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@Jay – Gotta love making a profit on something you buy and use. Great weel of sales.
@Stevelist – congrats on getting past 1600. With listing and selling it always feels like 2 steps forward one step back (and often 3 steps back). It always feels great to pass another milestone.
@Retro – Congrats on the profit. That has to be a relief. I know I would have been very nervous to invest so much at one time. Good for you having the guts and foresight.
@ChristineR – cute painting. What a weird combo of ideas. Almost feels like something and AI would throw together. Kind of Horton hears a Who mash up with an alien.
My scavenge of the week was a rusted kitchen knife from an overpriced estate sale. It was late on the first day and wasn’t much interesting, but wondered into the kitchen and found a carbon steel chef’s knife that had a light coating of rust over much of the blade. I couldn’t make out much of the name but Solingen was visible, and I knew old knives from Solingen, Germany usually are good buys. They wanted $6 for it. Took it home and it cleaned up nicely. Maker is Friedrich Herder which is one of the oldest knife makers in Germany from the 1700’s and still in business. I’ve started it at $499. I’ll open to offers in a few weeks and should get at least $300 based on comps.
Week Ending 9/2/23
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $206.70 (eBay $73 / Etsy $134)
Net Sales: $177.51
Total Items Sold: 8 (eBay 4 / Etsy 4)
Total Items in eBay Store: 1185 / Etsy Store: 509
Cost of Items Sold: $12.25
COGS Percent: 6.90%
Highest Price Sold: $49.95 Judaica Bookends
Average Price Sold: $25.84
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00Average Days Listed: 584
Longest Listed: 2131
New items listed: 8
New Listings Value $1,144.00Definitely sucks to lose such a big sale, but you’re right to cancel than deal with the hassle.
For some reason I’ve stopped getting notifications for new posts for the numbers. Just unsubscribed and resubscribed so hopefully that will fix it.
My “big” sale of the week was a set of Dayagi Bat Mitzvah brass book ends. Everything made by Dayagi sells well.
Pretty sad week overall. Etsy hasn’t had many sales lately, but showed up on this slow week. Hopefully, the summer doldrums are over and we can start seeing the start of the Christmas rush.
@Christine – you have a good eye for that type of thing. I see they already sold so congrats.
Wow, that is a bad situation. I wonder how long the restriction would have lasted had you not thought to call. Especially egregious since if they are able to use a bot to identify it, they should be able to use a bot to restrict the listing from the get go, and alert you to the problem later if missed. With the rise of AI it may be the face of the future…
Crazy about those Costco sweats.
Catching up after a few busy weeks. This was a sad week of sales.
Week Ending 8/19/23
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $147.90
Net Sales: $118.54
Total Items Sold: 6 (all eBay)
Total Items in eBay Store: 1205
Total Items in Etsy Store: 515
Cost of Items Sold: $31.69
COGS Percent: 26.73%
Highest Price Sold: $40.00
Average Price Sold: $24.65
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00Average Days Listed: 814
Longest Listed: 2158
New items listed: 0
New Listings Value $0.00@Jay – Like with eBay, those random poor reviews fall away into the background noise when compared to all your 5 star reviews. She probably had a bad day and you were the cat she kicked.
Late to the party again.
Week Ending 8/26/23
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $501.68 (eBay $484 / Etsy $18)
Net Sales: $379.86
Total Items Sold: 10 (eBay 9 / Etsy 1)
Total Items in eBay Store: 1180
Total Items in Etsy Store: 501
Cost of Items Sold: $87.70
Highest Price Sold: $199.95 (Typewriter)
Average Price Sold: $50.17
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $253.92Average Days Listed: 542
Longest Listed: 2506
New items listed: 2
New Listings Value $550.00Good thing I listed two items this week, my big sale of the week was a typewriter I listed on the Friday that also sold on Friday. I thought I was shooting high on the price for it, but I guess I wasn’t.
My new inventory came from an online auction and was mostly books.
@Retro – WOW. Congratulations. What a killer summer! In the words of the immortals Wayne and Garth, “I’m not worthy”. You’re obviously on a whole other level. How you can do this with a house full of kids and a full time job is beyond me. You should teach a course. 🙂
I took a big gamble on a book auction thia week. Maxsold sale had several book lots with many older editions of well-known novels. One listing had the complete Tolkein series with the 3 LOTR books, The Hobbit and the Silmarillion, but they were only showing the spines. I did some research and the only thing I could tell conclusively is that they were early editions with one possible first edition of The Fellowship of the Ring. Someone else wanted them too and they ended up costing me $222 for the lot of about 100 books. A lot more than I’d typically risk on a batch of old books, but I took a chance based on my research.
Long story short, none were first editions, but all were early editions, with The Hobbit being the best as a US 10th printing hopefully worth at least $200 with the others in the $50 – $100 range. Fortunately, the lot also contained several other less well known but valuable first editions and early editions, including a first edition Virginia Woolf and T.H. Lawrence. I’ll get them all posted this week and expect the listings to total between $1500 and $2000. Not the $3000 that the Tolkein first edition would have brought, but I’m making money.
To soften the blow, I also won a lot of electronics for $1 that I should reap about $200 from an early Sony Walkman and a Discman and a Garmin Nuvi with lifetime maps.
<p style=”text-align: left;”>I can believe it. That was a lot of stuff. They reminded me of my father and grandfather who never threw anything away just in case they ever needed it.</p>
I’m so impressed by the transformation. You guys really have the eye for it. Pity you didn’t put your videographer skills to work and video the process. That would be a hit on YouTube.Finally getting caught up after being away for two weeks on vacation. Sharing a picture of my spreadsheet for the last 3 weeks as it’s easier. Nice to have the time away, and, as always, nice to see things still sell while we are away. Slow time of year anyway, but at least we sold more this year during the same time period than last year, and we’re now up a whole $1000 over where we were this time last year. Woop, woop!
Tough to get back into the swing of things after the time off. Lots to do with school starting up again next week.
Wow, I’m gob smacked with the house. 🙂 I can’t believe what you did with the place. It was so dark and cramped, but we saw it when all the rooms were stuffed with junk. What a vision you had. It turned out really nice. Did you have to haul off all the junk in the woods, too? Congratulations!!
@Jay – can’t wait to see it. It had a lot potential for the right vision.
Week Ending 7/22/23
Gross Sales (w/o shipping $ tax): $1,017.53 (eBay $903 / FBM $30 / Etsy $85)
Net Sales: $849.36
Total Items Sold: 22 (eBay 17 / FBM 1 / Etsy 4)
Total Items eBay Store: 1204 / Etsy: 516
Cost of Items Sold: $143.89Highest Price Sold: $400.00 Vintage Cast Iron Toy Motorcycle
Average Price Sold: $46.25
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00Average Days Listed: 197
Longest Listed: 2008
New items listed: 8
New Listings Value $358.60
@Jay – Looking forward to seeing what you are doing with your new house. You guys always have something in the works.Like for Retro, this was a great week of summer sales for me, both with number of items sold and dollar amount.
That cast iron motorcycle really helped. I had been greedy and listed it originally for $1000, lowering it more recently to $750, having seen some sales for that much within the last two years, but couldn’t resist the $400 offer since it was still way over the average selling price for these. My recurring Christmas ornament buyer came back and purchased another lot of 6 ornaments for $160. And my favorite sale, a stuffed Hansa Bald Eagle that I got in a l$2 ot of stuffed animals sold for $112.
Getting ready to leave on vacation Sunday for two weeks. Dreading putting my store on vacation mode since sales aren’t terrible. Will be nice to get away for a bit and recharge.
