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That does sound like quite an adventure! Congrats on the score.
“The estate sale company was trying to get rid of everything.”
I haven’t run into one of those in a long time. The companies in my area just take the leftovers back to their warehouses and bring them back out to put in with the next sale or they have retail stores they take them to, so they don’t deal. Some don’t even do 50% on Sunday. I went to one a couple weekends ago that had loads of old things coming out of a couple storage buildings which I got excited about until I saw that most of it was literally junk and anything promising was water, mold, bug, or heat damaged. Nothing was priced and they weren’t bashful about starting high at checkout which was annoying enough, but I walked out when I saw the son sticking his nose in the pricing and I learned that he was living in the house and it was apparent that he had no compulsion to clean it all out.
Nothing bought or found last week so I’m going back a couple weeks for a great find that I haven’t mentioned here yet. I found this Autocourse annual book on mostly European auto racing (grands prix, sports cars, rallies, etc) for the 1971 season at a yard sale in my neighborhood put on by a young couple. The sale seemed like all baby stuff and I wouldn’t have even gotten out of the car when we happened to be driving by except that my wife was with me and she saw a cheap lamp or something for the house that caught her eye. The book was $1 and sold quickly for $215 plus shipping to France. https://www.ebay.com/itm/275516339515
Week of 11/6 – 11/12:
Total items in Store: 315
Items Sold: 12
Gross Sales: $502.41 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $294.02 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $49.21 (including consignment commissions)
Highest Price Sold: $102.50 incl shipping (Tektronix 2101 Pulse Generator for parts or repair)
Average Price Sold: $41.87
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of new items listed this week: 9Another busy week for me. Not sure how long it will last since like Sharyn my Q4 is normally so-so and I’ll have a long time away coming up over Thanksgiving. I am using various strategies to stimulate sales, like ending and selling similar, putting things up on auction and offering free shipping (which I did for the pulse generator that was my best sale last week, the free shipping for competitive advantage since the label was only $15 and auction because I had no clue what it was worth), and I’m paying more for promoted listings and taking lower offers. It makes me feel like I’m not making as much and working a lot harder for it.
“Not sure how you found the link to this page.”
I clicked on Forums in the top banner, then What Sold! to get to the page with all the What Sold topics.
Nice golf course highball glass. I have done well with those and with similar ski resort glasses. I’ve found them cheap in thrift stores. I think they sell for more than baseball glasses because of what golfers and skiers will put in them to drink. Baseball fans are drinking beer out of a can, or a plastic cup. 🙂
Happy Veterans Day to you, Steven, and all our fellow vets on the board.
This WWII son-in-service pin was a nice example, in sterling and maker marked, and it had two blue stars so it denotes two sons in service. (A gold star denotes KIA.) Yes, there were military women who served but the pins are known as “son-in-service” and many, like this one, specifically state that. It was in a $10 jewelry box full of random items at the flea market and sold for $15 plus shipping on a best offer.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275512260683
The pins came in many different varieties, cheap metal to 14K gold, but the real BOLO is a six-star pin. Here’s an unmarked 6-star pin that does not say “son in service” that sold for $235 at auction recently.This ‘70’s Gemini disco mixer with cueing for two turntables was a $5 yard sale find. It needed a little cleaning up and though with limited features not among the more desirable of vintage mixers, sold quickly at $50 plus shipping on a best offer. The buyer told me he used to use this model as a DJ years ago. There is a different model Gemini mixer that was used by Grandmaster Flash back in the day that goes for a lot more.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275518825149
Here’s a neat RPPC from 1930’s Shanghai, China, depicting the famous dragon boat races. It seems a bit unusual to me that I could get this much for a card with tourism subject matter but I’m not complaining. It was part of a large auction lot and sold for $20 plus Pirate Ship Special Export Rate shipping to China on a best offer (listed at $34.79).https://www.ebay.com/itm/275493941762
Jewelry is usually a dead letter for me. I’m not sure why I have so much trouble categorizing, titling, and describing jewelry and it usually sits and sits so I’m quite proud of this sale. It’s an Ann Hand Forget-Me-Not enamel pin that was commissioned for female veterans and given out at an event by a corporate sponsor. It sold for full price at $75 plus shipping.“… at a Goodwill it’s really something!”
