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Oh yes I forgot – happy birthday Jay!
Here’s a question for the forum – thumbs up if you’re a scavenger who’s into preparedness (not necessarily of the full doomsday variety, but enough where you’ve actually made some time/money investments in e.g., contingency food & water supplies).
I have leanings that way but I’m trying to prep by scavenging rather than spending a ton of money up front.
For sure. I think because of the things I sell (mostly business/industrial) things seem a little bit less seasonal for me than they would be for you guys. E.g., April was my best ever month, while December was merely good. We’ll see if that holds true in the future.
Sales: CAD$687, 5 items, COGS: $89 –> Item profit: $474
Expenditures: $135 –> Cashflow after tax: $305
Notable sales: bulb for arc lamp $5–>$300, another miter saw laser $10–>$125, last 3 of my medical lead vests $15–>$125.
Listed: $3115, 26 items
Scavenge of the week: professional GPS tracker/messaging systems x3, sorta for parts, $60, hoping for $2000. Also 9 Hilti anchoring adhesives $60, expecting $500 or so.By my standards I have been listing like mad for the past month, but so far sales are still pretty slack. I am badly overspent so now I’m trying to cool it on buying new inventory unless it’s cheap.
I ran the numbers and decided now it made sense to open a basic store, so pulled the trigger on that last week. Should save me about $50/month.
Found a nice big area rug, probably like 6×8, at the local dump’s salvage centre for $40. We’ve been looking for one for ages but never could find a good price. This one is synthetic, not super fancy, but it has a nice pattern and will fill our needs nicely. I think it’d be $300 or so new.
Now for the podcast!
If I had my future acreage already, I’d take them.
(1) Are the hooks copper?
(2) Free firewood is always handy
(3) They are pretty and they might actually sell – maybe to a Kit & Ace store?-
This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by
simplicio.
More auction hauls this week, listing has been good! We got out camping with friends this weekend and had a great time, too. Sales a little slack.
Sales: CAD$784, 6 items, COGS: $65 –> Item profit: $598
Expenditures: $471 –> Cashflow after tax: $37
Hours: 8, $5/hr
Notable sales: UV light $200 (paid 10), miter saw laser guide $130 (paid 15, have 3 more).
Notable buys: cool mexican wool rug $20, pump for radiant heating system $70 (hoping for $1200), and a bunch of random HVAC parts I still have to go through but I’ve got hopes.05/30/2018 at 6:02 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 362: Scavengers Are Always Prepared To Clean Out A Basement #41315Well, many parasites evolve to minimize damage to the host (to extend their resource extraction as long as possible), but I take your point.
05/30/2018 at 4:28 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 362: Scavengers Are Always Prepared To Clean Out A Basement #41308The only time scavengers could be accused of being parasites is if we are buying something whose worth its seller is completely unaware of.
Even then I am all right with that provided the seller gives their own price first and the interaction was initiated by them (they put on the garage sale or whatever), and I don’t have a duty to them (like e.g., an art appraiser would).
Most of our profits come from folks not wanting to incur the storage and transaction costs of selling their stuff for retail prices, which costs are considerable. We also add value by testing and warranteeing things we bought typically untested and unwarranteed.
05/28/2018 at 5:55 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 362: Scavengers Are Always Prepared To Clean Out A Basement #41149-
This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by
simplicio.
05/28/2018 at 12:07 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 362: Scavengers Are Always Prepared To Clean Out A Basement #41122Also the place is made for two adults (two master bedrooms) but there’s only one parking space. And it’s subgrade so little sunlight. Everything inside is nice but those to factors are killers.
05/28/2018 at 12:05 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 362: Scavengers Are Always Prepared To Clean Out A Basement #41119Yeah, we did. In retrospect, the model that makes sense is to buy a fixer upper like you guys. We bought full price because prices were going up like mad and rents were nice and high too, enough to cover everything easily. The numbers made sense then, and for about 5 months after we took possession. Then oil tanked and it’s been losing $200/month after tax ever since while not building that much equity. And because it’s the low end of the rental market the renters it attracts often have trouble paying.
The main lesson is, don’t mix price speculation up with cashflow considerations if you’re thinking of getting a rental property. The property has to have LOTS of cashflow to buffer rents decreasing. If it appreciates that should be just gravy, not something you’re counting on.
05/28/2018 at 11:28 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 362: Scavengers Are Always Prepared To Clean Out A Basement #41113I am really down on garage sales, I guess because it’s been a while since I found anything really good, and because they tend to be priced high in my area. But I will probably hit a few this summer.
Had a pretty slow week. But got some decent stuff at auction.
Sales: CAD$389, 3 items, COGS: $95 –> item profit: $232
Expenditures: $276 –> After-tax cashflow: -$9
Hours: 10.5, -$9/hr
Listed: $1450, 13 items
Notable sales: some expired toner bought almost a year ago, $31–>$180. Also a broken Trimble survey controller – rolled the dice that it might work & paid $59 at auction. It didn’t work but I still sold it for $130.
Listed some decent stuff this week. I got a big lot of POS equipment for $40 that is a bit beaten up but I expect to clear $1000 from it. Also a fancy commercial blender for $60, also beat up but I think I’ll get $500+.Cashflow wise the past two months have sucked because we’re trying to sell a condo we once bought as a rental property. So I’ve eaten 2 months of mortgage payments at about $1200/mo and we haven’t had a single offer. This property was a big mistake from the getgo. We overpaid and it’s not very desirable. Our old house on the other hand is a great rental property and I’m very glad we kept it.
What I see they mean by templates is extra awesomecool html stuff and long spiels about your return policies etc. to put in descriptions. Unless there is some list of parts to enumerate, my descriptions are super lazy copy/pastes from the title and I sell just fine.
Don’t think so, and I found it doesn’t work at all with my phone-based listing workflow. They’re very big on templates, which I care not a whit about.
Decided to cancel. I’ll find another way to back up my listings.
I can see how other sellers would like Inkfrog though. Has a nice interface.
Cool site, I’ll definitely be flipping through it. Some thoughts though:
-We work with whatever the tide washes up. Researching what to look for is a kind of top-down approach to scavenging; best is to research what you find, which could be literally anything whatsoever.
-This site is very much about the high-dollar single item, whereas as scavengers quantity is often just as important.Proposition: it isn’t worth learning about collectibles unless you really like them, because you need to know a lot to not get burned.
I now dislike buying collectibles unless I, personally, think they’re cool. A bit parochial perhaps, but it prevents me getting into a mindset of “the next sucker will buy this”, which is too common in thinking about “investments” of various kinds.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by
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