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@mark-s – I hear you about the typewriters. I’ve done well with them over the years, but a high percentage have problems. I have 3 on my shelves right now in need of maintenance before I can sell them. I’ve backed off lately on buying items that need servicing before selling. Have a shelf full of electronics in the same boat.
Sales Report for: 9/25/21
Total Items in Store: 1199
Items Sold: 16
Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $646.46
Net Sales (After fees): $523.92
Cost of Items Sold: $78.45
COGS Percent 14.97%
Net Profit Margin: 68.91%
Highest Price Sold: $130.00 New Waterfield Leather Bag
Average Price Sold: $40.40
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Sold via promoted listings: 11
Promoted Percentage: 68.75%
Average Days Listed: 274.69
Longest Listed: 1444
New items listed: 17Still listing postcards. Lost a bit of momentum on listing this week as I had some family commitments and I got into some unusual cards and went down a rabbit hole on research. The thread having listings “good enough” was timely for me. It’s hard for me to leave a mystery alone. Several of the cards I have are seemingly rate and I am still too green at postcards to know when that means they’re high dollar or just that no one is interested. I’ve been using the site delcampe.com to identify and price, along with eBay, but Delcampe has a better history for the European cards that I am pricing. Keep telling myself that these are long tail and the buyers will come. Got some reinforcement from some playing card decks I sold this week. Bought a huge lot a while back and spent a lot of time researching and listing them. Now they trickle in regularly. Sold 3 decks this week for $15 – $30 and a lot of the ones that weren’t worth listing individually for $35.
My high dollar sale this week was a leather Waterfield messenger bag for $130. It was basically free to me as it was hidden inside another bag when a purchased a lot of TUMI luggage. I’m a little nervous about the sale as it is going to Mexico to a buyer with only 1 previous rating and no purchases in the last year. I’ve never been burned before… I sold it on offer so I’m rationalizing that a thief would have just bought it outright. Insured just in case.
@cdils – I hope most of the collectors groups have your attitude. I can understand their frustration and am embarrassed when I see other sellers taking advantage. Common threads are about inconsiderate sellers mining them for info, uninformed sellers incorrectly identifying items, and how ebayers are jacking up the prices and ruining it for everyone.
One of the glass groups I belong to seems to take your attitude, that educating sellers keeps new inventory out there and at least it gets described properly.
I try to be extra respectful. I see myself as a collector. I enjoy the pieces that come through my hands, learn about them, then pass them in so someone else can enjoy them, too. Just without the normal 50 years in a curio cabinet between flips.
Thanks for the input.
@5853ne10 – Great sale on that Coleman lantern. I pick those up any time I see them, but haven’t come across one like that before (I just had to look it up).
You’re living in the spot. I lived in that area back in my 20’s and still miss it to this day. Often think of moving back once my kids are grown and out of the house. Prices have gone through the roof since I left though.
@craig-rex – Always a fascinating story with your posts. Appreciate that you so openly share your knowledge.
Regarding the dishes, I have a few handwritten menus that the chef used for special occasions at the restaurant they worked at. I’ll be posting them to sell, also. The restaurant is a local favorite, L’Auberge Chez Francois.
I’ll keep an eye out for the Modernist Cuisine. Thanks
@cdils – Thanks for the suggestion on the Facebook group. I’ve been utilizing Facebook groups for research on other things, but hadn’t thought to check for that. There does seem to be a group for everything there now.
For me, I always feel a little sheepish using those facebook groups for research, or any affinity group for that matter. I see so many sellers being rude in them and not doing their own research first, just a “what’s this worth?” or “is this anything?” without contributing to the discussion. They can be very handy, though. I have an old miner’s lantern that I couldn’t find any information on and I posted on a UK-based group. It turned out to be fairly rare and they generously gave me so much information on the lantern that wasn’t available anywhere else. I’ve had the lantern sitting on my desk for a few months now unposted because I feel a little guilty just taking their info and using it to drive up the price of the lantern. Feel like I need to wait a respectful amount of time before posting as I know many of these groups watch eBay carefully for listings for their items. I probably worry about it a bit too much. 🙂
@craig-rex – You do know your cookbooks. Yes, it was the Larousse Gastronomique. I got the books from the same auction that I got the postcards from. The person was originally from France and worked local to my area as a chef in French restaurants during their career. The lot had some amazing books. Poor pictures in the auction and they were stacked to deep, so ended up with many more books than I had expected.
The coolest in the lot was a 2 volume set travel guide “Les Curiosites de Paris” published in 1742. There were quite a few other cookbooks and antiquarian-type books, but most are classic of French literature. It is all in French so time consuming for me to completely understand what I have. Fortunately, Cecile is a native French speaker and I can bug her when I get stuck.
Sale up a bit this week. Have spent the week focussing on postcards still. Started out the week with a $50 sale on a postcard (which I mentioned last week), and that gave me the motivation to keep plowing through the collection I acquired. Not expecting many quick sales, just loading the pipeline.
