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I used to cash them in when I lived in NY, too. Getting a nickel per can or bottle was a pretty good deal back then!
All that is available to us in Texas is to save up cans, and haul them to the scrapper for whatever the per pound rate is.
It’s probably an old Bell Laboratory piece. They did a lot of scientific research, not just stuff related to telephones.
I love parting stuff out! Kirby vacs, Oster Kitchen Centers, Old Sunbeam Mixmasters, Rival meat slicers…I find them all the time at auctions and yard sales for $5. It is easy to make $100 or more by parting that stuff out. Makes it easier to ship, too.
We replaced our dishwasher, took apart our old one, and yep -it is going on ebay.
Broken vintage toys like Transformers are good to part out, too. I made a lot of cash off a $2.50 box of original Transformers parts that everyone else dismissed as garbage. 😀
-Liz
At an estate sale. There were 4, from different British Navy ships. They are kind of beat up, but I only paid $4 a piece.
I found a stack of 8 Dave Ramsey’s FPU kits at a church thrift for $10 each. I have sold 5 so far, at $70 each.
Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University
My little water color by a local artist sold today. I had listed for $100 and accepted a best offer of $50:
This raggedy old geography book sold, too. It is literally falling apart. I’m betting someone wants the old maps in it for a project. This came out of a giant box of Victorian-era books for $5. I’ve made at least $200 off that box by now.
Brass and Glass curio. I bought this one and 2 other different shaped curios for $25. One of the others sold for $70, the other for $40 (I think), and this one for $35.
03/08/2017 at 1:32 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 300: Our 300th Episode!! Now let’s talk taxes… #14045Linda, we keep ours until they go to the Big Hen House in the Sky, too. When we bought our house, it actually came with 2 chickens! They were older hens, and only laid for about a year after we bought the house. I became really attached to one of them. She seemed to seek out human company from time to time, and would let my son hand feed her berries from the garden. She’d follow me around, and would let me handle her without any fussing. Sometimes she’d come up to the back door and peck on it, waiting for someone to come out and visit with her! I was really sad when she died. She wasn’t acting right one night, and I decided I’d take her to the vet first thing in the morning. When I checked her the next morning, she had already died. I felt awful. 🙁 She had a sister that died a few months before her, too. Her sister was pretty sassy, and didn’t care for people much, however!
Pythonesk, yeah, we basically break even on the birds each month. We were able to scavenge a lot of stuff for their house, and their feed doesn’t cost much. They get a lot of leftovers from us. The cost sort of doesn’t matter at this point. It’s become really important to me that the animals we depend on for food are treated well. It impacts the quality of our food, and it weighs heavily on my conscience if the animals are not treated well. I wish I could find a local dairy that sells pasteurized milk. Everyone around here sells unpasteurized, and while I respect their choice to do so, it’s not for me.
I don’t have a niche, but I have some things I generally never sell, because it makes me crabby to list or pack/ship.
I don’t sell clothing, (a few rare exceptions), because I hate listing it, and it has a higher rate of return. I also don’t like selling dishes and glassware. Too much bubble wrap! It takes forever for me to get it all wrapped securely.
Is there anything that you dislike selling? If so, cull those items. What types of items in your inventory have the highest return rate? I’d consider culling them, too.
Do you have detailed, specialized knowledge of an item you like selling? If so, can you source that type of item with consistency? Is it an item that is in demand? That might be a way to focus your inventory a little.
As long as a package is scanned at some point in the journey from you to buyer, it will be ok, even if the USPS skips the acceptance scan. This happens a lot. I once had the post office scan all my stuff as “Delivered” instead of “Accepted”. It was a temporary, minor hassle, but it ended up ok when the item was delivered for real.
Did you check the tracking number on the usps website? Sometimes I can view more tracking information there than I can on the ebay site.
