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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).
Items in Store: 2974
Items Sold: 33
Total Sales: $1,364.00
COGS: $180.00
Total Profit: $1,184.00
Average profit: $35.88
Average sales price: $41.33
New Listings: 35
Items scavenged: 40
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 38I didn’t do much this week ebay wise. My day job has been quite stressful as we’re having trouble with the foundry. I think I about have the issues figured out, but it has taken some time and we’ve lost alot of production time. When things don’t go as expected when melting steel at 2900F – no matter how minor – it is a bit alarming.
This weekend I was pretty much out of commission due to neck pain issues. I must have slept funny as I had headaches and couldn’t move my neck hardly all weekend. I’m better now thankfully.
Amid all that, I still got my shipping done and got some listings out. Now we have crap weather this week. I’ll keep on swimming and someday I’ll have all my mess cleaned up.
So my plan this week: List in place. I don’t really want to spend much time in my inventory shed due to the weather. I’m gonna get all my listed inventory currently in the garage office out to the shed whether it is in labeled bins or not. Then I’m going to shuffle around and list stuff inside my garage and keep it in the garage. My hope is to convert two carts of death pile stuff into 2 racks of listed stuff. Then that stuff can sell and I can keep feeding those two racks with more stuff from the garage. I gotta start somewhere!
In the meantime I’m going to adjust my scavenging to homeruns only. High STR AND $75+ items only.
Premium Hoarder update:
Sold 6 items for $520. Unfortunately I think a $175 shirt is coming back. The buyer wrote me and said they loved it but it was too big. We’ll see if they actually return it.
Oh wow, that is alot at once! I’ve brought mine in a van load at a time and just kind of dealt with it in my existing space. I had just made my work space super clean, neat, and organized the week before I unleashed that collection upon my space.
How long did you keep the pod? Is there a cost to that for you or the consigner?
It’s good that he is hands off. I’ve always been leery of consignment as I don’t want a 3rd party having any input in my business or hassling me. I get enough people not “staying in their lane” at my day job.
Here is the story I mentioned last week:
The socks were pre-covid – I think 2019. I cleared out a tent sale at Dick’s sporting goods. $2 a pair women’s smartwool. I bought somewhere between 250-300 pair. I listed most of them and sold every one of them back then. I mis-placed a giant tub of them somewhere in death pile mountain for several years ( sad, I know!). That tub turned up around 18 months ago and I listed the rest. They haven’t sold as quickly as the first batch. I’ve made several thousand dollars on this pipeline.
the markers I bought at Hobby Lobby on clearance around 2 years ago I think? I bought over 400 PrismaColor Art markers for $1.50 each. They retail for $7. My ASP has been $5.20 because I have two marketing plans to give a discount if buying multiples and free shipping if buying 4 or more. I’ve been surprised at how many single markers I’ve sold even with the discounts and possible free shipping. When I sell a single I get $6.99 and make an extra dollar on shipping with my discount. I only have about 40 left.
Items in Store: 2972
Items Sold: 43
Total Sales: $2,219.00
COGS: $266.00
Total Profit: $1,953.00
Average profit: $45.42
Average sales price: $51.60
New Listings: 40
Items scavenged: 0
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 40Starting the year off right! I hope to ride this $2k+ per week wave as long as I can. I’ve started on my numbers for the year – there is a deal on Turbotax right now if you use that. Home & Business was $75 on amazon.
I made one Goodwill trip this week but they didn’t have anything worth buying that fit my criteria. Their inventory is strangely depleted at this Goodwill and they are starting to reorganize shelves. I have a bad feeling they are going to do much more Purchased Goods. I’m not too sad I didn’t get anything. I only want the fast sales and high dollar stuff. The mileage trip still counts even if I don’t buy anything. Can’t find the big fish if you ain’t at the lake!
