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Oh wait, I did have a scavenge of the week!
I forgot about this until I listed them at lunch today. Every time I’m at Walmart (I’m there ALOT!!!) I check their clearance aisle. It hasn’t been lucrative in a few years, but occasionally they do a real clearance, such as this.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266976960451
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266976958777
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266976957915
I bought all of these for $1 each. It’s definitely a long term pipeline but they’ll all sell eventually as people love 2 things – Lego and Animal Crossing.
Items in Store: 3181
Items Sold: 50
Total Sales: $2,132.00
COGS: $274.00
Total Profit: $1,858.00
Average profit: $37.16
Average sales price: $42.64
New Listings: 87
Items scavenged: 9
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 40
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,605.11
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 34
2024 ASP $47.45
2024 projected total sales $83,465.94Shipping was ANNOYING this week! 50 items is a lot for sure. I stayed on top of things and even went ahead and packed/shipped items on Saturday/Sunday and I STILL have 20 things to ship today.
Historically, I’ve only hit 50 sales in a week 10 times – 5 of those times were the first 5 weeks of Covid lockdown so they don’t count. I have a feeling I have plenty more 50 sale weeks in my future this year.
Low dollar sales are still dragging down my ASP as I had 12 sales at $12 or less. Gotta get rid of these items somehow and $116 in my pocket off of these sales is better than $0 if I pulled and donated them!
Yard sales I think are dead in my neck of the woods. I may not even make the effort to go out anymore. It’s not like I need the stuff. I just picked up a few items this week – not really worth my time.
I spent some time organizing in my garage/office. My goal was to reclaim the disaster death pile in the corner where my weight lifting platform is. I bought a bunch of tubs from Menards along with another foldable 2×4 table. I accomplished my goal and prepped 8 bins of commodity clothing for my oldest children to 100% list. There is A LOT more of this stuff for them to do.
I pay them $2 per item completed. If they start and finish a complete bin (20-25 items per bin typically) within 2 days I will pay them a 10% commission on the ESTIMATED total profit from the bin (Sales price minus COGS, fees, and 15% average reduction due to offers.) This way they won’t have to wait on the items to sell and it encourages them to be quicker with their work. They tried a bin this weekend and…well… those legos, phone games, and xbox just aren’t gonna play themselves! They missed out on their 10% commission this time.
These bins will stay in the garage in an organized manner in labeled bins so I don’t have to move anything to inventory – it is just 100% done and all I have to do is ship solds which is quick and easy in a poly mailer. If shipping gets super annoying I will teach them how to ship these items and pay them for that work too. If this little project results in an extra 50 listings and 10 or so sales a week it will be a huge success! I clearly will have to hound them relentlessly to keep them on track though.
I also got a bit frustrated with my son and his photos. When he did the photos of the coat/jacket wardrobe the photos weren’t great. He is using my old iphone 7. I used that phone for several years and THOUSANDS of items and it did a fine job as a 12MP camera. Then the photos this week were even worse to the point I couldn’t use them. I did a bunch of research into why the camera was sucking so badly. I was even looking into buying an iphone 11 to replace it (since the ebay app no longer supports iphone 7). Nothing was making sense…until I looked at the camera lens. I asked my son “Remember when I told you that you needed to clean the lens EVERY time you go to take photos – are you doing that?” “Oh yeah…I forgot”. I cleaned the CLEARLY greasy lens and went out to reshoot one of his items – perfect photos. GRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!! Ah the joys of trying to teach/employ teenagers.
Premium Hoarder update:
Sold 9 items for $736.
Nothing major – just a good mix of clothes and a few pair of shoes. I’m close to 500 active hoarder listings and I’m about to cross 500 sales. It’s CRAZY that I’ve already listed/sold near 1000 items from this haul and I’m nowhere near done!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266891998711
American Girl Julie Doll Retro Table and Swivel Chairs Yellow White Blue
Picked up at a yard sale for $2. American Girl stuff is a BOLO if cheap. The problem is it’s rarely cheap.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266891999234
The Clone Wars Captain Rex Command Helmet 1:1 Electronic Voice Star Wars 2008
I’ve sold a BUNCH of these voice changer helmets over the years. A definite bolo if you see them. Cosplayers eat them up.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266969408295
Larry Mahan Green Lizard Cowboy Western Boots Size 8.5 B Vintage
Picked these up in a lot of boots a few weeks ago at a yard sale. My cost was $15. These sold same day for $150.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266949693209
Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-P10 5.0MP Digital Camera Tested & Working with adapter
There is a strange market for old point & shoot digital and film cameras.
