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05/22/2019 at 1:50 pm in reply to: Don't you love when thrift shops tell you what you can do with your own items? #62265
It is definitely counter-intuitive. One of my local Goodwills used to be this way. The main lady was hateful and despised resellers. She felt like they were basically stealing! I’d engage her in conversation and blow holes in her closed minded ideas. It was fun.
Then one day I checked out and her demeanor had changed because the reality lightbulb had finally turned on for her – resellers spend a TON of money there! She thanked me and said “I was hoping you’d come in today. You always help me meet the sales quota for the day”.
Why wouldn’t you want resellers? Most of them don’t complain, pay the sticker price if it makes sense, and are polite. I get to know all the people at my local stores.
I return my carts after I unload in the car. I remove all the hangers and even put them back on the hanger rack for them. I prefold and sort all the clothes so they can easily handle them. I’m a model customer.
There are perks to being a polite, helpful, and “spendy” customer too!
There is high turnover, but occasionally I get an employee that will hook me up.– I’ve had one store hold back huge box of high end mens shoes that were all size 16 and up. They knew I’d take them all and they wouldn’t have to take up valuable shelf space with them.
– Another store they will go in the back and quickly price things they know I would be interested so they can get them out for me to buy.
– Another store the e-commerce manager will pull out a bunch of clothing racks for me to look through.I have started accepting more and more initial offers. If they are at least “in the ballpark” I have been accepting unless I know the item has a high probability to sell for more. For many of these items it may have been the first offer in over a year of listing time. Am I really willing to risk losing a potential customer and wait another year?
I have more stuff than I can list and can acquire an exponentially larger amount if I so desire, so I’d like to keep the sales velocity going if at all possible. to clear up storage space.
Scavenging is definitely therapy. The excitment of finding a rare item. The thrill of a great deal. The accomplishment of scoring a big haul. I’d do it all the time if I could get away with it.
Scavenging is great therapy…too great sometimes.
I’ve throttled way back on my scavenging. I used to go to multiple thrifts during the week. Now I maybe do one a week. In April I did none. I do 1-2 hours of yard sales most Saturdays – just a trip down the main drag. No marathon days from 7am-1pm, which would be pretty easy to do around here.
All that therapy led me to having a giant backlog. That would have been fine if my day job would have ended as I expected, but it didn’t. It would also be fine if I had time to list it all, but I don’t. I make WAY too much money for way too little work to walk away from my day job.
I’m slowly chipping away at the backlog and also keeping up with the new stuff coming in.
I’m slowly but surely finding the balance that works for me. I’m committing to myself to list the new stuff I get as soon as possible, and then do some of the backlog before buying more stuff. I commit myself to sticking to higher dollar items and only get $25 and under items when they are a quick flip and easy to list.
I don’t want to completely quit scavenging because I want the tax write offs associated with it and there are always excellent things out there that I’d kick myself for missing out on – like the brand new high end DVD recorder I got yesterday that will be a quick $100 profit). I considered skipping that scavenging trip but did it anyways so I could claim the 45 mile round trip as business travel. It paid off.
Items in Store 1129
Items Sold 26
Total Sales $745.00
COGS $55.00
Total Profit $690.00
Average profit $26.54
Average sales price $28.65
New Listings 36Not much to report on this week. Just listing and shipping. I did some organizing on Saturday and it PAINED me to go through some of my unlisted inventory. Things that I know will sell for over $100 just sitting there unlisted. I had to stick to my guns on priorities though – I already had 65 listings ready for photos. That lot of imaginext stuff though is soooo totally getting listed once I finish my photo backlog. I also had a house project I finally finished, much to the happiness of my very patient wife. Lastly, it was 90+ degrees and I actually had my pool up and ready before memorial day for once! Pool time is good time. 🙂
Have a great week everyone!
05/17/2019 at 7:41 am in reply to: Ebay late shipment and tracking uploaded Metrics – Evergreen or once a month? #62040Yep, that’s it. Mine hasn’t updated since 4/30. Super irritating as I have been shipping on-time all month and I should have had 8 late shipments fall off from last may.
05/16/2019 at 4:09 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Ferrari drawing, Bread drawer liner, Navy trucker hat, Old perfume, Lamps, 70’s Panasonic Stereo #62021I also have a drawer in my kitchen with one of those. Maybe I should yank it out and sell it!
