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Sure I think the cardboard Flat Rate Small Envelope would probably hold up for some items. It is permissible to tape and reinforce the seams and flaps and tape the shipping label and closure, but not cocoon or encase the entire envelope in tape. Which is how I once received a shipment of loose metal items weighing about 8 lbs. It was the darnedest thing. It arrived looking like a mess and had morphed into sort of a shapeless bag but there were no holes and nothing fell out.
I haven’t examined the 205 deduction in depth yet. There are some complications to it but I think Jay’s correct that the entity structure doesn’t matter (so long as it’s not a C Corp). I use TaxAct for doing my returns so I’m hoping it’ll give it to me if I deserve it.
As for doing a year-end inventory, I agree that’s a pain for us random junk sellers. I plan to use an exception to enable cash accounting for retail under Revenue Procedure 2001-10 https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-irbs/irb01-02.pdf as a “qualifying taxpayer” (NOT a “qualifying small business taxpayer” under Rev Proc 2002-28 which excludes retail sales businesses) and be exempt from “keeping an inventory” under IRC Sec 471. It accounts for retail merchandise held for sale in the same manner as non-incidental materials and supplies which are deducted when used or consumed. So “consumption” of merchandise under this revenue procedure occurs in the year it is sold. I only need the COGS for what I sold in that year – right off EAT.
In accounting terms, I’m using specific identification of inventory with EAT rather than FIFO or average cost to identify the cost of items in inventory.
https://www.accountingtools.com/articles/2017/5/8/specific-identification-methodIt’s accomplished on Schedule C by entering “0” for beginning and end inventory (Lines 35 and 41) then entering the year’s COGS on Line 36.
Since this will be my first year of operations I won’t need to worry about what’s necessary to change accounting methods, since some aspects of that have changed with the TCJA.
I think this method is not really the best for resellers with bigger operations and/or who sell commodity items and it does not track your held-over inventory as a lump sum. Also prior to TCJA there was a cap of $1M per year gross on businesses that could do this.
Hey Christine, it’s a decision I’m wrestling with. The pros for switching are strong: I have always made a profit, and that’s even with a high percentage of personal family items that are booked as a wash. EAT which I already use does make keeping the numbers easy except for having to manually enter COGS. I also already use Everlance for mileage and to record cash purchases and have a credit card I use only for eBay. I have used Schedule C often over the years, both for primary income when I was a sole practitioner and for various side businesses, and it is quite easy to fill out.
I’m also considering doing it in arrears, that is doing the Schedule C for 2018. But: Did I get permission from my landlord to have a home-based business? Did I register with state/local tax department and collect taxes on sales to my home state? Did I set up a separate bank account and card? Did I obtain a business license? Did I file quarterly estimated taxes? Did I file for a business entity LLC or corporation last year? I did none of these things. I did start to think about all this last year but procrastinated. It’s all fixable, though, so I’m leaning towards switching on the 2018 return and sucking up the pain of straightening out the administrative requirements. That is preferable to paying income tax on my gross from eBay as a hobby for 2018. That would hurt more.
Going forward I don’t think I’m going to bother with creating a business entity, though, if for no other reason than setting up a new eBay ID for the entity would shed my long-term reputation and feedback. It doesn’t seem worth the trouble at the level I’m at. I’m also not too worried about a separate business account and business credit card. As long as I can keep the records separate and I’m making a profit, the IRS doesn’t care. I’ve never not made a profit on eBay and since I don’t buy large amounts of inventory and have very low expenses it is hard to imagine that I’d ever not make a profit. It’s when you claim a business loss against other income and happen to get audited that every aspect of running the business professionally becomes important to convince the IRS examiner that it’s not a hobby.
02/15/2019 at 10:52 am in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Vintage German microphone, Calvin Kline sunglasses, Spectacles, Healing Ointment, Doc Marten redux, Cocktail shaker #57029Everyone had really interesting sales this week!
I had these matchbooks I kept with my camping gear, left over from my Army days. (They came in military field rations.) It’s amazing that I’ve been carrying them around all these years, but also amazing to me that people pay money for them. This lot went for $22 plus shipping.
This GW University Bulletin from the ‘40’s was a quarter at a church sale. Pretty dry reading since it’s just a course catalog but it sold pretty quickly for $13 plus shipping. Maybe I underpriced it.
