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2nd this times 1000!
I would go a step further and tell ebay about the message so it can be added to the case as evidence. Seems pretty skeevy to me.
Items in Store: 2920
Items Sold: 27
Total Sales: $929.00
COGS: $139.00
Total Profit: $790.00
Average profit: $29.26
Average sales price: $34.41
New Listings: 0
Items scavenged: 28
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 31
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,540.53
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 35
2024 ASP $43.93
2024 projected total sales $80,107.73Yay! Yard sales! Not a ton of yard sales, but I was able to hit about 8 sales Saturday. I just didn’t have time to list this week. The weekend was full of baseball Saturday and yard work on Sunday. I was able to make a draft bank of about 40 items during breaks/lunch at work that need photos. I’m continuing to add to the bank this week but I don’t know if I’ll get them photographed.
I waited till this weekend to do taxes. Fortunately I have a pretty good methodology down now for taxes. I always have all the data. It just takes some time to go through it all and pull the actual numbers. This year I made Uncle same happy. I reported a business profit of $26000! 2020 was my highest reported income and it was only like $12k. Clearly I’m gonna have to find some more deductions to write off. LOL!
I still get a refund from the fed thanks to all the credits for having 6 kids, but I owed the state an additional $900. BOO! WV has pretty much zero deductions or credits. I expected I’d owe so late last year I made an adjustment to my state withholdings for my day job pay. I’m going to make another adjustment of an extra $25 so I can keep what I owe as close to zero as possible.
A couple weeks ago I went ahead and fully paid off the van I drive daily. I bought the van in 2021 (Toyota Sienna) and I’ve been able to pay for it completely with ebay profits. I’ve paid extra every month and went ahead & did a payoff of the last few Thousand just so I don’t have to have the monthly payment on the books anymore.
This week is probably the roughest week of the year for me. A full slate of baseball games, two kids have birthdays 3 days apart, and I started out the week in the negative on the sleep bank thanks to staying up and finishing taxes Sunday night. I’m exhausted.
Premium Hoarder update:
Sold 2 items for $172.
Eh, at least it’s something!
She was checking for uranium glass with a blacklight. It’s collectible but not worth a ton of money. Pretty cool stuff because it glows under a UV light.
Power tool chargers are a BOLO for me. I find them regularly for $1 at yard sales and they sell quick for $20-50+.
I also buy battery powered tools when the price is right and piece them out. I sold two craftsman reciprocating saws on ebay this week for $25 each. I bought an entire bin of Craftsman 18v tools last summer for $20. They were dirty but there were a ton of tools, a charger, and two batteries.
Yard sales are where the magic happens. Goodwills are great for bread n butter items but the unique stuff just never makes it to the floor anymore. Oh man, when I first started actively selling scavenge finds I found SOOOO much amazing stuff at Goodwill for next to nothing. It’s a different beast now – thrifts know what they have.
For every yard sale where I find shoes like that for $1, there will be another that has someone asking top dollar for everything. You just have to hit as many sales as efficiently as you can. I stick to the same local path every week and hit everything in that loop in about 2 hours. I never go to any other towns or areas here. I would if I was full time. If you’re willing to branch out to other areas and go HARD from 7am to 3pm you could find so much amazing stuff anywhere in the US.
If I remember right, you don’t have a car. It would be worth your while to rent a cheap car for the weekend for $100-150 and go to some suburbs around your area. Find some neighborhood wide sales and load up.
That would be a great adventure. It would be no sweat to score at least $1k of inventory for less than $100 COGS with a full days scavenging if you hit enough sales.
This Goodwill did me a favor and jacked their jacket/coat prices through the roof. So I only buy the heavy hitters now and ignore all the bread n butter items. I paid $15 for this jacket.
Their jackets range from $10-20 now, even for junky Walmart ones.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266435309834
Sony CFD-E75 Yellow CD Cassette Player AM FM Radio Portable Boombox w/ Remote
Bought last summer at a yard sale for $10. I’m surprised it took so long to sell.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266604152887
Harley Davidson Women’s Riding Motorcycle Jacket Shoulder Pads Medium Embroidery
Sold on offer for $45. I still have a couple of these women’s Harley jackets left.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266345892028
Tote 45 Record Green Carrying Case Hartzell Loaded With 54 45 Records 70’s 80’s
I LOVE picking up these awesome 45 record totes. I’ve sold several over the years with or without records. For the life of me I can’t remember where I picked this one up. Did I pick it up at a yard sale last summer or did I pull it out of the death pile? I think it was the death pile. Either way I only paid a couple bucks.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266371634359
Nike Apres Ski Knee High Snow Boots White Silver 414950-100 Women’s Size 7.5
Sold for full price. Paid $1 at a yard sale. SCORE!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266589024616
Greenworks 40v 2.5 Ah Battery WITH Charger 2938402 Tested Good
I bought what I thought was one battery and one charger at Goodwill. It turned out to be two chargers once I busted open the taped up box that was with it. FREEBIE! Sold on offer for $54. I have the other charger still listed so I’ll make more than originally planned.
