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How much did the typewriter sell for? We got out of selling them a couple years ago because the market price fell so much.
I haven’t sold it yet. (I need packing peanuts to finish my pre-packing job before I list it). It’s a red IBM Selectric II. They typically sell for over 100 plus shipping in working condition.
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 3167
Items Sold: 36
Total Sales: $870.52
Cost of Items Sold: $98
Average Price Sold: $24.18
Average Cost of Item: $2.74
Highest Price Item Sold: $69.95 Canon PowerShot A650 Digital Camera
Number of items listed this week: 45
YTD Sales: $27208
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +13%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 384
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 142
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 69
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.14%Kudos to Jay on educating us about stuttering. I found the discussion very interesting. Though not quite the same thing I can relate a little. I have a slight lisp. Not great for someone with the first name of Simon as it’s something I have to think about every time I introduce myself. It’s something kids teased me about for a while in school. I’m not sure if anyone really notices these days. Certainly nobody has said anything to me about it for years. If you ever want a topic for a new podcast, a podcast on stuttering might be a valuable one for a lot of people out there.
Random story. A couple of months ago I bought a huge typewriter. I haven’t listed it because I was concerned about packing it. I finally put it on the top of my to-do list to pre-pack it before listing it so that I wouldn’t get stressed when it sold. I googled “how to ship a typewriter” and Google returned one of Ryanne’s old videos about packing a typewriter.
eBay topic : Does anyone else find the photo uploading and editing processes on eBay to be unpredictable. I regularly get broken images (while cropping, lightening on the website) or if I upload images through the app and don’t wait long enough they get dropped. I find I constantly have to work around eBay’s quirks.
Hope everyone has a productive and profitable week! 🌻
07/12/2019 at 12:35 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 418: Brick & Mortar Store Is Not For Us #64825That’s funny. With the number of pages eBay has I guess it doesn’t surprise me too much that they have inconsistencies. I hope scheduled listings do end up being free but I’m not seeing it yet. It sounded like some people are seeing free scheduled listings though.
07/09/2019 at 12:33 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 418: Brick & Mortar Store Is Not For Us #64709Regarding the fee for scheduled listings, I still see the 10c fee mentioned on the eBay site:
https://pages.ebay.com/turbo_lister/schedulingfaq.html#7When I attempt a scheduled listing, the fee still appears.
07/08/2019 at 11:43 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 418: Brick & Mortar Store Is Not For Us #64641Thanks for the podcast! After a long weekend, it was good to have your podcast to listen to on the way to work this morning.
Here are my numbers for this week:
Total Items in Store: 3159
Items Sold: 43
Total Sales: $1476
Cost of Items Sold: $223
Average Price Sold: $34.32
Average Cost of Item: $5.19
Highest Price Item Sold: $229.95 Scotty Cameron Studio Style Newport 1.5 Putter (paid $30)
Number of items listed this week: 66
YTD Sales: $26337
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +14%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 378
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 193
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 42
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.36%
Hats sold this week: 26 (60% of sales) worth $459.99 (31% of sales $)The end of the week (Sunday for me) was very strong which pushed my numbers above this week last year. I sold a couple of high value golf clubs which boosted my numbers so I’m happy wiht how the week turned out.
On the subject of Reddit, I’ve been active on that site for years (since Digg collapsed). I like using it and I’d join a SL subreddit though I think you’d find the amount of time necessary to moderate it would probably be greater than what you do now if it was public. Maybe it’s worth setting a subreaddit up and see what happens. If it’s successful, shut down this forum, otherwise shut down the subreddit. You’ll have twice the moderation duties for a while.
Different topic: I’ve recently crossed the 1-year-from-retirement countdown mark. I set myself a goal 2 years ago to retire from my day job next June. I’m on track to do that. I plan to sell part time on eBay and do lots of traveling and probably volunteer work. Lots to look forward to.
Hope everyone has a great week!
So there’s a fee for people with a store and free for people without? If true, that doesn’t seem very fair. I’ll try one on the weekend.
>Scotty Mailers
I think you mean Scotty Stuffers.
This is a bit off-topic because I wouldn’t use them for hats but I bought Scotty Stuffers a while back but I rarely use them now as they are pretty expensive. I’ve switched to using regular 8x5x4 boxes now as they are the largest regular boxes that can fit in a padded flat-rate envelope. They are about half the price of Scotty Stuffers: https://www.ebay.com/itm/50-8x5x4-Cardboard-Packing-Mailing-Moving-Shipping-Boxes-Corrugated-Box-Cartons/141893303535?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649
Half of the things I sell every week come from eBay purchases. I buy and split lots and sell thing individually. I currently watch for 4 types of lots. I should probably branch out more but I haven’t put the time into it.
I think it’s a rumor that offering free returns means you never get negative feedback. There’s no reason why eBay would want that. I’ve seen this same rumor mentioned in multiple places now.
For wide brim hats like that I use boxes that are 10 inches long by 8 inches wide by 4 inches tall. (I use 4 inch tall boxes because that’s the tallest that can be dropped in a curbside collection bin). I use the ecoswift boxes from eBay which are extra light and ship under 8 ounces. If you’re not dropping packes in curbside bins, using boxes that are 5″ tall might be good.
