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Hi, I doubt anyone would remember me. I posted here a few years ago. I periodically read here to keep motivation to keep listing. My husband and I bought a couple of storage units the day before Thanksgiving and we’re still going through inventory.
Anyway, thanks for keeping this thread going. I’ve gotten 63 items listed this week. I’m going to have a piece of cake and try to find some more motivation to list tonight (I’m so over this crap in my garage).
So, I have one of these buyers with an INR case. They say they asked their sole neighbor, and they don’t have it. I told them to contact UPS, and now the buyer is kind of flipping their chips about the situation. “I’ve spent 90 minutes on the phone on the website trying to file a claim and I can’t, I should have known better than to pursue this, you hired this company not me, so it’s your job to fix this, blah blah blah”. “this company”…Like UPS is some fly-by-night company, good grief!
He is a grumpy old man and I kind of just want him to shut up and go away. If I just refund him, does that have a negative impact on my account? I’m guessing he’s going to leave negative feedback no matter what I do.
This week, I’ve had 1 return, 1 item-not-paid, 1 order cancelled, and now this guy. And I even sent this guy extra stuff to be nice, (he bought a bunch of empty egg cartons and I sent extras). No good deed goes unpunished.
Total Items in Store: 387
Items Sold: 14
Gross Sales: $468.86
Net Sales: $263.49
Cost of Items Sold: $30
Highest Price Sold: $90 (dirt bike kick stand)
Average Price Sold: $33.49
Returns: 2 ($200 worth of stuff, boo)Slow week, oh well. Some old stuff that I’ve had for years finally sold, and it was all stuff that I got for free. I also sold a bunch of empty glass yogurt jars, metal tea tins, and sold all our scrap metal to the recycler. Literally selling our trash for cash! Gotta love it.
We’re looking for significant acreage in upstate NY. Significant for us, at least -about 20 acres. It’s surprisingly affordable compared to where we are now. Properties that would cost about $1 million here are about $350K there. It’s wild how things have flipped; I left NY because I was priced out.
Plan is in motion, but we’re still saving up for the move. We’re 5-7 months out from having enough cash on hand. We know where we want to go and what we’re looking for. I want to keep sourcing to keep inventory fresh and sales coming in, but I don’t want to have a giant inventory to move, either.
Total Items in Store: 368
Items Sold: 10
Gross Sales: $512.02
Net Sales: $287.10
Cost of Items Sold: $34.00
Highest Price Sold: $200 (Yamaha dirt bike carburetor)
Average Price Sold: $51.20
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $105
Number of items listed this week: 0Slow week, thanks Prime day! 🙁
I didn’t get any listing done, (maybe 3 or 4 things). I was in a down mood because the auction I went to was a bust AND the auction house decided to close up shop for good. They’ve waffled back and forth on it for a few years and then abruptly announced last weekend was the last auction. Ugh. I checked the auction calendars for other places and there isn’t much going on within 100 miles unless I want to sell guns and tractors. Which I don’t. Ugh ugh. Then Prime day came and I had no sales for 2 days. Ugh ugh ugh.
But then I remembered about The Bins! I have not been to the Goodwill bins in years because I always had my son with me, and he was too little to handle that place, plus it was kind of far. I sort of forgot about them. A doctor appointment took me halfway there so I said, “Why not?” There was another huge thrift store next door, too. I spent about $105 between both stores, (minus the $3 I found in a wallet!) and came away in 3 hours with about $600 of inventory to flip. And I found a couple of things I needed and have been looking for, (a cotton blanket for summer for $1, two leather jackets that fit me perfectly for $1.50 each).
So maybe the bins will be a decent enough work around if I go once or twice a week. I’ll make a day of it and do the round of all the thrifts between my house and there. That might end up working out better than spending all day in a hot, dusty auction barn.
I don’t know if the “golden age” is over. These things go in cycles.
I do agree that there are way too many new with tags, ugly LulaRoe things at all the thrifts. Like, this stuff is seriously ugly.
I don’t bother donating anything to Goodwill anymore because I never see it hit the floor. I used to sometimes see our stuff, which always weirded me out, but not anymore. Either they are selling it online or shipping it off to a different store. I know that one of the local goodwills will straight up destroy stuff they don’t want to deal with. Like, they have a giant trash compactor in the parking lot. No thanks! I put my stuff at the end of my driveway and anything my neighbors don’t want goes to either the women’s shelter thrift or the monthly humane society rummage sale.
Total Items in Store: 372
Items Sold: 26
Gross Sales: $1225.16 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $758.79 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: about $60
Highest Price Sold: $60 (Georges Briard serving tray)
Average Price Sold: $47.12
Returns: 0Sales included an Imaginext castle play set that my son outgrew. I have no idea what we paid for it 10+ years ago, but it sold for $70 plus shipping. We also sold 4 vintage speakers that my husband pulled out of an amp cabinet. He traded a guitar for the cabinet, then sold the actual cabinet for $200 locally, and then I sold the woofers from it for about $300. I have no idea how to figure out COGS for stuff like that, lol.