Yes indeed. I was very surprised to find it, and to still have its major parts as it was piled together in a random open box. They must have just put it out. Since there is no model name or number anywhere on it, it’s possible they had no idea what it was and whoever was pricing it got lazy with their eBay search to figure it out. I’m still surprised though because this Goodwill is not bashful about putting high prices on random unique items. It’s so heavy maybe they didn’t want to bother packing it up to send to their auction hub.
BTW the extra turret sold a couple hours after I put it up so the rest is all gravy now.
I ran out to get some bubble wrap last week at the U-Haul place and stopped in the Goodwill across the street on the way back. I have very rarely found anything of value there so I’ll never make a special trip to shop it, but every once in a while, they overlook something that’s worth buying. This time, I saw a box on the electronics shelf with some interesting parts and pieces sticking out and discovered a late model Lyman T-Mag Turret Press for reloading ammunition inside.
There was also an extra turret (the part with the 6 threaded holes) and a set of Hornady dies for .300 Blackout ammunition in the box, all for $27. I’m probably looking at ending up with getting $20 for the dies, $50 for the extra turret, and in the $200 range for the press, maybe $250 if I offer free shipping but it is a heavy mother.
Praying for them, Retro.
Week of 10/30 – 11/5:
Total items in Store: 310
Items Sold: 8
Gross Sales: $400.60 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $244.94 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $42.59 (including consignment commissions)
Highest Price Sold: $99.99 plus shipping (1950s Romanian rifle bayonet, complete)
Average Price Sold: $50.08
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $27
Number of new items listed this week: 2Listing took a back seat to a busy week in other matters.
It was announced last week that Easy Auctions Tracker is going out of business. The 2022 version will be their last spreadsheet issued and they will be shutting down support after April 15, 2023. I guess it was inevitable; at $40 a year with unlimited support I don’t know how they did it. I found it to be an incredible time-saver in multiple ways, not to mention making consignment bookkeeping very easy. At least I’ve got some time to find a replacement.
Thanks y’all!
@Craig-Rex regarding the shipyard employee badge, I think it’s apples and oranges with the MA badge. I’m no expert on employee badges but from what I’ve seen, generally the most valuable are the older photo badges, then below that are the older non-photo stamped-steel badges, and then the lowest in value are the late ’40’s and up printed shell pinback style like the one you linked. The USS Albany connection is interesting but would not be the key driver of value for those collectors. And there would be few militaria collectors excited about its link to a post-war heavy cruiser like Albany that had a relatively boring service career and they wouldn’t care so much about a yard employee badge anyway. I’d say the low sold price is a function of it being at the margins of collector interest in either collecting niche, its condition, and a low starting bid at auction. I would have listed it at say $15 – $25 BIN range and it would be long tail.My MA badge is in a strong militaria sub-niche coupled with law enforcement interest. I was definitely pushing the envelope on price since Albany was not that interesting (though it did help in dating it). I had to wait for the right buyer to come along.
Week of 10/23 – 29:
Total items in Store: 320
Items Sold: 20
Gross Sales: $1,418.72 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $1,029.70 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $323.70 (including consignment commissions)
Highest Price Sold: $226.40 (1950s US Navy Master at Arms (military police) badge from the USS Albany)
Average Price Sold: $70.94
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 23I think selling 20 items in a week is a record for me, since I started on eBay in 1997. And over 20 items listed; that’s also probably a record for me, too.
