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I have a couple bins of clothes and about 30-40 pair of shoes left.
There is a ton of stuff left. There is about 30 bins of mostly NWT clothes & loose shoes they pulled from the apartment in a hurry to get it ready to close out.
Then there is a ton more stuff that they already had in the garage that is in my neighborhood. In short – a ton of stuff.
I’ve been doing 15-20% send offers but the sales conversion is pretty low on offers.
In your area yard sales may be better for shoes and clothes. I figure you have year round yard sales with your weather (JEALOUS!!)
We get a bit of overpricing locally and I see it WAY worse in Columbus when I go there. There are entire thrift chains up there that I don’t even waste my time going to because of their pricing. I stick to Goodwills as they are the most reasonable in that big city. There is a Goodwill outlet there but I’ve never went. Maybe someday just for fun. Hairy Tornado does the Goodwill outlet near him and finds pretty good stuff. He also has his Whatnot channel to sell everything to his viewers really quickly so it’s not a model I can adopt.
Thankfully the goodwill closest to me swung back the other way and went all in on just turning over product as fast as possible. Their shoes are mostly back to $3.99, with only a few pair priced up.
Always be willing to try out new things to sell and pivot to what is available and profitable.
I’ve done well with belts, but I rarely shop for them. I have a bag of them from the hoarder collection I’ll eventually get around to listing. I’ve sold every belt I’ve ever listed.
High quality leather or unique design combined with a good brand name = good sale.
You can make money with mens surf trunks but you have to get them dirt cheap and sell dirt cheap. Not worth it if COGS are over $5 an item unless they are REALLY special. $10-20 sales price. The cheaper you go the quicker they sell.
I do sell kids shoes occasionally. Kids Air Jordans, and kids Adidas Samba are great pickups that are usually cheap. I also buy/sell cheap baseball cleats. They’re usually $3 at the thrifts. Then I have cleats on hand for my kids when baseball season rolls around. If they don’t fit them they will sell and I make money. Win/win!
Soccer cleats can be BIG money if you find the right pair. The best cleats are made with Kangaroo leather (once you feel it you know it). I’ve sold soccer cleats for $100+. Nike Tiempo and Adidas Copa Mundial are the words you want to look for on the cleats for the big bucks. I regularly buy soccer cleats even if not kangaroo leather as they can sell for $100+ and are usually in great condition.
Avoid the sun hats. Hats in general don’t have a great STR unless you have something very special. The market is super flooded.
If I could make one hat recommendation for you, it would be Ping brand golf hats. They always sell.
Yes, Men’s clothes do much better than women’s.
As for shoes, I’ll take ’em! I sold 7 pair of non-hoarder shoes last week for $220 on $40 COGS. $22 Profit after fees per pair for about 5 minutes of work per pair*. That’s one heck of an hourly rate.
*my profit margins are actually higher now that I make a significant amount on shipping. Much of my fees are covered by the difference in shipping so it’s more like $25 a pair.
I also sold 7 non-hoarder clothing items last week for $141 on $35 COGS, $12.75 profit per item after fees. Listing is maybe a minute longer due to measurements. I lose some time on listing due to measurements, but make up some time on photography on most clothing since it is typically just 3-4 photos.
Bread n butter shoes blows bread n butter clothes out of the water…as long as you have the storage space. It will take up to 3x the space depending on how efficient you are with storing clothes.
I challenge you next time you are in a thrift to find one pair of shoes with a 50% or higher STR and a sales price of $30 or more that are in above average condition. Then list them and see what happens. Just one pair. You can even wear gloves if you can’t get past he ‘ewww’ factor. LOL!
Items in Store: 3013
Items Sold: 32
Total Sales: $1,556.00
COGS: $242.00
Total Profit: $1,314.00
Average profit: $41.06
Average sales price: $48.63
New Listings: 24
Items scavenged: 7
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 40
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,428.60
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 33
2024 ASP $43.55
2024 projected total sales $74,287.20After some thinking this week I added a few new metrics to the bottom of my weekly numbers. Now each week I can see a snapshot of if my trending ASP and projected sales for 2024. It is nice see these numbers automatically populate each week. I’m not exactly lighting the world on fire yet, but I’m still doing VERY well compared to past performance this time of year.
