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https://www.ebay.com/itm/267101247399
Geometry Seeing Doing Understanding Third Edition Jacobs Set with DVDs
This is a new set that I bought for my oldest child’s Junior year curriculum. It was cheaper to buy the entire year set then just buy the individual subjects I needed. So I sold off the subjects that were extra, like this one.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/267131650675
Champion CT-475 Aviation Spark Plug Cleaner Tester
I took an offer of $550. I shot for the moon and I’m sure I could have got more, but that is a fair offer for this item in untested condition. Business is slow so it’s hard to turn down $550 on a $10 COGS item!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266925629934
Donkey Kong Country 3 Dixie’s Double Trouble SNES Cleaned Tested New Battery
Sold for full price. my cost was less than a $1 as this was part of a big lot of games and an NES I got for $20. I’d love to do more video game sales, but they are hard to come by – lots of competition for sourcing. That’s the beauty of sourcing old used shoes – nobody wants them!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266462712275
RAINBOW BRITE Dress Up Doll Hallmark 1983 RARE Vintage with Hair Piece
Sold on offer for $70. I picked up a bunch of vintage rainbow brite dolls at an independent thrift store I check 2-3 times a year. I just happened to be there on the perfect day at the exact perfect time. They were being put out just as I was finishing up shopping. This was one of those “scavenger spidey sense” adventures. I really only go to this store when that spidey sense goes off as it is a bit out of the way. I still the complete original line that I have listed as a lot. I’ve never got any action on it. I’ve never got any action on it though – just people who want me to part it out. either way, I’ve already made a ton on the couple dolls I have sold.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/267148666067
Ninja Crispi 3-in-1 Portable Glass Air Fryer Cooking System NEW
I picked up 2 of these on clearance at Walmart last week for $50 each. I’ve been wanting to get an air fryer again, but it had to be a PTFE free unit because we have a parrot. This one fit the bill. So naturally I bought both so I could sell the second one to recoup my cost. My only regret was that there was only 2 on the shelf. I would have bought more! It’s a great little compact air fryer. I love it.
I totally did that with my last dishwasher. Made several hundo. I still have a few shelf rollers in inventory that I sell for $10 a pop occasionally. Sold one last week.
I did a washer, dryer and a fridge as well.
I have another equipment dilemma I’ve been debating on the last week or two. I recently bought a lot of PlayStation two games and they all have minor scratches. More so than I normally have for items I sell. I also have a big stack of disc only games that are scratched up that have been sitting on shelf for a while.
I can get a disc cleaner that’s $200 That will do a very good job of cleaning all these discs up. Having clean discs can increase your STR and increase your sale price.
I honestly don’t buy a whole bunch of disc based games mainly because they’re hard to find. But this is a piece of equipment that I know I could recoup the investment fairly quickly just by cleaning up the discs. I have on hand.
Video games will never be a major component of my store. What do you all think? Worthwhile investment that’ll pay itself off quick and will be there when I need it, or just burn through the inventory I have as is to be done with it and move on.
Pretty rough week.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/267131652336
Dictaphone 2750 ExpressWriter Cassette Voice Processor Transcriber Tested
Sold for full price. I was going to list this for $50 untested, but the variable power supply I picked up for less than $20 let me fully test it. I fully tested this and one other oddball voltage item I didn’t have the adapter for that let me make an extra $60 in total. That investment paid off immediately!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/267009956748
RRL Ralph Lauren Drawstring Sweatpants Joggers Men’s 2XL Black Indigo Dye NWT
It was a rough week so I took an offer of $140 on these. That’s fine – I was on the high end anyways.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/267130539113
K2 Lil Kat BOA Snowboard Boots Kids 13 Black Pink Dial Snowboarding Girls Boys
Snowboard boots can be great sales but you have to be very picky to make sure it is a desirable boot. These had been sitting on a death shelf for over a year and I see them all the time. Not anymore! Now they are gone and put cash in my pocket.
I’m not a big dinnerware or pottery seller, but I’ll take another big lot of Denby again without hesitation. I’ve made a TON off of a big collection I got for $100 at a yard sale and I still have a few plates left. I’ve made over $1500 on that lot.
My testing showed 2% was pretty much worthless. I was at 3% across the board. 3% was also pretty much worthless when I compared it to 4% and 5%. I set up 3 campaigns at 3,4,5% and ran them a while. Then I swapped the 5% campaign to 3%, and the 3,4% campaigns to 5% then ran them a while. 5% was king when comparing the same campaign at different rates, so I switched all my items to 5%. I made a forum post discussing my results back in August.
So I’m at 5% on the items still promoted. 55 of 180 items sold in January were PL sales.
Sometime around October I just decided to start turning off promoted listings when I relisted items and I’ve never added anything new.
