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Week of Oct 24 – 30
Total Items in Store: 1397 eBay, 36 Etsy
Items Sold: 10 eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $1.50 + $9 Commission
Total Sales: $159.63 eBay; Includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: $29 framed print on canvas
Average price: $15.96
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 8No big sales this week, so my total is pretty low.
I don’t know if I have an answer to your question really, but I do belong to an organization called PMI. It stands for Project Management Institute, and its charter is to teach and certify people in the management of projects.
Maybe the dice could have been a handout at one of their conferences? Maybe one of the discussions was about the randomness that can affect a project (roll of the dice)? Just a guess.
Framed art is easy to buy for cheap. If you wait for the right buyer, they will sell. Unfortunately, the high cost of shipping does slow down sales in that area, so I don’t sell many.
However, I have sold several fancy frames at decent prices. Someone recently asked for a cheaper price on a painting because he wanted to use the frame. The frame was nicer than the painting, and I preferred it out of my house rather than wait for someone to meet my price. I got $65 for it, and shipping was $25.50 through FedEx. It was 31″ x 27″ and about 12 pounds, and I put it in a 38x28x5 box.
I also sold another fancy frame for more than that, but I don’t remember the particulars. I never know whether a painting or print was purchased just for the frame or not.
However, I now have lots of miscellaneous frames that aren’t that exciting or unusual, and I need to decide what to do with them. I’ve seen eBay listings where they sell a group of frames for decor, staging, and so forth. I am planning to try that. I will organize the frames into groups of 3 to 7, whatever makes sense (size, color, style), and see if I can market them like that. If they all sit there for a year or two, I might just get rid of them. It will be an experiment.
Week of Oct 17 – 23
Total Items in Store: 1402 eBay, 36 Etsy
Items Sold: 10 eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $1.65 + $0 Commission
Total Sales: $356.42 eBay; Includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: $135 Sony Walkman II nonworking
Average price: $35.64
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 23I had a pretty decent week due to a few higher priced items, but this past weekend sucked. Only two sales.
23 listings for me, 14 met the monthly challenge
@Julie B – I’m right in the mist of my hard goods mess. I purchased a huge group of paintings and frames at the beginning of the year. I listed maybe 70% of it by the end of spring. The mess has been sitting there since then. I did get through all the art this week, and now I have empty frames to organize and list.Steve –
I did check Terapeak before offering the $20 price. It might have been on the low side, but within reason. The buyer had offered $15, but I stood ground there. Had I thought about breaking it down for parts when I initially listed the radio, I would have listed it higher, I’m sure.
Either way, I’m always happy to get your advice! In that auction lot of radios I purchased in 2019, most have been sold. I have 80’s Panasonic clock radios left. I did look into possibly repairing them (inspired with what you do), but I just don’t have the time especially now that I have a part time job.
Steve – I never think to look at vintage wood chairs. I’ll need to pay attention if they fold up. Interesting!
I figured these were leather tools, but I couldn’t find much about them online. Antique Frog confirmed that they were cobbler tools, so I added those key words. Probably paid about $1, and they sold for $18 in a few weeks.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/185072449239
I bought a bunch of wood barrels with a few other things in a live auction several years ago for $2.50. This barrel sold for $27. I still have two left – part of the pipeline.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/184688335306
I had a partial vintage Garrod radio on sale for pick up only. Someone asked to buy the faceplate only. I sold it for $20 plus shipping. I’ll grab a few other controls that are also sellable, and then trash the rest. So glad to get it out of my inventory. It came in a large auction lot of radios, probably less than $1.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/185102857297
When I was picking up stuff for free from my parents’ friends in Florida, I wasn’t sure that these metal slide storage cases were worth anything. But, someone purchased this one for $25 last week. They left positive feedback, and then purchased the second one I had in stock. Both times, it cost $15.50 to ship to Texas.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/185070652468
Just a vintage oil painting that I paid about $5 for several years ago. Artist is known, and someone must have wanted a beach painting. Sold for a bit over $41.
I just received an answer from eBay for Business, and, for some reason, the vases are restricted in China. Not sure why, but might be one of my key words I used. I will cancel it and explain the reason to the buyer, but I’ve put them on my blocked buyer list this time around.
The whole thing about the Global Shipping Program is that they refund your buyer if there are any delivery issues, either non-delivery or damage. The bottom of this page shows all the eligible countries:
https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/shipping/ebay-global-shipping-program.html
For the US post office, you can find a list of countries that provide tracking status for first class international (4 pounds and below) here:
https://pe.usps.com/text/imm/immc2_022.htm#ep3032639
I thought that all international Priority mail provided tracking, but I could be wrong.
