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Estate sales can definitely be unpredictable but that’s part of the fun for me. You can never predict what a sale will be like. If you go to a lot of sales you might be able to learn which estate sale companies price high. I have one of those near me. I like the people and they do a great job staging the houses but their prices mean that I rarely buy anything.
Estate sales run by families are the most unpredictable. Sometimes the prices are crazy high. Sometimes the stuff is almost given away.
Congrats on a good week of sales R&J. Glad things are going well for your stores.
I’m still listening to the show as I write this…
My stats for the week:
Total Items in Store: 1589
Items Sold: 26
Total Sales: $623.51
Cost of Items Sold: $66.85
Average Price Sold: $23.98
Average Cost of Item: $2.57
Highest Price Item Sold: $119.95 – 28 point Chilean Spurs
Number of items listed this week: 37
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 209
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 78
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 52
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.64%
# of Hats Sold: 16 (61% of sales)Another consistently normal week of sales for me (from a $ perspective). A couple of highlights for me. My wife came with me to an estate sale a couple of weeks ago. She rarely comes sourcing with me (and usually just shops for herself when she does) but on this occasion she noticed some interesting spurs. I would have overlooked them if my wife hadn’t picked them up. We paid $30 for them when I saw they sell on eBay. They got lots of interest and sold in a few weeks for $119.95. They are going to Poland via GSP:
Another of my favorite sales was a small pile of Miami Beach hotel brochures from the 1950s that sold for $36.95. I sold a similar group from Las Vegas hotels from the 1970s a couple of months ago. Definitely worth keeping an eye out for this kind of thing.
Hey Brian – How did your expenses zero out all your sales? Are you saying you made no profit for 2016?
Congratulations and a huge THANK YOU for 300 episodes. You’ve helped so many people with your shows.
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 1578
Items Sold: 25
Total Sales: $622.95
Cost of Items Sold: $110.7
Average Price Sold: $24.92
Average Cost of Item: $4.43
Highest Price Item Sold: $134.95 Kenwood TS-120S 80-10 Meter SSB/CW Radio Transceiver – Not working. Bought at an online auction.
Number of items listed this week: 66
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 179
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 97
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 54
Sell-through rate: 1.58%
# of Hats Sold: 17 (68% of sales)I’ve been plugging through my own taxes this week. Except for one year when I used an accountant, I’ve done my own taxes for the last 30 years. I’m good with details and finance so I don’t mind doing it myself. I use increased tax withholding at work to cover my taxes but I didn’t really have any idea if I was paying enough. As of last night it looks like a couple of credits (for having 2 kids in college) will mean I’m getting a refund. (This year I did tax returns for both my college-aged kids too.)
Jay was remarkable calm about the cut in the FVF discount considering it’s going to cost you thousands over a year. I can’t get over the fact that it seems to be an unduly large burden on TRS who are, presumably, eBay’s best sellers.
I agree with pythonesk. I’ve worked in tech for a long time and over the last 10 years I’ve worked for 3 different online eCommerce companies so I always judge conspiracy theories through that lens.
What is eBay’s #1 goal? Presumably it is to make money. Accordingly, they want their search algorithms to show buyers the items that they think are most likely to be purchased. Period.
Their algorithm has to include relevancy (probably as the #1 factor) but there’s likely to be a myriad of other minor factors eg: an item that hasn’t sold in a long time might get a bump down, items from crappy sellers are hopefully bumped down, free shipping might give an item a nudge up. That kind of stuff. Ultimately, eBay just wants to sell the most stuff they can.
Intentionally hiding listings from some sellers makes no sense if those items are likely to sell. In the same way, showing listings from sellers that are further away makes no sense either because higher shipping costs would discourage sales. (The small extra amount in FVF would be vastly overshadowed by the overall lower sales).
That said, eBay probably screws up some times and it wouldn’t surprise me if tweaks to their algorithm sometimes negatively impact certain sellers more than others. I’d put that situation in the bucket of “things I can’t control”.
This is a disappointing update. Over the last year most of the changes have been pretty reasonable from a seller perspective. The reduction in TRS+ discount comes straight out of the pockets of some of their best sellers and is very visible. That change will cost me about $500/yr I believe. The increase in FVF seems much less significant. Only around $50 for the year for me if I’m doing the math correctly.
Here are my numbers for the week
Total Items in Store: 1535
Items Sold: 32
Total Sales: $755.50
Cost of Items Sold: $100.85
Average Price Sold: $23.61
Average Cost of Item: $3.15
Highest Price Item Sold: $120.95 Model Martin M-130 Pan American Airways China Clipper w/ 21″ w.span
Number of items listed this week: 49
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 203
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 103
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 27
Sell-through rate: 2.08%
# of Hats Sold: 18 (56% of sales)I had another good week despite having long handling times as I was on a business trip. My biggest sale was a large model plane that I bought at an auction. It was a bear to package so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it arrives safely.
When I’m sourcing I try very hard not to buy stuff for myself. I want to avoid bringing in unnecessary stuff into our house. On the other hand, when my wife tags along she invariably treats it as a shopping trip for herself. Oh well. 🙂
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 1522
Items Sold: 29
Total Sales: $638.25
Cost of Items Sold: $119.26
Average Price Sold: $22.01
Average Cost of Item: $4.11
Highest Price Item Sold: $89.95 4 piece Snap On Tools File Set
Number of items listed this week: 53
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 200
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 136
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 55
Sell-through rate: 1.91%
# of Hats Sold: 18 (62% of sales)Another solid week for me. I hope things continue this way. Is this really a spike caused by tax refunds? I wonder.