Yay there were yard sales this week! I scored a handful of cool things, but I promptly buried them as I had to condense my van to make room to buy a new lawn mower.
Off hand I can remember a Nu Wave induction cooktop, a Mountain Hardwear Fleece jacket, a handful of Xbox One games, some Dyson vacuum accessories. Ah man there was something else really good ($100+ item) but this was a whirlwind weekend and I forgot!
Yesterday we did our weekly Goodwill trip. The highlight was a vintage Harley Davidson leather jacket. It is nearly identical to this one:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/284646392842
I don’t have a specific recommendation. For Nike’s if you find a specific Jordan in the wild you can look up many specific guides for that style. Research into Nikes online is quite plentiful.
Whether it is shoes or clothes, it really comes down to a couple things – differences in the tag, the stitching, and general workmanship.
The best way to learn is hands-on. You have to handle some real items and some fake items to get the feel for it. You can’t exactly go to a store and buy fake clothes/shoes, so those you have to unfortunately buy your education occassionally. I unknowlingly bought a couple pair of fake Jordans from Goodwill a year or two ago. I got a great education out of it, and the single pair that were real paid for the education.
One of the pair of jordans was identified as fake by shining a light on the perforated areas. A real pair has highly reflective material underneath the perforated leather. The fakes had reflective material, but it was nowhere near as reflective as the real ones. Otherwise, they looked almost indistinguishable.
Another pair after going through one of the online guides was glaringly fake…once you compared them side by side. A casual view walking down the street noone would ever know.
Honestly this was the hardest part of some of the hoarder shoes, as brands like Prada and Versace are SURPRISINGLY low quality for a “premium” brand. Some shoes I flagged as being fake turned out to be very real.
Profit in 10 years don’t pay the rent or put food on the table today.
So this isn’t a scavenge of this week, but it’s a scavenge…from a week. Who cares really? There are no rules!
During lunch I was doing some listing of some vintage clothing I bought at an estate sale a couple weeks ago. The first item was a vintage 90’s Tommy Girl sweatshirt. I noticed right off the bat that something was off. The stitching wasn’t quite right. The material was lower quality than it should be. The embroidery backing material was intact (nicer clothes use a water soluble backing).
The shirt was clearly fake and not even a great one at that. When I was shopping this estate sale it was a quick stop on my way back from my lunch break. clothes were $1 each so I didn’t do much inspection, just grab & go.
Back in the 90’s/early 2000’s flea markets were PACKED with knock off name brand stuff. I remember it well. It’s the most West Virginian thing in the world to go to the flea market every weekend. I would bet there is a collector market for crappy knock off stuff, but not on ebay! In the trash it went.
There is one fake item I’m holding onto though for educational purposes. I was super excited to pick up what I thought was a NWT Polo Ralph Lauren shirt. If you’ve followed my store you’d know I’ve become somewhat of an expert in Ralph Lauren vintage NWT stuff. Yeah…pretty darn fake. The tag is wrong. The material is wrong. The embroidered Pony is lacking detail, too small, and puckers the fabric oddly. The craftsmanship is just…off. They even have one of the tags that explains the method they used to dye and age the shirt. I can even tell THAT tag is fake.
There were multiple fake tommy and nike shirts mixed in, but not everything was fake. The best was a 90’s nike baseball t-shirt that says “Chick’s dig the long ball” and has a kissed ball on the back. I’m gonna list it for $60. There is tons of information on Nike tags that helps authenticate clothing.
Anyone remember “Big Johnson” T shirts? They were super popular in the early 90’s. I remember kids wearing them to school…and no one batted an eye! It was a different time then!
Unfortunately I didn’t find a Big Johnson tee, but I did find another similar double entrendre innuendo brand called Bump n Grind. It’s a pretty funny shirt but sans scantily clad women. That one I’m listing for $50.