2% is the minimum now. I figure at some point it’ll go up to 3%. The recommendations for promoted listings percentages are outrageous.
i’ve done plenty of tests with promoted listings over the years. I know that removing them all is disastrous, that raising the minimum number will give you a temporary boost but it levels out. now that I know if I remove a couple here and there that my sales will not be affected.That is as long as I keep listing desirable and higher priced items. No amount of promoted listings will sell a crappy item. I honestly think that a lot of my promoted listing items sell promoted just because the person clicks on that link by random coincidence. I see the same thing when I buy items on Amazon. I’ll see an item and then I’ll see the same item 2 spots below. The top link is sponsored the bottom one is not. Both listings show up at the same search but conveniently the sponsored one is just one or two steps higher. That Amazon experience is really what pushed me to start phasing PL out.
Oh and I keep forgetting to mention this: I’m phasing out promoted listings. When I end/sell similar my oldest items, I turn off promoted listings. I’m also no longer adding anything new to PL.
Eventually I will be PL free and it (so far) has had no ill effects on my sales. It will be a slow process, but sometime in the next year I will be PL free. That may be the key – weaning off nice and slow through attrition and new listings – to keep the algorithm from killing my sales.Currently only 2184 of my near 3k items are promoted. That is quite a drop since I was at near 100% a couple months ago.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/267091216078
Polo Sport Ralph Lauren Adjustable Leather Strap Hat Green Flag Vintage
Sold another of the hats from the hoarder collection. I love the unexpected homeruns!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/267131646730
TiVo Roamio TCD846500 OTA (Antenna) or Cable 4 Tuners W/ Remotes No AC Adapter
Bought this at an estate sale for $1. I was soooo hoping it had a lifetime subscription – alas it does not. Still sold same day as I listed it. I tested it with a neat little universal power supply I got from amazon. If you do electronics, I highly suggest getting one of these:
That bad boy will let you test pretty much any DC voltage electronic just change the tip and dial in the voltage.
I also used it to test a dictaphone I was going to list untested. It used an unusual 19v ac adapter. I was able to test it and list it for $40 more than I planned to and it sold quickly.
Anyways, back to your regularly scheduled program…
https://www.ebay.com/itm/267113286577
THE BEATLES WHITE ALBUM 1978 Capital SWBO-101 with Photos WARPED RECORDSWhen I originally got this the records were perfect. Oooffff….brutal. This record had a great serial number too – I was going to be listing it high. Oh well – the buyer was ecstatic and left me glowing feedback and it was still an amazing profit off of the original purchase.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266891101400
Mad Catz Universal MC2 Steering Wheel Game Controller GameCube Playstation
I think I paid $5 at a yard sale this summer? Sold for full price.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266897958036
PACO LUI LAU Leather Croc Print Mens Loafers Shoes Size 11 US Spain 44 EU
Ah yeah, this is probably a 2016/17 listing. Back when I listed on an end table with a posterboard background and I had 75W daylight bulbs in the regular room lighting. One of my earliest shoe listings. Jay encouraged me to try shoes, and here I am many years later with almost 1000 active shoes listings!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/267102897469
PetSafe Wireless Fence Pet Containment System PIF-275 Collar RFA-443 Lot
Wireless pet fences are BOLO! Paid $20 at a yard sale. I have sold 5 or so of these over the years.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/267130540418
Ghostbusters Ghost Trap Lights & Sound Doors 2019 New in box
Sometimes a death pile pays off! I’ve had these sitting on a shelf for a few years. I bought 3 traps and 5 meters on clearance at walmart. I paid somewhere between $10-20 each for these when I got them. They were only going for $50 or so when I bought them, so I said I’d wait until Halloween time to list them…then missed it and said “next year”…then again. Well when I was cleaning up my shipping supply rack I decided the price was right and got them drafted and then finally photographed/listed a week ago. Sold for full price. See kids – procrastination pays!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266461524251
FORD MUSTANG 31” Stainless Steel Antenna Complete assembly with wiring
Sold for full price to a buyer overseas. Paid $3 at Goodwill.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/267136955996
Boys Carhartt Green Y06MOS Coat Hooded Full Zip Bomber Jacket Size Large L
Sold same day as listed on offer for $25. I was going to sell it for $50-60, but then I noticed the sleeve cuff damage. If an item is desirable enough, it really doesn’t matter if it is damaged. It will still sell!
What are your thoughts on the Paul Skenes 1:1 card? Did you buy any of the chrome update boxes?
Man I couldn’t imagine as a kid asking my parents for a $350 box of cards!!! I left the hobby in the late 90’s when they started selling “super ultra awesome sauce” packs of cards that were $7-10 per pack of only 4 cards and EVERY card was special in some way. I could afford $1 packs… what cards was becoming just….wasn’t for me.
Same for comics. I balked at the death of superman special black bag edition – it was $8. The comic stores were pushing it HARD – “You should buy a couple of them before they are gone! They’ll be worth THOUSANDS one day!” I just got the standard issue and read it many times. Looks like I was on the right side of history for that decision! My Brother in law has 20 copies! The day I got to show him how worthless they are was a GREAT day.
