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[Retro Treasures WV]

I’m focusing on the shoes right now as they have highest ASP. I want to get that investment back as fast as I can.

Here’s two good examples from this latest haul I got listed this morning.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266847189794

Louis Vuitton Brown Damier Hair Square Toe Slide Loafers Size 9.5 UK

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266847191546

Allen Edmonds Sea Island Slip-on Loafer Navy Size 11 D USA Made New In Box 69133

I want to do 5 a day until I get about half of the new shoe haul listed. That will put around $10k of value into my store in just 50 listings.

I did some organizing this morning so I could get back to photography sooner. Then next week my kids will be freed up to get the 180+ drafts photographed for me.

[Retro Treasures WV]

Wow, a near 10% weekly STR is amazing!
you really have your finger on the pulse of what people want in cards and memorabilia.

[Retro Treasures WV]

So first off, I made a sale that isn’t ebay or business related that was fun. I bought two of those egg chairs off of Amazon that were on a special sale. My cost was $250 for two ($300-50 in amazon rewards points from my CC). I got the chairs, and one had a broken wicker wrap on one of the pieces. I contacted the seller, sent them a photo and they said they would send me a replacement piece. Well they sent me an ENTIRE new chair! At that point you’re darn right I’m going to repair the broken one. So now I have 3 chairs. I built the first one, sat down to relax after that hard work in the heat….and immediately HATED it! Dang… that stinks. I couldn’t sit back in it to relax – only a person my wife’s height could comfortably sit in it, and even then it wasn’t great. To make matters worse the only thing the egg top part really did was give birds a place to perch and crap on the cushions! I never even took the other two out of the box. I listed them on FBMP and began the frustrating process of dealing with tire kickers and dead beats. Once it was all said & done I sold all 3 chairs for $500. So a happy accident netted me $250 profit. Scavenger life for the win!

Now onto ebay sales:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266826357598

Fisher Price Disney Baby Finding Nemo Soothing Sea Soother Crib Toy Music Lights

Death pile item I got at some point for $2. Sold within a few days for full price.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266320972660

Axe Element Fastpitch Bat 31″ 19 oz MX8 HyperWhip Endcap L151H Official Softball

This was one of the items my kids sourced when they did the broke homeschoolers challenge. I bought them out and absorbed their items into my inventory when they lost interest. Sold on offer for $40. Now I get to teach them the valuable lesson of investing – I made a huge profit because A: I had cash, and B: I had patience.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266319472103

Lew Magram Sweater Snow Leopard Leather Turtleneck Size M Vintage Shoulder Pads

One of the first Premium hoarder items I bought at the first sale I went to. Paid $7. I actually have 2 of these but only listed one. Sold on offer for $100 just to move on from it. There was no market – I just put a price to the moon on it. I’m not turning down a $100 sale right now.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266822500187

Transformers Voyager Class Lugnut Complete 2010

Sold on offer for $180 – paid $ at a yard sale a couple weeks ago. I was completely shocked when I looked this one up initially. I was expecting $30 or so when I bought it.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266450496812

Polo By Ralph Lauren Corduroy Button Mens Blazer Jacket Green Size XXL

Another premium hoarder item. Sold on offer for $150.

I ALWAYS check corduroy jackets at Goodwill hoping to find Polo Ralph lauren ones. I’ve found several in the wild over the years. They are BOLO for sure.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266819841676

JVC Everio Digital Camcorder Model GZ-MS110BU w/ Battery & Charger

Paid $5 at a yard sale a couple weeks ago. Sold on offer for $40.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266824190381

Rudis KS Turbine Adult Wrestling Shoes Purple Cosmo US Men’s Size 12 In Box

I love selling wrestling shoes. Picked these up at a yard sale 2 weeks ago for $20. They included a head gear I also have listed that will cover the COGS. Sold on offer for $75.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266708586213

Xero Prio Zero Drop Barefoot Running Sneaker Shoes Women’s 8.5 Blue Minimalist

This is a BOLO brand. Pretty much any minimalist shoes are BOLO and have really good ASP. I paid $6.

