $377 / Etsy $205)
Net Sales: $479.04
Total Items Sold: 17 (eBay 11 / Etsy 6)
Total Items in eBay Store: 1144 / Etsy 555Cost of Items Sold: $41.31
COGS Percent: 8.62%
Highest Price Sold: $112.46 (set of 4 antique floral prints)
Average Price Sold: $34.18
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $167.50
Sold via promoted listings: 6Average Days Listed: 223
Longest Listed: 1289
New items listed: 7
New Listings Value $389.65@Jay – Wondering if you meant $250 for the car instead of $25. Assume so, since your average sale was almost $42.
Week Ending 12/16/23
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $1,130.20 (eBay $721 / Etsy $410)
Net Sales: $955.90
Total Items Sold: 24 (eBay 14 / Etsy 10)
Total Items in eBay Store: 1154 / Etsy 564Cost of Items Sold: $80.32
COGS Percent: 8.40%
Highest Price Sold: $250.00 (Antique knife)
Average Price Sold: $47.09
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00Sold via promoted listings: 8
Average Days Listed: 372
Longest Listed: 1832
New items listed: 16
New Listings Value $505.20Another week of higher-than-average numbers. Last week was the highest number of items sold for the year, but this week one-upped last week with 24. Almost 1/3 of the sales were for items I just posted in the last 2 weeks. Always nice to see the quick turn-a-round.
My big $250 sale was for an antique knife that I purchased from an estate sale for $6.36. It was covered in surface rust and looking pretty bad. Thankfully, it cleaned up nice and turned out to be a fairly rare German make, Frederich Herder. I originally asked $500, but after a few months of very low ball offers and lowering the price to $350, I jumped on the $250 offer without hesitation.
My one return was for the typewriter I wrote about in last week’s post. Not technically a return, but a refund of $125 might as well be.
Thinking I will run a sale for the last two weeks of the year. I posted a lot of ornaments this year and still have quite a few left after the Christmas rush.
Happy Holidays to all.
Week Ending 12/9/23
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $1,314.92 (eBay $915 / Etsy $400)
Net Sales: $1,081.80
Total Items Sold: 23 (eBay 17 / Etsy 6)
Total Items in eBay Store: 1164 / Etsy: 564Cost of Items Sold: $312.95
Highest Price Sold: $325.00
Average Price Sold: $57.17
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Sold via promoted listings: 13Average Days Listed: 452
Longest Listed: 2053
New items listed: 21
New Listings Value $1,360.95Decent week of sales for our store. The most items I’ve sold in a single week this year. Many were low dollar so my total wasn’t too great. My COGS were very high for this week’s sales as 3 of my bigger sales were items that I misjudged their value at auction and overpaid for them.
My big sale of the week was an old typewriter for $325. I paid $90 at auction, but when I got it, it had undisclosed damage. I had to pay another $50 for it in parts to repair it, plus a lot of time to actually repair. To make matters worse, FedEx really mishandled the package and it arrived busted. The buyer threw the box away before contacting me, so no evidence for a damage claim. I ended up refunding them $125 for the damage. Basically, a wash sale. Pity, as it was a very cool looking typewriter. I enjoy fixing things like this, but this was discouraging.
What a turnabout from last week. All it takes is one great sale to turn things around. A fairly busy week with both a nice number of sales and a good return. My big sale was a set of 6 framed prints for $1599.95. This was my 3rd highest sale ever. I wrote about them several weeks ago in my scavenge of the week and am really pleased that my research paid off. Made even better because my cost for the lot was $17.25 at auction. This was a case of Google lens being my friend. The online auction had no information about the art. It was only because I used Google image search on the photos that I was able to determine they were valuable.