Right now, I have a buyer from China that is asking me to ship direct on a set of small porcelain vases. This is the second time she purchased it. I cancelled it the first time, and I’m waiting for a response from eBay for Business through Facebook as to whether there is an issue with the buyer seeing a price for GSP. If I don’t hear from them by tomorrow morning, I will have to cancel again. I’m just not willing to ship to China without going through GPS, period.
I’ll ship to most of Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia, and probably a few others outside of GSP, if they ask. But, hell no for China!
I did a small experiment several years ago, when I was still a newish reseller. I counted up the number of times I had answered a question over a two-ish month period and whether I ended up with a sale or not. Then, over the same amount of time, I answered each question with an offer.
I found that the number of sales I made in that second period of time was substantially higher than before, without the offer.
I believe that some people are shy about asking for or making an offer, but they want to know that they are getting a good deal.
I listed 17 this past week.
I delved into a bunch of tools that my husband went through first. Took him about a year.
I did list one framed print, so I’m on the board with one so far for the challenge.
Week of Oct 10 – 16
Total Items in Store: 1389 eBay, 36 Etsy
Items Sold: 12 eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $12.25 + $10 Commission
Total Sales: $201.27 eBay; Includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: $41 oil painting
Average price: $16.77
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $13
Number of items listed this week: 17I haven’t been scavenging much, but I did go to the library’s book sale Saturday. I picked up a bunch of audio books from The Learning Company. Basically, they are classes on CDs. I haven’t listed them yet, but apparently a class on reading and understand poetry is worth over $40, but Algebra II is less than $20. Go figure.
Steve –
Color appeared to be your theme last week. The adding machine, the clock, and the phone were all cool MCM colors.
Your listing for the phone says that it is from 1983, but I thought that we had pretty much moved to touch button at that point. Could be that many people preferred the rotary. In addition, the phone company charged you extra to use the electronic push button calling instead of the slower rotary style.
I really have nothing exciting to show for last week. Everything was lower value pipeline stuff. I can tell one story. I purchased an adapter at the beginning of the year so that I didn’t have to drag one back and forth from work. But, a few months ago, I somehow convinced them to get me a new computer, so I sold my old adapter at the same price I bought it for. I guess I paid the eBay fees to use it for about seven months.
I suggest that every package, including media mail, be scanned at the post office by standing in line for a cashier or using the self-service kiosk.
Within my first year or two of reselling, I had a media mail box delayed about 10 days in USPS hell with no update whatsoever. I assume was opened for an inspection. After that, I started getting every box scanned, and I’ve never had the same issue.
My hypothesis is that they don’t check your box if they know you’ve scanned it in and its progress is being tracked.
OK, since this post has changed course a bit, perhaps I can add my own little rant on eBay categories for a minute. On Oct 4, I received an email from eBay saying that I had books listed with media mail in categories not allowing media mail. Thing is, all the categories were book categories! I ignored the email, and later on I received an “oops, ignore the email we sent out” email.
Here’s the content of that original email:
Your account has active listings that offer USPS Media Mail as a shipping service option in categories that aren’t eligible for Media Mail under USPS rules. In addition, eBay Labels does not support shipping label printing for Media Mail in these categories.
In order to prevent buyers from selecting Media Mail for listings that aren’t eligible for the service, we recommend you update your active listings to remove Media Mail as a shipping service option for items in those categories. For new listings in those categories, Media Mail won’t be an available shipping service.
Below is a summary of the top categories in which you have the most active listings. Please note that you may have active listings in additional categories:
Category ID: 29223
Number of listings: 58
Category Name: BOOKS & MAGAZINES:ANTIQUARIAN & COLLECTIBLE
Category ID: 261186
Number of listings: 48
Category Name: BOOKS & MAGAZINES:BOOKS
Category ID: 1105
Number of listings: 9
Category Name: BOOKS & MAGAZINES:TEXTBOOKS, EDUCATION & REFERENCE:TEXTBOOKS
Category ID: 171223
Number of listings: 6
Category Name: BOOKS & MAGAZINES:TEXTBOOKS, EDUCATION & REFERENCE:STUDY GUIDES & TEST PREP
Category ID: 139973
Number of listings: 5
Category Name: VIDEO GAMES & CONSOLES:VIDEO GAMES
If you believe a particular category should be eligible for Media Mail support via eBay Labels, please provide details in this short survey.
