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[Simon]

@cheryl5678 : I’m going to guess it’s the What’s New war bonds magazine. Here are some covers:  https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1AVFC_enUS824US824&sxsrf=ALeKk03fTcp1j3ThXbS4J6LH08EAUkUvXA:1625119214066&source=univ&tbm=isch&q=%22what%27s+new%22+magazine+war+bonds&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwie8OLrmMHxAhVNqp4KHY_VAssQjJkEegQIBxAC&biw=1494&bih=560

[Simon]

My auction pickup was north of where I live so I ended up going to the Santa Rosa flea market and the Sebastopol flea market.  I typical only do local auctions for this very reason. If I’m going to do 50+ miles each way to pick something up there have to be very large profit margins which is rarely true for online auctions near me.

[Simon]

Thanks for the podcast.

Here are my numbers for the week:

Total Items in Store: 4638
Items Sold: 83
Total Sales: $1670.98
Cost of Items Sold: $225
Average Price Sold: $20.13
Average Cost of Item: $2.72
Highest Price Item Sold: $69.95 Cunard Queen Mary 1937 Ephemera Souvenir Paper Lot
Number of items listed this week: 80 worth approx. $2212
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +33%
Hats sold this week: 59 (71% of sales)

I had a great week.  It didn’t feel super busy but I rarely get 80+ orders in a week.   These were mainly low-value orders as you can see from my highest priced sale.

I had a similar, though non-traumatic, auction experience to Jay this week.  I thought I was bidding on a local auction and after winning only a single item I realized the pickup was an hour a way.  I ended up doing a big loop and visiting a couple of flea markets before doing the pickup so it wasn’t a wasted trip.  When I got home my wife decided she’d like to keep the auction item for herself!  (It was a baking dish for a Villeroy & Bosch pattern that we happen to have in our house).

Thanks for the tip about Time Away and GSP.  It seems ridiculous that they can’t adjust the handling time for GSP orders. That seems like an incomplete feature.    I mainly use eBay SEND (Standard International Delivery) so I’d probably just roll the dice on that because constantly changing handling times on oodles of business policies is annoying.

[Simon]

Congratulations on taking the leap!  As Jay has said many times over the years, being in control of your own time is an amazing feeling.  As long as you have a little self discipline to put the time into your business when necessary,  you’ll do great.

[Simon]

Yep. That’s one thing you can say about hats.  There’s a pretty steady demand.  I’ve analyzed my own sales history and I see that hat sales typically peak in April  & May but they are surprisingly consistent for the rest of the year with just a slight downward trend from June for the rest of the year.

[Simon]

Random ebay observation that doesn’t warrant it’s own thread:-  There’s finally a search function on the eBay Purchase History screen.  I think I remember Ryanne complaining about this missing feature.  It’s certainly something that has bugged me for a long time.  I can’t believe it’s taken eBay over 20 years to finally add the ability to search for a past purchase.

[Simon]

Thanks for the podcast this week.

Here are my numbers for the week:

Total Items in Store: 4640
Items Sold: 78
Total Sales: $1810.68
Cost of Items Sold: $295
Average Price Sold: $23.21
Average Cost of Item: $3.79
Highest Price Item Sold: $89 Canon Vixia HF10A Camcorder
Number of items listed this week: 102 worth approx. $2238
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +32%
Hats sold this week: 55 (70% of sales)

Another good week for me.  No complaints.

Here’s a story about a sale that only scavengers would understand:- I have a wall-mounted bottle opener in my garage. I use it to open bottles of beer from a fridge in our garage. The bottle caps fall into a little bucket and after years and years (I don’t drink much beer) the bucket was full.  My wife suggested emptying the bucket into the trash but instead, I listed the bottle caps on ebay and sold them to someone in France.  Not a big sale (about $15 plus shipping) but I thought it was fun to turn trash into money.

Regarding the Time Away feature mentioned by your caller, I had the same issue.  I said I would be on vacation till Wednesday recently but apparently the Time Away feature interprets that to mean I’ll be shipping on Wednesday. The instructions suggest starting Time Away before you leave and ending it days after you return but I think the settings are quite misleading if you want to minimize your long handling period.

[Simon]

Thanks for the podcast.  I listened while I hiked around the hills near my home at sunset.  An evening hike and Scavenger Life in my ears is the perfect combination.

Here are my numbers for the week:
Items Sold: 94
Total Sales: $2210.96
Cost of Items Sold: $350
Average Price Sold: $23.52
Average Cost of Item: $3.73
Highest Price Item Sold: $369 1960 Oakland Raiders vs Houston Oilers First AFL game program.
Number of items listed this week: 119
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +29%

I had a great week.  I sold more items last week than I’ve ever sold in one week (in 6 years of reselling).

