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Week Ending 4/2/22
Gross Sales (w/0 Shipping & Taxes): $964.70
Net Sales: $803.50
Total Items in eBay Store: 1049
Items Sold eBay: 9
Total Items in Etsy Store: 149
Items Sold Etsy: 0
Cost of Items Sold: $113.48
Highest Price Sold: $399.95 Schatz Clock
Average Price Sold: $107.19
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $703.24
Average Days Listed: 236
Longest Listed: 681
New items listed: 4Always loved the stories from your trips to NY. Waltzing through the streets and picking up money.
Had slow sales last week but good prices on what sold. Had to go back two years to find a week with such a high average. Helped to have a clock sell for $400. Had three other +$100 sales of an antique porcelain pig and two pieces of high end luggage. Guess people are gearing up for traveling this summer.
Found two items in my inventory that had fallen out of eBay at some point. Just noticed them as I was picking orders and was surprised they hadn’t sold so looked them up and they were no longer there. One of these days I’m going to have to reconcile my inventory.
Bought over $700 at online auctions this week. Ran smack into one of the big risks for buying online: poor pictures. I bought a lot of 3 guitars for $485 because I misidentified one of the guitars as a $1500 Yamaha bass when in fact it was a $150 bottom of the line. Ouch. I’ll still make my money back as the other two guitars are in the $300 – $500 range, but not the slam I was expecting. All lessons are expensive… I also got a $500 printer for $23 from the same auction, but plan to use that for myself and not resell.
In another auction I bought a few lots of sports trading cards, inspired by Craig Rex. About 5000 cards for $37. That’ll be a project.
@craigrex – I couldn’t resist and ended up buying two lots of cards from the auction. One lot of about 20 prism cards and another lot of 5000 that gave no indication of what was inside. I think I lucked out on the prism cards as one of them is a David Robinson that I have found recent solids in the $80s. Haven’t had the chance to look through the remainder yet but a quick glance and they are at least in great condition. Figure it is a good way to educate myself for cheap. Paid $37.50 for all. Worst case, I send them into COMC if I get bored. Reading your posts has been motivational. Thanks for being so generous in sharing your knowledge.
I read somewhere that Facebook and Venmo were going to start sending 1099 to people now. Maybe the end of tax-free profit if you dont get cash?
Interesting. I assume this applies only if the money exchanges within Facebook, otherwise I can’t see how they will now what final value is. I see with Venmo it only applies if the buyer tags the payment for good and services. Pretty low bar for Venmo, they report after only $600.
Week Ending 3/26/21
Total Items in eBay Store: 1056
Items Sold eBay: 17
Gross Sales eBay (W/o shipping and tax): $1,108.17 (Includes FB Marketplace Sale)
Net Sales (After fees) eBay: $1,006.74Total Items in Etsy Store: 150
No Etsy SalesCost of Items Sold: $127.11
Highest Price Sold: $450 Vintage MCM Night Tables
Average Price Sold: $65.19
Money Spent on New Inventory: $273.00
New items listed: 13Nice to see some new faces on the weekly numbers board. Welcome!
Had a nice week of sales for a change. Nice to break $1000. Big sale of the week was a nice pair of MCM night tables we grabbed from an online auction for $50 and sold for $450. We’ve done well lately with furniture and considering expanding into that area. Even though we also post them on eBay they’ve been selling on FB Marketplace. Nice to sell something without the fees.
Hit a couple of Estate Sales this week and found some good values. Most of what I posted this week came from those sales.
One of my first jobs was as a dishwasher in a restaurant. That’s hard work during busy times. I can see how it might be more satisfying as an owner. It sure wasn’t fun as a grunt on the low end of the pecking order.
@Retro – From my understanding, the problem is due to certain credit card companies and banks using a more sophisticated form of multi-factor authentication and the synchronization process breaks down whenever the MFA prompt is presented. Apparently, some companies enforce this to a different degree and some allow a token for services to reduce the MFA hassle. American Express, Capital One, and my credit union all seem to be enforcing it to a higher degree. eBay and Paypal haven’t been a problem for me.
In all fairness, the syncing problem isn’t unique to GoDaddy. I have an acquaintance that is developing their own online budgeting system to compete with Quicken and they have been battling this issue also.
That’s a pity. I’ve been underwhelmed with the product overall but found it much better than Quicken. Perhaps Quickbooks is a better solution than Quicken? It had its problems such as the constantly having to reconnect my cards for import, and occasional import issues, but I liked its simplicity.
@craig – thought of you this week when I saw this local auction full of sports cards. Not sure where you are but might be worth your look if you are within driving distance of Alexandria, VA. It is a relatively new auction house that has lowish traffic. https://capitalareatreasures.hibid.com/
<p style=”text-align: left;”>As long as the buyer can show them that they paid it shouldn’t be a big problem. They may have to print their receipt from eBay. I shipped a few packages without it before I realized it and never heard anything from the buyers.</p>
<p style=”text-align: left;”>I’m pretty sure the premature delivery notification issue is resolved now. I haven’t had a customer complaint in ages and I usually ship a few packages each week via PS.</p>
The customs info is passed to PS and they do put it in the final labeling.One thing VERY important when using PS instead of eBay for labels is that the VAT tax information does not get passed to them. You must enter the VAT number that is on your eBay sales record on PS, or it is possible that your customer will have to pay twice. There is a field at the bottom of the form that has a place for this. Number starts with IM. eBay collects VAT for most countries in Europe now.
