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I may have to stop listening to your podcast. LOL! I haven’t received a payment dispute in probably 5-6 years. I listened to the podcast this morning about the rash of payment disputes people are getting and 5 hours later I get a payment dispute because the buyer doesn’t remember buying a postcard. Unreal. Can you please talk about winning the lottery next time?
This is right up my alley. I have over 26,000 postcards listed on ebay. https://www.ebay.com/sch/spinach-eater/m.html?item=114370545382&hash=item1aa10406e6%3Ag%3A9QoAAOSwXj9fQT5z&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562
Search “street” or “church” and it should narrow it down. Let me know if you find anything of interest.
John
I usually cringe when I see a Seller update. I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop. The last several have actually been positive for sellers, the Fall 2020 one included. I do have to wonder though if there is a luxury watch lobby I didn’t know existed. Seems odd that so much effort and a rate reduction was put into a random and probably pretty niche category.
Total Items in Store: 26,496
Items sold: 165
Gross Sales: $2,256.92
Highest Price Sold: $225 postcard sized color chart used for ordering postcards & $125 Tempe AZ Street View from 1920’s
COGS: $16.50
Average Price Sold: $13.68
No Returns, but another Item Not Received refund, luckily only for $1.49
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0
Number of items listed this week: +/- 655Great week for me. Sold a few dental books and also sold a lot of CD’s for $68 that were part of a larger collection of over 400 that was being thrown out during our last community bulk trash day.
Total Items in Store: 26,006
Items sold: 162
Gross Sales: $1,674.17
Highest Price Sold: $60: Robert E Lee Monument in Richmond, VA
COGS: $16.20
Average Price Sold: $10.33
No Returns *
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0
Number of items listed this week: 620The “lost” postcard from last week was delivered. It took 14 days to go 80 miles. Got another “haven’t received it yet” message this week. Card only took 3 days to get from Maryland to San Antonio, but it’s been sitting at the San Antonio post office for 8 days.
I’ve been pretty motivated to list over the past few weeks, but I’m still not doing what I think I can easily do which is 1,000-1,200 new listings a week.
Total Items in Store: 25,548
Items sold: 136
Gross Sales: $1,499.03
Highest Price Sold: several postcards for $30 each
COGS: $13.60
Average Price Sold: $11.02
No Returns *
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0
Number of items listed this week: 538+/-I got the specialization down pat, just not the $1,000 an item. Specialization does help me tremendously when I’m buying postcards at antique malls, auctions, etc. I can even do very well when I buy from other postcard dealers at shows. These postcard experts only specialize in selling at postcard shows, they don’t sell on any Ecom sites, so they don’t know what the current trends are or current prices realized for certain topics, towns, etc. Since I specialize in selling postcard on ebay, I can cherry pick their cards for ones I know will sell well online. I recently bought a card from a dealer for $.25 of one of the confederate monuments that was removed and I resold it today for $60.
*No returns but I had an impatient buyer open an item not received case. I see his point that in the “good ol days” it did not take 10 days to travel the 80 miles from Baltimore to Harrisburg. I’ll wait until the last moment to issue a refund, hoping that it shows up. I’m only out $7 if it doesn’t show. Cost of doing business. But, I’m wondering how bad it’s going to get for me since 82% of my cards are mailed with a forever stamp and no USPS tracking.
It’s a 30 year. I’ll probably just keep sending the same payment amount as my old terms so the extra $400 goes to the principle.
Thanks Jay. I am lucky with my pipeline. Since you last interviewed me my postcard “hoard” has grown to about 400,000 cards in my house. I have been vending at postcard shows in addition to ebay. I have a show stock of about 30,000 cards. Before covid I was also going to monthly postcard club meetings and have a rotating stock of about 60,000 cards that I sell for $.25 each to the club members. I also have about 32,000 cherry picked postcards just waiting for scanning and listing.
I’m still working alone. Once in a blue moon my daughter is willing to help and I’ll employ her. But, she’s more interested in watching videos on her phone than earning cash. I’m not sure I’ll ever have to hire anyone. Maybe if I get over 50k listings.
Yes. That $3 is the postcard in a plastic toploader and a bubble mailer sent USPS 1st class.
