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[Simon]

You guys are familiar with my area. We live in Novato. My son goes to school at Santa Rosa Junior College which has campuses in Santa Rosa and Petaluma.

[Simon]

Yep. You’re right. We have about 800K in equity at the moment. (We live in Marin County which is just north of SF). We could take half of that and get a very nice house in most of the country. With my son in the local college and an elderly mother-in-law it’s not quite the right time to make the move but it’s part of my longer term plan.

[Simon]

Welcome and congratulations @aperture. I’ve very jealous of your impending retirement. Almost exactly one year ago I put a countdown clock on my browser. Every day when I go into work it tells me how many days till my planned retirement. (I have 2 years to go). It makes my antsy because I just want to be done with the office world. After 30 years of being a dutiful corporate employee I long for my “never-ending weekend”. (A term I heard recently which I like more than “retirement” – especially when talking to non FI/RE people). Financially I’m pretty close except that I would probably have to move to a lower cost-of-living area so that I could take some of the equity in my house to add to my investments. I hope you find the experience of retiring as wonderful as I imagine it to be.

[Simon]

Hi R&J – Thanks for the show as always. I’m curious about your mystery project….. It’s not like you guys to keep secrets 🙂

Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 2355
Items Sold: 30
Total Sales: $759
Cost of Items Sold: $67
Average Price Sold: $25.3
Average Cost of Item: $2.26
Highest Price Item Sold: $94.95 Starrett Combination Square Set (bought for $10 at an estate sale)
Number of items listed this week: 69
YTD Sales: $19297
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +18%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 332
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 177
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 131
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.27%
# of Hats Sold: 19 (63% of sales)

Just an average week for me. It felt slow but the numbers show it was normal.

I was going to switch on free returns but I decided to try business policies at the same time since they worked for you. When I opted-in, I got an error message that it didn’t work (and that someone from ebay would be looking at the problem) but it’s still in an error state so I haven’t switched on free returns yet. My TRS+ discount is only about $25/month these days so it’s not a huge incentive to have free returns.

Also inn regard to free returns, eBay has probably proven that it boosts sales by some %. For sake of argument, let’s says 10%. For eBay, a change that increases sales by 10% is huge but for the average eBay seller, a 10% increase isn’t noticeable at all. The weekly swings in sales are easily more than 10% so there’s no way to know what factor is causing the change. I don’t think the average eBay seller could ever accumulate enough data to know whether free returns makes a difference to them personally. For some sellers it probably will. For others it probably wont.

Hope every has a great week.

[Simon]

Yep. I grew up in Melbourne but I always wanted to see the U.S so I got a contract job in San Francisco. I planned to do a little work, do some traveling and go home but I met the woman that became my wife and I’m still here decades later.

[Simon]

Thanks for the show Ryanne & Jay.

Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 2319
Items Sold: 34
Total Sales: $836
Cost of Items Sold: $179
Average Price Sold: $24.6
Average Cost of Item: $5.28
Highest Price Item Sold: $94.95 Pioneer 301 CD player Changer
Number of items listed this week: 51
YTD Sales: $18,538
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +19%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 332
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 145
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 47
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.47%
# of Hats Sold: 23 (67% of sales)

I used the long weekend last week to force myself to test and list some electronics that I’ve been sitting on for a while. That helped get my numbers up a little this week.

I don’t know if this has already been discussed but I got an offer from eBay to cover the cost of returns for me during June if I offer free returns on my items. I haven’t got around to offering free returns yet but I may try it. I’m going to switch on business policies first to make these kinds of things quicker to adjust in future.

It was good to hear Dan call in to the show. Melbourne Australia is my home town though I’ve live in the U.S for decades now.

Hope everyone has a great week.

[Simon]

> #1 by shopping around.
> #2 by raising our deductible on houses.
> #3 by switching to liability-only on our cars since they’re too old to get much money for them.

I did the first two also. I should double-check on #3 again for our older car. I suspect the cost is very low because our deductible is high and our older car isn’t worth much.

It’s amazing what a big penalty you pay by being loyal to an insurance company. Shopping around your insurance needs is well worthwhile.

When I first shopped our insurance around I cut our total insurance costs from $8600/yr to $4600/yr. (For a while there we had 3 cars and 4 drivers including 2 teenagers on the auto policy which was a big factor).

[Simon]

Thanks for the show R&J!