This sold for full price and was part of a big box of stuff put into an even bigger offer pile at the vintage toy yard sale this summer. My COGS was pretty much zero.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266628880726
Houston Oilers Sports Specialties Script Snapback Hat Vintage
I felt good when I picked this up as Oilers stuff does very well. I didn’t think it would be $100 good though!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266312139781
PG Drives PENNY GILES Joystick 3 PIN D50020/03 Power Chair Jazzy
I still have a few pieces kicking around from when I parted out a mobility scooter a few years ago. I’ve done VERY well on that decision. Sold on offer for $100.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266968061034
Haggar Repreve Suit Pants Slim Fit Stretch Charcoal Smart Wash 30×30 NWT
I regularly find men’s dress pants new with tags at thrift stores. I almost always pick them up because they are only $4 and are an easy $25 sale. These sold within 2 days of listing. I’ve pretty much cut back my clothing purchases to either new with tags, 100%+ STR, or worth $50+. I also have a big push on-going to get my clothing death piles listed. I should have alot more bread n butter sales like this in my future.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266808737099
Love Com manga Vol. 1-13 English Missing Volume 6 & 12 book lot Lovely Complex
Man I have been kicking around this item for years now! Several years ago I picked up a huge collection of Manga from a yard sale for $200. I’ve made well over $2000 from everything. One in particular was a series called Nana that I sold for over $600! This series in particular I have one of the more valuable books – volume 13. It alone is worth over $100. I have fielded soooooo many requests to sell just book 13. Always someone wanting it for nothing.
I’ve been sending offers in the $200-300 range forever. Every time I tell myself I should just lower the BIN. Finally I got a $200 offer and just decided to part ways with it. They get a great deal and I’m done with it/get the space back. Win/win!
I’m not buying much at all right now. I’m not doing thrift stores and yard sales are dead. I did pick up a few interesting items though.
At my mother-in-laws I raided her death pile and got a silver plated flute, and two talking sesame street Teddy Ruxbin style 80’s toys. She is a hoarder and has ROOMS full of junk she has bought. It’s sad. I try to raid a few items here and there just to get her comfortable with getting rid of some stuff. If I get something with value I always take her out to a nice dinner to further encourage her to let go of more, even if it is just to take to Goodwill. Thankfully the high prices at Goodwill mostly cured her buying problem (that and she ran out of space).
At the only decent yard sale I bought some vintage Chevy hubcaps – 3 sets for $20. Hopefully when I research/list them they will be decent. At a minimum I will get at least $100 even if they aren’t super great.
I only add listings quarterly. In the future I might switch to 60 days.
years ago after using PL for a while ( and when they gave ZERO metrics to judge performance) I did an experiment and turned off PL. it was an unmitigated disaster and I only made it like 3 days and turned it back on. Quite literally was like eBay shut my store off.
LOL! I feel like that card wasn’t really that rare. As a kid well before the internet we all knew about it and plenty kids had it. That article was a great read! Really brought back some memories. Us poor kids from the junk wax era really got the short end of the stick. I’m sure glad I just thoroughly enjoyed my cards and comics instead of hoarding them in original packaging like everyone else.
Here’s another article that explains that what you REALLY want is the white out version.
Oh man the binding machine was a BEAR to ship! I’ve been dreading this since it sold.
I imagine the feeling is similar to winning at a video game…and having to step out the door and actually do whatever it was you did in the game!
I “won” that $650 in the magical video game called ebay on my phone. If only I could just keep the money and call it a day. LOL!
I had to buy a heavy duty 24×18 box at menards to ship it in. Another break is that the long handle easily comes off with a simple finger screw. Just for an occasion such as this I keep 1.5″ foam board on hand. The box was near perfect to place a full cocoon of the cut foam board around the machine and use packing peanuts I sourced from shipping dept at work to fill the internal void space. I sized the height of the box down to 15″ to perfectly fit around the top layer of foam board.
The package is a fort knox and weighed 67 lbs!
This is definitely some advance wizard level shipping work!
So now I can compare week over week after updating rates.
