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Week of 11/18-11/24
Items in Store: 3012
Items Sold: 40
Total Sales: $1,773.00
COGS: $339.00
Total Profit: $1,434.00
Average profit: $35.85
Average sales price: $44.33
New Listings: 3
Items scavenged: 8
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 36
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,609.23
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 35
2024 ASP $46.26
2024 projected total sales $83,680.17More of the same – lots of shipping, not alot of listing. I’m writing this in December so honestly I don’t remember much from this week. I did mount some remote control puck lights in my inventory shed. They work awesome and light up the shed real nice….until they all fell down. That double sided tape does not work well in the cold. I’ll have to glue the base plates down where I want them at some point. Oh well, back to working via cell phone flashlight and/or a headlamp.
Premium Hoarder update:
Sold 15 items for $1068.
I sold alot of Ralph Lauren sweat pants this week. Not cheap ones either – $75+ each!. One person bought 2 pair for $180 shipped.
Week of 11/11-11/17
Items in store: 3046
Items Sold: 31
Total Sales: $1,814.00
COGS: $276.00
Total Profit: $1,538.00
Average profit: $49.61
Average sales price: $58.52
New Listings: 5
Items scavenged: 3
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 36
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,605.67
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 35
2024 ASP $46.31
2024 projected total sales $83,495.04I spent alot of time shipping this week. Then I spent alot of time relaxing this week. I’m working extra hard at my day job right now and I’m finding myself mentally drained, which combined with the time change it’s just all a mess! Due to the work I did this year R&D’ing a new process corporate management gave me $750k to implement to full project effective immediately last week. I was able to make a fully functional low production version of the process for less than $10k that was putting out production parts that were of superior quality to our current process, cutting an astounding 80% from the normal cleaning/processing time. So me and another engineer (grammar be damned, this project was my baby so I come first!) are designing the full process and buying the “big boy” equipment. I’m genuinely having fun most days at my day job.
Our baby is 4 months old now and he’s changing from “just lay there and sleep” baby to “ENTERTAIN ME NOW, PEASANT!” baby. Not a bad thing at all – I have a little 80’s music dance party every evening with him while momma does her stuff. It’s just less time for ebay. I’m thankful for my 3k item store so I can weather a listing drought and still have great sales.
I’m thinking that getting my kids to do listings just is never going to happen at any reasonable level of consistency or scale. I got 5 listings out of them this week. They did fine on them and took about an hour. Should have took them about 20 minutes since they were tag-teaming. I paid them $2 an item and told them if they could start doing it more often and more independently I would give them bonuses at certain levels. For example, it they could knock out 100 items in a week (very do-able at 10 items an hour) I’d give them a $50 bonus. That’s $250 for 10 hours or less of work!
Premium Hoarder update:
Sold 11 items for $1329.
I have a Louis Vuitton Bag/Wallet thing that went to an Authenticator from this collection this week. It passed. I have another potential buyer who had reservations about a pair of expensive sunglasses. I sent him a copy of the passed authentication of this item in hopes of securing another high end sale as ebay doesn’t put sunglasses through the authentication program yet. No dice – never heard from him so clearly just a tire kicker. The best part of selling this high end stuff is that 99.9% of the buyers know their stuff, recognize they’re getting a deal or an amazing hard to find item. They pay, the leave great feedback and are zero issues. I’ve had multiple return buyers as well. It seems any problems I have are typically $10 and under items.
There is an independent thrift near me that puts 100% of proceeds to animal shelters and fostering. Ran by some older women, 100% volunteer ran, and is cash/check only. It used to be a great place to shop but a few years ago they went all in on ebay pricing. They even put the “Goes for $X on ebay” on all their price tags. Ugh…
I only stop by there once or twice at most a year now. Independent and little old ladies doesn’t always add up to deals.
LOL! Once upon a time programs were just meant to be throwaway pamphlets to let you know who the players were and have a few advertisements to pay for the printing cost. Nowadays they are sold as “SUPER DUPER SPECIAL LIMITED EDITION COLLECTIBLE” programs. Sold, being the key word.
Galaxy CDS was a no-go. Dude was very grating and too much like a radio DJ.
Pure hustle was ok. I’ll listen to a few more. I think I listened to them years ago and they were heavy into Amazon FBA. They seem be mainly ebay now.
We haven’t got there yet on prices at the local stores, but prices have been climbing and inventory has been getting crappier every year.
Currently regular pants are $4.29, jeans are $8.69, regular shirts/t-shirts are $4.29. Coats & jackets are an ABSURD $13.69. Shoes prices used to be a set price of $4.99 for adult shoes but now they price individually but still generally vary from $3.99 to $7.99. They try to price up the ones they think are higher end – they’re wrong alot and it keeps me entertained.
At Goodwill I don’t even consider clothing now unless the STR is good and the sales price is $25+.