I need to get my weekly listings over 50 to get my items sold back over 40. If I can keep my ASP over $40 where it is now I need to get up to 46 sales a week. That’s a TALL order. The further I get into the year the harder it will get. That $100k gross sales goal is definitely a stretch. Still, having $75k in sales be the new normal is a TREMENDOUS change in my business!
I was quite light on listing this week. Actually I didn’t create any new drafts – just had my daughter photograph most of my draft bank from last week yesterday. I ended up busier than I originally planned. Saturday morning I spent some time on inventory management which is SUPER important for my long term success. Then Saturday evening and all day Sunday I was down with migraine and bad neck pain. It’s still there today but much more manageable. I’m still not where I need to be, but the fact I’m getting alot of the organization knocked out now means I’ll be spending my time listing in March/April instead of doing all the inventory management then.
It’ll probably be another light week this week as I have some family commitments this coming weekend.
Premium Hoarder update:
Sold 9 items for $896. It seems like I’m gonna live & die this year based on my hoarder sales each week. I haven’t listed any new hoarder items in a bit. I will try to list a couple pair of shoes this week since I sold a few pair.
Not many unique items to talk about this week.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266535009443
Nikon D40x 10.2MP Digital SLR Camera Black 2 Lens 18-55mm 55-200mm Bag
Last week I sold a lens from this lot. This week I sold the camera. Noice!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266388875986
Lacoste Purple Sweater Size 9 V Neck Men’s Cotton Pullover
Sold for best offer $67 – from the hoarder collection
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266146123655
Nike Air Jordan 1 Mid Retro Youth Size 3.5Y Leopard Print Shoes BQ6931-021
Shoes aren’t even in great shape and still sold for $50 full price. I love selling shoes!
I’ve been locked in a battle for years to outearn my dayjob with my ebay business.
I’ve been quite successful on both fronts though, so I’ve never got there and likely never will. I can’t stop trying though! Even if I can’t out earn my day job I still want to break that $100k annual gross sales barrier at some point. If I can get to 50 sales a week I can do it as my ASP has increased. Historically it has always been $35, but since July ASP has been over $50.
It was $41 in January but I only averaged 33 sales per week. If I can keep my ASP at $40 for the year I have to average 48 sales a week. I average 40 sales per week in the last half of 2023. I won’t always have all these home runs from the premium collection so my ASP will eventually trend back down.
So what’s a guy to do – create some new tracking metrics!
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,396.75
2024 Avg weekly items 33
2024 ASP $42.33
2024 projected total sales $72,631.00So I’m clearly not there. I have to list more – like 70 items a week in an attempt to get up to 50 sales a week. I’ve got to encourage more sales. I might become a bit less precious over offers. I missed out on over $1k in sales this month because I wasn’t willing to come down so far on a couple items. Maybe I should have taken them?
Oh well, let’s focus on what I can control and see where it takes me. More listing, promoted listings, and renewing old listings. I need to be renewing about 20 old listings each weekday to refresh my store every 6 months.
Items in Store: 3021
Items Sold: 26
Total Sales: $1,004.00
COGS: $94.00
Total Profit: $910.00
Average profit: $35.00
Average sales price: $38.62
New Listings: 50
Items scavenged: 5
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 45It was a slow week that was saved by a $300 sale on Sunday at the last minute. I’ve only been doing my listings on the weekend so far this month rather than spreading them out. This week I want to try and spur my store activity by ending/sell similar old listings each day and promoting listings. It has been over 6 months since I added any items to promoted listings. Considering I’ve listed well over 2000 items since then I’m definitely due. I’m kind of on the fence if I should even do it anymore, but we’ll give it a go since I’ve had success in the past.