This anchor link chain necklace was in a baggie of jewelry that I bought at an estate sale for a couple bucks for the whole bag. Marked Italy 925 Sterling, the necklace went to Mexico for $48 plus shipping. Shipsaver now insures shipments to Mexico so I have taken it off my list of countries I don’t ship to. But Mexico prohibits imports of jewelry. If this had been sold through GSP, the folks in Kentucky doing the customs declaration based on the listing title and category would probably cancel the sale and send it back to me because they would know that. Since I instead ship internationally direct, I was able to describe the item on the customs declaration as a decorative chain and use a non-jewelry HS Tariff Number. It is a chain and it is decorative, right? I took a chance customs would disagree but I didn’t have much at risk. The buyer only had to pay $10.50 postage total, got it just fine, and was very happy.
This beat up, dried out Little Beaver zipper wallet was $7 at an outdoor flea market. It was a little more than I’d like to pay but there was no doubt I’d make money on it. It sold for $70 plus shipping to a Beverly Hills relative of the original creator of Red Ryder comics in which Little Beaver was a character.
My in-laws spent most of their working years abroad in Africa and the Middle East – including a long stint in Saudi Arabia – and they were collectors. Cleaning out their house after their passing a while back served as a great education to me in many kinds of obscure items from cultures we do not see much of in the US. So when I saw this in an indy thrift for a couple dollars I knew it was a Middle Eastern incense burner called a mabkhara. The applied emblems are the national crest of the United Arab Emirates up until 2008. One issue with Middle Eastern items in general is that the souqs there are full of “old” items made up for the tourist trade. Those souvenirs will sell but not for antique prices. This wasn’t intended to look old of course but it went for $35 plus shipping after about four months listed.Well that’s interesting. I did a search on the USPTO for US trademarks and found this:
You can see it was just filed in 2018 and it’s not yet registered, so the little R in a circle is actually not authorized yet. That’s a federal offense – fraud. (Though maybe this item is not a US retail item, the trademark may be registered in another country. If the sheets are truly from the ‘70’s, this may be a foreign company that has not previously sold sheets in the US.)The owner of the trademark is “WP IP LLC” which tells me that the owner is just a subsidiary of some company set up to hold intellectual property. Many large manufacturers/retailers do that. The trademark is not registered yet so here is no assignment recorded, so we don’t know the manufacturer/retailer name. Once the trademark is granted they’ll have to record an assignment and you’ll then know who’s using it.
Doing a little more digging it appears that the mystery company’s initials may be “WPH”. Or it could be just “WP”. If you know any retailers or manufacturers with those initials, that’s probably who it is.
That link only provides US sales for me, so I had to add an average back in. My lifetime is at about 70% of receiving feedback overall but that’s since I started on eBay in 1997. Back when you could give a buyer negative feedback they were better about giving a seller positive feedback because sellers were not shy about throwing buyers under the bus.
Over the last several years it is down to about 1/3 for me. I only give feedback after it is received. My packing slip says (among other things) that I’ll leave it after the buyer does. It says “Please leave me positive feedback to let me know you have received your item and are happy with everything and I will reciprocate.” Many of my buyers with 0 and single digit feedback don’t bother to leave feedback so they don’t get it from me.
I used to send an email after the sale asking for feedback until I made the mistake of poking a grumpy buyer. Won’t do that again. I’m with Jay on letting sleeping dogs lie.
Welcome Kenya! Things are usually pretty quiet around here on the weekends but it’ll pick up.
I have a supply of clean newsprint sheets from our last move but I only use it for lightweight smalls. If you don’t crumple it, multiple sheets add weight to the package that you’ll pay for and if you do crumple it, it compresses during shipment, allowing the item to bang around inside the box and get damaged. Or even tear through the box from the inside out, if the item has any edges or is heavy enough.
02/08/2019 at 3:06 pm in reply to: How would you list this? Authentic 1960s Playboy Club Doorman's Hat. #56640Wow that’s an amazingly cool hat, even without the Playboy connection.
I also like the 50 cent sticker inside.
Here’s my historical record system: After an item sells I make a screen print pdf of the listing saved with a file name that contains sale date (six digit year month day), then a one-word broad category, then one-word for the type of item, then any other key words important to me with increasing specificity. The pdfs all go in one directory. In Windows Explorer I can sort that directory by date (by clicking on name), then search with progressively more detailed keywords if I’m looking for something. I got in the habit of using the ascending-specifics description style in the military.