5% – stayed at 5%: Impressions and clicks dropped 30% – the new car smell wore off I guess.
3% increased to 5%: Impressions and clicks up 20%. Sold 16 items. Very nice
4%-5%: Impressions increased only 3% but clicks was up 32%. Sold 7 items.
Overall I got around 300k impressions from each campaign and roughly 55-600 clicks. That’s a crazy
So even though the 3% & 4% are VERY old listings, bumping to 5% PL rate got these listings in front of the same amount of eyeballs as 5% campaign with new more desirable items.
I have the data I need – I’m sticking with 5%. It works, plain & simple. I sold 23 items from ancient campaigns due to a slight bump in percentage.
One question I have that remains is if Cassini will reward me for increasing my PL rate. For instance, lets say I start a campaign at 3% and then increase it just 0.1% every week. Would that result in an activity bump or would it be a waste of time?
I had some heavy hitters this week.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266955910304
Ralph Lauren Double RL RRL Western Cowboy Bull T-shirt Tee Men’s Size XXL NWT
Premium hoarder item. Sold within a day for $85. For a freaking t-shirt!!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266955912009
Sony Playstation 3 Original Fat PS3 Console Bundle 80GB Tested CECHK01 6 Games
Well this “bad buy” turned out just fine. Sold for full price within a day. I’ll take it!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266957248344
Alan Flusser Mens Black Pinstripe Wool Suit 46R
An example of the stuff my kids are listing. They used an old iphone 7 for photos, so they aren’t great quality. This one sold same day as it was listed. I would have paid $7 for this YEARS ago.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266926726977
Smith Corona Sterling Manual Typewriter BLUE Portable w/ Case
Sold another of the typewriters from my “list in place” experiment. Dang I hate that I let these sit so long.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266895450409
Red Wing Moc Toe Chukka Boots Men’s Size 12 EEE casual Brown Leather 4611
Sold for $100 on offer. Paid $1 at a yard sale in June. Nice!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266948497545
Michael Simon Vintage Sweater Teacup Rare Size M womens
Sold on offer for $65. I had this one at $100 forever. I repriced when I ended/sell similar and now it is sold. Yay!
And now, the grand finale!!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266884835978
Akiles AWM-E21 WireMac E21 Heavy-Duty Twin Loop Wire Binding Machine
Paid $50 at the WV State Surplus. Sold on offer last night for $650! Oh man shipping is gonna be a beast! Hopefully I can disconnect that arm easily. At work I have access to an expansion foam packing process. I may need to finally use that.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266965144217
Polo Ralph Lauren Leather Jacket Motorcycle Driving SOFT Men’s Size XXL NWT
Sold on offer for $980!!! I don’t remember the sticker price at the time at the hoarder sale – probably $50 or so but I know my average price per item on that trip was $10-12.
This jacket is soooooooo butter smooth. The nicest leather I’ve ever touched. Ricardo Montalban would be impressed.
Items in Store: 3144
Items Sold: 46
Total Sales: $3,528.00
COGS: $396.00
Total Profit: $3,132.00
Average profit: $68.09
Average sales price: $76.70
New Listings: 69
Items scavenged: 6
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 39
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,589.62
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 33
2024 ASP $47.66
2024 projected total sales $82,660.12ooohI’mabouddamakeanameformyselfoutherr! Sorry, seeing him in live action and in Xmen 97 has me feeling pretty awesome about my all-time favorite comic book character, Gambit. If you’re an 80’s/90’s kid and haven’t watched Xmen 97 yet, you should! Holy smokes, what an emotional ride!
Anyways…what an amazing week! I had two huge sales that pushed it over the edge. It was still a great week aside from those though. 9 of my sold items accounted for $2500 of my sales!
I am feeling good about pushing past $90k in sales this year. My weekly listings are going to be quite good the rest of the year and I’ll be listing some heavy hitters.
My two oldest did a PHENOMENAL job listing that entire wardrobe of coats, jackets, and suits. I did have to keep pushing them, but they made it. These were NOT easy items to list. When it comes to clothes, suits and coats are about as difficult and time consuming as it gets. Anything I ask them to do going forward with clothes will be easy. I paid them $2 per item and since they completed the entire wardrobe (57 items) I am paying them a 10% commission on every sale. Two items already sold. The listed value is about $3500 so they will do VERY well on this project if things keep selling. All I had to do was review the listings for errors, double check price, and make it live. Soooo nice! Now that both wardrobes are 100% listed
I did a bad job shipping this week. I had a lot of trouble sleeping and missed my midnight deadline two nights by falling asleep early so I ended up with some late shipments. Boo! When your so exhausted that you just fall asleep wherever you are – even the hardwood floor – it is what it is.