 

[Retro Treasures WV]

IIRC, you don’t have a car. What you could do is order boxes on demand from Walmart and have them delivered. Just cross the free shipping threshold and you just pay for what you need – no need to order boxes in bulk. The best part is that you’ll likely get same day delivery by a driver.

[Retro Treasures WV]

Items in Store: 2859
Items Sold: 29
Total Sales: $981.00
COGS: $115.00
Total Profit: $866.00
Average profit: $29.86
Average sales price: $33.83
New Listings: 0
Items scavenged: 560
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 27
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,429.05
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 33
2024 ASP $43.42
2024 projected total sales $74,310.36

 

Well I bought a BUNCH this week. I got the call to come back to check out the final load from the premium hoarder haul. I had to do a lot of reorganizing to get my van emptied out. The first day I completely filled my van. Then the next day I filled my wife’s van! I can leave mine full since I just drive to/from my day job, but my wife’s had to be emptied pronto. So, turns out my van wasn’t completely full. I managed to fit most of the rest in there and moved the rest into the garage. So YAY I managed to get everything a place. My work space is a disaster though. I have paths to all my stations in the garage but that’s about it. Due to all this work (plus some honeydo’s) I didn’t have time to get listings done. I have over 160 drafts awaiting photos! It’s a good problem to have but at some point I have to get those photos done. I’ll probably hit 200+ this week. I have some drafts that will expire in about 2 weeks.

 

In other sourcing news, yard sales were plentiful on a beautiful 1^st weekend of June. I picked up 2 junior sets of golf clubs that I will sell on FBMP. The highlight of the day was some SCUBA Gear for $10 and a pair of vintage made in USA converse sneakers. Then an unexpected find once I started creating listings. I picked up some vintage hats at a sale for 50 cents each. Good sellers, and some possibly $40-50 hats. One of them was a Seinfeld hat. I thought at the time it would be a $20 or so hat. Well… here is the same hat: https://www.ebay.com/itm/135084748910

A long tail item for sure, but there have been solds in terapeak at that price. I’ll probably list for $100 and take offers.

Premium Hoarder update:

Sold 2 items for $250.

Welp, I bought a bunch more. I did not make an offer on the entire garage. I cherry picked everything with higher profit margins and left a bunch of stuff that either was too low of sales price, had a longer STR, or just didn’t “tickle my fancy”. I skipped on a lot of bread n butter used Ralph Lauren stuff.

In total I bought 408 clothing/misc pieces and 113 pair of shoes. There were 9 pair of new in box shoes left I paid $25 each for. For the non-boxed shoes I paid $20 a pair. I went through every pair and left the common low value shoes which was a giant tub full – probably 60-80 pair – I left behind.

In the end I paid $12 average per item this haul- $6320 total. The lady was definitely not charging me tag price on a lot of things as it should have been closer to 17-18 average, especially with the shoes. She threw in a few nice items for free as well. My total cost for everything I have bought from this estate is $18761. I am quite happy with what I have. They will do a few more yard sales this summer as there is still a ton of stuff left. I will swing by and maybe change my mind on a few items.

In the meantime, I am at MAX capacity and need to start selling this stuff ASAP! I would like to start listing the higher dollar stuff and get my summer average weekly sales back up over

[Retro Treasures WV]

Items in Store: 2887
Items Sold: 34
Total Sales: $1,003.00
COGS: $133.00
Total Profit: $870.00
Average profit: $25.59
Average sales price: $29.50
New Listings: 50
Items scavenged: 28
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 29
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,450.38
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 33
2024 ASP $43.82
2024 projected total sales $75,419.81

Just plugging along. I front loaded the week with work, which is good since I spent the holiday weekend either working hard on yard work or suffering with a bad migraine and the aches/pains of doing too much yard work.

