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On the last day, whatever doesn’t sell is going to be sent to the box lot auction, the clean out people or just getting trashed. I have filled up the car for $30 on the last day of some Estate sales.
Everything is negotiable, regardless of the stated prices or discounts. Don’t be afraid to ask, especially on the last day.
I’ve had a couple of people tell me their children purchased the items with out them knowing. One actually said it was her 18 month old daughter. Both times they hadn’t paid, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt and cancelled the sales with out any negative results.
As long as nothing has shipped I’m ok with it.
What drives me nuts is the number of sales for Local Pickup I’ve had to cancel. They buy it, pay for it and then say they didn’t know it was a local pickup. Each time, I lose a little on Paypal fees and of course my time. It hasn’t happened in a while, so maybe it was a glitch in the system.
The community yard sales, usually sponsored by real estate firms, are generally where I get my best finds.
The church sponsored rummage sales are a great place for $1 items, but it’s tougher to find high end stuff there.
On Sundays we have the box lot auctions. Those can be profitable, but I end up filling the car up and then sifting through boxes for about a week or so trying to determine what is valuable. Honestly, my operation is not efficient enough to handle this volume more than once a month or so.
Finally there are the ever present Estate sales. These are hot or miss for me and involve more driving than the other options. I try to go on the last day to get the cheaper prices.
Buying is easy. Listing is the battle.
I have a couple of sales that I had to cancel due to the item being damaged. My defect rate is 0.26% due to this. If I had sent the items and later refunded the buyer, or taken a return, I would not have gotten defects for them.
I have no complaints.
I just don’t see free shipping as an option for anything beyond a USPS Flat rate envelope, First Class or Media mail. A lot of my stuff sells on the west coast due to the less expensive shipping costs.
I don’t know how much it would increase my sales. How many of the sellers they are referring to sell IPOD cases, software and New ink cartridges.
Maybe I’m wrong.. it wouldn’t be the first time.
Regarding the tailgate issue, It appears they have a truck with a lift gate picking up the pallets as an option. Who knows the additional cost. Those guys generally have pallet jacks on board. Whether they would let it leave the truck is up to the driver.
Worst case, you can buy your own pallet jack for a couple of hundred dollars. If you are going to be expanding in this area it would be a good idea anyway. That way you could easily move stuff around once they are palletized.
I have a simple system utilizing plastic totes and plastic drawers.
Each ones gets a letter and a 2 digit number such as H45.
The letter stands for where the item is. I use my garage, 16′ X 9′ shed, underground bomb shelter and now my house.
The numbers correspond to the tote or drawer.
Right now I’m using the notes section of the listing for my item location and date of listing.
If I were starting it today, I would just use the SKU field and incorporate the location, date of listing and cogs there.
I ship a lot of Fedex Smartpost and an occasional FEDEX Ground. I’ve never had that issue.
Good Luck.
The auction I go to has, among other things, unsold estate sale items. It’s funny, because I often recognize the stuff from estate sales I’ve actually gone to. Now I’m buying it by the box or by the pallet.
I’m not going to the auction today. I’m going to stay home and list.
It’s raining here, which it never does. Between that and the Thanksgiving weekend, I bet nobody is going to the auction… Deals deals deals..
I’ll be home listing. I’ve got to be an adult.
Bummer….
I print out the generic one with a thank you message. Then, since it’s half a sheet in size, I fold it in half, cut off the bottom and use that for another person’s packing list.
Generally if an an item is priced $50 or higher I list it with Priority Mail as the shipping method. This gives me $100 of coverage free. If it is a media mail item, I may add insurance once the purchase price approaches $100 or more. For priority mail I consider additional coverage when the price approaches $150.
For less expensive items, I take the risk. It’s like imposing a deductible on myself.
There is the hassle involved as well as the claims history that gets created when you make a claim. Is is possible, that after I make Three $18 insurance claims, I’ll look like a bad risk? I don’t want to find out.
The final reason is that I rarely have a damaged or lost item. In all my years on Ebay only one item, on Fedex has ever been damaged and none lost.
The sky is falling chicken little.. Reagan was going to start World war 3, Obama was going to cripple the economy and now everyone’s afraid Trump is going to strip away all of our social benefits and set us back 20 years.
Let’s get back to scavenging and listing…
I think a political topic in the forums is a great idea..
Sometimes the packages aren’t scanned and sometimes they are scanned. but for some reason the information is not uploaded to USPS com which is where we see it.
I went through this last year. There was a software problem and the scans weren’t being uploaded. The pickups were showing up on the internal Post Office network, but not showing up USPS.com. It took a few phone calls and eventually got fixed.
Recently at a church rummage sale, while digging through a pile of shoes, I found a pair of new, never worn Kenneth Cole men’s dress shoes in the original box. When I opened the box and saw the brand new shoes, I was very excited.
Last week I was digging through a box of books I had purchased at an auction. In it, was a bible from 1830. Yes 1830. It was worn and a bit dried out, but intact and legible.
These are the reasons I do what I do.