I had to do a business trip to Seattle this week and have been going through that annoying daily experience of changing handling times on a slow internet connection. Wow, what a pain that is. It takes forever, fails half the time and who knows whether it actually worked.
Side note, the closest AirBnB to the Seattle office for my company happens to be an old renovate trailer (like an Air Stream trailer) so that’s where I chose to stay. Kinda different to a typical boring hotel room.
Hi Beth,
I’ve pondered your question myself in the past because I saw the same pattern. When my store was small I sold a much higher percentage of my items.I don’t know if I can explain it well but my theory is that as you list items, a percentage of those listings (let’s say 20% for argument’s sake) will sell almost immediately, a percentage (let’s say another 20%) of those will sell over the next 2 weeks, 20% will sell in the next 6 months and 40% will sell in more than 6 months or maybe never. Over time your store fills up with those very slow moving (or “never sell” items) so the % of sales drops over time. When your store is small, those quick-sellers account for a much larger % of your sales. I tried to do an analysis of my own sales but never put sufficient effort in to figure exactly what those percentages look like for me but I’m pretty sure that’s what happens. I kind of think of of my store as a lake. There’s water (items) flowing in and a smaller amount of water (sales) flowing out and over time my lake is filling up with sediment (dead, slow-moving items).
Let’s face it, if we were selling very popular, one-of-a-kind items that sold quickly, it would be very hard for a single person to find, list and ship sufficient items to build a big store because the stuff would be disappearing quicker than we could replenish them.
Yes! I had the same issue Ryanne. I would uncheck that Gallery Plus checkbox but the $1.00 fee remained at the bottom of the listing screen. I tried saving and refreshing the draft and the checkbox would be checked again. I ended up unchecking, listing and getting charged the $1. I called and got it reversed but I don’t think the eBay C.S rep believed me when I tried to explain the problem. Super frustrating. Ending and relisting / sell-similar didn’t fix the issue. I’ll have to recreate the listing from scratch and rephotograph the item.
In regard to COGS, the for completing your tax return IRS only wants to have a single number – the COGS for everything that was sold during the year so… you can take the value of all your inventory at the beginning of the year, add the cost of all your purchases during the year, and subtract the value of the inventory you have left at the end, and the difference is your COGS.
Retro T – If you’re looking for a lightbox, check out the StudioPro Lightbox on ebay. It’s an all-in-one system with LED lighting embedded in the roof of the box. I’ve found it much much less hassle that the kind with multiple lights on the stands on the outside:
Golden Finger Picker did a youtube video on selling slides that you might find interesting: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjuoNSLpP_RAhXGjVQKHZqQC5oQtwIIGjAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DBiUmhK9UMuc&usg=AFQjCNGQaSfa_zGj-tJgYTWy-Y17YrNuTQ&sig2=cbRV3YSmp_07AnIEUIa0Hw&bvm=bv.146094739,d.cGw
Here are my numbers for this week:
S.L Weekly Post
Total Items in Store: 1498
Items Sold: 17
Total Sales: $507.75
Cost of Items Sold: $90.75
Average Price Sold: $29.87
Average Cost of Item: $5.34
Highest Price Item Sold: $149.95 Set of Snap On Ball Peen Dead Blow Hammers (bought at auction for $60)
Number of items listed this week: 53
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 204
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 116
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 50
Sell-through rate: 1.13%
# of Hats Sold: 9 (52% of sales)I enjoyed the show this week. You guys were very chatty and obviously having a good weekend. Lots of interesting stories and comments.
One of the best tips I got when I first started eBay was to set up a good inventory system. I’ve used a spreadsheet since I started. By being very very careful about copying the descriptions of listed items into the spreadsheet and putting everything into numbered tubs and putting the tub# into my spreadsheet, I can find items very quickly. I have over 900 hats on ebay now which are stored in lots of tubs so I couldn’t operate without some quick way to find a specific hat.
Great to hear that Jay is experiencing what it’s like to do the full listing experience. I think it makes a lot of sense to have those skills. Will we hear that Jay has been doing all the shipping next week? 🙂
I’ve received packages where the seller has underpaid shipping. It annoys me much more than it should.
Thanks for the podcast!
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 1462
Items Sold: 32
Total Sales: $615.50
Cost of Items Sold: $77.70
Average Price Sold: $19.23
Average Cost of Item: $2.43
Highest Price Item Sold: $39.95 Borland Kylix Software (purchased from a thrift shop for $5)
Number of items listed this week: 50
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 198
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 132
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 61
Sell-through rate: 2.19%
# of Hats Sold: 19 (59% of sales)Another consistent week for me. Can’t complain about this at all.
I’ve had the goal of increase my average sale value for a while but I’m actually much more comfortable with lots of small purchases that give a good return than fewer more expensive items. I paid up for some items at an auction recently (spending a total of about $600) and with the way it’s going like I’m going to be fortunate to get my money back on those when I eventually sell those items and it feels like a much bigger deal to have a $100 item sitting around than it is to have 100 $1 items.
In regard to auctions, the two auctions near me have both now added online bidding which adds a whole extra level of competition. Estate sales are still my favorite but even a few of those are adopting the auction model. Interesting times.