Other cool sales: This pillow cover I bought at a rummage sale for 50 cents. It sold for $50. https://www.ebay.com/itm/234610383275
A stack of yearbooks from a local high school. A guy bought one of them, then asked if I would make a deal on the other 10 books I had. I sold everything for about $150 shipped. I bought the lot of them for $5 and had previously sold 2 other books for $35. Yearbooks usually sell for my fully asking price (about $30), but you have to wait until the right person comes along. I was happy to cut a deal and get them out of my house faster! https://www.ebay.com/itm/334433588746
The husband and I are experimenting with parting out dirt bikes that he bought off fb marketplace. So far, we’ve sold a gas tank off of a bike. https://www.ebay.com/itm/234610183381
Items in Store 389
Items Sold 19
Total Sales $1789.68
COGS $60+ (Another mix of stuff I picked and things we no longer use, so it’s hard to nail down COGS exactly)
Total Profit $1149.01
Average sales price $94.19The highest sale was a $1100 guitar amp my husband no longer used. I think he paid $1400 for it a few years ago, so technically we “lost” money on it. But he used it for several years, so ? COGS always feels fuzzy for those kind of items.
Without the amp skewing the numbers, my average sales price was about $39 per item.
I had 2 people initiate returns for a total of $200, but they haven’t shipped the item yet. *insert eyeroll here* My buyers always send stuff back at the last possible minute.
Lots of reasons, but the main ones are too political for this forum. Let’s just say that the area and I are a bad match. 😉
We’re thinking of heading to upstate NY.
I don’t have a set formula for pricing. It’s a combination of research and gut feeling. A lot of the resellers in my area are chasing the high dollar stuff -things that will sell for at least $100. They’ll drop $50 on something to sell it for $100-125, which is one way to do it. But there’s too much competition for those items and it ties up too much money in inventory. While they are fighting over the high end stuff, I focus on the stuff I can easily flip for $30+. It’s not a lot of dollars per transaction, but I’m making 10x my money on those items usually and I’ll sell a few of them every day, making the trip to the post office worthwhile.
I don’t have a huge storage area, so I need things to move along relatively quickly. If something has been sitting for 12+ months, I re-evaluate.
There are a few categories I do not sell because they annoy me to list/ship. Like, I don’t sell clothes unless I stumble upon something really special with great profit potential. Right now the only item of clothing in my store is a varsity jacket. I am going to stop selling most glassware and dishes because they are a PITA to ship. I’ve never done well with art, so I stopped purchasing it. It sits for ages waiting for the right person and I just don’t have the space for that.
I’ve been focusing on practical items lately: cookware, belts, wallets, purses, bedding, flatware. I’ve sold a surprising number of brass chains for hanging lamps over the last few months. The chains were part of a $5 table that no one wanted at the last auction. That $5 table will make me $1200 over time thanks to those lamp chains. Everyone else was fighting over some vintage table top radios. The radios were cool but there was only about $200 in profit there.
In general, I try not to be stressed out or annoyed by my inventory, lol. I’ve become very un-attached to my inventory. Previously, I bought things I was like “Oh, I LOVE this!” and would then have big opinions and feelings about it selling, which lead to stress! Now I’m like, eh, it’s just stuff. Will it sell for profit? That’s the whole point of this, making profit. I am not my target buyer.
I’m not currently chasing after what is “cool” because I feel like most people don’t have the money to throw around on “cool” stuff right now. All my “cool” stuff is still sitting in my store, but the lamp chains, chandelier parts, and vacuum cleaner parts are selling. 🙂
Hi, not sure if anyone remembers me. I used to post 2-3 years ago. I kind of lost my scavenging mojo for awhile, sorted myself out over the pandemic, and now I’m back at it.
Items in Store 384
Items Sold: 32
Total Sales: $1297.19
COGS: ? I sold a mix of stuff I scavenged and stuff we no longer use. COGS for the stuff I picked was $46
Total Profit $887.32
Avg price per item: $40.54I’ve had a few really good months of sales. I think it’s a combo of looking at things with a fresh eye and not being precious with the pricing. I’ve been motivated to get my death piles listed and actually see light at the end of the tunnel! I only have 4 more totes to go and I’m 95% done listing everything from the last auction I attended.
I’ve had a couple of buyers get snippy about handling time, lately. I switched my handling time to 2 days, because that’s what I felt I could safely handle, with a combo of usps pick ups and me dropping off sometimes.
Buyers on day 2: When is this going to shiiiiiiiip?! I neeeeeeeeed it asap!
Um, well, it’s a guitar pedal and you want it shipped to France so it’s not like it’s getting there any time soon, and since there’s this whole pandemic thingy happening, I freakin’ KNOW you aren’t playing a gig anywhere that would require this pedal, so calm the heck down. I can’t imagine you’re going to get faster shipping from Amazon or Sam Ash right now.
I have no idea what you’re wanting people to say right now. Some version of “Yes, we’re all fucked. Our lives are destroyed”, it seems.
In nearly 50 years on this stupid rock, I’ve yet to encounter a problem that was solved by immersing in self-pity and angst.
I hope you find some peace.