Thrift stores are still good sourcing opportunities, but you’ll have to find the decent stores and be willing/able to source in any department (you aren’t going to find sports cards or memorabilia there). For instance I go to Columbus multiple times every year for fun and sourcing. There are ALOT of thrift stores there. Some of them have the crazy prices you see and I can’t believe people shop there. Believe it or not, the Goodwills are the most reasonable stores – some more than others. Most of them still have generic pricing on clothing & shoes and reasonable pricing on everything else.
I’ll have to check out the galaxy CDS and Pure hustle podcasts on my commute. They look promising.
This month I did start listening to Trash to Cash podcast since I found it on apple podcasts. Dave NC Picker is a pretty terrible reseller and I definitely have watched his youtube stuff in the past to feel better about my abilities. LOL! Then he went full time and dag gone it, if he can do it then I could DEFINITELY do it if I wanted to! Their podcast is…fine… for casual listening that is reselling related. Similar to mindlessly eating cheetos while watching tv. Alot of hot hair that doesn’t really satisfy. There is a general charm to their banter though – just guys hanging out and chatting about ebay and other stuff. In a way it reminds me a bit of how it felt to listen to the Scavengerlife podcast and that gives the show bonus points!
One of my fav youtube reseller channels:
https://www.youtube.com/@catrpcrew
You would most likely not like them. Chase is legit though – he knows what he’s doing as a reseller and I regularly find myself inspired by their crew channel where they get into the nitty gritty of how they do things. They are constantly seeking more efficiency in their space and processes. The 2023 $10 challenge was alot of fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l17hu3z_UNs&list=PLHlBTEO7H84j9r56hKNi8oL2mFU2xJWU4&index=1
Now they are all about Whatnot. And hey I can’t blame them! I also look forward to the episode where their amazon gets shut down and Whatnot crashes/burns. It will be very interesting to see how they pivot/adapt. And no, I won’t join your discord!https://www.youtube.com/@technsports
This guy was the brains/silent partner behind the scheister 10konthebay/daily refinement. After Daily refinement got banned on ebay, technsports kicked him to the curb and started putting his own content on ebay. His weekly video calls are great to listen to where he just does Q&A. He is a walking encyclopedia of clothing knowledge. I listen to this while at work when I need to do alot of data entry.Justinresells has some excellent content. He’s quite bland to listen to though.
My wife wanted to go to goodwill so I made my rounds. I only go 2-3 times a month now to goodwill.
This time was worth it though!I got a couple nice pairs of shoes, a pair of Ralph Lauren selvedge denim jeans, a pair of vintage Lee Riveted corduroy pants.
the home run though was a set of Jeep tail lights. They were in an aftermarket box and I have no idea why someone would swap these out as the OEM ones are awesome. I paid $50 for the pair and these are like new off a 2023 model. They sell for $300-400 EACH!!!
here’s a comp:
Someday, ebay will add a few tools to help sellers do bookkeeping. All the really need to do is add 1-2 more custom SKU’s. If I could put my COGS in an SKU separate from my location SKU that would be sweet!
Oh I left out one interesting item.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266687586034
LL Bean Tweed Wool Tweed Pea Coat Green Womens Size S Petite Wrapped Buttons
Yeah the item and sales price are great, but what makes this interesting is why it possibly sold.
Yesterday I did some inventory management – I moved a bunch of items to a numbered bin in storage. This coat I changed the Custom SKU, as I do with all these items. A bunch of these items showed up in my send offers to buyers yesterday and this one sold for full price.
Clearly the mere activity of revising the listing with a SKU caused some form of visibility bump to these items in ebay search.
Not alot of scavenging for me right now. I did stop by an estate sale at a real nice house on the way home from an event. Their prices on hard goods were laughable – $200 for a lamp that had a $14.99 TJ Max sticker still on the bottom. LOL!
I did buy two items though – a Christian Dior Women’s blouse and an old instamatic camera still in the original box. Both items worth about $40 each and I paid $2 each.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266824190799
SEGA GENESIS Controller – Standard 3 Trigger USB Brand New MK-16500
I got this at a yard sale for $1. Nice!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266328716359
Vintage Ralph Lauren Polo Chino Pleated Pants Trousers 36 X 32 USA MADE
This is why I love Polo Ralph Lauren. These are NOT a premium hoarder item. I got them at Goodwill. Sold on offer for $50. Always look for Ralph Lauren. The Treasure to junk ratio is quite good on this brand and there are plenty of unicorns out there in this brand as well.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/267045960204
Oakley Radar Pace Prizm Lens Sunglasses Bluetooth Connect Missing 1 Earpiece
This was from the recent lot of hoarder sunglasses I got. Sadly one of the earpieces was missing and I missed it…or I dropped it when I went through the contents. Either way, it impacted the sales price pretty hard – sold on offer for $100.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266932022328
Manolo Blahnik Men’s Mario Blue Raffia Loafers Leather Trim UK 10 US 11
Another pair of shoes from the hoarder collection. If you look at the photos you’ll see this pair had the receipt – that played a big part in my pricing. If I didn’t have the receipt I would seriously question the authenticity. They’re cool shoes and all, but I’ve felt better made shoes in the Thom McCann selection at K-Mart back in the day!