Week of Oct 16 – 22:
Total items in Store: 315
Items Sold: 16
Gross Sales: $757.72 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $534.78 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $203.00 (including consignment commissions)
Highest Price Sold: $75 (1950’s Romanian rifle bayonet & scabbard)
Average Price Sold: $47.36
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $173.00
Number of items listed this week: 21
I’m a little late but getting this up to keep me honest. Another good listing week – got some short tail items listed which sold right away, which helped my numbers. Interest has also been raised in some long tail items that I have recently ended and put up through sell similar, though I noticed that I don’t get a new item notice with those, so I wonder whether eBay knows they’re actually not “new” items. I hit a couple flea markets and estate sales on Sunday 10/16 and found some really good items.Thanks. I started antique picking as a teenager in the early 1970s and the memories of what I could find and how much things were have been an albatross around my neck ever since. 🙂
I actually have a few sales to talk about from last week since my numbers have started picking back up. These were all newly listed items.
This is a cool consignment challenge coin from US Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, Africa, in the shape of some kind of African gazelle skull and horns that sold for $45 plus shipping on a best offer. Navy figural challenge coins are BOLOS. The more elaborate, the better. They’re usually Chief Petty Officer coins like this one, which helps.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275497483388
This complete pinstripe painting tool in its original box was in a bin of mostly junk at a yard sale. The seller wanted a firm $20 to take the whole bin. I suppressed a rude comment about him charging people to take out his trash and bought it. It was exasperating to pay that much but this tool in its original box sold for $70 plus shipping on a best offer after three days up and there are a couple more sellable items in the box.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275504900636
Here was another great yard sale find last weekend that cost $1 and sold a couple days later. It’s a device that senses electric current in cables, etc., and comes with a small current generator. It was originally manufactured to trace POTS phone lines. Apparently, they sell like hotcakes, so surely they’re being used for other purposes these days. It’s a Progressive Electronics inductive amplifier with tracer and case and sold for $35 but with free shipping (cost me @ $4).
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275505224764
In the Navy, aides to very senior officers wear identifying shoulder cords on their service and dress uniforms that are called aiguillettes. The dress aiguillettes are fancy, with a knotted cord, multiple loops, and metal drops at the ends. The service aiguillettes (for the office uniforms) are simple gold and blue cord loops worn over the left shoulder going under the arm, with the number of cords corresponding to the rank of the aide’s boss. This consigned service aiguillette is for a full Admiral (four star = four cords) and sold for $50 plus shipping on a best offer to a China forwarder.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275499808938
This is a head-scratcher if you run across it at the flea market unless you know what you’re looking at. It’s a reproduction shoulder stock / carrying case for the iconic Mauser C96 “Broomhandle” pistol originally in production from 1896 into the 1930s. The pistols were manufactured with a slot at the back of the frame to take a stock but few of the original stocks remain. Not all that many of the pistols remain, either, despite about a million being made. The reproduction stocks like this one have been made for years and are popular. I paid $10 for it at the flea market and it sold for $50 plus shipping on a best offer within a week of listing.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275504861635Those of you especially in the Northeast and New England will say “ho hum” to my joy at finding a low-priced real antique at a flea market or yard sale, but I find it’s not so common in Florida and pretty exciting for me nowadays. My favorite find at the flea market last week was a 19th Century miniature brass ship’s cannon inscribed “Relic of Royal George Sunk 1782 raised 1840” for $20. HMS Royal George was a 1st Rate 100-gun Royal Navy ship of the line, launched in 1754 and saw service in the Seven Years War and the American Revolution. The ship was intentionally rolled on its side to conduct work on the hull while anchored in harbor in England but ended up foundering with the loss of over 800 lives. It was salvaged for its guns and other gear over time and eventually raised and blown up to clear the harbor. A local cottage industry arose making souvenirs from pieces of the wreck, and this is one of them. I’m still deciding on a price at which to list it. A larger version sold at auction in England in 2021 for £500, including buyers’ premium, and one slightly smaller than this one sold recently on eBay UK for £275. I will pay for UK site placement when I list it.
