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Posts
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Items in Store 1091
Items Sold 13
Total Sales $452.00
COGS $46.25
Total Profit $405.75
Average profit $31.21
Average sales price $34.77
New Listings 36I was right to exclude the pinball sale last week. The buyer was a weird flake and I’m glad he didn’t pay. For some reason the unpaid item case never opened on its own. I’ll be closing it out tonight. Things started to settle into a routine late last week with the new baby and I was able to do some ebay work.
I stopped by a couple yard sales Saturday and at one I bought a HUGE lot of Loving Family dollhouse stuff for $40. It was a desirable dollhouse plus TWO trash bags and a large box full of dolls furniture and accessories. I’ve always done very well with the Loving Family stuff. I didn’t want this stuff sitting around so I pushed it to the front of the line and processed everything this weekend. I already have the majority listed. The hardest part with a lot like this is deciding how to break it up and list it. If you don’t start with a plan you can waste a lot of time getting stuck in research purgatory.
My plan:
1. Sort everything out and remove any non- Loving family “junk”.
2. Research pieces with part numbers to see if they are part of a set.
3. Search through lot to see if I have full sets – group sets together.
4. List separately any high dollar items.
5. Lot up remaining furniture and accessories for auction sales
6. Sort dolls into model years and search for family sets based on year or model numbers.
7. Sell valuable dolls separately, sell complete families or twin sets together.
At this point I went in already knowing a lot about Loving Family and have done bulk buys on it several times so it was pretty easy to blast through it all.
The highlight of this lot was a complete 2002 African American Family set. This is a cool set because the mother and daughter have real hair and the parents each have a baby carrier for the baby and toddler.
Once I am done the total listed value will be over $1k!I love computer strategy games but it seemed like I would spend hours playing them and have nothing to show for it. At least with this strategy game, I put some money in my pocket.
Exactly! I deleted all of the games off of my cell phone. They are a waste of time (not money though…I’ve never spent a dime on an app except my mileage tracker app).
I started my ebay business after a layoff as well. I also got wind of the “bloody Monday” while on my anniversary weekend getaway vacation. Boy that really took the fun out of the weekend…
The facility I worked at went from 400 people to 100 people over a few months and a few layoff rounds. I did get an exceptional severance package that had me collecting my usual paycheck for 5 months and maintained my insurance for a year.That summer was the greatest summer of my adult life! I wore flip flops and shorts the entire time, spent a ton of time with my family doing all the fun things I usually missed out on during the summer. I also started the ebay business and did quite well with it. I had a new job secured by the end of July but had them hold off on my start date until the summer was over.
It still sucks to have a day job after having that kind of freedom, but my boss knows about my ebay work and my “FU” money attitude at work buys me alot of freedom that makes it more palatable.
So good luck and I look forward to seeing your business grow!
There is no reason for non store sellers to have access to promoted listings. It is a pure cash grab and that is bull shit.
I was sent a seller survey a while back from ebay. I am assuming this is the feedback they are referencing.
Their inability to handle cases in a logical and consistent way and the constant lying and lack of transparent documentation of Customer service cases has GOT to be fixed. They’ve done permanent harm to my seller relationship to ebay. If they fixed this one thing, so many other issues would resolve themselves organically!
I pointed out the hypocracy of their “in alignment with industry standards BS” when their systems are nothing like their counterparts. Even amazon provides detailed email summaries of all Customer service cases.
Needless to say, I’m not exactly looking forward to the update with optimism.
Oh and for paying someone to do it, You would pay $200-500 for labor to get it working good with no cosmetic repairs. You could do some basic troubleshooting of the boards and then send of the main board for repair for $150-250 parts and labor. There’s only ever been one pinball machine and one arcade monitor each I tapped out on and sent off for repair. It was worth it each time as the issues were above my skill level.
I’ve always worked cheap…but “cheap” is $40 an hour labor rate. Pro repair folks are $80-120 an hour with a minimum call out fee.
There’s also several pinball forums out there where folks will happily assist you when you hit a wall.
Pinside.com is one I used to frequent.Oh and one more resource that just gets better with age:
http://www.pinwiki.comThat is not a very valuable machine. About $800 working and decent condition.