So far this year I’m on a pace WAY above anything I’ve done before. I’m more than double items sold and total sales $ of last year. I’m even at a higher total sales $ than 2020 so far (though I did sell more items in 2020 at this point). The goal was to increase my ASP and that I am doing. My historic ASP was $35 and I’m at just under $45 so far this year. I just need to keep doing what I am doing.

Last night I got a message from the Premium Hoarder lady. I’ll be doing a private pick on Friday of the stuff left. Do I have room for it? NO! Do I have the free Capital to spend right now? NO! Am I gonna do it anyways and make it work? YES!

I do actually have the cash but I just have these minimum balances in my accounts that I REALLY don’t like going below. Mentally it’s as if that money doesn’t exist. Kinda arbitrary numbers but it gives me peace of mind to know that money is always there. I feel like if I break below that barrier I’ll never get back to where it was.

 

Anyways, she said they have a bunch of Polo stuff priced. We’ll see if they’ve jacked up their prices in the time since I last was there. I should have a great update next week.

Premium Hoarder update:

Sold 3 items for $305.

Eeesh, not much sold. I have 368 active listings in the premium hoarder store category, so 1% a week is 3-4 items. Historically I’ve sold 383 items from this collection.  I sell 25-35 premium hoarder items a month. So having a monthly STR of 8-10% isn’t too bad. I haven’t been listing new items to this lot so of course it will dwindle back down to the 1% weekly STR.

[Retro Treasures WV]

A sampling of sales for the week:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266450497403

Alan Flusser Blazer NEW Linen Blend Cream Sports Coat XXL Jacket Vintage

A hoarder item. Sold on offer for $80.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266606417339

Geri’s Game VHS Tape Pixar Short Film A Bug’s Life Vintage 1998

Picked this up at Goodwill for $2. Sold on offer for $20.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266371211741

Verbatim Imation Multicolor 3.5 Floppy Disks Lot Of 81 New

Paid a couple bucks at Goodwill. Sold for full price. Obsolete unused media is always a great pickup.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266801020103

Camel Lights Joe’s Place Metal Permanent Match Striker Cigarette Lighter Bustah

I picked up a bag of lighters at a yard sale a couple weeks ago for $10. I’ve sold a couple of them already – not big sales but they add up. I love little pipelines like this. I listed/photographed them all on break at work at my desk.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266595098388

Izod Chino Shorts Mens size 32 White Flat Front Saltwater Casual Stretch NWT

I don’t buy a whole lot of clothes right now but I always buy NWT clothes of the nicer brands. Paid $4 and sold for full price.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266321087607

Memento Shelby Leonard 2-Disc Special Edition Case File w/ Slipcover

I always scan DVD and VHS section for things that jump out at me. This is one of those items. Paid $1. Sold for full price. This is an AWESOME movie if you’ve never seen it.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266827997493

Tupperware Lunch Box Set Pack N Carry Vintage Lot Red Orange

Paid $1 at a yard sale last week. Sold quick for full price. I have no interest in piecing out tupperware on a per item basis, but a lot like this was a no- brainer.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266819797510

SKIL SC118 9.6V-18V Volt Power Tool Battery Charger Genuine OEM TESTED WORKING

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – tool chargers are a BOLO. Paid $3 at goodwill – sold for full price in a week.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266804311039

Back to the Future: The Game 30th Anniversary Edition Microsoft Xbox 360

Most Xbox games are a dime a dozen, but this one looked like it would be a good one. I bought two games at a yard sale for $1 each. My hunch was correct – this was a good one. Sold on offer for $20.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266828003306

Wild Wonderful West Virginia State Trucker Hat Blue Cap Vintage Patch

I bought a handful of vintage hats at a yard sale a week ago. I’m really torn on hats. They are SLOW sellers but I get a kick out of selling them. I have a bin in my inventory shed dedicated to hats. I try to keep it full so I limit my sourcing on hats so I don’t go past that one bin. This hat surprisingly sold quick for full price.

