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When the switch started, I got two of those instant pay offers in one day. I haven’t seen another one since so it must have hit some snag.
I didn’t really shop this week but my mother-in-law gave me a near complete set of value tales books.
I had these books as a kid – they were awesome.
I’ve also sold a set before on ebay I picked up at goodwill.
If you’ve never seen these books, give them a quick search on ebay. They are a BOLO for sure.
Well that’s not exactly what he said. 😉
Good deal. I also pick up NWT qvc stuff. I sold a quacker factory skirt last month NWT.
I also tried out Whatnot for the first time last week. I partook in an auction done by a fairly prominent youtube video game reseller. It was shocking how much people were overbidding on things! Contrary to what I expected with the sheer volume of items being sold and the limited amount of people (<1000) in attendance, I thought for sure some deals would pop up. Nope pretty much every single item went for OVER ebay trending prices. I felt like I was in bizarro land!
I was mainly there to see how things work on the platform and to enter the giveaways (they had ALOT of giveaways). I ended up buying 3 things. One I got below ebay prices, but sweeter deal because of the $10 referral credit. The other was an ok deal for something I wanted personally (full ebay price, but free shipping), and the last was a lot I was getting for resale. That one ended up being very misrepresented.
I started a item not as described claim with whatnot and contacted the seller. They responded very professionally and offered a full refund return, so we’re good.
I’ll say this, the youtube resellers with their built in audiences and their pseudo celebrity status are making BANK on whatnot. It is basically a dream scenario for them.
For people like me and you that would have to build an audience organically, not so much. If I do whatnot again I’ll have to find an auction that isn’t filled with people bidding on the experience more than the actual item.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/265772704932
One for the shipping nerds here. Takes more effort to ship but once you’re at the level where you can ship things like this regularly it is not really that hard. I also do love the empty space items like this create in inventory storage when they sell – very satisfying!
Items in Store 2109
Items Sold 20
Total Sales $732.00
COGS $87.00
Total Profit $645.00
Average profit $32.25
Average sales price $36.60
New Listings 0
Items scavenged 2
Listing 2022 weekly Avg 44Another week goes by, another week with no listing. I have a couple issues, my ebay workspace is a DISASTER (not conducive to listing), and my weekends keep getting hijacked. I’m just scraping by doing the bare minimum shipping.
This weekend I planned on installing a new hot water heater and expansion tank Sunday morning. Yeah… that turned into a 2 day affair with a plumber involved. On the bright side, I now know why I’ve had so much trouble with water based fixtures and appliances over the years – my water pressure was 100+psi. The other issue I brought him in for was a plumbing crossover issue I was having (cold water on hot water side even though everything is closed.) I explained why I thought it was one of the shower cartridges. He said he had never seen that and it would be pretty much impossible. He also chastised me for “learning things on the internet”… so I banished him to the crawl space to do the work I didn’t want to do and left the crossover and hot water heater for myself. I had the plumber install a PRV and expansion tank as well as replace the exterior frost free hose bib that has been broken for a couple years.
after he left I replaced the shower cartridge I suspected of being the issue. He said it would be very difficult and take 1-2 hours. I did it in less than 10 minutes. I was also right – the design DID allow crossover if an o-ring goes bad. Replacing the cartridge fixed the crossover issue – no more cold water on the hot side.
i’ve Messed with paper packing in the past in crumpled and shredded forms. In my experience it was only really good as void fill for light items and the weight addition. It Could swing things a few ounces to the point that paying for bubble wrap was cheaper.
i’ve also never double boxed a single item. If packed well it isn’t really necessary for 99.9% of items. Just a waist of money on an extra box and oversize shipping charges.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/265787325539
I’ve sold this same style item once before so when I saw this one I knew how good it was. I bought it in a large lot of photography equipment for $150. This one item put me in the profit and I have more items from that lot listed for over $500 along with other items still not listed.
