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So I listened to a few more Pure Hustle and they are our people.
I started with the newest and was going backwards. I made it 3-4 in and one of them reminisced about scavengerlife and how much they loved it. Then they acknowledged how when they started they were almost 100% Amazon FBA.
One of the guys homeschools his kids as well.
So I subscribed and went back to start in 2021 at episode 236 and will listen on from there.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266925936311
Mystery Science Theater 3000 MST3K Single-Stitch Shirt Size XL Crow
I picked this shirt up along with the Metallica shirts this summer for $1. I’ve now sold the 3 shirts that weren’t Metallica for $70-100 each. No bites at all on Metallica shirts, but I am priced to the moon. I’m gonna stand pat on price for those. These shirts can only go up in value over time.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266892006372
Playskool Duracell Flashlight Red Green Color Change Lenses Vintage 1986
Vintage toys will always have a place in my store, but they definitely aren’t the focal point anymore. Paid $1.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266824895899
Trapper Keeper Mead Original Binder Retro Portfolio Vintage Style SUNSET Pink
I make this my sale of the week beause I sold ALL of them finally. A buyer bought 6 of them about 6 weeks ago. They messaged me and asked if I could do the same deal on more. I said yes so they bought the last 17 of them. I crunched them numbers and after selling 51 of these, my total net profit was an amazing…….$90. LOL! When I went all in on these I was expecting to sell them for $20+ a pop. Then they just….sat. I’m so incredibly happy that they are gone off my shelf.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266288051865
Scentlok Cold Blooded Late Season Pants Mens Size 2XL Realtree Xtra 86221
Speaking of bad buys… WAAAAYYYY back pre-covid Dick’s sporting goods would have a huge tent sale every summer. One of these sales is where I got my very lucrative Smartwool socks from. Anyways, they had all this hunting gear on super clearance – 90% off. These were like $250 pants originally. Now I have sold the majority of the hunting gear I bought then and I’m well into profit, but these specific pants I can’t sell! This specific pair I sold for $70 free shipping. I have 3 pair left so I just went ahead and dropped the price to $79.99 to see if I can blow them out this month.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/267001452351
Definitive Technology ProMonitor 800 Bookshelf Speaker (Single, Black)
I picked up 4 of these speakers at a yard sale for $20 total. This sale is kind of a bummer because of the flawed “send offer” system on ebay. I sent an offer and the buyer accepted. I messaged them to say I’d honor the same price on the others, but it was too late – they had already bought the other 3 elsewhere. They thought they could only get one from me.Ebay needs to fix the send offers function so that the buyer could increase the quantity on multi quantity items.
Items in Store: 2987
Items Sold: 25
Total Sales: $1,091.00
COGS: $242.00
Total Profit: $849.00
Average profit: $33.96
Average sales price: $43.64
New Listings: 0
Items scavenged: 0
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 35
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,598.44
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 35
2024 ASP $46.22
2024 projected total sales $83,118.75I was off work from my day job last week so I was primed and ready to accomplish…nothing. That’s right folks, I did my bare minimum on shipping and just sat on my butt the rest of the week. Well not really – I did alot of non-ebay work. I did laundry…sooo….much….laundry. Lots of cooking, playing with kids, napping, and holiday crafts.
I tried again to get my oldest two to do some listing. I had created a workflow for them so that one of them could take measurements while the other made listings. I’ve always done measurements while creating the listing but it is more efficient to break it out if more than one person is involved in the process. I made a measurement template in Excel that would capture every measurement for a shirt, jacket, or pants on a roughly 2×3″ piece of paper. I set it up so a bunch could be on one sheet of paper and then cut up using a paper cutter. You fill out a measurement sheet and then tape it to the item. Then to show them it works I timed myself measuring and did 28 clothing items in just under 25 minutes.
My daughter then created 3 listings using the pre-measured items (over about an hour) and the bin was not touched again all week. Those 3 items weren’t even photographed. This just ain’t working for me. It’s bumming me out and affecting my own ability to be motivated.