9 times out of 10, these people never actually pay in my experience.
As stated in Goodfellas…
“Got a sob story? F*** You, Pay me.”
05/15/2019 at 8:32 am in reply to: be careful not to default on pwc loan with ebay managed payments #61942Yes I got something in the mail from ebay about the square capital loan program.
I didn’t really read it as I get a much better deal for a personal loan from my local credit union.
Oooohh, Legos is a rabbit hole that you really have to explore to see how far down you want to go.
A couple pointers:
– Complete minifigures can sell GREAT separately, especially if you can identify the set they went to.
– custom parts have part numbers on them. Research the part numbers and sell separately for good cash. Boat hulls, things like that do great.
– Look through the bins for a weird bottle opener shaped orange handle thing. That is the tool that easily lets you separate bricks. I learned what these are AFTER I had separated alot of bricks by hand. Doh!
– Lot up Star wars pieces. These are the gray and black pieces.
– Sort your pieces to remove Megabloks and other generic bricks. Customers DO NOT like getting the off-brand bricks. At. All. If you do sort out the off-brand, mention that in your listing. If you don’t, also mention that they may be there.How to lot:
EASY: Create 1 lb ( or whatever weight you want) random lots and list individually. Photograph each lot so buyers know exactly what is in them. No sorting necessary.
HARD: Sort bricks by type: Flat pieces, 2×2’s, 4×4’s, 4×6’s, 1×2’s, technic pieces, smooth top pieces, graphic pieces. Bonus points for separating by color. Then sell by the pound or as a large lot for each sorted type.Like I said, you can go down this rabbit hole as far as you want – even so far as selling it brick by brick.
I have a pair of shorts listed. Description says “See pictures for details & condition”. I have 7 photos that include close ups. I also have dimensions in the listing and describe the rubbery waist band liner thing these golf shorts have to help them stay up.
This morning I got a message that says this:
“There are no comments on the condition of the shorts. We need more information”.So after reviewing my listing I sent this reply:
“If the pictures are not enough information for you, then this item is probably not for you. ”Definitely set off my red flags.
No!!!
Then people will start posting political crap. Then people will get offended fight and leave. New users will show up who spend all their time there and don’t contribute anything of value anywhere else in the forum. Then it will bleed over into the rest of the forum. Then a sub forum just for political crap will be created to try and fix things. Then J&R will start wondering if this place is really worth their time….So, no. Absolutely not. EH EH! Nein! Nay! No Dice! However you want to say it, we don’t need it. It’s not a good thing.
Items in Store 1119
Items Sold 23
Total Sales $617.60
COGS $57.00
Total Profit $560.60
Average profit $24.37
Average sales price $26.85
New Listings 1The make offer in app thing was very successful for me this week. I made 6 sales in my first wave of offers, and two yesterday in a smaller wave of offers. I only had one new listing, but I have completed 60 other listings except for photos. I intended to do all the photos this weekend but my wife got very sick and I instead took care of her and the kids. Poor thing had a 102-103 fever all weekend!
Hopefully things will get back to normal sometime this week.
Back when I was a poor fresh out of college newlywed, I drove a 1994 Volvo 850 Turbo that I bought for $800.
I had a local shop that I used for more indepth repairs on my cars over the years. They would let me bring in my own parts.
For the Volvo, I would research the issue, buy my parts from Rock-auto (cheap). I would also print out a repair guide from brickboard.com and hand them the guide along with the parts. That kept my repair costs WAY down.
That was an awesome car – very luxurious. An old man who could not hear ran over the front of my car in a gas station parking lot – backed up right up and over me. Lol! I got $3500 from insurance for the car. Worked out great!
Well I should have known.
We agreed on a price for two lots and I was coming to look at a bunch of other lots. Agreed on meet and address was given to me for the estate it was all located at. I was bringing plenty o’ cash. All the sudden I see one of the lots I was getting was marked ‘sold’. I messaged him to ask whats up. He says
“I got an offer of $85 on that one. I still have the other lot”. I knew who I was dealing with…and I still gave it a shot. Shame on me.Douchebags never change.
I responded with ” Enjoy your $85 and your complete lack of integrity.” and blocked him.
Oh well. There’s always more stuff.
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