I don’t know why you would ever want to talk to someone at ebay. The Chat function is far superior and you even get a chat transcript. I don’t miss the phone option one bit. I still have a bit of trauma from some of my horrific CSR calls with ebay from the past.
Items in Store: 2947
Items Sold: 29
Total Sales: $1,045.00
COGS: $156.00
Total Profit: $889.00
Average profit: $30.66
Average sales price: $36.03
New Listings: 7
Items scavenged: 7
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 342024 avg gross weekly sales $1,584.21
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 36
2024 ASP $44.45
2024 projected total sales $82,379.14Wow you had basically the same opening line as me. I’ve been insanely busy at home and at my day job. I’ve also not been feeling great lately. My diet and exercise have been at the bottom of the barrel. This week I’ve dialed in my diet which has given me a great energy boost. I haven’t listed much since I got back from vacation several weeks ago. As I start to feel better I hope I can get to doing more listings. I need to as it fits into other plans I have in the non-ebay world.
Even without much work other than shipping, the store is still doing pretty good! A week like this still being a $1k week when I did the bare minimum is like getting free money.
I only sold one item higher than $100 this week – a pair of the lower end hoarder shoes for $127.
One year ago my numbers were 10 sales for $497. The year before – 20 sales for $468. YEESH! The first 2 weeks of April have always been the weakest period of my ebay store since I started tracking my numbers (with the exception of Covid lockdowns anomaly)
So to put it in perspective, not listing going into the worst sales month of the year and I still had a $1k week. Yeah that’s not just great – it’s PHENOMENAL!!!
Premium Hoarder update:
Sold 5 items for $287.
Eh, a slow week. The fact my big ticket hoarder items didn’t contribute this week makes the sales numbers even more impressive.
Oh yeah, all the art is about 12 feet in the air at Goodwill now. It’s so high up I forget it’s there most days.
he used to be just stacked against the wall to where you could flip through everything and once upon a time I would sell a piece of art here and there.
I haven’t really sold art in years nowNot alot of huge home runs this week, but some fun items to share.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266687590244
Adidas Originals Jardim Agharta Farm Firebird Track Jacket Brazil Rio SZ Medium
Picked this up at Goodwill for $10. It caught my eye while I was at the checkout on a rack that hadn’t been put on the normal racks just yet. I didn’t research it – just knew it was a sweet item that would do $30-40 easily. Well it was MUCH sweeter than that! Took an offer of $85, but I could have held out an eventually got full price. Holding out for full price just isn’t my game right now.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266219176990
Donald J. Pliner Vergil Mama Loafers Mens Size 9 M Black Brown Shoes
I’ve had good luck with Donald Pliner used shoes over the years in mens and womens. Driving shoes always sell well in many brands. Sold for full price.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266673207425
Sip-A-Roos 1990 The Simpsons Bart Simpson Toymax Box Drink Holder New on Card
This one took a while to sell. I ended/relisted with a lower price a month ago. Looks like that led to the sale. Such a FUN item! I will always pick up things like this even if they aren’t super valuable, because I enjoy selling it.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266530655210
Nickelodeon The Rugrats Movie! Talking Reptar 8″ Wagon Toy Mattel 1998 With Dill
Yes, I realize now that it is Tommy and not Dill in the car. I copied from another listing and didn’t think about it much. The buyer is super excited – it was his favorite toy as a child and his kid wants to play with it too but he’s a bit rough. So buyer bought this one to give to his kid so that he can keep his own intact and on display. I love selling retro toys! This is the niche that makes ebay truly magical. Where else could this person have ever found this totally random toy from his childhood?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266687586719
Schaefer Outfitter Vest Style 707 Mens 2XL Brown Herringbone Wool USA Ranchwear
Paid $5 at Goodwill. The goodwills around me redesigned their stores so the whole store is clothing racks and everything else is in metal racks on top of the clothing racks. Thankfully I’m tall – this layout SUCKS for short people. Anyways, my usual method is to go around the whole store and just let my eyes quickly scan the clothing racks and top racks to see if anything catches my eye. I also tend to run my hands along the clothing as high quality fabrics just have a different feel. This vest stood out as unusually high quality and wool. Gut feeling was correct. Sold in about a month on offer for $85.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266414778684
Lara Croft Tomb Raider Encounters the Ferocious Doberman Action Figure In Box
The last of the Lara Croft playsets. Sold on offer for $50. Paid $2.
Resale value of Vineyard Vines has dropped over the last couple years. Much like common Ralph Lauren shirts – it used to be an easy $30-40 item. I still pick it up when cheap, but not a home run sadly.
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