For regular curved & structured brim hats 10x6x4 boxes will work. I get mine from ecoswift.
For floppy “dad hat” style baseball hats, I use the ebay-branded 8x6x4 boxes.Some people stuff hats with paper or bubblewrap and ship them in padded mailers. I always ship in boxes.
> Terminal 99 is another person we’ve interviewed who’s on youtube
Yep. I watch him regularly too.
Another guy that appeared in my YouTube suggestions recently is Blue Bus Dave: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgqBDgN_d5avMDx7icxZiWA/videos
He is pretty prolific with videos and buys a lot of stuff I wouldn’t touch.
Thanks for the podcast!
I was away last weekend so I didn’t post my numbers but here they are for this week:
Total Items in Store: 3137
Items Sold: 30
Total Sales: $708
Cost of Items Sold: $67
Average Price Sold: $23.61
Average Cost of Item: $2.26
Highest Price Item Sold: $64.95 Hewlett Packard HP41C HP 41C Vintage Calculator for parts
Number of items listed this week: 72
YTD Sales: $24862
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +14%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 383
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 180
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 72
Sell-through rate (for the week): 0.96%Sales were a bit down this week. It’s my first sub $1000 week since April. This was at least partly due to not being able to go garage-sale-ing and doing less listing last weekend.
When you were talking about the woman on Youtube selling tchotchkies were you referring to the Crazy Lamp Lady? I like watching that because those are things I would never think to buy. Speaking of YouTube, I stumbled across Spinach Eaters postcard YT channel. I didn’t know he had a channel and I watched it for a couple of hours while listing on the weekend. My own experiment with postcards didn’t go well and I don’t think I’d try it again.
Moving to Reddit: Have you thought about asking for volunteers to help moderate / administer the current forums instead? Maybe that would take some of the load off the two of you?
Package size restrictions. I saw the issue with various shipping options being hidden based package sizes at shipping time. (If you adjust the dimensions, those options re-appear. In addition, over the last day or two I noticed that eBay now wont let you list an item where the package size is bigger than the method chosen. eg: I tried to list a game console today. I know it will fit in a medium flat rate box but the rough dimensions I entered were bigger than the medium flat rate box so it stopped me listing until I fixed them. This is an annoying “feature” for me but probably helpful for new sellers.
Hope everyone has a great week!
06/17/2019 at 12:18 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 415: Importance Of Being Honest As A Business Owner #63581Thanks for the podcast
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 3087
Items Sold: 38
Total Sales: $1112
Cost of Items Sold: $127
Average Price Sold: $29.25
Average Cost of Item: $3.35
Highest Price Item Sold: $119.95 Magnavox Freetimer D8040 Vintage Boombox
Number of items listed this week: 78
YTD Sales: $23046
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +16%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 373
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 203
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 87
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.23%
Hats sold this week: 20 (52% of sales) worth $365.48 (32% of sales $)Another decent week for me especially for this time of year.
Regarding eBay returns, I started my own return on eBay this week (June 12). It was a relatively cheap item that was defective. The seller must have had the RMA option switched on because as of today (June 17) I still haven’t received a shipping label. Ebay has given the seller until today to provide a shipping label. The seller has been messaging me telling me that If I close the return (as “changed mind”) they will refund me. Obviously trying to skirt the INAD defect. Super annoying that they aren’t forced to resolve this more quickly.
My find of the week this week was a toy that reminded me of something that Frank from American Pickers would find. It’s a 1960s Japanese robot. Like new in the box. Apparently worth around $200. I found it at a garage sale.
Hope everyone has a great week!
I’ve been using my own wording as I felt it was important to make this offer seem personal to distinguish it from the usual eBay junk messaging. I avoid mentioning the specific item in the text so that I can just re-use this same text over and over. I have no way of knowing if customizing this text improves the conversion rate of my offers.
Hi There,
I saw that you were watching this item so I wanted to send you this offer in case you were waiting for a lower price.
Thanks very much.
SimonI didn’t do my Monday morning commute this morning so I haven’t listened to the show yet but here are my numbers for last week:
Total Items in Store: 3047
Items Sold: 40
Total Sales: $1042
Cost of Items Sold: $137
Average Price Sold: $26.06
Average Cost of Item: $3.43
Highest Price Item Sold: $119.95 Apple AirPort Express 802.11n
Number of items listed this week: 53
YTD Sales: $21935
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +14%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 379
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 225
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 89
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.31%
Hats sold this week: 26 (65% of sales) worth $454.03 (43% of sales $)Nothing new here. Sales continue to be strong and I had a good day of sourcing at Saturday’s yard sales so I should be posting some more good items this week.
I might have made one bad buy on the weekend. There was an estate sale for a Levis executive. On of the things I bought from there was a dozen Levis branded new-in-box vintage transistor radios. For the life of me, I can’t get regular AA batteries to fit in them. Either batteries are slightly longer now or these weren’t made very well. It feels like a dumb problem to have.
I hope everyone has a fun and profitable week.
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