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[Simon]

Things still seem to be working fairly normally around northern California. Packages seem to be arriving relatively quickly (including ebay supplies and USPS supplies) Maybe I’ve just been lucky but I haven’t received any “where is my package” messages from buyers recently either. One of the YouTubers I watch regularly who is in the NY area is experiencing loads of delays though.

[Simon]

National Education Association:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-NATIONAL-EDUCATION-ASSOCIATION-NEA-SYMBOL-Sterling-Silver-ENAMEL-Charm/352587998875

The Google Lens app found it

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by Simon.

[Simon]

Looks like typical dot-matrix art that I remember from the late 70s or early 1980s so, while it could be someone famous, I’m thinking that seems less-likely especially as it’s not a particularly flattering image. The promo/trade-show thing seems like a good possibility but who would want a dot-matrix version of themselves on a t-shirt?

[Simon]

That pile of remote controls sounds like a great find. Easy to store and ship and pretty reliable sellers when priced correctly.

[Simon]

Thanks for the show this week Ryanne & Jay

Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 3851
Items Sold: 80
Total Sales: $1525.72
Cost of Items Sold: $210
Average Price Sold: $19.07
Average Cost of Item: $2.63
Highest Price Item Sold: $99.95 The Interpreter’s Bible : 12 Volumes 1957
Number of items listed this week: 74 worth approx. $1408
YTD Sales: $19486
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +23%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 467
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 355
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 261
Sell-through rate (for the week): 2.08%
Hats sold this week: 63 (78% of sales) worth $1004 (65% of sales $)

Another busy week for me. Once again, the sales for the week exceeded sales for any week for the whole of 2019 and it was one of the best weeks I’ve had in the last 5 years. Loads of hat sales this week and I only had a couple of sales of anything over $50. Hopefully things stay busy as parts of the country reopen and people find activities other than online shopping to do.

Jay, I’ve been listening to the show for 5 years and you’ve always said that you need $1000 in gross sales to pay the bills however your lives are much different from where they were 5 years ago with 2 (or is it 3?) AirBNBs and a retail space. It feels like that minimum number you need to pay the bills should be much different these days.

I hope everyone finds creative ways to source and sells lots of trash this week.

[Simon]

I don’t see the chat option. I can only see
– Call us
– Email us
– Start a return
– Report an item that hasn’t arrived

Maybe chat is a program they are still rolling out. Or perhaps it depends on the type of seller you are. (I have a anchor store).

[Simon]

I think I remember a couple of months ago there was a discussion about how ebay was hiding some shipping methods. In the case of the 2 priority shipping options, for example, there’s no reason to show the buyer two options, the cheapest is clearly the only option they need to see.

[Simon]

Hi Ryanne & Jay,
Thanks for the podcast.

Here are my numbers for the week:

Total Items in Store: 3858
Items Sold: 81
Total Sales: $1599.39
Cost of Items Sold: $152
Average Price Sold: $19.75
Average Cost of Item: $1.88
Highest Price Item Sold: $125 Parker Vacumatic Golden Brown Fountain Pen & Pen Dual Tone Nib 1930s
Number of items listed this week: 104 worth approx. $1814
YTD Sales: $17960
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +20%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 456
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 287
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 179
Sell-through rate (for the week): 2.1%
Hats sold this week: 59 (72% of sales) worth $968 (60% of sales $)

I had a great week. In fact I had the best week I’ve ever had (in the last 5 years). I’ve never had more orders in a week and my $ sold was also the highest ever. In addition I had 2 days where I sold more in a single day than ever before. (I sold 22 items on two different days). I also sold something that had been listed for 1389 days which is the oldest listing I’ve ever sold.

In regard to offer history, I mentioned in the forum that you can always use this link to see offer history. (eBay only provides the link when there is an open offer): replace the 99999999999999 bit at the end with the item number of your listing https://ofr.ebay.com/offerapp/bo/showOffers/99999999999999
I’ve been using this link a bit because people have been letting offers expire and then contact me to ask if I’ll resend it. Even though the username is scrambled the feedback number is correct for the user so I can match that up.

My 1000 hats / $1000 purchase seems to be coming to a satisfactory conclusion. The seller is sending another 150 hats and gave me a refund of some of my purchase cost to make up for grossly underestimating the number of hats.

Hope everyone has a great week this week. Stay healthy, sell trash!

[Simon]

No that it has anything to do with your question but that must have cost the buyer a small fortune to ship a large item via GSP. What country was the buyer in? Other than Canada, that kind of electrical items isn’t going to work in most of the rest of the world due to the voltage differences.

[Simon]

That’s a weird one. When you modify a listing a “Last updated xx/xx/xx View All Revisions” link appears on the listing page just above item specifics. I checked one of my listings and see that it remains even after a sale. Does that appear on your listing?

I’d reassure the customer that they will get the exact item on the listing. If the buyer is just making up a story, ebay should have your back as there will be no proof that anything was changed.

[Simon]

Dont forget to consider how many items you list that also list and sell within a month. You’re paying for 400 that roll over but if you’re listing another 200 items that sell withing the month, that would add up too.

Your invoice shows you ever listing that you were charged an insertion fee for.
On the main page of your seller dashboard, on the lower left under Promotional Offers you can see how many of your listings you’ve used but that may not help when you’ve used up all your free listings. https://www.ebay.com/sh/ovw

By the way, didn’t you get that 50,000 free listings offer? You’d want to activate that regardless. https://pages.ebay.com/promo/2020/0323/Stores50KInsertions.html

[Simon]

If you’re looking for offers sent or received on an item, use this link and replace the 99999999999999 bit at the end with the item number of your listing

https://ofr.ebay.com/offerapp/bo/showOffers/99999999999999

I have no idea why ebay hides this info from us.

I regularly get messages from buyers saying “sorry, I missed your offer. can you resend it” and without this link I have no idea what I might have sent them (via offers-to-watchers usually).

[Simon]

I powered through about 800 35mm slides all last week.

Wow. How you get motivated to do that? I would find that excrutiating. I have a pile of slides that I haven’t done anything with for at least a year, maybe two. I was going to try selling a pile of photos of 50s or 60s wooden boats/yachts but I could never face selling them individually. I had the same problem with a pile of glass slides that I’ve been siting on forever. I can’t face fiddling around with them when they are so long-tail and relatively inexpensive. I just can’t get motivated.

[Simon]

Of the ones we’ve received already best guess is that there were probably 50 that I’d list immediately and expect to sell fairly quickly (next 6 months) at full price. Those will be worth about $1000 in sales. We’ll probably discard 50+ immediately and the rest will be long-tail hats that we will list and some will sell for less money over years. I’ll do a proper count of the good ones and rejects before I start listing. I’m keeping them packed in case I cant get the seller to follow through on their refund / extra hats, and I have to threaten to send them all back.

We have all our inventory in one bedrooom and part a 2-car garage. (Packing supplies etc take up much of the rest of the garage so we don’t actually put any cars in there).

[Simon]

I feel like we are ok with delayed gratification but will wish we had traveled more.

When I look back on my own life, the best thing I ever did when I was younger was to take a year off work and travel with my wife. I’m looking forward to doing a lot more when I retire from my day job. We had to for-go plenty of traveling over the last couple of decades in order to raise our kids and pay the bills and save for retirement on one income in a HCOL area.

[Author]

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