Yard sales sucked. Plain & simple. I’ll ride it out through September but I doubt there will be much more.
I’m still not doing thrift stores right now, though I was tempted.
This week I have 100+ drafts that need photographs. I would like to crush that pile as much as possible – it’s mostly shoes. Since the coat/suit wardrobe project was so successful I plan to organize another death pile in the corner of my garage. Get everything in labeled bins and then have my kids tackle the listings bin by bin – complete listings just like this. Instead of a 10% commission I will offer a bonus for comlpeting a bin within a specific time frame. Then just leave it all sitting there instead of moving it to inventory storage. Letting them focus on old death pile stuff can be a HUGE benefit to me for space AND sales.
Premium Hoarder update:
Sold 12 items for $1768.
I’ve been driving around with the back of my van packed full of giant trash bags of premium hoarder clothes since June. I finally broke down, bought some new bins and got it all into proper storage bins. So now I have the back of my van packed with storage bins…Lol! I’m slowly listing this stuff, 5-10 items I bring in and create listings on my lunch break when I have time. Then I do photos in the morning before I leave for work. It is really easy to knock out 5 clothing items photos in a couple minutes before I leave.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266824895899
Trapper Keeper Mead Original Binder Retro Portfolio Vintage Style SUNSET Pink
Wow, what a mistake this buy was! Walmart was having a clearance sale on these things for $6. I speculated that eventually the price would jump back up and I would be making $20-25 per binder. I have 50 more of these listed. In well over a year, this is the FIRST one I’ve sold…
I took an offer of $8. After all fees I made…3 cents. Man I just want these things gone…
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266925623394
Little Nemo The Dream Master Nintendo Nes Cleaned & Tested Authentic
This sale is why I fully cleaned the NES games I listed. The pricecharting average is $11 for a loose cart and I got $15+shipping. I want that top dollar if I’m gonna list games!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266938376722
Sony PlayStation 5 PS5 DualSense Wireless Controller White CFI-ZCT1W
This was just a random item in the vintage toy cleanout yard sale. Just thrown in a box so I technically didn’t pay anything – we’ll call it a buck.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266945990902
Sony HDR-SR11 10.2MP 60GB HD Hybrid Handycam Camcorder w Nightshot TESTED
Another item from a random box of electronics at that toy cleanout sale. Sold for full price. Sony handycams are like printing money – definitely a BOLO.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266945993261
Whirlpool Kenmore Maytag Dryer Control Board 8546219 WP8546219 3980062 8557308
I thought I had sold all the dryer parts when I parted out my old dryer. I finally got a bin low enough to do a bin cleanout for inventory control and this was no longer listed! I relisted it and it sold very quickly for full price.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266891003234
Yep, another item from the toy cleanout. Again sold for full price.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266821290883
Bernina Editor Lite V4 Embroidery Software with Dongle for Windows 2000 XP
So this was a pickup of what I thought was a Bernina sewing machine accessory that was going to be worth like $30 and I paid $4. Well turns out the actual item I thought I was getting was incomplete and thus worthless. Who cares though – inside the box was this amazing gem! I was hoping to get alot more, but the version was too old. I took and offer of $70.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266888718004
Levi’s Denim Trucker Jacket Neon Magenta Pink 100% Cotton Mens’s Size XXL NWT
One of my favorite pieces from the last Premium hoarder haul. The color is just amazing! I have another one in slime green that is still listed. Sold on offer for $250.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266889680758
Jacob Cohen Men’s J688 Handmade Luxury Gray Jeans Button Fly Stretch 40×32
Another pair of jeans from the premium hoarder collection. Never heard of the brand, but I like the money! Sold for full price.
I only bought a couple things this week.
One was a Playstation 3 and a stack of games. I overpaid at $100 as I screwed up and thought NCAA 12 Football was worth money. I knew better – I just had my excited blinders on LOL!
