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11/02/2017 at 8:10 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 332: Share Your Extreme Scavenging Confession #24816
T-Satt thanks so much for the detailed answers!
I definitely have the mind for self-employment. I have the drive and I do love making spreadsheets. I quit making them over a year ago though because I just didn’t have the time to maintain it – that time was better spent listing since I have VERY limited ebay time. If I go full time I will switch to six-bit or wonderlister as my first step and develop a more robust inventory management system with all of my metrics front loaded.
I’ve spent the last two years reinvesting in my ebay business to build all the infrastructure needed for full time. All the equipment and supplies I need, the storage facilities, the processes, and most importantly all the knowledge to be an expert scavenger across a wide variety of inventory types.
I also have a mother load death pile that has been quite intentional. Since I have no control over when my job will end, I have been stockpiling high value inventory so that I would not have to scavenge at all for at least 6 months.
While I did survive the layoffs at work in October, there are still a lot of questions here. There are rumors the facility will be shut down or relocated to Texas. I think there is a greater than 50% probability one of those things will happen within the year. There will definitely be more layoffs unless some drastic changes in culture and safety happen here. I’m doing my part, but there are a lot of cogs in the wheel. In the mean time, I’ll keep prepping and making the adjustments necessary to make the transition to self-employment easier every day.
11/01/2017 at 2:07 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 332: Share Your Extreme Scavenging Confession #24706T-Satt,
How did you find the transition from career to full time ebay reselling? Were you already super frugal, or did you start to be in order to make the transition?
The income loss switching from day job to full time ebay scares me. I know it will be a pay cut. We already are raising 4 children on a single salary, but it’s a pretty good salary for this area. My wife stays at home with kids and homeschools. We’re already frugal in many areas, but mainly just to get more “bang for our buck” – not to save money.
I know that once I am at home and fully in charge of my time that a lot of things will fall into place. I KNOW we’ll be happier as a family and have a much more fulfilling life. But dang, that’s a big cliff to jump off of. I’d really prefer to be shoved off. Lol!
Anyways, I think you guys would make for a great interview with J&R. It’s been a while since there was an interview episode. I think we’re definitely due for one.
10/31/2017 at 3:57 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 332: Share Your Extreme Scavenging Confession #24652Thanks! I have 2 more pinballs, 4 video games, and a plush crane machine still out there. Only two of those are 100% confirmed to make the move inside. I also have a solid wood pub booth I got at an auction. The booth was from this awesome old eatery in Huntington that was in an old railway station.
All of my arcade collection was built on the back of my scavenger mentality. I think you folks here can appreciate this: I have ZERO dollars tied up in my arcade collection. I’ve always bought machines in less than stellar condition for cheap and then restored them. Then I sell the ones I don’t want.
I’ve bought lots of parts and then sold them off individually. I’ve bought parts to repair and resell – trackballs being a big one there. I also do repair work for others. I service and machines to a local pizza chain and get paid quite well for my time there. I also have keys to all their machines and play for free whenever I take my family there to eat.
I’ve had people over in my gameroom before and they asked me how much it all set me back and I honestly explain to them that I have nothing in it but I usually get the “wink wink nod nod, I’ll play along for your wife so you don’t get in trouble” reaction. Most people just don’t understand that hobbies can be investment neutral, if you put in the sweat equity.
10/31/2017 at 8:54 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 332: Share Your Extreme Scavenging Confession #24626The road cheeseburger wins in a landslide! All bow to the scavenger queen Ryanne! I loved the whole story – I was dying from laughter. You guys make my day every Monday. Thanks!
I guess my grossest scavenger pickup was around 2008 or 2009. A buddy told me there was an arcade game just sitting by the railroad tracks in Huntington. I hopped in my SUV to take a look. It was a Championship Sprint, which is a fairly valuable game. It had obviously spent a while in the weather, as the particle board sides had roughly doubled in size. It was near a business, but set far enough away that I was fairly sure it was fair game. So we quickly tipped it into the back and off we went before anyone could question us.
Dang that thing got stinkier and stinkier as we drove back to the house! I had the sense to at least disassemble it outdoors before bringing it in the garage. There was a rats nest in the bottom and a huge ants nest in the marquee area. In the end I stripped it of all valuable parts and threw the cabinet on the burn pile. I made about $400 selling the parts, so that worked out well.
As for food scavenging, I’m not big on it. It always bugs me seeing people leave large amounts of food untouched at restaurants. What a waste! One time at a pizza place I was in a mood and I did grab some pizza the next table left and brought it over to our table. Why is it that this would be considered gross in my mind, but if I was at the restaurant with these strangers it would be normal to share a pizza with them? The fact I don’t know them makes it taboo. We have a lot of screwed up, wasteful stigmas in this country.
10/30/2017 at 12:32 pm in reply to: i liquidated our FBA merchandise, why is half of it still on Amazon?? #24576I’ve noticed the same thing because I got a sold item notification a while back. I checked and all my liquidated inventory was back! I lost $2.50 on the sale due to the increased fees. The weird thing was that just a couple hours afterwards all my inventory was gone again.
A month or two went by and just the other day I had 3 sales. I currently have 7 items left in my inventory. I liquidated like 40, so I have no clue what happened. Apparently the liquidated just “some” of my items even though it was supposed to be a package deal?