An example: 181022 Militaria Holster Makarov East German Brown
That way I always have examples of sold item specifics, condition, and description that are easily searchable to pull up. (I’m the opposite of R&J – I tend to go into detail). The only thing missing from the screen print that might be helpful is weight and shipping information but I’m pretty good at winging that. Also you don’t see all the photos. Depending on your browser, you may have to print in landscape and adjust scale size to fit all the text in the pdf or to get the pdf to a manageable size.
If I was really good about doing this every time something sells I would omit the date in the name since the file itself would have the sale date, but sometimes I get busy and I’ll wait and do a week’s worth of sales at a time.
All my sold item photos are in another directory with each item having its own subdirectory under broad category subdirectories. I may also have a word document with research notes or other useful files in the item’s subdirectory. I list on a desktop so this is all pretty quick and easy for me to do, but I am a low volume seller, only selling about 150 items a year these days.
This is all just for historical information. I use EasyAuctionsTracker for the numbers.
Hey great job on the lures. That is definitely my MO for eBay selling. It’s all about the treasure hunt for me and digging out the history. Unfortunately the listing part is the hardest for me….
So as not to go down too many more rabbit holes than I already do, I stay off Pinterest and the like. It helps that I’m an old guy and a slow adapter.
In pre-internet days as a collector and occasional picker and flea market/antique co-op dealer I maintained a pretty substantial reference book library and kept notebooks to preserve the knowledge I gained. That started getting really unmanageable for me just as I discovered consumer-level computers were getting more and more useful for data storage. So now I try to stay paperless to the extent I can and I have multiple directories by topic of notes, scans, and photos for my reference. I keep everything but only electronically. Even that is cumbersome, though. My inner historian won’t be denied but it must be held in check.
It’s a lamp constructed of possibly antique boat parts and pieces. The part marked T.W. Cherub is a taffrail log, it came attached to a line and dragged through the water behind the boat to determine speed/distance. The light at the bottom is a combination sidelight, showing green to the right and red to the left so that observers know what side of the boat is facing them at night. Usually separate, they might be together in one unit like this on a smaller vessel.
I’ve seen taffrail logs made into lamps before but some of this brass nautical stuff is made in India to look old. The construction of the sidelight especially looks very India to me but the back looks like it has real age. Hard to tell without seeing it in person.
But whether fake or not there is a strong interest in nautical decor so it’ll sell well for a decent price either way. And I agreee with Jay and Antique Frog on leaving it as is.
Here’s a full kit taffrail log:
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This reply was modified 2 years, 7 months ago by
Temudgin.
Understood. They never removed mine.
Very informative Tommy, Julie, and Steven, thanks! Kinda quiet here today so let me add a random recent selection of my sales (unfortunately all bread and butter low dollar):
Part of a police belt lot with accessories I picked up from a thrift shop, this Bianchi pistol magazine pouch did not take long to sell at $20 plus shipping. This is a generic item but specialized police gear is subject to federal export controls. Usually eBay will prevent you from listing if you’ve got international shipping enabled, but even if an item sneaks through, if it sells foreign and you use GSP, the folks in Kentucky will cancel the sale and send it back to you.
This Murano Glass Key Ring was a hostess gift to us from friends who don’t bring wine. Sigh. Sold for $20 plus shipping. $20 will definitely get me a nice Chianti. (Goes well with liver and fava beans, I hear.)
This set of Jordanian basic parachutist wings (military insignia) took about a year to sell for $23 plus shipping. Militaria is a very active eBay category and stuff does sell, but collectors are very price sensitive and I was definitely pushing the envelope with my price on this one.
This NWT Italian leather Dopp kit was a yard sale find for a couple of bucks. Lots of interest but it took six months to sell at $35 plus shipping.
Picked up for a couple bucks on the last day of an estate sale, this 70’s 12V Power Supply was still sealed in plastic but had been out in the garage obviously for years. The cardboard box inside the shrink wrap showed swelling so there was certainly the chance that it was a mess inside. I held my breath that it wouldn’t be returned but buyer was happy so all was well. It went for $30 plus shipping. It’s used for operating a mobile CB radio on household power.
I’ve had this shark business card holder for years. It used to sit on my desk at the law office. It sold for $24 plus shipping.
I never get tired of cats trolling dogs.
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