When I listed this it only had one light stand in the case. I just plowed ahead and listed anyways. After the sale the buyer asked if I happened to have the second stand. After thinking about it for a second I remembered there was a basket full of odds n ends with the original lot that I still haven’t went through. I checked and sure enough the second stand was in there. I threw it in for the buyer and he was ecstatic.
I stopped by the local library today as they just started their book sale. They had a TON of vintage EU Star Wars novels in paperback and hardcover. I bought them all. Many of them I had as teen as I was a big Star wars nerd. How big? Lets just say I spent time in AOL Star Wars Chat rooms and regularly participated in ‘raids’ to Star Trek Chats to proclaim our superiority. Ahh, 90’s internet was awesome…
Anyways! I sold ALL of my star wars books around 2010 in a yard sale for pennies. Ouch…
Anyways, I’m not sure of the value of everything yet, but at 50 cents to $1 a book it was a no brainer even if I just re-read them myself. I figure $300-400 profit with no research at all and should have a quick STR.
Items in Store 2126
Items Sold 24
Total Sales $834.00
COGS $140.00
Total Profit $694.00
Average profit $28.92
Average sales price $34.75
New Listings 5
Items scavenged 55
Listing 2022 weekly Avg 45Man I had the post vacation blues this week. Day job was demanding, took a while to get caught up on shipping, lots of family stuff and home chores to do. Then this weekend I had the joy of dealing with kidney stones. Needless to say, listing did not happen!
I did do some retail arbitrage at Walmart. They are doing heavy remodeling and set up a temporary clearance section in the middle of the store. I got lots of great end of season lawn/garden stuff. I’ll either lot it up or do some multi quantity promotions like on my markers to help them move quicker.
I also had a fascinating conversation with a supervisor there. I figured they were going to go 100% self checkout like the walmart 10 miles down the road. To the contrary the new checkout system is 2 banks of self checkout on the ends and then even more regular checkouts than they had before in between. They even actually had alot of the regular checkouts manned with cashiers!
I told the supervisor my surprise that they didn’t go to 100% self checkout. She said that after the store 10 miles away did that, their own store’s business increased over 10%. Apparently they’ve gotten the message loud and clear that a large portion of customers don’t like self checkout and will go way out of their way to another wal-mart (or other retailer) to not use it.
I went to a house auction like that once. It was definitely bizarre! They were auctioning things like a single broken plastic clothes hamper.
and people were actually bidding on it!!!
No rotation, no cash.
If you just want cash then Chase ultimate rewards is probably your best bet.
So 3x points if you use the paypal credit card hack on ebay. 6x points on pirateship.
Even if you don’t deduct meals or gas directly, you do get 6x points at restaurants and gas stations as well.
And Jay, Hampton inns are nice but embassy has a way better breakfast (cooked to order omlettes), all suites rooms, and free drinks/snacks in the evening. Try one of those out sometime.
If you look at the point value for dollar spent, there are some cards that give better value than hilton honors – chase rewards being one of them.
Take that trip to myrtle beach I took – for 5 nights I paid 267000 points. It was a holiday weekend, that same stay would have cost about $2500 if I paid cash. The math comes out to around 4.6 cents per real dollar spent if I earned every point with the 6x points option, but realistically I’m at about 3.5 cents per dollar on my hotel stays.
I have a chase rewards card that gives me 5x points on gas purchases and if I directly convert those points to cash it is 5 cents on the dollar. I only get 1 cent per dollar on shipping if I use that card for shipping though.
Once you add in the free rewards nights I get each year and the diamond status, all the little perks start to add up. Plus, I just like being able to never pay for hotels.
The other big benefit to us using this card with the 6x shipping points is that the money spent on shipping is FREE money to earn points with! It’s not the same as spending money on gas or cost of goods. With the way I cleverly use my shipping discounts and how I switch USPS to Fedex depending on the buyers location, I tend to make money on shipping after FVF every year.
I spend 8-10k on shipping every year.
If you only use this card for shipping and nothing else, you could still rack up multiple free nights every year easily.