Here are my numbers today:
Total Items in Store: 2268
Items Sold: 41
Total Sales: $736
Cost of Items Sold: $77
Average Price Sold: $17.94
Average Cost of Item: $1.89
Highest Price Item Sold: $44.95 Pair of Birkenstocks
Number of items listed this week: 47
YTD Sales: $17082
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +22%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 334
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 233
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 191
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.81%
# of Hats Sold: 32 (78% of sales)

I put best offer (with auto-decline to filter out low-ballers) on about 900 hats that I’ve had listed more than 4 months to generate some business. It resulted in lots of sales but it bought my average selling price down be 2 or 3 dollars.

On the topic of budgets, I was a little like Ryanne. I was fairly careful with my money and didn’t think a budget would be particular useful but I’ve been doing a monthly budget (which is really just a tracking sheet as I don’t limit my purchases based on it) for about 4 years now.

I think a budget is really useful for helping you understand where you’re spending your money and then you can decide if your spending matches your priorities. When I first started my budget I found it really useful to identify a few areas of high spending – groceries and insurance. I re-shopped all my insurance policies and saved thousands in the first year. We have auto insurance, house insurance, flood insurance, earthquake insurance, life insurance, umbrella insurance (and health insurance through work). Insurance is a fairly big annual expense in our household budget!

Hope everyone has a great week!

[Simon]

The tip about the listing category is important because, strangely, the free auction thing only applies to collectibles and fashion. If you list in the correct normal for magazines (“Books > Magazine Back Issues”) you have to pay for the auctions.

[Simon]

Thanks for sharing your experience with Mercari Home Decor Guy. Sounds like it’s working out well for you.

[Simon]

From a buyer’s perspective, I think INAD should remain:
1. To allow buyers to get their original shipping back if they paid for shipping
2. To allow eBay to identify sellers that are providing a poor product / poor experience so that eBay can weed them out. Allowing returns is fine but it still makes for a less-than-ideal experience when products are poor or mis-described or faulty. As sellers, we want buyers to come back and the fewer negative experiences they have, the better.

[Simon]

Hi J&R – Thanks for the interesting podcast.

Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 2261
Items Sold: 39
Total Sales: $901
Cost of Items Sold: $63
Average Price Sold: $23.1
Average Cost of Item: $1.62
Highest Price Item Sold: $209.95 1962 New York Mets Baseball Yearbook
YTD Sales: $15681
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +29%
Number of items listed this week: 63
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 327
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 233
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 110
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.72%
# of Hats Sold: 29 (74% of sales)

My week got off to a good start with the sale of the Mets yearbook. (It was the first regular year for the Mets). I paid less than $1 for the program. I got a pile of magazines for $10 at an estate sale and the estate sale company was too lazy to see what’s I’d found in a box in the garage.

I’m glad you mentioned the pencil auction. I watched that one end and was amazed by the price. I haven’t seen pencils mentioned before.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to switch on free returns yet. I’ll be interested to see how you guys find it. I got an annoying returns this week. (2 hats sold to the same person being returned as defective where the notes say “doesn’t fit” grrrr…).

Hope everyone has a good week!

[Simon]

> I also didn’t realize that you can only go back so far looking at items sold

Yes, this is another pet peeve of mine. As a buyer I can see some details on years of my purchases yet as a seller, my sales disappear after 60 or 90 days. I wonder if this is just a historical throwback to a time when storage (particularly of photos) was much more expensive or whether this has something to do with the the 3rd party services which have access to much more historical sales data (eg: Worthpoint)

[Simon]

Welcome back and thanks for the podcast.

My numbers for this week:
Total Items in Store: 2264
Items Sold: 34
Total Sales: $663
YTD Sales: $14203
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +33%
Cost of Items Sold: $72
Average Price Sold: $19.51
Average Cost of Item: $2.13
Highest Price Item Sold: $42.95 Garmin Nuvi 1300LM
Number of items listed this week: 44
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 320
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 140
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 44
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.5%
# of Hats Sold: 23 (67% of sales)

Things were pretty quiet this week relative to recent weeks. I had a business trip and long handling times so that may have been a slight factor in the dip. Not to worry. I should see pretty good sales from now till at least mid-summer (based on previous year sales).

I hate that draft issue with a passion. I call it draft rot due to the weird way some photos & some thumbnails disappear and some remain. Surely it’s not too much for eBay to leave our drafts intact for a few months.

[Simon]

I forgot to say “Thanks for the podcast”. It was great to have a Monday-morning fix of Scavenger Life even though I know you guys are in the middle of a trip!

[Author]

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