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01/07/2020 at 3:23 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 444: Is Cross Posting The New Reality? #72621
@ChristineR – your experience matched mine. For my kind of reselling, I’d generally have much more luck hitting a dozen garage sales or estate sales than I had with hitting a similar number of San Diego thrift shops that were either very picked over or very junky or both. I couldn’t find any hidden treasures. I did buy some hats but I passed on a equal number due to the high prices.
01/06/2020 at 8:01 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 444: Is Cross Posting The New Reality? #72585Thanks for the podcast. I really enjoyed this week’s episode:
My numbers for 5 days only (from 1/1):
Total Items in Store: 3454
Items Sold: 33
Total Sales: $752.05
Cost of Items Sold: $71
Average Price Sold: $22.79
Average Cost of Item: $2.16
Highest Price Item Sold: $169.95 USS PUEBLO (ACR-7) WWI era US Navy Tally Donald Duck Flat Cap Hat
Number of items listed this week: 3487 worth approx. $655
YTD Sales: $752
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +-16%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 443
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 290
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 191
Sell-through rate (for the week): 0.96%
Hats sold this week: 22 (66% of sales) worth $529.26 (70% of sales $)My only high-value sale was also the most expensive hat I’ve ever sold. It was a lucky find at an estate sale. I paid a dollar or two for it.
I had a week vacation in the San Diego area and made time to hit about a dozen thrift shops. (I don’t normally source from thrift shops). I give much respect to anyone that can sustain a decent reselling business from thrift shops in a major metro area without sourcing clothes. I could never, in a million years, make that work I don’t think.
On the subject of thrift shops, I visited the San Diego Goodwill outlet. The bins only had clothes which isn’t something I am interested in. Off to the side they had auctions of gaylords (or the euqivalent) of other things. (I missed the opportunity to see what they were selling at auction but I believe it is things like books an accessories). The auction was held entirely in spanish. The auctioneer and all the bidders only spoke Spanish. That was a strange experience.
(To Jay’s point, my local Goodwill outlet doesn’t have a territorial feeling about it. There’s a race to the new bins but once that starts it’s every man/woman for themselves with no restrictions that I’ve ever seen).
Since I’m on vacation from my day job this week I had the luxury of listening to the show while listing on eBay this week (rather than listing during my long commute).
I enjoyed your end-of-year look-back. We often over-estimate what we can do in an hour and underestimate what we can do in a year. You’ve certainly had lots of changes. On the other hand, my eBay world is almost identical to how I started the year. I’m constrained by time and it’s not practical to make significant changes till I retire.
I had a relatively quiet week. No big (or even medium-sized) sales at all so my numbers were down a bit from this time last year.
Total Items in Store: 3456
Items Sold: 36
Total Sales: $630.68
Cost of Items Sold: $77
Average Price Sold: $17.52
Average Cost of Item: $2.14
Highest Price Item Sold: $39.95 Nintendo Game Boy Advance
Number of items listed this week: 45 worth approx. $1335
YTD Sales: $49014
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +6%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 442
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 291
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 234
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.04%
Hats sold this week: 25 (69% of sales) worth $402.18 (63% of sales $)I’d love to break the 50K sales mark but it seems extremely unlikely since this coming week is likely to be fairly quiet. I’d need 1K in sales to get there.
I hope everyone enjoys their holidays and gets to spend some peaceful, non-working time with friends and family.
12/17/2019 at 3:19 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 441: How Do I Go From Rookie to Veteran Scavenger? #71813Thanks for the podcast. I’m late to the party but here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 3448
Items Sold: 53
Total Sales: $1272.69
Cost of Items Sold: $138
Average Price Sold: $24.01
Average Cost of Item: $2.62
Highest Price Item Sold: $134.95 Alesis AirFX Sound and Effects Controller.
Number of items listed this week: 44 worth approx. $861
YTD Sales: $48384
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +6%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 435
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 207
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 79
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.54%
Hats sold this week: 41 (77% of sales) worth $863.24 (67% of sales $)A pretty decent week. On par with this time last year. Anyone know how many days are remaining before the shipping cutoff for a first class package going across the country (to arrive by Christmas)?
Hope everyone is having a profitable week.
I’ve been reselling for about 4.5 years now. There are areas I’m fairly knowledgeable about and others I have no idea about. Apart from hats, for example, I’m ignorant about clothes.
I try and make a point of noticing things that seem interesting that I have no knowledge about every time I go through a thrift store. As much as time permits, I’ll do the same thing at Garage/Estate sales. I look those items up on ebay to get an idea if they are worth anything. Although I’ll forget a lot, I still feel like I’m expanding my knowledge base but constantly looking up new things. That said, I find i learn the most when I’m forced to list things.
Thanks for the podcast
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 3457
Items Sold: 49
Total Sales: $1202.06
Cost of Items Sold: $147
Average Price Sold: $24.53
Average Cost of Item: $3.01
Highest Price Item Sold: $200 Sony Cybershot RX100 V 20.1MP Digital Camera (for Parts)
Number of items listed this week: 36 worth approx. $708
YTD Sales: $47111
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +6%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 430
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 232
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 127
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.42%
Hats sold this week: 33 (67% of sales) worth $587.71 (48% of sales $)My highest-priced sale this week was for a camera I got for free at a garage sale because the person running the sale told me it was broken. That’s some easy money.
In my post last week, I forgot to mention my most interesting sale. I picked up a book called the Art and Science of Embalming at an estate sale for $2 which sold for over $50 to a funeral home. It creeped out my wife. Not surprisingly.
Good sales this week. I’d guess we just have one more week of good sales before we’ll hit the xmas slow down as the mailing deadline gets close.
