Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Twas a VERY rough week – worst in the history of my ebay business.
Still, this is a fun sale:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266197038755
Spectracide Bag A Bug Japanese Beetle Trap 16901 Lot of 3
I bought a whole bunch of these when my local walmart remodeled for $1 each. They have started selling since spring began. I debated about how to lot them up, and a lot of 3 made the most sense. It is a nice pipeline that I hope sells out this summer.
Well my best scavenge of the week is these books:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266277535403
Found them in a giant pallet book bin at a goodwill sitting on the top of pile in perfect like new condition. They should sell pretty quickly as the 90 day STR is over 200%
My garage is my office and some storage.
I have a 12×20 barn style shed for inventory storage.
I also have a 14’ enclosed trailer that I converted to a storage shed. The trailer is all unlisted inventory. The main shed is all listed inventory except for the lofts.The back area photo in that listing makes it look like a NASA clean room compared to what it was when I went through it. I was mainly looking at motors in a storage room back there, but nothing turned up with a good enough sales history to make it worth my while to get them.
I just remembered I did get a box of pins, but they were beat up badly. My wife wanted them, they sat around a long time, then I sold them on FBMP for $40.
I originally went to get a set of those sweet restaurant chairs with the leather arm rests. I couldn’t put together a nice enough set of 6 to go with our dining table unfortunately.
I have a vintage booth from another Huntington landmark in my gameroom I got about 10 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington_station_(Baltimore_and_Ohio_Railroad)
I couldn’t find a picture, but I wanted one of the booths that were in the restaurant for years. Lo and behold when they shut it down all contents were auctioned at an auctionhouse 5 minutes from my house. Heritage Station is an amazing old time facility that has been turned into quite the hip shopping center.
I spent many childhood days playing on those trains – so have my kids.
Items in Store 2009
Items Sold 14
Total Sales $839.00
COGS $113.00
Total Profit $726.00
Average profit $51.86
Average sales price $59.93
New Listings 2
Items scavenged 16
Listing 2023 weekly Avg 17I had some big sales this week that boosted my numbers. I had a great time hitting yard sales bright and early at 7:30. Definitely got some stuff I normally would have never seen – posted about in scavenge of the week thread. I think I may continue this trend of hitting some sales in my short loop before the family wakes up, come home to cook breakfast, then go hit the longer loop of my yard sale path with the fam once baseball is over.
I didn’t post many listings, but I did create plenty of drafts. I’ll have a nice draft bank to kick off my Summer listing extravaganza in June.
If it is a desirable brand and you are missing a piece, consider parting it out. You’ll likely make way more that way.
Speaking of haunted bowling alleys, this is a paranormal investigation of the place.
https://apris.weebly.com/colonial-lanes.html
The restaurant area was SUPER dark and creepy. Very run down. It blows my mind that this was THE place for prom dinners when I was in school in the 90’s.
Nothing was off limits when I was there. Everything was for sale. There were old locker rooms that were all busted up and still have stuff in them. I assume at some point some kids got in there and tore stuff up after it closed.
Other things I got that day – a pair of bowling shoes I sold for $150. Another receipt printer I sold for $100, and a pepsi letter sign from their concession window along with a big bin of those sign letters.
Here is the FB marketplace listing for the sign. I’ve never put it on ebay (though I should)
I had a couple real nice sales this week.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/265706322149
Affliction Blake Mens Jeans Size 31 R Black Premium Live Fast Distressed Biker
These aren’t the hot cake sellers they once more, but Men’s embellished jeans still sell pretty well. Women moved on to yoga pants…with pockets!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266240905611
Ten-Point HCA-20318 Stag Hard Crossbow Case
The last of my Field n Stream store closing Retail Arbitrage. My profit on this item was $100.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266145649173
Simac Il Gelataio Magnum Ice Cream Gelato Sorbet Maker TESTED
Well this was my favorite all time item to test the functionality! It was a sad day in my house when I took it back out to the photography table. Paid $7 at a thrift store. It is so easy to use. Flip on the compressor power for 5 mins, gather ingredients and dump them in, flip on paddle and come back 20 minutes later to perfect ice cream.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/265772710737
Smartwool Women’s Jovian Stripe Black SW0SW599 Merino Wool Socks Size M
These sock sales are so much more satisfying when someone buys in quantity. In this case the buyer bought 4 pair. Definitely my favorite all-in pipeline sourcing of all time – over 200 pair. Paid $2 a pair and sell for $20 a pair.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266047279108
Star TSP100 futurePRNT USB Receipt Printer Black TESTED with cables
I bought this at a bowling alley that was closing down for $2. That was a fun picking day. Getting to wonder through the seedy bowels of a run down bowling alley looking at all kinds of interesting stuff. It felt like I was in a horror movie most of the time.
On Saturday baseball games had a later start (and eventually rescheduled). I always up very early and my family wakes up very late, so I did something I haven’t done…pretty much ever – I did early bird yard sale-ing. I was the first shopper at several sales. Being the early bird does really get the best stuff it seems! The highlights:
- A stack of 1st party Wii and WiiU games for $5 each. Paid $80 and created the listings for $300. I also asked about consoles and left my number. They called me back yesterday and I got a complete in box WiiU for $30. The power of the ASK!
- A Buck Knife with case for $5. Unfortunately not really old so only about $50-60.
- Pair of Red Wing Steel Toe boots for $10 – will sell for $150.
- One of these complete in box: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=mr+christmas+stepping+mickey+&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&rt=nc
- I paid $5 for the mickey. Again, I was 1st shopper of the morning. Multiple people were ticked off they missed it as I was waiting to pay.