Alot of these designer brands are just selling a name. Most of them just aren’t well made. Louis Vuitton stuff is pretty awesome though and some of the Gucci. High end Ralph Lauren is almost always better in quality across the board.
Sell less items for more money – that is a goal we should all be striving for!
Currently I just have a few:
- Roller Coaster Tycoon Pinball (My wife’s machine.)
- Slugfest Pinball (The “dream machine” I always wanted to own as a kid)
- Arcade shooting cabinet (It is a generic cabinet with a pull out drawer so I can swap out multiple arcade shooting game boards. I have Police Trainer, Sharpshooter, Area 51, and Maximum Force – all the best 90’s arcade shooters)
- Arcade1up Tron
I do still have a multicade cocktail Ms Pacman I’ve never finished. Someday I suppose!
At my old house (and with FAR fewer kids!) the entire basement and garage was a big arcade & entertainment space. I started collecting in 2006/07. I enclosed the garage at one point to make it a fully functional space. I had so many games that I kept an AutoCAD layout of my space so I could rearrange the games into the most efficient layout without actually moving anything if I got something new. At max capacity I had 6 pinballs and 24 video games. I kept everything full coin op and kept a tub of arcade tokens in the room to play with. I was constantly buying, fixing, and selling games. Before I did ebay reselling the way I do now, I did arcade reselling. Buy a broken game for $50, fix it and resell for $500+ depending on game. I’d buy parts lots and break up/resell the parts. I’d buy big lots of coin mechs, fix them or mod them and resell individually. I would even fix games for other people at my house or at their house/business and charge by the hour. I was “cheap” at $40 an hour. Seriously, that was cheap for a skilled arcade tech! So many games I wish I still had but money and space was finite so no single game or pinball stayed for too long.
Then eventually games got too sparse and expensive, and I had more and more kids so I just didn’t have the time or passion for it anymore. We rarely even turn the ones we have on. I keep the tron in the living room so the kids do play it somewhat regularly.
At the house we currently live in the most I had in the gameroom was 4 pinballs and 5 video games.
The real Tron and Paperboy I had I do wish I still had but…they are SUPER heavy and hard to move around. I also lived in constant fear that they would break – parts are SUPER expensive and in some cases unobtanium. I was also concerned that my kids would leave them on without me there and something would break in a way that caused a fire. I’ve always had a rule that the games can’t be on if I’m not there in case something goes wrong. These are after all very old commercial machines not meant for home use. It takes alot of specialized knowledge to fix and maintain them.
That’s the best aspect of the arcade1up machines or even a MAME machine – they are meant for home use. The Tron one is extremely nice and a very comparable experience to a real machine. I’ve played some of the other ones and they’re all well made.
Oh did I mention MAME? If you’ve never heard of MAME, you are in for a google treat!
Items in Store: 3068
Items Sold: 40
Total Sales: $1,430.00
COGS: $203.00
Total Profit: $1,227.00
Average profit: $30.68
Average sales price: $35.75
New Listings: 8
Items scavenged: 0
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 37
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,603.16
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 35
2024 ASP $46.10
2024 projected total sales $83,254.09It was a short week for me. I traveled for my day job Tuesday through Friday to Louisville KY. I always bring my family on business trips and it was …interesting to use the big new van in a bigger city downtown. I had time away turned on from Monday afternoon to Thursday afternoon and still had a tremendous amount of sales!
Well I didn’t expect ebay to take a backburner in Q4 but here we are. I’ve barely listed anything since the end of September. I have been away from home for 14 total days in Q4 so far and I may travel more at the holidays. That time away takes away all that listing time but it also effectively kills several more days of productivity catching up on shipping. And now we’re in the dreaded time change era so my sleep schedule and productivity is all messed up.
So that $90k goal – yeah that’s pretty much dead. $80k is still well within my grasp. If I end up at $81-82k in sales that is still $10k higher than last year which was a major step change in performance! As of this week I’ve already exceeded last years sales so I’m in the gravy no matter what!
So, I’m gonna get done what I can the rest of the year and not sweat things. If I can, I’ll get my two oldest kids listing clothes for me as that is time neutral for me. They are capable of doing 100% complete listings I just review and make live. I will be taking some time off from my day job around the holidays and I’d like to start organizing and prepping for a more ORGANIZED 2025. I don’t have any plans to bring in much new inventory – I’m far more interested in listing death piles and moving stuff out the door. I need to desperately contract my storage space to gain more functional space. Once I start to dread photographing, listing, or shipping because I’m tripping over things it’s time to clean and organize.
Premium Hoarder update:
Sold 4 items for $426.
I cancelled a pair of Gucci sandals I sold. When I listed them I thought to myself “these are rough but someone will want them. ” They sold for $100. Then when I pulled them to ship I thought ” eesh, no way am I shipping these out for $100. ” I didn’t think my photos well represented the actual condition. and I was concerned the footbed was dry rotted. The buyer was understanding and was fine with the cancel. I may wear them myself until they fall apart – rock me some Gucci baby!