I hope everyone has a profitable week.
I spent some time going through PayPal yesterday to understand the sale tax situation. As @Kelly1mm says, in PayPal the sale tax that is collected shows up lumped into the sales figure and the sales tax payments out to states (via ebay) and are shown in transaction history as “partner fee” which is confusing. There are no PayPal reports which summarize the breakdown of sales tax collected / sales tax distributed. Most summaries / reports just lump the sales tax payments (to ebay/states) in with fees.
It appears you have to download the activity history and do sales tax calculations yourself. I expect the 1099 from PayPal will lump Sales Tax collected into the total sales figure so it’s going to be important for people to be able to figure out what portion of that is sales tax. I expect people are going to be yelling at PayPal to make this more transparent once tax season starts.
I’m glad you didn’t get evacuated. That must have been a little terrifying. We’ve been swamped by rainstorms the last couple of days. I hope some of it’s way down south to end the fire season for you.
Thanks for the podcast. I have to confess I napped through some of it as I was on my way to work (on a bus). (I had taken some time off work so it was a shock to be back to my early morning schedule).
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 3470
Items Sold: 45
Total Sales: $1264.71
Cost of Items Sold: $214
Average Price Sold: $28.1
Average Cost of Item: $4.77
Highest Price Item Sold: $274.95 The Bosns Whistle Magazine (38 magazines – 1941 – 1943)
Number of items listed this week: 53 worth approx. $1630
YTD Sales: $45923
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +6%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 421
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 233
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 244
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.3%
Hats sold this week: 23 (51% of sales) worth $406.12 (32% of sales $)The holiday selling season arrived by Sunday for me. My big sale of the week were several lots of WWII magazines that sold to the same buyer a few days after listing. I wish I had finds like that every time I visited an estate sale. I paid up for them ($60) but the gamble paid off.
It’s good to hear that you’re still enjoying your inventory system. Over the years I regularly wondered how you put up with those odd items that didn’t fall neatly into categories. Every time I spend more than a couple of minutes looking for an item I have a mini panic about it.
I hope everyone has a busy and productive week.
Thanks for the show R&J
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 3462
Items Sold: 31
Total Sales: $627.71
Cost of Items Sold: $56
Average Price Sold: $20.25
Average Cost of Item: $1.83
Highest Price Item Sold: $95.95 Oxford Pin Seal Morocco Goatskin KJV Bible
Number of items listed this week: 83 worth approx. $1462
YTD Sales: $44658
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +5%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 431
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 294
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 216
Sell-through rate (for the week): 0.9%
Hats sold this week: 23 (74% of sales) worth $412.21 (65% of sales $)It was a pretty quiet week. Hopefully things pick up a bit from here to the end of the year. My goal is 50K in sales for this year and it looks like I’m a bit behind that target.
In answer to Ryanne’s question about finding a buyer’s paypal address, try this… Find the paypal email for the transaction. Start a “Reply” to that email (but obviously don’t send it) and you should see the buyer’s email address populate the “to” line. Depending on your email program, you might need to hover over the name in the “to” line to see the email address but the email address your reply would go to, is the buyer’s paypal address. Hope this makes sense. (You can also see the email address if you do a view-source of the paypal email and scroll down quite a long way).
Hope everyone has a great week!
Thanks for the podcast.
Here are my numbers for this week:
Total Items in Store: 3412
Items Sold: 42
Total Sales: $844.61
Cost of Items Sold: $80
Average Price Sold: $20.11
Average Cost of Item: $1.93
Highest Price Item Sold: $99.95 4 Porsche Wheel Center Caps
Number of items listed this week: 51 worth approx. $1190
YTD Sales: $44011
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +7%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 424
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 313
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 211
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.23%
Hats sold this week: 30 (71% of sales) worth $506.77 (60% of sales $)Just a typical week for my store.
I’ll be curious to hear what the latest R&J secret project is when you’re ready to share. I started guessing what the “expensive machine” was and a commercial expresso machine was the first thing that came to mind (for a coffee biz).
You’ve certainly taken a different approach with your investments than me. I didn’t grow up in a household that invested in real-estate (other than the family home) so I’ve never explored that area. My dad invested in the stock market and I’ve always felt more comfortable putting my retirement savings there too even though he didn’t really push me or educate me in that area. I think I have some of his accountant-ways even though i didn’t become an accountant.
Hope everyone sells lots of trash this week.
I hope things are settling down at home @ChristineR. The teenage years can be a difficult time for everyone. My daughter was fine. My son had some extremely difficult years. (He moved away to college in September. He should be there for a couple of year. The house is much more peaceful for my wife and I now).
@catmom – your original post was a little confusing. You clarified things a bit with your last post. So PayPal is asking for your Social Security number because they may need to issue a 1099? That makes more sense.
In some states (VT, MA) they issue 1099s for sales above $600. For other states it is sent out using the rules others have mentioned above.
Create the best records you can and plan on filing taxes for your business for the 2019 tax year. If either you or your husband have regular job, consider having slightly more tax withheld for the rest of the year to cover the profit on your business (assuming there is some).
Maybe the value-add over direct international shipping is the guarantee:
Each purchase of the eBay Send International Standard service includes our shipping protection plan. You can be assured that your international shipments will arrive at their destinations, or we will protect you if there is an issue that is beyond your control.
For USPS 1728 cubic inches is where the dimensional pricing kicks in eg: 12x12x12.
I sometimes use the rule that W+L+D should be 36″ or less eg: 16x12x8 = 16x10x10
Under those dimensions, weight is the only factor that determines price.
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Simon.
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