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I used these for a long time: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JQOPGQO/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1. (880 labels for $27.99)
I switched to the Betckey labels for my last purchase. They were fine but, yes they are stuck on the roll so that last label is annoying. I can deal with that small issue for a cheaper price.
Good luck with that @KentuckyPicker. I hope it works out well. I always find that when i buy lots of any particular item it really helps me learn a lot about that particular area.
Couple of weeks ago I bought 300 vintage electronic vacuum tubes for $100.
That’s interesting. Do you have a vacuum tube tester or are they all new, old stock?
I made 24 eBay Send sales in August. I haven’t heard of any problems with any of those. (Knock on wood). I’ve only had a single eBay Send order truly go missing this year that I used an insurance claim on. (I also had one with a bad address and one where the customer didn’t pick up the item. Neither of those orders were returned).
For me, the increase in sales makes it well worthwhile to do eBay Send on lower value items. I use GSP for large & expensive items.
but the insurance only covers the price of the item, it won’t even let you ask for the full amount,
Isn’t that the dumbest thing! Given that the delivery service failed you would assume that the insurance would cover that aspect. I couldn’t believe it when the insurance. claim form prevented me from requesting price+shipping.
On the upside, my claim was approved fairly quickly.
One more comment regarding this week’s podcast. Similar to Ryanne, I recently had an Ebay Standard International Delivery order that had tracking stop updating (in Mexico). I filed an insurance claim and it paid out pretty quickly. Insurance info can be found here: https://pages.ebay.com/sell/send/termsofservice.html
You file a claim using this form:
https://www.pip-claim.com/PIPClaim/eBayIntClaim/CreateeBayClaim(For anyone that hasn’t come across it before, this website gives much more detailed tracking info for international standard delivery orders that you’ll find on ebay: http://parcelsapp.com/en/ )
Thanks for the podcast. I listened as I did a late evening hike in the hills near my home tonight. Have you thought about doing a podcast about what it’s like to start a retail business. I think that would be pretty entertaining. I’d listen to a podcast about opening a coffee shop for sure.
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 4086
Items Sold: 52
Total Sales: $1766.62
Cost of Items Sold: $288
Average Price Sold: $33.97
Average Cost of Item: $5.55
Highest Price Item Sold: $529.95 Zebra ZT410 300 dpi Industrial Thermal Label Printer
Number of items listed this week: 85 worth approx. $1717
YTD Sales: $41536
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +21%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 465
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 218
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 66
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.27%My numbers were skewed a bit by my big sale of the week – an industrial label printer that I got from a neighbor who worked for a now-defunct startup company. I bought a pile of electronics from him a month ago and finally got around to testing, selling and shipping this big printer. (Knock-on-wood it arrives safely).
We’ve had the same heat wave in Northern California that @ChristineR is getting in Southern California. It’s been over 110F here the last 2 days. Thankfully the air quality has been OK for the last few days. We had 5 days last week where the air quality from the nearby wildfires was so bad that it was unhealthy to open the windows.
My big news outside of ebay is that I’ve decided to ditch my day job and retire from that world. I’ll give my notice in the first week of October (after I get a company stock grant – RSUs). I have a couple of years worth of expenses in cash so I wont need ebay sales to pay the bills but I’ll probably ramp up slightly so that I can hopefully pay half of my monthly living expenses via ebay. I had originally planned to retire in June but retiring into a pandemic seemed too weird so I stuck it out. (Working from home instead of commuting was also much easier to handle).
I hope everyone has a profitable week on ebay.
Doh! I didn’t realize this was a repeat episode so ignore my comments about the show. (I use a podcast app and just play episodes when they pop up. I didn’t realize it was a repeat until now.)
My response to their message was…. “I can’t help you with an ocean view but you can have this pre-owned hat for just $14.95. No presentations required.“
Thanks for the show this week. Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 4053
Items Sold: 57
Total Sales: $1332.71
Cost of Items Sold: $238
Average Price Sold: $23.38
Average Cost of Item: $4.18
Highest Price Item Sold: $106.21 Zebra GC420d Zebra Direct Thermal Printer
Number of items listed this week: 82 worth approx. $2187
YTD Sales: $39769
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +18%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 468
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 284
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 100Another decent week of sales. This is normally the slowest period of the year for me so I was happy with the end result which was higher than this time last year.