Yes, it’s true. I think I’m still in shock that ebay is giving us these free listings. I’m cautiously optimistic that there isn’t a “catch” coming in the next few months. I have (had) both an anchor and a premium store. I just closed the premium store and paid a $100 early termination fee, which is better than paying $60 a month for the next 4-5 months. I used sixbit to move the 3,000 listing over to the remaining store.
I had just renewed my anchor store in June and the fine for reducing that to a premium store is just shy of $1000. Sometime over the next several months when the fine reduces to $500/$600, I’ll go ahead and take the hit to downgrade my store. I’ll probably wait until I can get my new $150 shipping coupon and then cancel. But, my ultimate goal is to have 75,000 listings, so I will need an anchor store at some point. I just don’t think I’ll get there within the next year.
Total Items in Store: 25,146
Items sold: 163 (160 postcards)
Gross Sales: $1,722.49
Highest Price Sold: $37.50 L/E Commissioned Halloween Postcard
COGS: $28.10 (postcards average $.10 each except for the Halloween cards which I buy direct from the artist for $10 each)
Average Price Sold: $10.51 (postcards only)
No Returns
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0
Number of items listed this week: 400+/-Concerning free shipping. I have free shipping on about 90% of my listings. Pretty much any postcard below $15. My shipping costs are about $.70 per postcard (a forever stamp, photo mailer, lettertrack.com tracking service). I have built in about $1.00 worth of wiggle room on the price of a card, so I can absorb small increases in stamp prices. About a year ago I started charging a flat $3 shipping for any postcard that I list over $15, my cut off used to be $25.
Chevy Silverado. I made my way around the other brands, but I always come back to Chevy. They’ve given me fewer problems than the others. And, thank you! At times I didn’t think I was going to make it to retirement, it always seemed so far away. I am so blessed to be able to have my time and my life back. It’s amazing when 90% of the BS you had to deal with suddenly disappears overnight.
I haven’t posted numbers here in a very long time, but wanted to show that postcards still provide a very lucrative income.
Total Items in Store: 24,863
Items sold: 160 (159 postcards)
Gross Sales: $1,852.13
Highest Price Sold: $60 (Barney The Dinosaur Plush from my 2nd store)
COGS: $18.89 (postcards average $.10 each Barney was $2.99)
Average Price Sold: $11.27 (postcards only)
No Returns
Money Spent on New Inventory: $500 for approx 6,000 postcards
Number of items listed this week: 450I consolidated my 2 stores and I’m still 95% postcards. After retiring in November 2019 it took me about 5 months to decompress, recover and regroup from my job. My pension covers all of my bills with some leftover. I still do ebay for fun money and for capital for other lofty goals.
As a retirement gift to myself I took advantage of the dealership offers during the pandemic and bought my forever truck. Probably shouldn’t have, but I usually don’t splurge on anything for myself. I went from driving 500 miles a week to driving 500 miles every 3 months, so I hope to have this truck for many years to come.
THANK YOU for talking about mortgage refinancing!! It prompted me to call my current mortgage company. I’m dropping from 3.5% to 2.375% and will be doing a VA streamline refinancing with no points, no appraisals, no inspections, no documents, etc. Zero out of pocket expenses. It’s going to save a little over $400 a month. Add to that the $1100 a month savings in ebay listing fees. Besides starting to buy that fancy cheese in a can, what to do with an “extra” $1500 a month?
I’m really liking the increased listings since 99.9% of mine are in the collectibles category. Between my anchor and premium stores I have about 25,000 listings. By closing the premium store and downgrading my anchor to a premium (it has the larger feedback #), if my math is right I’ll save over $13,000 year. I’m paying $300 a month for the anchor store and an additional $600 a month for the extra 12000 listings over the 10k they give me. Downgrading from anchor to a premium and cancelling the other premium store would be a wash. But the extra 2200 listings over the 1,000 the premium store provided was another $220 a month. I’ll also be able to close my second Hippostcard.com store linked to the premium store and save another $120 a year. Again, if my math is correct, just on ebay, my listing fees will drop from $1,180 a month down to $60 a month.
Listening to your one caller in the RV (my dream by the way), you could easily specialize in specialized postcards. But postcards are still quantity over quality.
I may have disappeared, but I’ve always been listening.