- And my favorite find of the morning – a tub of vintage Lego for $20!
- I LOVE finding cheap bulk lego at yard sales. Sure the money is nice, but I have a blast with my older kids sorting it, building complete sets, and lotting it up. I actually had fairly low expectations initially and was very pleasantly surprised. We spent all rainy day Saturday building and organizing legos. We put together multiple complete sets that sell for $50+ each. There were 3 complete spacemen and a helmet for the 4th. All together I have listings made for $250. The last listing will be the bulk leftovers that I will put on auction and will likely go for around $100 so $350 total.
Well it looks like it worked!
My scavenge of the week was one of these:
I was hoping to have mine live by now, but I haven’t had a chance to take photos yet. Mine is complete in the box, but the battery is dead.
There is a guy in my neighborhood that does 2-3 yardsales every season. I think he does some cleanouts here and there. Anyway, there were SLR camera boxes laying all over the place and I kept going through them to find they were empty. Just as I saw the camera bag another lady picked it up. I kept hovering around hoping she would put it back down. As I was hovering I saw the garmin box, took a quick peek, saw a bigger screened garmin and thought “looks like a trucker GPS – probably worth about $50”. I asked for a price expecting $30-50 as he was a bit too precious on some items – instead he said $5. I grabbed it up and kept hovering. Lady kept going through the dang bag FOREVER and never put it down so eventually I checked out and left.
Later that day before we left for Columbus I remembered the GPS and scanned the barcode out of curiosity. To say I was floored on what it really was is an understatement!
Items in Store 2017
Items Sold 17
Total Sales $345.00
COGS $52.00
Total Profit $293.00
Average profit $17.24
Average sales price $20.29
New Listings 0
Items scavenged 16
Listing 2023 weekly Avg 18We skipped town this weekend to Columbus and ‘may’ have skipped out on some baseball games. Oh well, my wife deserved some extra R&R for Mother’s day. Only went to one thrift while I was there and only got 2 things of no special note.
I did get to go to yard sales for the first time Saturday morning before we left. I was so excited I was literally shaking at the first sale once I found my first good item. Good times!
That first sale was a good one too. I bought one item (a slide rule) for $1 that I thought might be a $100 item (it wasn’t but a solid $30) and picked up another item as an afterthought for $5 that I thought might be $40-50 (it wasn’t – more like $500-800!!!) I’ll share more on the $800 item in the scavenge of the week post later this week. I want to get it listed live this evening first.
The yard sale experience is so fun and so rejuvenating! The negotiating, the pile building, the peek into another families life…it ‘s just on a another level.
Thrifting has really turned into a drag. The truly unique items just don’t make it to the floor anymore. Many items I would normally buy are overpriced, and the bread/butter clothing & shoes are just generally lower quality and MUCH higher priced now to the point they aren’t worth giving more than a high level glance. I mainly just do thrifting for the mileage deduction now, and the occasional higher dollar find. Even then it is just a “yay…another boring $50 item…” kind of feel most of the time.
Over the next 2 weeks I hope to find some time to start organizing my work and inventory spaces for ebay so I can hit the ground running in June with my listing.
After a few weeks of terrible sales and low ASP, I had two good/interesting sales this week.
Nike Cortez Basic Nylon Black White Size 10 2003 Shoes Sneakers
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266149996877
It isn’t just Jordan’s that can go for big money. I check these as best I can for authenticity. These are older and have many of the details of an authentic shoe.
Yu Yu Hakusho Ghost Files Anime DVD COMPLETE UNCUT Set 32 Discs Episodes 1-112
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266032175927
All that talk of anime DVD’s last week must have finally spurred a sale on this item. Thanks Craig! The only crappy part on this sale was that I had to pay $2 per disc, so $64 since there are so many. This pretty much clears out my anime DVD haul – I only have 3 listings left worth about $50. I’ve made about $400 profit on that haul.
This sale clears out a good bit of room too, a nice plus.
I picked up one of these at Goodwill New in box for $29.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/125322675643
Digging into the research shows that $350-400 will be what I get. That listing above shows up in Terapeak and he sold 5 of them for $361 each with the last one selling in January of this year. On amazon there are listings in the $400 range.
Items in Store 2032
Items Sold 13
Total Sales $476.00
COGS $104.00
Total Profit $372.00
Average profit $28.62
Average sales price $36.62
New Listings 0
Items scavenged 6
Listing 2023 weekly Avg 19I had two $100+ sales this week, so yay! Only a couple more weeks of baseball season and then I’m gonna hit ebay like a mad man. I’m so busy I can’t even really do yard sales right now which really sucks!
My goal is to list 1000 items this summer from June 1 to August 31st. That’s 77 items a week which is very achievable for me. I’m such an excel nerd that I’ve already modified my weekly numbers spreadsheet to track my summer weeks and auto update the number of listings & the weekly average needed to meet the goal as I input each week.
I plan to take a week of vacation each in September and October, and I will again stop listing for year Thanksgiving week like I’ve done the last 2 years. That leaves 9 working weeks for ebay this year in the fall. I will need to average 50 listings a week in those 9 weeks to hit 1800 new listings, which is just shy of the 1858 new listings I did last year.
I’ll close with a quote from my Toddlers favorite movie, Storks:
<b>Make a plan, stick to the plan, always deliver!</b>
Hmmm, I don’t know why the link isn’t working. I’ll try again. Here is just their store link to the photo boxes. You can click on an individual box to see the video.