I’ve been listing heavily but haven’t been moving items to inventory at the same rate. The limited daylight and cold temps in winter always leads to me slacking on the inventory org side of the business. I was able to move a bunch of stuff to inventory this weekend, but I have a bunch more to go. I got a nice new headlamp for when I work at night out in the inventory shed. New Toys…I mean tools always motivate me to do work. LOL! I’m starting to run out of room again in the listed inventory shed so I’m going to have to do more intense reorganizing and efficientizing. Boo!!! The room is there, I just gotta put the work in to make it more available. It’s sooo much easier to do with nice weather during daylight so I can work outside as well. One way or another I have to get it done this week. I can’t wait until spring to get my work spaces cleaned up and organized.
Now that ebay has some pretty robust numbers tools, I like to do some numbers fun. We talk about pipelines around here. Two of my best pipelines are Art Markers and Smartwool Socks. I sell some of each every week. I was able to pull the numbers from ebay for last year on each of these pipelines. I sold 244 markers for $1265. I sold 67 pair of smartwool socks for $950. I LOVE these pipelines and will be sad when they are depleted. I’m sure something else will come along.
Premium Hoarder update:
Sold 9 items for $946. That brings my total items sold up to 247 and my ASP is up to $118.
In my store I currently have 479 more items listed for a list price of $64665. My current gross sales is $29k. If I apply my actual ASP price to the unsold listings I am looking at $85k in gross sales eventually. I have around $15k more in the stuff I haven’t listed yet, so my initial thoughts of $80-100k in sales is turning out to be accurate.
My total profit on the haul so far is $12750.
I took a $300 offer on a pair of shoes that I had listed for $500 at the end of the week just to insure I hit $2k sales for the week. I had these priced up anyways and the buyer market for these was likely limited. Might as well strike while the money is in-hand.
The good stuff always sells Columbia, Spyder, etc. Coats are very spotty just because there are soo many. Bib overalls have always sold good for me in pretty much any brand. When you see it just do some quick searches on the brand in terapeak so you can see the seasonality and STR if you are picking it up off-season.
This summer I picked up a vintage NWT kids snowbobile suit and a vintage men snowmobile suit for FREE at a yard sale. I couldn’t believe they were in a free pile. I saw nothing but huge dollar signs…that blinded me to the GIANT rips in both I saw once I got home. At least they were free!
I went to a Goodwill last week but didn’t buy anything. But I do have a scavenge worth noting.
So I picked up this interesting Sony headphone set a while back at Goodwill. Couldn’t find anything on it at the time but it was Sony, it was vintage, and the price was right.
Last week I finally got around to researching it a bit. There isn’t much info out there and there is ZERO sales history. I found the manual and realized I was missing a piece – the wireless transmitter. I was able to find the transmitter on ebay for $20. Yay!
I got it in and tested the system out – it works perfectly. So for pricing all I know is that it sold for $750 in 1994/95. It was a neat advancement in A/V, but was immediately made irrelevant with other rapidly happening developments.
So how does it work? Well like with most high end audiophile equipment, the effect is subtle to a non-audiophile such as myself. But if you listen a while with the virtual setting on and then turn the setting off it is jarring how much more natural the virtual audio sounds. Moving around with standard headphones on watching the tv felt very unnatural. Here’s the thing though – when watching a movie how often do you look away/turn away? Not much. It’s…kind of pointless. I get the feeling it was just an exercise that needed to be done to push technology forward – innovate just for innovations sakes and to show something off a tech show.
I believe I have the only complete unit for sale in the world. My hope is that somewhere there is a rabid Sony collector who has a search set for this item. I suspect that the buyer will be international. Yes, I priced it to the moon. The market (if there is one) will let me know what the going rate will be.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266608801620
Sony VIP-1000 with VIP-1000H Headphones Virtual Phones COMPLETE TMR-IF310
Check out this awesome mileage and expense tracking app, Everlance. https://link.everlance.com/LoQnhDXGcGb
everlance. I’ve used it for years. 60 bucks and it auto tracks Every trip I take in a car. Swipe left or right for work or personal. At the end of the year it spits out a number for me to put in my taxes.
it’s running all the time in the background on my phone, works great. I just open the app once a week and categorize everything.
