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I’m kinda curious as to what the toy is, as a collector myself 🙂 . Is this a 1980s or newer toy? Old space age tin toy?
My advice is unless it’s legit “classic” art, don’t show anything that could get you flagged. Chances are you’ll be “OK”, but getting hit with a takedown is a really bad feeling. I had a PlayB magazine life size puzzle from the 70s flagged and pulled down even though it was “tasteful” and no worse than what you’d see in a classical oil painting, and I even censored the pics. I had to wait months before relisting with just a pic of the outside box.
I find the trends in the clothing market on Ebay over the last 15 years or so to be fascinating. There was a time in the early 2000s where you could pick up pretty much any Ralph Lauren Polo shirt at goodwill and flip it quickly on Ebay for $30.
The same went for vintage or vintage style t-shirts around the time “That 70’s Show” was popular. You could clear out the T-shirt racks at a thrift store for a dollar or less each and sell them for $15-20+ a pop for stuff you couldn’t give away today.
I was a small time hobby seller back then and I can attest to the fact that pretty much anything you placed at auction would sell and for prices that would be considered insane today, even if you didn’t have photos. It seems so archaic now, receiving all those money orders in the mail!
The market has only gotten more and more competitive as time goes on. I think part of it was the number of people that were looking for ways to make money after the recession, and the growth of Youtubers posting “BOLO” videos on clothing brands, jacking up the supply.
Like mentioned above, to survive as a seller today, its not enough to mindlessly pick up “BOLO” brands. You have to understand what people want in a particular brand. Take Coogi sweaters for example, they were a high end brand in the 90s and were popularized in the mainstream when rappers like Notorious B.I.G. wore them in videos. Coogi sweaters easily sell all day long for $100+, but you can’t give away the t-shirts / pants / etc. from the same brand.
My experience over the years is that 9 times out of 10, you are better off selling as is. Unless you are selling something VERY high end (think mid 3 figures or higher), the cost of repairs will most likely not be recouped with a higher sale price.
You also have to factor in the time to find the repairman, hope they do a good job, pick the item up, etc. The risk reward just isn’t there. Even in the scenario mentioned above, lets say you pay $30 to sell for $50 more (I think this is a bit of a stretch in this case, I sell a lot of Corcoran boots), that’s a potential $20 return on a $30 investment for a whole lot of effort. I wouldn’t bother paying $30 in a thrift store to sell an item for $50, so why would I do the same for a repair? You are better off taking the extra time it took to deal with the repair to visit a thrift store / yard sale and find an item for $3 that sells for $30.
I had this situation happen on a $250 package once, almost gave me a heart attack! Fortunately after 8 days it eventually showed up.
My biggest pet peeve at the moment with USPS tracking is when the mailperson at the end of the delivery forgets to scan the package and you get the dreaded “Delivery Status Not Updated”. I have this happen on maybe 1 out of every 100 packages, and haven’t had any issues yet, but I’m waiting for a buyer to say that they never received the package. I wish the system would at least flip it to delivered if it sits in this status for too long.
One thing to remember is that on Priority packages we get an automatic $50 (or $100 at TRS I think) of insurance. So long as it gets scanned once, you have at least that level of protection.
I always feel a sense of camaraderie reading these stories. I think we’ve all been on both sides of these situations. Think of all of the people who’ve witnessed you picking up that valuable item and putting it in your own cart!
I have a very hard time letting go, perhaps because I work a full time job and can only source 1 day a week, so my thrifts are usually quite memorable due to the time between trips. Just so I can join in the fun, here are the three things I missed out on that really bum me out.
1) Super old metal Igloo brand cooler brought out on a wares cart at Goodwill. A older lady was closer to the cart and nabbed it before I could get to it. I saw the tag and it was marked at $5. It was prob. worth around $100-250.
2) high end baby doll again at a goodwill. Picked it up, looked at the brand, put it back on the shelf and walked away for a second to research. Lady comes up behind me and nabs it. Turns out it was worth around $70, was marked for $2.
3) Super massive life size Squirtle Pokemon plush from the 90s. A little kid grabbed it right as I was walking towards it at Savers. It’s worth around $100.
Fortunately these occurrences are pretty rare for me because I’m one of those annoying people that will load up my cart with anything that catches my eye, and I’m not shy about being that guy who waits at the backdoor to get first dibs at a new cart as it gets wheeled out.
Totally agree Jay, I barely pay attention to Starbucks mugs anymore, unless they’re the “country/city” mugs from an exotic place (which I still haven’t found in the wild). These seem to be the only ones that still hold value.
I think a lot of people start out with mugs because they’re cheap, plentiful, and easy to list. The downside is that because of this prices are very depressed on common ones, but its still one of my favorite categories.
Don’t expect more than $15-20 for the less impressive ones.
Some of my highest mug sales include
1) a vintage “Big Hug Mug” when one appeared in the HBO show “True Detective”, causing prices to spike. I was one of the early sellers and got around $100 for it.
2) Vintage 3M Fire King mugs. Most of the collectors for these are in Japan. Found a group of 8 of these and sold them for around $80 each.
3) Some random discontinued fancy travel mug, without lid, from the early 2000s. It was a super generic brown color ceramic with nothing much to distinguished it besides the name printed on the bottom. Apparently its desirable, got like $60 for it.
4) modern “his and her” romantic English designer mug set from the 2010s. Sold the set for around $50.
As you can see, its very hard to crack the $50 mark, after 4 years of selling and thousands of sales, these were the only mug sales that came to mind that sold for over that level.
I appreciate that Jay always has a positive attitude whenever it comes to “Ebay throttling” or whatever you want to call it. While I agree with him that there is no insidious plot by Ebay to limit sales, I do believe that Jay underestimates the variables used in algorithms that a publicly traded company like Ebay uses to try and drive total sales / revenues.
It’s not even a theory really. Do a search for something on Ebay (i.e. “Polo Shirt”), then log out of your store, delete your cookies, and change your IP address, preferably to one from a different part of the country, and the ordering of results will be different.
I will often see sales from specific geographic areas or categories spike over periods of time. Recently, it’s been 4 hat sales in 2 days (random trucker hats and high end baseball caps). Yeah, it could be random, but I think it’s more likely that Ebay’s algorithms rotated me to the top of the “hat” category for a period of time, and the sales kept me there for a while.
There is no malice or human thought involved, just a computer algorithm running and trying to maximize sales via search results.