I personally do NOT enjoy working on Stern or Bally of that era. Stern pirated Ballys technology, so they are basically the same electronically. They used .100 connectors and it predated lamp and switch matrices, so every single switch and lamp has dedicated wires and drivers. You have to resolder every pin header and replace every molex connector in the machine before you can even start to troubleshoot if the machine is a total basketcase.
I’d bet there is severe battery leakage damage too if I had to guess. That will be evident if you take out the backglass and look at the boards – if you see a ton of corrosion then you are in for either a major board level repair or replacing the main CPU board with an aftermarket board.This is the go-to document for repairing this era of machine:
http://www.pinrepair.com/bally/But if you have zero experience, you should start here:
http://www.pinrepair.com/begin/index.htmIf you want to do this for fun, learn a TON about electronics and mechanical repair, and in the end have a cool machine that you can be proud of then have at it. The knowledge you will gain is transferable to so many other applications. So my answer is yes – you absolutely can do this. Be prepared to spend several hundred dollars if it is not an easy fix though.
If you are only wanting to make money then you should just sell it as-is for a couple hundred.
You really shouldn’t part out a pinball unless the cabinet is severely damaged beyond repair. It’s just bad karma.As for removing the head, I highly recommend you avoid that if at all possible. If you must, then thoroughly mark each connector and their orientation.
Take the pinball out and remove all loose items from inside the machine if turning it up on its end.
The only time I’d recommend storing unlisted inventory is if you needed to temprarily move out everything to reclaim your space in an orderly manner.
Say you have an overwhelmed garage and you wanted to make it a lean mean business space with dedicated storage racks and work stations. If it is already full with junk piled everywhere, how do you tackle the project?
In this case, you could rent a storage unit and move everything out. Make a commitment to being done within a month, and then spend another month if necessary listing like a madman to fill the storage area with LISTED inventory.
That would be a very effective use of a month’s storage rent.
I’ve absolutely told a buyer I won’t engage with them because they leave too many negatives.
Go ahead and tell them. Some buyers need to know their actions have consequences.Items in Store 1068
Items Sold 9
Total Sales $378.00
COGS $34.00
Total Profit $344.00
Average profit $38.22
Average sales price $42.00
New Listings 0Terribly slow week. A $180 pair of cordovan shoes saved me.
I did sell a $2800 pinball, but the buyer is having payment issues. I don’t think that one is going to happen so I didn’t inlclude it in my numbers.We had the baby on Wednesday night. A happy healthy little boy! Needless to say, I haven’t really done much ebay since. I’m working from home for day job today, which is a nice luxury to have. I’ll be able to stay home for a week and a half and I have used only a single day of leave.
I know it is scary to consider, but you might consider selling it as new but take it out of the package. Photograph the lure with the pieces of the carefully opened package beside it.
About what I have now. I’ve been floating between 1000 and 1100 a while now.
1/1/18-4/16/18
$8742.90 on 288 sales1/1/19-4/16/19
$11632.34 on 307 sales
(skewed by $2500 sale, so adjust to $9132.34)I’m actually quite surprised by these stats.
I did your calculator with just the 41k and the 5 kids in your calculator and turbotax calculator. Zero with holdings in each calculator.
Turbotax calculator showed refund of $8694
H&R Block: $8597
Taxact: $8715
efile.com: $9919 (I believe their earned income credit was higher here) Maybe I should ditch Turbo tax and file here in the future! I like their number.
Jackson Hewitt: $8418.Nerd wallet did tell me $5900. Their calculator is wrong. It does not take the earned income credit into consideration. If they can’t even get that simple thing right I don’t think I’d trust them with my wallet.
In that scenario, you qualify for the earned income credit.
Mine are slow movers too, but I list high. When a heavy coat sells, it is a great day! It is usually a $50-100 sale.
I’ve sold 7 heavy coats in the last 90 days for $191.Looking back further, I see 20 more coats sold dating from late August to the current 90 day period.
So I sold 27 total coats for this season from August 18 to April 19.I sold ZERO coats in May/June/July last year.
I currently have 31 more coats listed, so my sellthrough rate was 47% for the coat buying season this year. 3 of the current coats were recently listed so its more like 50% STR.
So based on my actual data, I would have to recommend you wait until August to list coats.