Week Ending 12/2/23
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $2,256.12 (eBay $1875 / Etsy $381)
Net Sales: $1,749.81
Total Items Sold: 20 (eBay 12 / Etsy 8)
Total Items in eBay Store: 1166 / Items in Etsy Store: 566Cost of Items Sold: $177.07 (10.2%)
Highest Price Sold: $1,599.95 (Set of 6 framed menus)
Average Price Sold: $112.81
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Sold via promoted listings: 7Average Days Listed: 464
Longest Listed: 2221
New items listed: 8
New Listings Value $554.60@Jay – looks like you named the thread for the previous week.
@Retro – great sales. Always interesting to see what sells. I would have passed up those books, that box and that crib soother.
@Craig – Curious why you do flat rate shipping? A large percentage of my orders go to California so I’d be eating profit all the time if I charged for East Coast shipping.
@Craig-rex – I’ve been trying a lot of different things. I promote most items at 5% initially. Every item above $15 eventually gets best offer added. I recently relisted most of my listings over 1 year old. Those I relisted I upped the promoted listings percentage to 10%. I’ve noticed that the recommended range keeps getting higher and higher on eBay. I assume that is because everyone is chasing the average up to boost sales. I ran a 30% off sale on all Christmas decoration listings that were older than a year and did get a small bump, but most of those were low end sales.
I believe that at least part of the decline in sales may be due to my high pricing. I traditionally priced my items in the top 1/3 of the price range for previous sales and even boosted above last high point for items that appear rare. Many of my items hit my store during the pandemic surge when prices went up. As I’ve been relisting, I’ve been reviewing prices for many of my items and lowering the prices in accordance with what the “new” average is. That has also led to a few additional sales of my older inventory.
I’ve been taking and making much lower offers than I’ve been used to. Used to be I rarely took more than 25% off an item, but I’ve been taking some 40% and 50% offers.
Maybe this week was an anomaly. Ghost in the machine gunking up the works. My more recent week has been much better and more in line with what I’m used to.
Etsy is another animal altogether. eBay is usually fairly consistent, but Etsy has wild swings. But then, they do have a much smaller user base than eBay, and my vintage stuff really isn’t Etsy’s main target, so that is to be expected.
They are having an outage currently. eBay: System Status
Bad week of sales for us. Way below average for this time of year. Losing the lead over last year that we had built up. More like a summer week than Christmas season.
Week Ending 11/25/23
Gross Sales(w/o shipping & tax): $289.82 (eBay $178 / Etsy $112)
Net Sales: $216.97
Total Items Sold: 12 (eBay 8 / Etsy 4)
Total Items in eBay Store: 1172 / Etsy: 567
Cost of Items Sold: $19.49
Highest Price Sold: $59.95 (Christmas Tree Star Topper)
Average Price Sold: $24.15
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Sold via promoted listings: 7Average Days Listed: 540
Longest Listed: 1171
New items listed: 10
New Listings Value $274.50Late again. Life has been getting in the way of eBay, but in a good way. Sales weren’t awful, but not what I’m used to seeing this time of year. I was really hoping that the time I spent listing Christmas ornaments earlier in the year would be paying big returns this time of year, but not seeing what I’d hoped.
Week Ending 11/18/23
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $889.21 (eBay $734 / Etsy $156)
Net Sales: $697.29
Total Items Sold: 23 (eBay 20 / Etsy 3)
Total Items in eBay Store: 1183 / Etsy: 555
Cost of Items Sold: $102.13
COGS Percent: 14.65%
Highest Price Sold: $199.95 (Glass nativity)
Average Price Sold: $38.66
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Sold via promoted listings: 18
Promoted Percentage: 78.26%
Average Days Listed: 512
Longest Listed: 2106
New items listed: 10
New Listings Value $967.50I am using Sixbit, still. It has a steep learning curve but now, except for occasional glitches, it works pretty smoothly. Not happy with the $123/month subscription cost, though, and probably would never have done it if I hadn’t received a small business pandemic grant that basically paid food the first year. Considering the sunk cost and effort it’s tough to give it up. As long as it continues to pay for itself in extra sales I will probably keep it. Really wish they would put it all in the cloud. It has too many limitations being desktop based.