This deal worked out fine though as the PS3 bundle I created has already sold for full price at $150. I still have several other games that were listed individually so my total sales from this one will be close to $200.
In hindsight I should have never bought this lot. All’s well that ends well as it is already quite profitable!
The other item I bought at yard sales was a bag of Blaze and the Monster Machines Die cast cars for $5. How I handle a bulk pickup like this is that I will use google lens to identify each one and do a quick search to check for rarer/valuable individual cars. Anything with a good STR or sales price will get listed during the research. Any low STR/low value or damaged cars will get set aside for a bulk listing.
In this case I individually listed 6 of them for a total of $83 and then a lot of 6 commons for $26. There was one car that will be a near insta sale at $20.
One other scavenge this reminded me of from the previous week that got lost in the shuffle was a box of Pixar Planes Die cast planes. I love getting Pixar Cars die cast, but I like the Planes figures more! There are less of them and they sell great. There are a couple really good ones in this box as well. If I get to them this week I’ll share some listings.
Yeah that was the same kids last summer. Teens are not easy to get (or keep) motivated. Basically like catching lightning in a bottle.
They have completed their first 10 items. They did a great job!
oh man, how awesome is it that I just checked listings that went live in my store that I did NOTHING on! They did 5 of them with no input from me whatsover. These aren’t easy items either – multiple 2 piece suits.
they got $20 for the listings and the list value on those 10 items is $565 so they have another potential $50 to make when they sell.
money well spent on my part, and my kids will have a skill they can use to make money once this challenge is over.Items in Store: 3121
Items Sold: 40
Total Sales: $2,366.00
COGS: $268.00
Total Profit: $2,098.00
Average profit: $52.45
Average sales price: $59.15
New Listings: 31
Items scavenged: 4
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 38
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,530.88
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 33
2024 ASP $46.43
2024 projected total sales $79,605.70Oh yeah we are cooking now! I broke out my talk on promoted listings to a separate thread. Good stuff – go check it out.
https://www.scavengerlife.com/forums/topic/promoted-listings-my-results-with-trying-new-percentages/
The big push I had listing all of that retro toy haul has paid off. I’m close to $500 in sales already from that $200 buy. Man I’m glad I didn’t let that stuff sit anymore.
So I have an interesting project going on this week. My older kids did a yard sale at their grandma’s house last weekend and this past weekend. They made…$0 the first week and $15 this past week. Ouch!
They are wanting to save up a bunch of money to do a bigger haunted house this year, and to have money for the anime convention they go to in October each year.
They were dedicated, punctual, and did all the work themselves at those yard sales. I’m very proud of their efforts even if it didn’t pan out. I’ve always said that if you are able to make good money at a yard sale then you are REALLY leaving money on the table (for people like me!). I made an offer to my older kids this week. I have a wardrobe full of coats and suits that I’ve let sit for years unlisted. I want it all listed now. If they can do all the work and get the 60 items in that wardrobe listed this week I will pay them $2 per listing AND 10% of the sales price for every sold item. The 10% commission is contingent on all the listings getting done this week.
My daughter already had an email account from a past attempt to get her into creating listings for me. If you haven’t tried it, ebay lets you assign different privileges to “authorized users” so you can let employees or helpers only have access to certain parts of your store. In this case I gave them access to creating drafts and terapeak access. You can also grant a helper access to printing shipping labels among other things. They can do all the work with drafts but cannot make any listings live.
Anyways, they did 7 items yesterday and they asked good questions. Will they actually finish the job? Eh, stay tuned! I don’t think they will unless I really push them (which I DON’T want to do!) If they can get this done then I’ll have 2 helpers capable of doing complete listings. I have a TON of bread n butter clothing that I could put them on. This could be a game changer for my business. Hopefully they can keep it going.
Sourcing this week was ‘meh’. Just a couple items at yard sales. I’ve sworn off thrift stores for the time being. Yard sales are winding down so I won’t get much more from them. That’s ok though, because I have to really hit the listing. Once yard sales are officially done I will go back to a once a week thrift store check for high dollar items.
Premium Hoarder update:
Sold 12 items for $1587.
It’s about time to list some more boxed new shoes as I’ve cleared out a bit of space in my inventory shed on the premium shoe shelves. I’ll try to get 10 more pair listed this week. I am back to doing a couple of the hoarder clothing items at lunch time at work.