I also thought they eventually just chucked all the unliqudated books. Nowhere in the liquidation paperwork did I see anything stating the inventory would default back to my store as in-stock.
I hate Amazon…
10/30/2017 at 11:29 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 332: Share Your Extreme Scavenging Confession #24567
10/30/2017 at 11:28 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 332: Share Your Extreme Scavenging Confession #24566Total Items in Store: 892
Items Sold: 15
Cost of Items Sold: $52
Total Sales: $492.34
Profit: $440.34
Highest Price Sold: $100 13“ TV VCR Combo
Average Price Sold: $32.82
Average Profit: $29.36Bummed because I had a $100 shoe purchase cancellation. Boo!
I can’t really think of an “extreme” scavenging confession other than my creative lying when buying at yard sales. Maybe reading other folks responses here will jog my memory (or remind me how weird I didn’t know I was- lol!).I’ve mentioned on here before that I repair and collect vintage arcade and pinball machines. We since we moved 5 years ago we never set back up a gameroom in the new house. All my machines have just been rotting out in the garage since we moved. Well yesterday my wife got inspired and laid out a plan for me to do some rearranging and start the conversion of the ebay room to the gameroom.
Hey, when your wife asks you to move arcade games into the house and she is serious you make it happen! I was able to move one pinball and two video games in and still maintain my ebay space for the most part.
Now that I’m committed to the move I’ll end up converting the garage to 100% ebay business. I’ll need a good heater out there for the winter and will put in a window AC for the summer. This is so exciting to finally committing to making the move!
I tried including a photo.
As your store gets bigger, you have to start considering the “profit per square foot” of items. Coffee makers take up a lot of room in storage and are harder to pack. Earlier in my store I too would buy coffee and tea makers that would sell for $25-30. Now I shoot for $75-100 for larger items, with the option to take $50 on a slow sales week. Anything less than that I don’t bother with larger items. Food for thought.
10/25/2017 at 2:56 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 331: List and Forget, The Buy And Hold Strategy Of Ebay #24440Total Items in Store: 901
Items Sold: 15
Cost of Items Sold: $63
Total Sales: $443
Profit: $380
Highest Price Sold: $50 JVC Camcorder
Average Price Sold: $29.53
Average Profit: $25.33My Birthday was Monday so we took a long weekend in Columbus (we get a floating holiday to use for our birthday at work). This was a working weekend getaway though, because I scavenge every day on Columbus trips. All told I spent $562.35 on inventory over the long weekend. One goodwill was the motherload of high end clothes and shoes – I spent $263 there! As usual, I was only planning on being there for a couple minutes as I didn’t have high hopes. After 5 minutes I recruited my wife to help me tag-team. We shoped for an hour and a half and we simply quit so we could go do something fun. I could have easily been in there for 4 hours doing a deep dive.
These weekends are so much fun for me. I get to spend a bunch of quality time with my family and I also get to do work that I absolutely love. Now I need to buckle down and list list list for a month before we go back for Wild Lights at the Columbus Zoo.
On another note, buying $563 of inventory at thrift stores over a weekend is ALOT of inventory. My death piles are becoming quite impressive. My wife and I are in agreement thought – the prices at thrifts are trending up at alarming rates and they are also getting in on the online sales games. Basically, we are “getting while the getting is good”. And again, if my day job dries up I won’t have to buy any inventory for many months.
10/19/2017 at 7:51 am in reply to: Buyer claimed spot on coat, I offered return, she ignores me for a week…. #24133Me personally, I’d ask for a copy of the receipt and go ahead and refund the cleaning cost.
You would be perfectly in the right in sticking to your guns and telling them that having the coat cleaned before clearing it with you is their responsibility. That is how it would go in any other case. You’ll probably get a retaliatory negative feedback though.
I’m quickly getting to that point as well with that “magic spell” sound. Lol!
Dawn + Liquid Glycerin. Works awesome. Oxyclean is an amazing “soak” stain remover for mildew.
I’ve dealt with a buyer like that. I just told them to go to the library if they have to. Eventually they figured it out.
Total Items in Store: 899
Items Sold: 20
Cost of Items Sold: $60
Total Sales: $674
Profit: $614
Highest Price Sold: $110 Chemistry Set
Average Price Sold: $33.70
Average Profit: $30.70Great week. Last night I finally sat down and created listings for a tub of shoes. First time I’ve worked on listing in over a month. It felt…awkward. Lol!
I have a delay in photographing because we’ve been using the listing table to fold clothes and my wife “snapped” a towel to get rid of lint before folding and it broke one of my lights. I ordered some LED photography lamps as replacements.Sold some cool items this week. This one was my favorite.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-80s-Gitano-Patchwork-Plaid-Blazer-Jacket-Wool-Blend-Mens-Size-L-Hipster-/263225452987?hash=item3d4975a9bb:g:lHEAAOSwFuxZxsoEPicked that up at a thrift on the way home from vacation in September. It was one of those items that I see and just know there is someone somewhere in the world that will pay about any price to get their hands on it.
This weekend I did some arcade work for the pizza chain I maintain games for. If I ever go full time that hobby will definitely come to the forefront again. The home gameroom market has exploded the last few years.
Knex makes compatible lego bricks. They are definitely an inferior quality. Eventually I got to where I could identify them just based on the slight differences in color and feel. Their quality was definitely a step below Lego.
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