I tried one last time yesterday. (I write my numbers on Monday morning in word and post whenever the blog post goes, so this paragraph is new). I explained why her help was important, and I gave her a specific deadline. The deadline passed, and only 3 new listings were made. I got a plethora of excuses. Today, a whole 3 more listings were done. So I’ve decided to no longer use my oldest child for ebay – guess I’ll be “firing” her when I get home. I’m going to keep using my second oldest for photos. He isn’t as capable, but he shows up and completes anything I ask him to do and is coachable. For a helper that is a far greater value to me than someone who has alot of potential but zero drive to actually perform at any reliable capacity (Oh my gosh she is a carbon copy of ME at that age!!!! I must have been insufferable).
At the end of the day, this is not really a job for me. I have a passion for reselling/scavenging. It is my hobby, my fun time, my relaxation time, etc. I was putting too much effort into coaching up my kid and it was slowly killing my passion. I can’t let someone leach out my passion (even my own kid), because then I just won’t want to do this anymore. It sucks because this is such a great and useful skill to be able to make money and weather the seas of change as she becomes an adult. A scavenger reseller is resourceful and never without a way to make money. I want her to have this skill sooooo bad, but I have no control over where she puts her time/passion. Having teenagers is hard when you see the class 5 rapids of life they are heading for and they just won’t listen.
I think I’m calling it a year in regards to listing or organizing. I can’t get my older kids motivated to do ebay. It’s too cold out, and we still have plenty of holiday events coming up. It looks like I’ll end up around $82k in sales this year even if I don’t list anymore, which is amazing! This also will likely be the first year I’ve ever sold more items than I’ve listed (barring an unexpected listing blitz this month). I kinda like the thought of that as I do want to contract my inventory size eventually. A 3000-3500 item store is about where I want to stay as a part time seller.
(More new thoughts since I originally wrote this)
Since I made peace with firing my oldest kid, I’ve already started to get that spark to list back. I did some organizing in my van and got some draft listings done on my lunch. My brain is cooking up some new ways to be efficient as I adapt to our new normal of having 7 kids. So maybe I’m not so ready to write off this year. We’ll see!
Premium Hoarder update:
Sold 8 items for $446.
I crossed 600 total items sold and $65k in gross sales. Still plenty of stuff to list and sell. Sometime in 2025 I’ll cross $100k gross sales on this haul most likely.
The wheelchair was a combination of ebay research and online research for each part. There is quite a bit of sales data for most of the parts.
I’ve had a pair of $35 common (non-jordan) women’s nikes go through authentication. They are all over the place when it comes to Nike, but Nike is probably one of the most faked brands in the world.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266628886459
Red Man Select Tobacco Corduroy Snapback Hat Cap Redman Vintage
I bought 5 of these at an estate sale a few years ago. I’ve sold two of them so far. SLOOW mover.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266461515430
TEAC LP-R450 turntable recorder USB CD cassette tape Player FOR REPAIR SEE DESC
Oh what could have been on this one… I paid $50 for this, got it home, and the record player didn’t work. I replaced the cartridge and still no-go. Turns out the amp chip was no good. It wasn’t readily serviceable and the company would have charged me about $150 (plus shipping both ways) to repair it. So I sold it as-is and it FINALLY sold for $110 on offer.
If the record player would have worked this would have been a $400-500 player!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266362020270
Nike Air Jordan XI 11 Retro GS 378038-003 BG Space Jam 2016 Sz 5Y
My favorite Jordan. I’ve sold multiple pair of the space jam jordans over the years. These went through the authentication process. I paid $7 at Goodwill. They somehow missed these in their markups – I assume because they were kids size.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266462415292
PRIDE QUANTUM Power Wheelchair Actuator Control Module
Years ago I went bonkers and bought a used junky looking mobility scooter from Goodwill. It still blows my mind I somehow got this loaded into the back of my van by myself. I paid $100 for it with the intent to part it out. There were ALOT of parts. I haven’t kept track of how much I’ve made but I would venture a guess it’s close to $1k and I still have a couple parts left.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266945984445
MR POTATO HEAD NEW YORK JETS NFL SPORTS SPUDS Sealed New
Jets fans…bless their hearts! So committed, even buying toys during such an…eventful season!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266966410550
USA Leather USMC Marine Corps Black Leather Bomber Jacket Mens Sz XL
Paid $10 at Goodwill a few years ago. Such a cool jacket.
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.