We got a very teeny tiny bit of semi-decent weather which let me do what I needed to do in order to get my garage office space cleared out a bit. It is by no means complete but I was able to make a big dent in the chaos. While clearing/reorganizing one death pile I got the unpleasant surprise that a mouse has been livin it up throughout. Never in my entire ebay history have I had a mouse mess with a single item in my garage or my shed. It is TOTAL WAR! I WILL DESTORY THIS MOUSE AND HIS ENTIRE LINEAGE!
Lots of droppings and pee marks. I have to clean a bunch of items. It chewed a hole in a really nice Irish wool cardigan. Fortunately that is all the damage I’ve seen.
When I start organizing I tend to freak out and want to stop sourcing for months as the death piles overwhelm me. Then my wife talks me out of it and reminds me that if good stuff comes along, I should get it and figure it out like I always do. She’s an enabler I tell ya! I only bought 5 things last week that were $50+ items with good STR. I can deal with 5-10 items a week and hopefully have some space once spring and yard sales comes around.
More decent weather coming so I’ll capitalize on it and keep cleaning, organizing, and listing. I started off the week with a 30 item draft bank so I should be able to list a good number of items. I’d like to get my weekly listing average above 50 items a week.
I crossed 3k items in my store. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’d rather have a higher STR, so hopefully that number don’t get too much bigger this year. It would be awesome to average 50 listings a week AND 50 sales a week. I averaged 40 sales a week and 66 listings a week in the second half of 2023. Surely I can get to 50 sales a week by the end of 2024.
This was my best ever January in total sales, even though it felt kinda slow. That’s a great way to start off the year. Let’s see what the next month will bring! March-May is usually a dead period for me so I’m really hoping to turn that around.
Premium Hoarder update:
Not much to say here. Only two items this week. a pair of shoes for $300 and a Bose speaker system for $100. I crossed $30k in gross sales on the collection.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266608803233
Bose Companion 3 Speakers Series I Multimedia Speaker System TESTED
I picked this up at the premium hoarder sale for $20. It was sitting up front when I was checking out. Bose stuff is always a BOLO if the price is right.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266402925586
Team Caliber Owner Series Adam Petty Winston Cup 2000 Monte Carlo Sprint Car
Collectable die cast cars are a mixed bag. Most is worthless but some of it can be very valuable. I bought 4 of these at a sale blind because I just had a gut feeling there was something special in there. This wasn’t the best one but still it was a great pickup. Sold for $35 on offer.
If you find die cast car stuff, you just have to research it or get it dirt cheap. At this sale they were $5 each but I was able to use the ‘build a pile’ method to get the price down overall.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266630506447
LG RC199H VHS VCR DVD Combo Player Recorder HDMI & RCA Out No Remote
Sold in one day. I really need to do better getting my VCR stuff listed so it can sell. I’m sitting on quite a few in my death piles. I only listed this one because I needed something with stereo inputs to test some headphones.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266361656496
CON-TECH LA-13-P T Connector – White
A small sale at $17, but I bought a pile of these things at the habitat for humanity a few years ago for $1 each. I’ve made quite a bit off of them. I go to the habitat for humanity about once a year and always find something neat to sell. I always like buying things in quantity for cheap with decent STR.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266628890871
WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2007 Microsoft Xbox 360 Disc Only
This is the third copy of this game I’ve sold in the last month or two, but the first on xbox 360. Why is it so much more valuable on Xbox? Who knows! I’ll take it though.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266462716649
Avantree Opera Black Bluetooth 5.0 Comfortable Wireless Headphones BTHT-6190
Just a random item that caught my eye at goodwill. Seemed like unusual and high quality headphones. Price was right at $3. Sodl for $51 on offer.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266471310096
Everbilt Multi-purpose Screws #7 x 1-5/8″ 1 lb Box Lot of 5
Home depot occasionally has some REALLY good clearance stuff. I’ve made quite a bit off of clearance stuff over the years from there. One day they had a shelf of different boxes of screws for 50 cents a box. I bought all of it…and then let it set on a death pile shelf for a long time. Occasionally I’ll get a wild hair and list some of them. They have almost all sold at this point. Not a big profit but it has added up to well over $100 over time. I’ll be listing the last two lots this week once I catch up on photos.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266534250117
Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 DG Macro Telephoto Zoom Lens for Nikon F
SLR camera bundles are always a BOLO. They’re usually cheap and can be parted out to make the most money. This is the second lens I sold from this Nikon bundle. Once the camera sells I’ll have made about $400 on a $5 purchase. The key is to check the optics for clarity. If you can see mold/mildew inside the lens optics then it is no good.
