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Ten hours for an eBay course seems rather long. I’ve heard that someone had an eBay course at my local library, but it was maybe two hours.
You can also look at Meetup.com. You would need to find a place to host your meetings. You can use a meetup for a course or for an exchange of ideas. One meetup I looked at was held at a restaurant, and the organizer brought in different speakers each month.
I am speaking from just stuff I’ve looked at in the past. I’ve never run a course or started a meetup.
Yes, you can ship in the flat rate box to Kentucky. No problem. GSP will then figure out what type of box to ship it in for the rest of the journey.
I have been using GoDaddy bookkeeping per recommendations of Jay and Ryanne on the forum here. It pulls in the financials for eBay, PayPal, and many other sites. I put in my COGS, mileage, and other expenses. Overall, it’s pretty simple.
I understand that Quickbooks is a very versatile program, but is more complicated to learn. Quicken is another program that is a bit more simpler (from what I understand), but more complicated than GoDaddy. All the programs have online accounts. Quickbooks and Quicken have versions if you want them to be only resident on your computer. GoDaddy is based purely online.
Here is the one I bought it. I’ve used it many times for maker’s marks & jewelry.
I can’t imagine getting and shipping that many items in one day; however, I do know that Vintage Lacy sells lots of fabric and needlepoint patterns, not the ceramics and vintage electronics that I have to wrap so carefully.
I was fighting a cold all of last week. You know, one of those colds that make you miserable, but not bedridden. So, you try to do all the normal things that you do, but you do them slowly while your head feels like a ten ton weight. I’m feeling better now, but I listed only 12 items.
I hope this week is better, but my daughter will be home from college and I have many other distractions. We’ll see.
Good luck everyone on the last week before the holidays!
Happy Birthday, Vintage Treasures!
Week of Dec 8 – 14
* Total Items in Store: 1527 eBay, 35 Etsy
* Items Sold: 19 eBay
* Cost of Items Sold: $36.65 + $31 Commission
* Total Sales: $457.59 eBay
* Highest Price Sold: $73 Judaica wall tile plaque Sante Fe art
* Average Price Sold: $24.08
* Returns: 1 + 1 cancel
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 12I have a weird return / customer issue in process. I sold a brass stool or plant stand made in Iran (probably 50 years ago). It was obviously dented and scratched, which was fully disclosed. The buyer felt she should be able to screw off the legs and repair the dents, but they are welded on. She opened a false INAD because the “legs are supposed to be screwed on”. Nothing of that sort was in my description. I lost TRS a few weeks ago because of two stupid inventory mistakes I made in October, and I’m concerned that those will affect my ability to not have to refund her shipping. I’m going to message the eBay for Business Facebook page ahead of time to see what my options will be.
In my mind, there are two ways of taking deductions for your home. One is a home office and the other is storage.
The home office deduction is more complicated and requires that the area be used for business purposes only. You can deduction a portion of your mortgage this way in addition to utilities and other bills. There might be implications for when you sell your home. Because I use my office space for both business and personal use, I cannot deduct mortgage.
The storage is maintaining your inventory in a climate controlled area. You can deduct a portion of your utilities based on the size of the area used for storage. You cannot deduct mortgage.
There have been previous discussions on tax deductions on this forum. You can use the Search tool on the righthand side. Jay also interviewed Mark Tew “Not Your Dad’s CPA” in the past to talk about taxes specifically for resellers.
I don’t have a scanner, so I type in the UPC or ISBN into the desktop version, not the app. The picture will disappear if you select anything other than “new”, although I’m not 100% about “like new”. I will often click on the picture, save it to my computer, and then re-paste it after I make the changes.
The process is certainly easier than listing the other things I sell.
The first time I went to Englishtown was in college. Someone I was dating at the time took me there. This was in the 1986 timeframe. The flea market part was pretty big and crowded.
In the 90s, I volunteered for an animal rescue group. The Rt. 18 Flea Market closed down, so they moved to one of the Englishtown buildings. I believe their center is still there. At that time, the flea market part had shrunk somewhat, and the new vendor stuff expanded. In the morning, I would immediately go to the adoption center, so I never saw too much in the morning. Having kids really shrunk my free time, so I stopped volunteering.
By the way, I have two identical challenge coins from when I worked on an army program. I think about 2008-ish. Not sure whether they are worth much, but I’ll sell them when I find them.