 

 

[Retro Treasures WV]

My favorite scavenges this week were some vintage Mickey Mouse Mr. Christmas decorations. The lady said that when she bought the house the previous owner left a TON of mickey mouse stuff. There was a whole bunch more mickey stuff there that I passed on.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266832925619

Mr. Christmas Mickey Mouse Brass Band Animated 21 Carols 1995 Vintage WORKING

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266832892858

Mr. Christmas Disney Mickey’s Clock Shop Animated Musical Complete Vintage 1993

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266832891892

Mr. Christmas Mickeys Holiday Skaters Skating Rink Village Tested 1996

 

The best part of this scavenge is that I paid $44 for these 3 plus a few more items. One of the items which was basically a throw in item was an N Scale train car that I knew would be enough to cover the whole purchase. After I got home a created the draft listing I was correct – it sells for $50+ dollars. I always love when I scavenge and can hedge my costs for an entire lot on one item.

[Retro Treasures WV]

Topps is doing a limited run of negro league cards right now. They just added negro leagues records to the books and now Josh Gibson is officially recognized as the greatest hitter in baseball history.

you might want to check those cards out.

[Retro Treasures WV]

What are your thoughts on Ant being Jordan’s son? I’m not a big conspiracy guy, but a coworker made his case and I was sold!

[Retro Treasures WV]

Items in Store: 2871
Items Sold: 27
Total Sales: $1,242.00
COGS: $176.00
Total Profit: $1,066.00
Average profit: $39.48
Average sales price: $46.00
New Listings: 45
Items scavenged: 25
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 28
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,472.75
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 33
2024 ASP $44.56
2024 projected total sales $76,583.00

I got a lot accomplished this week. I put a bunch of listed items into inventory. I got my son to clean 20 pair of shoes, and my daughter photographed 14 pair. I’ve kept plugging along on creating draft listings and I’m still over 130 ready for photos. I even got some electronics testing done on some cameras. It always astounds me when people sell video cameras with recorded media still in the bag. One of them was likely a storage cleanout, but still surprising. This one had a church play and just random vids of the family on it. There’s no way I could get this back to the family so I just toss it after testing the camera’s playback/record functions.

 

Saturday was a weird day for me. I had BIG plans to get stuff done since we had no baseball games for once. I did yard sales early just before 8 with my wife. She was tired (growing a baby is HARD work) so I dropped her off back at home for a nap at 9 and I went back out by myself. After yard sales I took my wife out to lunch – she had been napping all that time until I got home at 12:30. When we got back home I ended up taking a nap until almost 6!

So at the end of the day all I accomplished was yard sales. No yard work, no organizing work, nothing. I made up for it on Sunday though!

This week so far I am firing on all cylinders. Every day I’m creating drafts, photographing 5-8 items, my son is cleaning shoes, and I’m putting at least 5 items into inventory each day. I’m also ending/sell similar at least 30 items a day.

Premium Hoarder update:

Sold 7 items for $679.

Sold a pair of Mezlan loafers for $375 as my big sale of the week.

[Retro Treasures WV]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266672462602

Classical Conversations Foundations United States Curriculum Fifth Edition Text

Another free book my wife picked up from the library.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266628881635

Red Man Chewing Tobacco Snap Back Trucker Hat Cap baseball mesh Green Patch

Cool hat. Also my favorite dad joke from my childhood. Whenever someone would sneeze my dad would say “Red Man”.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266801553369

Sony CFD-E75 Yellow CD Cassette Player AM FM Radio Portable Boombox w/ Remote

So my profit is much higher on this through a series of events. I sold this a few weeks ago. The buyer immediately opened a return and shipped back same day. Said his wife didn’t like it like he thought she would. I had a bad feeling about this return due to the high value and rarity of the remote. When I got it back I didn’t see the remote. I withheld shipping costs and reduced the return by the lost value of not having the remote. I messaged the buyer and said I would happily refund the rest if they returned the remote. They said it was in the box wrapped up in bubble wrap. Sure enough, there it was in a wad of big bubble wrap. It was so light that I didn’t feel the weight and in so many layers I couldn’t see the remote. WHOOPS!!!