When I do my numbers for Scavengerlife (and for my weekly numbers spreadsheet), I simplify things and just round off a $9.99 item to $10. So is it really $1000? No not really. Good enough though. My spreadsheets are just for high level metrics on my business – not my tax documents. I don’t maintain individual sales line items here – just high level rounded off Sales, COGS, Items sold and a few extra values/formulas to track any other things I want to look at trends on.
Now that ebay has pretty good tools for pulling down data I really should switch to pulling REAL numbers for my weekly numbers and go ahead and take all fees and every penny into consideration. I’ve done my numbers so long this way that it pains me to switch. The benefit of switching would be that all my numbers would be done already at the end of the year.
I’ve also been hoping for years that ebay would allow a couple more custom fields in listings as I’d like to integrate my COGS right into the listing. If they would do this I think I would switch in an instant. I’ve asked ebay CS and ebay for business multiple times to add a COGS custom field.
Change….ewww.
Items in Store: 2997
Items Sold: 30
Total Sales: $1,000.00
COGS: $138.00
Total Profit: $862.00
Average profit: $28.73
Average sales price: $33.33
New Listings: 53
Items scavenged: 14
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 43Whew! Kept the $1k week streak going just barely! Now at 21 weeks. I better step it up this week.
The weather was BRUTAL this week. I was able to work from home on Friday which was nice. The kids really enjoyed all the snow this week – they built an igloo in the front yard. When the weather gets cold like this it saps all the ‘drive’ for ebay right out of me. I’m just not a productive person in the dead of winter. We had our big freeze and some fun snow – TIME FOR SPRING!!!
My plan to ‘list in place’ this week was a success. I listed an entire rolling shelf cart and the top shelf on another cart. I was also able to list a bunch of items because on one of the cart shelves was a big bag of vintage hats. Hats are super easy to list and photograph quickly.
The weather this week will be better. As I write this on Monday, we will go from 2 degrees in the morning to 52 degrees by 3pm. Now that’s a crazy temp swing! Unfortunately there is a ton of rain in the forecast this week. Then the following week looks to be even better weather. I NEED good weather to get my workspace and inventory storage right and go on a big listing push.
So I really don’t know what I will accomplish this week due to the unpredictable rain. If it rains in the evening when I’m home from work probably not much. If I get clear weather from 4-7 any night I may get a ton accomplished. I’ll do some more “list in place” at least.
I had originally wanted to buy out the rest of the hoarder collection this month but I just don’t have the space. It ain’t going anywhere – might as well keep the capital in my bank account and use the “free” storage a few more months.
Premium Hoarder update:
Sold 5 items for $260. I negotiated on two different pairs of shoes but couldn’t get to an agreeable price. Both pairs I had priced $600 or more and both had the original receipts. I’m pretty precious on pricing with the pairs that have receipts. Both buyers wouldn’t go higher than $400 and I wanted to get to at least $500. Should I have taken both and collected $800? Maybe. I feel like the hoarder shoes sales will pick up in the spring so I will hold out. Nobody wants $600 shoes when there is snow/salt/ice everywhere!
Last week the forum ate my sale post and I just didn’t have the energy to redo it. I did copy the post prior to posting but for some reason it didn’t work! Grrr!