Congratulations on the giant art sale this week R&J! That’s pretty amazing. I don’t think I’d ever make a sale like that because I would have accepted the first offer offer $500 if my initial cost was fairly low.
In response to your caller who was selling their daughter’s laptop, since it’s a personal item you dont pay taxes on that sale and you don’t record it as a loss. (The laptop cost $1200 and sold for $700 so there was definitely no profit but it’s not a loss either since it wasn’t bought for sale). Since the revenue for the sale will be reported mixed into business sales, the simple solution that I use is to make the COGS high enough that the profit is zero. ie : COGS=(sales price + shipping paid by buyer) – (shipping for that item + fees). For example if the caller sells it for $700 free shipping and the cost to ship is $50, the COGS for that item would be approximately $559 (calculated as 700-((700*.13)+50) – using a 13% figure for fees. Hope this makes sense.
Different topic. Here’s my entry in the dumb message of the week. I’m selling a <b>hat </b>for a resort in Mexico and I received this message tonight via ebay messages:
“Looking for pricing at Sun Palace Cancun, 9/25-10/2 (7 nights) or 9/25-10/7 (12 nights) for 2 people. I heard there is a promotion 2 weeks for the price of one, is that on? We have been there before few times. Need ocean view. Usual airport transportation of course. As I’m sure you are aware, I am requesting pricing from a couple of people. Cancellation policy is needed just in case. We will book our airfare of course from Los Angeles.
WE WILL NOT ATTEND ANY PRESENTATIONS.”
It was sent through ebay messages by someone with a 440 feedback score. How does someone make this mistake. It blows my mind.
Hope everyone has a good week!In case you get more stamps in the future, stamps have more value when there are multiple joined together in a block like some you have in that photos. Also, on the lower left side there are four stamps with a number in the margin. That’s called a block plate and it shows the plate or cylinder from which the stamps were printed. That’s slightly more valuable than just a regular block of four.
I collected stamps as a kid (but my parents gave away my collection). When I started selling on ebay I was a bit sad to see that the market for most stamps had mostly disappeared.
I have a comment on the show. Regarding a helper. I wouldn’t write-off older people. You mentioned that younger people are likely easier to train which could be true but younger people are going to have lots of distractions and changes in their life whereas an older person is going to be more settled and could be much more dependable in the long run.
I empathize with the challenges of training someone. I trained my wife to list and photograph hats. It took a while and adjusting her process to match what I wanted took time. She is happy doing that part of the business but would prefer not to get involved in the rest of it (sourcing, researching/listing other stuff, shipping, customer service, book-keeping).
Sometimes I exclude the hat details as it seems like too much information. Also, I don’t necessarily want to encourage lots of other people to join my niche.
Since you asked… hats accounted for 79% sales last week (based on number of sales) but only 49% of my sales $ (because other stuff has a higher average selling price).
Btw, I listed to the show yesterday. I joined the reading-glasses crew a few years ago. This last Christmas, I asked my wife to get me some of those glasses cords as a present (which she thought were very “old man like”). But they are very handy when I’m working around the house, especially doing ebay things as I’m constantly taking them on and off.
I haven’t listened to the show yet but I’ll post my numbers anyway:
Total Items in Store: 4019
Items Sold: 43
Total Sales: $1173.53
Cost of Items Sold: $208
Average Price Sold: $27.29
Average Cost of Item: $4.86
Highest Price Item Sold: $264.95 HP-41CV Calculator w/ Survey Module Case
Number of items listed this week: 79 worth approx. $1796
YTD Sales: $37127
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +15%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 469
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 297
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 161.5It’s been a decent week. On par with recent weeks and this time last year. My biggest sale of the week was a vintage calculator from a pile of electronics and random stuff I bought from a neighbor. I gave him a fair price for his things but I’m still making a good profit. Watch out for those old HP calculators.
Yard sales are still pretty sparse around here (without doing loads of driving) so I didn’t go sourcing on the week. I don’t see the garage sale situation changing for quite a while which is disappointing as it’s my ebay-related fun.
Hope everyone has a profitable week.