I profusely apologized and talked to ebay to try and get the  refund fixed. The CSR appreciated my honesty, but they have no mechanism to amend the refund. They made a note in the system to auto approve a customer appeal and had me coach the buyer to appeal the partial refund. It went smoothly and the customer got all their money back including shipping. None of it came out of my pocket so I made an extra $40 on this item.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266804342183

Sony Lens VCL-DH2630 & VAD-WA Adapter Ring Tele Conversion Lens

Bought at a yard sale the week prior for $3 and sold on offer for $20. I’ll sell $20 items all day long if they are this cheap, easy, and sell this fast.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266692232239

Vintage Wooden Box Hidden Executive Desk Top Push Button Dial Telephone TESTED

This is one of the hoarder items I bought when I was actually at the hoarder apartment. Paid $20 and sold on offer for $50.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266748643798

Rudis SF-Tbilisi 2.0 Wrestling Shoes Tactical Black Men’s Size 6

Wrestling shoes always sell.

 

[Retro Treasures WV]

Nothing earth shattering in the yard sales this past weekend. Yesterday thought I bought WAY too much stuff I did NOT need on whatnot.

So one of the youtubers I follow had a blowout clearout sale on whatnot yesterday. Years ago they did a huge buyout of an entire warehouse of video game stuff. They had a ton of accessories and controllers they knew they’d never get rid of and didn’t fit their current profit margin model, so they wanted the space back for highter dollar inventory. I normally don’t pay attention to their whatnots because people typically WAY overpay on every item. I’m talking at or well above ebay averages. It’s crazy! This one started as I started my lunch break so I figured what the hay – I’ll watch a few minutes while I eat. Things escalated from there after I won a lot I just threw a bid on fully expecting to lose.

This auction they were selling of lots of vintage video game controllers. They’d throw 8-10 controllers or accessories in a box and run it. I ended up buying 16 lots! I paid an average of $47 a box for a total of $756. I’ll make about $1500 profit once everything sells. Not my normal margins, but this is some COOL STUFF I’ve never been able to handle before. Even though I make serious money in this business, it is still just a hobby for fun at heart so I want to sell and play with the fun stuff. In many cases there was one item in the box worth what I paid for the whole box.

I like these youtubers, but I’d be lying if I wasn’t thoroughly entertained at the constrained disappointment they choked back at what alot of items sold for in this auction. They asked for the resellers to show up and they got what they asked for. LOL!

[Retro Treasures WV]

Items in Store: 2853
Items Sold: 20
Total Sales: $1,028.00
COGS: $134.00
Total Profit: $894.00
Average profit: $44.70
Average sales price: $51.40
New Listings: 30
Items scavenged: 25
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 27
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,484.89
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 33
2024 ASP $44.50
2024 projected total sales $77,214.53

Just plugging along this week. I was able to get some photography/listing done this week. Yay! I’ll keep chipping away at listings and inventory storage in the spare minutes of my days until my schedule clears up a bit. I’m still creating listings. Even with 30 listings last week I still have a draft bank of 150 items ready for photos.I do a lot of listing while sitting in my van on breaks/lunch. Sometimes I bring items into my office to list or photograph if they are smalls. I have 9 bins of listed items that need moved into the inventory system. And then I have 6 bins of the 150 draft bank items that will follow shortly behind.

My older kids are working to finish up their school this month and baseball will wrap up early in June. Then they’ll be free to help me more and clear out that backlog. They’ve expressed interest in doing another $10 ebay challenge this summer.

Or maybe they’ll just play video games all day. It remains to be seen.

 

Premium Hoarder update:

Sold 5 items for $432.

[Retro Treasures WV]

In shoes there are some formerly HOT brands that have died completely

The two biggest are:

TOMS

Sperry Top Sider.

5 years ago they were insta-sales and for really good prices. You can hardly give those brands away now.

[Author]

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