I would also take the tracking number and ask the post office to trace the package. They have access to a lot more detailed information on where parcels are in the postal stream than what the consumer can view. If they don’t give you an answer you like at the counter, you can contact them via the website. They actually *do* respond to comments and complaints, and pass on the issue to the correct local post master to sort out. I have written twice with issues, and both times I received either a phone call or email THE NEXT DAY from my local p.o., (in Illinois and then in Texas).
03/06/2017 at 10:09 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 300: Our 300th Episode!! Now let’s talk taxes… #13964Total Items in Store: 353
Items Sold: 16
Total Sales: $607
Highest Price Sold: $170 (Saffire Pro Recording equipment)
COGS: ?
Returns: 0This week’s sales were saved by DH giving me some of his used audio recording gear to sell. I have no idea what COGS is this week, because he doesn’t remember what he paid for the gear. If I didn’t have those sales, plus selling an old Coach purse of mine, I would have made about $250 this week. :/
Spent a lot of time this week pruning trees. We had a few nights of below freezing weather in January, and it did a number on my citrus trees. 🙁 I lost about 1/3 of the branches from my grapefruit tree, half the branches on my orange tree, and almost 75% of the branches from the pink grapefruit, (which is the one the chickens depend on for shade in the summer). The trees are putting out new leaves now, but I’ll need to come up with another shade solution for the birds this summer. :/
We also sold 3 dozen eggs from our chickens for $9 total. 🙂 I’m kicking around the idea of getting more birds to sell more eggs. I have 3 birds now, and they only cost me about $5 a month to keep them. We get 4-5 dozen eggs a month from them. There really isn’t any real profit to be made by it; it’s more of an ethical issue for me. I like knowing they are well cared for, and are living happy, healthy lives. I am also considering raising birds for meat, but I really need to think on that one. I know *how* to, ahem, dispatch a chicken quickly and humanely. I could do it if I had to, (like if one of my birds was fatally injured, and I needed to end her suffering). I’m not sure I want to do it regularly, though.
Hello, Stream of Consciousness!
Woo hoo, I think I found it!
HMS Commonwealth, from WWI. The crest on this cigarette silk matches mine.
03/04/2017 at 6:22 pm in reply to: Engaging customers who leave bad feedback with no communication #13802I will respond to the feedback, so potential buyers see I respond to customer complaints. I will also reach to the buyer, apologize to them for their unhappiness, and let them know I take returns. I don’t try to convince or cajole them, just “If you would like, I am happy to take the item back as a return”. So far, no one has taken me up on it. The last one angrily replied “It’s not worth my time!”. But it is worth your time to yell and be nasty. Alrighty, then.
I don’t refund a dime in those cases, and I don’t feel bad about it, either. If I don’t like the shoes I buy from Macy’s, the clerk isn’t going to give me my money back unless I bring back the shoes.
So, I say, reach out to the buyer, offer to accept a return, and if they refuse, don’t worry yourself about partial or full refunds.
02/28/2017 at 2:37 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 299: What Control Do We Have as eBay Sellers? #13563I think the fact that sales may drop off in the second half of the month has everything to do with people blowing their paychecks in the first half of the month, and then having an “oh oh, I need to be more responsible!” moment, rather than ebay “throttling” an account. I typically have the opposite experience: my sales are slow the first week of the month, probably because everyone has paid their rent and mortgage. Once that second paycheck hits, sales take off.
I just can’t see ebay paying programmers to write code to limit sales. It’s madness to spend money to limit your income. And if it was the case that there really was code in place to throttle accounts, a disgruntled current or ex-employee would have leaked that information by now. People can’t keep secrets, and that would be a big one.
Beautiful!
I guess that cut in FVF discount is to help make up for the advertising revenue they will loose, since they are getting rid of 3rd party ads. :/ I always did think it was odd they ran ads that could take buyers away from ebay.
While I am not happy about the 10% loss in discount, it does make more sense to promote seller listings, rather than Verizon, like in their example.
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This reply was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by
Liz.
Update: The seller took my photos down, so I have not called ebay. I am glad I didn’t have to involve them.
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This reply was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by
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