My highest price sale came from an estate sale full of sports ephemera. It was dumb luck that I grabbed this football program in the first few minutes of an estate sale. I didn’t know what I had and I only paid $4 for it.

I can relate to the comments about the price of cars.  I’m trying to help my son find a used car. He’s currently driving mine.  There’s a shortage of used car inventory for sure.  Nationwide new car dealers only have 23 days of inventory. They normally have 60 days. A car dealer told me they are expecting it to get worse before it gets better.

By the way,  belated Happy Birthday to Jay!

I hope everyone has a good week.

[Simon]

I don’t have any info on this topic but I think you’d see groups of resellers rioting on the streets outside eBay if they removed the immediate-payment-required option.  People already complain incessantly about unpaid item cases arising just from offers.  I would be surprised if they would make that situation even worse.

[Simon]

Thanks for the podcast.  I listened while I did an evening hike in the hills near my house.

Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 4584
Items Sold: 71
Total Sales: $1724.9
Cost of Items Sold: $212
Average Price Sold: $24.29
Average Cost of Item: $2.99
Highest Price Item Sold: $191 Monitor Audio Speakers MA 700G MK II
Number of items listed this week: 78 worth approx. $1314
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +26%

I had another solid week.  I keep expecting that my run of good luck will end but it’s been consistently good for me.  I guess that my extra focus since my “retirement” is paying off.

Regarding your comment about the lavender clothesline videos showing her shopping and explanations for what she bought and what she passed over:-  I watch a lot of Youtubers while I list on ebay.   A couple of years ago there was maybe one Youtuber that did that kind of video.  He used a spy camera in his glasses to show garage sales which I found pretty fascinating.  In the last year or so there have been an abundance of YouTubers doing the same thing in much less subtle ways with GoPros strapped to their chests or just with their phones.  eg: Thrift Mine,  Paper and Moose, RVA Flips,  Froggy Flips, Cincinnati Picker.   If you like that kind of YouTube video their are lots to choose from.

Last week I took advantage of my freedom from the 9-5 world and spent Monday – Wednesday around Lake Tahoe.  It felt great to be able to go on a mini vacation on days when everyone else had to work.  🙂

I hope everyone has a profitable week.

[Simon]

Thanks for the work around.I wonder why eBay doesnt let sellers promote everything. Maybe to avoid promotions becoming too spammy?

That’s the reason I thought they might limit it.  When there aren’t a lot of similar items they might not want the duplication that comes with promoted listings in the search results.

[Simon]

@MyCottage : Yes, there’s a Unpaid Item Assistant setting to automatically relist items.  I have that switched on but I’ve had 2 orders cancelled by the unpaid item assistant recently and neither item was automatically relisted.  It doesn’t seem as though that relist is working now/yet.

[Simon]

Related to this topic,  I use the unpaid item assistant.  Instead of opening an unpaid item case,  the unpaid item assistant now just cancels the order after 4 days.  It doesn’t seem to relist the item which is annoying.

[Simon]

Thanks for the podcast.  I’m happy to hear that the coffee shop is still very busy. I hope it continues that way.

My numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 4574
Items Sold: 64
Total Sales: $1226.35
Cost of Items Sold: $180
Average Price Sold: $19.16
Average Cost of Item: $2.82
Highest Price Item Sold: $54.95 Sega Dreamcast Vintage Promo t-shirt
Number of items listed this week: 101 worth approx. $2296
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +25%

My sales were back down to normal levels this week.  I had no high-value sales this week.

In regard to your Jay’s theory about the store downgrade being responsible for slow sales,  I also downgraded from an anchor store to a premium store and didn’t see a big change in my sales.   If you think about it from eBay’s perspective, they probably don’t really care what kind of store you have. They make most of their money from final value fees so their primary interest is in helping sell as much stuff as they can to collect those fees.

I hope everyone has a good week!

[Simon]

I had to Google “GMV” because I wasn’t familiar with that acronym. It stands for “Gross Merchandise Value” or “Gross Merchandise Volume” and represents the total value of sales over some period of time (rather than the number of sales).

I wasn’t 100% sure whether those rankings meant what I thought or not but it’s new information to me.  If nothing else it’s staggered to know that there are 136,000 people selling used t-shirts on eBay.  Next time someone asks why their stuff isn’t selling we can point to numbers like those.

[Author]

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