Here are some of my interesting sales this week:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266312072992
Denby England Blue Jetty Cereal Soup Bowl 7″
I sold the last 4 of these bowls to a customer for full price – $100. I still have plenty of this Denby stuff left and so far I’ve made over $800. Not bad for a $100 investment.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266298402119
Star Wars Lot Of Action Figure Accessories, Parts, Pieces, Stands and Weapons
I bought a millenium falcon at a yard sale which was full of figures and accessories. Sadly it was not the vintage one and it was in rough shape. I sold the falcon, did a some high level research to identify any valuable figures/accessories to list individually, and then just lotted up the junk. This is the junk. Took an offer of $20. Basically free money. Sorting/prioritizing a bulk buy is an art that all resellers should develop. It would be easy to get paralyzed by analysis when picking up something like this. Having a system allowed me to go through everything quickly and efficiently. Google image search is also an invaluable tool.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266530291992
Bulwark FR Jacket With Removable Vest Combo Removable Men’s Large
It’s worth keeping your eye out for Fire Resistant work clothing. I picked this jacket up for $8.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266534238700
Math-U-See PreCalculus w/ Trigonometry Full Set DVD Missing Pages See Desc
Our local library gave away a bunch of homeschool curriculum. My wife filled a bin, we kept anything we would use, and I listed the rest on ebay. Sold this for $45 and it was free.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/265017620284
Vintage Levis Silvertab Straight Relaxed Jeans Mens 36×32 Distressed Light Wash
I’ve sold many a pair of vintage silvertab jeans over the years. They always go for $50+. BOLO for sure.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266488701022
Cir-Kit Starter Dollhouse Tape Wiring Kit CK101 New Unused
I love finding dollhouse hobby stuff in the wild. I bought this for $1 at a yard sale. Sold for full price $50.
I just made one trip to Goodwill this week. I only wanted $50+ items and didn’t expect to buy much. I mainly just want to brag on my wife. She shops the women’s section for me (and of course herself!) while I do the rest of the store. She brought me multiple women’s dresses (Some NWT) that sell for over $50- a couple are $100+!
She doesn’t want anything to do with listing/photographing or pretty much any other aspect of the business, and she has no desire to develop her “search-fu” researching items. She provides an invaluable resource developing her eye for good items in the women’s section and hard goods.
Now if I can just get her to watch Hairy Tornado on youtube so she can see how much fun that couple have working together I think I could get her more involved. If you don’t watch them, Josh started the business out of his garage. His wife slowly started doing more, quit her job to help full time and now they have a massively successful business where they have an amazing partnership with her being his equal in the business.
I don’t think I’ll ever convince her that spreadsheets are fun though. I think that one will always stick with me.
My best joke to tell on a rough day (I’ve had several already this year) is “ah well at least I can go sell used women’s shoes if we get shut down”.
A couple weeks ago a newer person in another building asked me if I lost a shoe in the parking lot. They said “it’s a woman’s shoe but someone said it might be yours.” With a completely straight face and no additional explanation I responded “well if someone here is going to have a random woman’s shoe fall out of their van it would be me”. And it was one of mine.
LOL!Nerd fact of the day: a smelter refines ore to extract metals such as iron.
In a foundry I use an electric furnace to melt iron and other alloying elements like silicon, carbon, manganese, chrome, & nickel to make iron alloys and pour into molds to make pump parts.Unfortunately you are SOL unless the buyer has some basic ethics at this point. I had a similar case during the great USPS Covid cluster when they had millions of undelivered packages at Christmastime. I gave a good faith refund to a customer and he made a good faith promise to return the item or repay me if it ever showed up. Item showed up and buyer ghosted me. Nothing I could do.
I’ve had other cases where I mixed up labels/packages. In that case I had good buyers that had good communications and basic ethics. I sent each of them a label and they each mailed the correct item to the other buyer. Easy Peasy.
In the future if this happens just do a return. They can re-purchase once you get the item back a close the return (they won’t re-purchase).