Had a rare Facebook Marketplace sale that was also my highest sale of the week for $250. I picked up a 1928 RCA Radiola radio at an estate sale a few weeks ago for $50. This was online so wasn’t able to inspect it closely. When I picked it up I quickly realised it was a beast of a radio. It must have weighed at least 50 pounds and was much larger than I imagined from the pictures. Plus it had an external speaker that was hardwired into the radio, which made it doubly difficult for shipping. I decided I didn’t want the packing hassle and thought I might as well try Facebook. I listed it a bit under market for a quick sale and it sold in a week and a half. If I’d been willing to hold onto it and ship, I probably could have gotten closer to $500, but I’m pleased with the quick flip without commission and shipping hassle. Attaching picture because I thought it was cool. Had a great sound to it.
https://imgur.com/gallery/aHuQ4QC
Had a second big sale in a French cooking encyclopedia from 1938. I bought a large lot of books just to get this one. Happy that it sold so quickly for $199.95. I paid $50 for the whole lot and have already posted several others and have many more to post.
Hit a few yard sales on Saturday. Nothing too exciting but some nice bread and butter finds.
Sales Report for: 9/18/21
Total Items in Store: 1198
Items Sold: 13
Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $867.15
Net Sales (After fees): $755.26
Cost of Items Sold: $135.11
COGS Percent 17.89%
Net Profit Margin: 71.52%
Highest Price Sold: $250.00 1928 RCA Radiola
Average Price Sold: $66.70
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $85.00
Sold via promoted listings: 8
Promoted Percentage: 61.54%
Average Days Listed: 124
Longest Listed: 460
New items listed: 41@Jay – That’s a tough question, but I have some ideas. I think there are two primary reasons. I have been very slow listing new inventory this summer. For the first part of the year I was staying pretty even to the numbers I posted last year. Over the summer months I fell way behind. By this point last year I’d posted about 714 items for the year, this year 538. That’s a big drop, and even though my average shelf time is still about a year, a good bit of the high dollar sales come from those rare items that sell right out of the gate.
I think the second part, and possibly why I’m not posting as much, is that most of my inventory comes from local online auctions. The competition is so strong that I am losing a much higher percentage of bids than I used to. My mindset hasn’t readjusted to the new reality of more competition and I’m still trying to get items for 10-20% of what I can sell them. I’ve actually spent more on inventory this year, $2900 vs $2200, but gotten less stuff.
Just need to follow the mantra, “Always be listing”.
Thanks for the response. Makes sense. I do not list 7 days a week. I’m lucky to get 4 or 5 with my other commitments. I have been increasing listings over the past few weeks to ramp up for the holidays, but need to get my volume of listing up to have enough to spread out. A lot of the stuff I list is time consuming to research. I’m focusing on listing postcards this week because they are not as time consuming, but they generally aren’t as lucrative as what I normally sell either.
@cherylvintageserenity – Regarding the inclusion of shipping and taxes in the numbers, the downloadable report, which you can set a custom range for your week, has a separate column that has just the sold price, not including taxes and shipping. Then the other fees are broken out into columns. When I put together my numbers I ignore the first column, shipping fees and taxes. I do have to add a new column at the end to calculate my “real net”, since their Net column is always off.
@millionairedojo – You’ve probably answered this before, but do you mostly just duplicate you listings on Etsy, or are there certain types of items that you list there (USPS patches excepted).
With the slow sales for me on eBay I am reconsidering my singular focus on eBay.
Thanks!
Mike
@Retro – Good to hear you are doing better. Wishing you the best on your mend.
<div>J&R, Nice to see that your numbers are recovering and you are seeing nice sales volume again. Hopefully it rolls downhill to us. :-)</div>
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<div>My sales still aren’t great, but at least off the bottom of the curve. Doing the only thing that really affects sales and trying to keep my head down posting. This week I focussed on books and postcards and got 37 new listings posted. A few weeks ago I won several auction lots that included about 200 books and 150 postcards. Many of the books are antiquarian-type 100+ years old and the postcards are all from between 1907 and 1930, all from Europe. Actually went back and re-listened to the podcast with Spinacheater to get some ideas and perspective on the postcards. Sold the first postcard late Saturday night for $50, a 1907 card from Poland, but it isn’t included in this week’s sales as they didn’t pay until Sunday. Having fun researching them and learning about the history related to them. Giving Google translate a work out as they are all in French and my French is pretty basic.</div>
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<div>Big sale of the week was a vintage Christopher Radko seahorse ornament for $150. Cecile is the ornament expert in the family and mainly focussed on Christmas related items. She bought two lots of ornaments at auction a few weeks ago that included this. Averaged about $7 per ornament for 7 ornaments, so this paid for all and got us into the profit zone.</div>
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<div>COGS way up this week and profit margin down because I sold a new lawnmover battery for what I purchased it for. I bought it back in June for my lawnmower and ended up the problem wasn’t the battery but the mower. Return window closed so I ended up selling on eBay to get my money back.</div>
<div><b>Sales Report for: 9/11/21 </b>
Total Items in Store: 1177
Items Sold: 10
Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $432.55
<b>Net Sales (After fees): $361.85 </b>
Cost of Items Sold: $152.59
COGS Percent 42.17%
<b>Net Profit Margin: 48.38% </b>
Highest Price Sold: $149.95 Radko Ornament
Average Price Sold: $43.26
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Sold via promoted listings: 6
Promoted Percentage: 60.00%
Average Days Listed: 179
Longest Listed: 901
New items listed: 37</div>@Jay – Yes, most things are still going very high and I’m losing much more than I win. I’m still winning enough to keep myself busy, though, but not bringing home the car loads I once was. Funny thing, I upgraded to a Honda Odyssey last summer in order to have more room for hauling home winning lots, and I haven’t needed the extra space since. I recall one a few years ago that I won so much I had to make two trips in my fully loaded Mazda 5.