@Mark-S – I’ve passed up lots of tubes in the past just because of that. I have come across an occasional tube tester for sale and have considered buying one just because of that. Returns seem to be VERY good if you can guarantee them working. The risk is that you just bought someone’s saved bad, replaced tubes. Another thought is that you could see if you have a local repair place that might test them for you for a fee. Your initial investment is low, so even paying $5 to have someone test it would be worth it for a tube that will sell for $500.
Good luck with those.
Had our slowest week since early October. Would have been worse if I hadn’t started cross-listing to Etsy. Spent a good portion of the week finishing taxes. As I mentioned in the tax thread, having migrated to Managed Payments part-way through the year made things much more confusing and it took much longer than normal, taking me away from focusing on listing.
The pandemic has really turned things upside down for us regarding sourcing. I used to get the majority of our inventory from online auctions. I would target 10% – 20% of what I expected to sell something for and would win a comfortable amount of new inventory. These days most things I target are going for 30 – 70%, or more, of what I’m willing to pay for them. Makes margins too thin for me. The thrifts locally either have little of what we target, or have their prices at eBay levels. In contrast, we’ve been getting more inventory from estate sales, which used to be the high dollar options. I guess it makes sense with the fear of the virus. Hit three last day sales Sunday and there was still plenty to scavenge for good value. Spent over $300 on new inventory that I hope to get listed this week. Will include those $$ on next weeks report.
Week Ending 3/19/22
Gross Sales: $292.60
Net Sales: $249.31
Total Items in eBay Store: 1061
Items Sold eBay: 7
Total Items in Etsy Store: 141
Items Sold Etsy: 2
Cost of Items Sold: $11.01
COGS Percent 4.42%
Highest Price Sold: $74.95 Bull Fighting Poster
Average Price Sold: $36.58
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $7.00Average Days Listed: 438.67
Longest Listed: 1605
New items listed: 3My big issue was that ebay once you are on MP, ebay doesn’t send alot of critical info to godaddy that lets you reconcile the two datasets.
I found myself going back to spreadsheets, also. Even though I import everything into GoDaddy, crucial information is lacking in several situations and frequently doesn’t get categorized properly.
As I see others saying that they are moving from Spreadsheets to applications, I’m leaning the opposite and may consider quitting GoDaddy. The biggest thing that GD has going for it is the automatic downloads. I had two situations where my banks only hold a few months information for download and the only way to get the information was PDF statements. Not good for this type of endeavor.
OMG. My head is swimming after spending a good portion of the last several days reconciling records for my taxes. They didn’t move me to Managed Payments during the first quarter so I have Paypal and MP records to slog through. Originally thought that GoDaddy had done an OK job, but due to having both systems it was a mess. The 1099s didn’t agree with my numbers so I ended up eyeballing both systems transaction reports. eBays’ are definitely simpler than paypals’ reports.
As I was feeling like I had it all sewn up, I realized that though eBay does not consider the taxes collected in the 1099, Paypal does. Glad I caught that before I sent the records to my accountant.
Nest year should be much easier. I hope.
@Timo -thanks for sharing. That is unfortunate. For international shipments it is not uncommon for me to sell something that costs more to ship than the item itself sold for. Will have to keep an eye on the impact.
Glad to see that the cafe is doing well. We just booked a few days in Luray for mid-April and look forward to stopping by during our stay. Unfortunately, we’re always too late and your place was booked. 🙁
Missed last week’s numbers, so posting both weeks at once. Since I can’t post the grid from my spreadsheet, uploading a picture instead. Below average sales for both weeks, netting $440 and $490. Fortunately, had two good size sales to boost the numbers. Sold a Victorian photo album for $225 and a vintage clock for $250. I had $100 in the album which is higher than I like to pay for things. Got carried away at an auction. I normally would have dismantled the album and sold the pics individually, but this one had each person’s name noted and some geneology info, so I knew someone would buy the whole album. Ended up going to one of the ancestors of the family. I picked up the clock for $35 at an estate sale. It was a Tiffany desk clock.
Had two rare returns. one for size and the other because the person said it was in worse shape than disclosed. Ironic that the knife buyer had made me an offer with a note saying he’d pay more but it was in bad shape and needed a lot of work. I had clear pictures of the blades. I got the knife back, polished out the scratches in about 15 minutes, retook pictures and reposted for more.
In the midst of taxes. I started with Managed Payments in late February, and it has been confusing to break things out between Paypal and eBay. I was expecting problems with GoDaddy, but it seems to have actually done OK. It is mostly my interpreting the data that is the problem.