I can’t remember the exact wording of his post. It just seemed like he was saying that he was trying to help someone out and that the profits weren’t going to him. The grammar wasn’t exact and the message wasn’t clear.
I never got around to watching the original video.
People do seem to care about him and his family. It’s a thing where a YouTuber makes all these videos, includes the spouse and the kids, and viewers get attached. Just the way that the Crazy Lamp Lady gets prices way above market for simple things that might hardly sell for a regular eBay seller.
Last night I meant to copy and paste a post from his Facebook page, but I guess I got lazy. Now I can’t find it. I checked his Facebook feed, and the post appears to have been taken down. If you want to find his feed yourself, it is under Curiosity Inc Edmonton, or something like that.
It was a cryptic message that really didn’t make sense, but he said that he took down the videos. There was something about him trying to help an estranged relative that he hadn’t spoken to in two years, and he didn’t know what he was getting into when he bought the warehouse storage contents. There was something about the auction proceeds to pay for the money that he put down and then it won’t be for him? I can’t exactly remember the whole message, but it didn’t completely make sense.
Other posts from the past two weeks or so mentioned a relative in trouble and that he wished he could do something.
Maybe he will be more clear once he has time to clear his head.
Steve – You show those record holders all the time, but I’ve never seen them in my area. I wonder if they weren’t popular here or people already got rid of theirs or I just haven’t run into them.
I bought a large number of radios in an auction lot where I bought everything left on the table. This was the oldest one from the 1930s with a wood case and “WOR” on the front. WOR is an AM station in NY that has been around since the 20s. It sold for best offer of $200, and now I am fully into profit on that auction purchase.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/184043373373This 1960s Panasonic tube radio was not part of that auction lot. I bought it at a flea market during the summer for $7. It sold for a best offer of $50.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/183926293244This Hanukkah cookie jar and matching salt & pepper shakers were a gift to my family from my parents. I just don’t bake cookies and never used it. Sold for full price of $49.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/183987623893A friend recently gave me some stuff to sell on commission. She had a number of books that have been doing quite well. This is a very thick Hebrew-English dictionary that sold within a few hours for $38. The book was written in Israel, so it opens from the right and reads to the left.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/184071238960I have some commissions from another family friend. His wife had a large collection of cobalt blue glass. This one sold for $40.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/184017549439We don’t know whether this inventory was collateral for a loan or not. I’m not a lawyer, so I would have no idea, but, if the warehouse owners didn’t know about any loans, then they are just looking to get their back rent. Storage places do this all the time. Seems legit to me.
I watched the whole hoarder’s house (then renamed potter’s house), series of videos. I found the whole story to be very fascinating. However, I haven’t been all that interested in continuing with the videos, and I haven’t bought into the “following a family because they are cool” sort of thing. They do seem like nice people, and they do a great job at producing the videos and getting exposure for the people that do work for them.
I’ll watch this video later when I have more time. Julie B may be correct that he is stretching things a bit. I’m sure people (like myself) dropped out once the hoarder/potter series was over. I’m sure he wants to keep his traffic up because he does make money off You Tube advertising.
In his favor, though, since he is well known and liked, people may search him out when they want to get rid of something quickly. He can then pick from the best deals, and he doesn’t have to do as much scavenging like the rest of us. He knows a good deal when he sees it, and, from the notes under the video, he had bought stuff from this seller before (the one that stopped paying the rent). Just like I’m sure he knew that the previous owner of that house was a famous artist, and that he might find some very valuable stuff.
BINGO, Jay! I was being lazy and didn’t feel like doing the search. My excuse is that I’m a bit under the weather.
Perhaps this will help those interested in selling lots of small items and/or ephemera. I’m thinking about selling my stamp collection next year, some piece by piece and some in sets. I think as long as I’m selling in large enough quantities or if I have some valuable stamps, I’d probably not use this service. But, I could set up a second store and use this service to have some kind of backup.
Something to think about for those interested.
With this discussion of shipping stickers, patches, and similar small items, I was thinking about a post over a year ago, maybe two. I’m thinking it might have been around the time that the guy from Popeye’s Postcards was interviewed, but I might be incorrect. Either he or someone else mentioned a type of tracking for letter sized envelopes with a regular stamp. I think that the service was extra – not through the post office – but through some website where you could pay by the item or have some type of subscription.
It wasn’t the full tracking that one would get with a label, but it did provide something.
Anyway, I could possibly find it through the forum search function, but maybe someone knows what I’m talking about?