The series I REALLY wanted to read was Batman Knightfall but I couldn’t read the whole thing because speculators were buying them all up. I couldn’t get all the back issues because I wasn’t gonna pay $20-50 markup for a copy I literally just wanted to read! So I never got to read the first half of knightfall…maybe someday I’ll read a digital copy just for fun.
I have sorted out the game haul and have just started listing it. When I get a lot of games I will scan them with pricecharting app. Anything that I can list for $15+ shipping or greater I will list individually. Everything else I will lot up and sell for a price equal to $4-5 per game.
Surprisingly 20 of the 30 PS2 games were worthy of individual listing. The best game was $40 with the average around $18 each. The PSP has been tested and works great. It even had a game in it – a crappy one, but still a game! It sells for about $60.
The surprise gem of the lot was the metal carry case for the PSP. I figured it was worthless, but ended up being the BEST item – surprisingly desirable and sells for $50-60 like hotcakes!
List price for the whole lot is right at $600 – $250 better than I guesstimated when I agreed to buy it all.
I did go to Goodwill Saturday while waiting on a home viewing appointment (nice house, but won’t work for us). I had to make it a quick scan trip.
I got a Daytona 500 jacket like this one:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/395387446788
I also got a pair of vintage Florsheim beatle boots. I’ve sold a ton of these over the years – one of my favorite repeat shoe pickups.
Week of 1/13-1/19
Items in Store: 2956
Items Sold: 33
Total Sales: $1,866.00
COGS: $152.00
Total Profit: $1,714.00
Average profit: $51.94
Average sales price: $56.55
New Listings: 8
Items scavenged: 0
2025 weekly new listings Avg: 15
2025 avg gross weekly sales $1,824.33
2025 Avg weekly Items Sold 32
2025 ASP $57.61
2025 projected total sales $94,865.33I was helped out this week by some heavy sales – 3 sales over $200, and 6 sales between 100-200. I’m on pace to have my best January ever. I’m up 20% over last year, and last year was way up from my previous high January.
The weather is just absolutely brutal and has impacted my productivity. I had a comp day to burn at work last week so I took Thursday off to get some work done. I was able to get a decently safe path carved through the ice between my garage, shed, and van. Now my van is loaded with clothing to list during my lunch at work and I can (somewhat safely) move items back/forth between the 3 locations. This week is more rough weather though and everything is icy again.
I still need to do a ton of inventory management, but I can at least do some photography again. I’m trying to get 3-5 items photographed each morning before work while my van heats up.
Going through my clothing deathpile backlog is gonna be rough. There will be alot of low dollar or low STR items, as at one time if it was cheap and decent I bought it. BUT, it’s only rough while listing things. Once it sells it becomes a positive again. The nice thing is if I bite the bullet and list at $10 those items tend to sell quickly – like the $9.99 Lucky brand blouse I sold the other day. Now I’m INCREDIBLY picky on clothing purchases at thrift stores.
I’m looking to improve conditions in my inventory shed this year. I avoid that building during extreme hot/cold weather, thus my inventory control suffers more than HALF the year. I’m going to take a look this year at some form of permanent lighting and temp control. I don’t need that area to be 72 and sunny year round, but comfortable enough to not get frost bite or heat stroke during deep winter and summer and be able to pick inventory without a headlamp or my phone’s flashlight.
In other news, my oldest child turns 18 in just over 2 weeks. Alot of emotions…very surreal. She’s been a feisty know-it-all “when I’m 18 I’m hittin the road” teen, but reality is setting in and she’s mellowed out alot this year. She’s a great kid and I think she’ll do just fine. What she’ll do after she graduates? Who knows! I just know I’ll enjoy watching her figure it out one way or another with any encouraging (or sarcastic) advice needed along the way.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pure-hustle-podcast/id1399376631?i=1000534706896
Episode 257if you have a couple of minutes fire up this episode of Pure Hustle Podcast and fast forward to the 39 minute mark. This was the first episode after scavenger life podcast ended and they just have a really nice talk about scavengerlife. These guys were OG fans and based a lot of what they do off of Jay & Ryanne.
felt good to hear, especially since things are winding down here.
No thrifting this week but I saw a post on fbmp for ps2 games. I agreed to buy those and asked if she had anything else. I got 30 ps2 games, a psp, 4 gba games, a sega game gear game, and two carry cases for $80. The psp and one single game covers the $80. Everything else is gravy. I’ll list the games worth selling separate and lot up the sub $10 games.
I have a set path for yard sales and my route takes on average 2 hours. I’ve done early bird 7:30-9:30 and I’ve done late yard sales 10–12. I’ve had great success both ways.
I never travel to go to other areas for yard sales since my regular route has been so good.
Estate sales around here are terrible. It seems other regions have excellent estate sales.
