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Jay and Ryanne, I’m sure that once you start Pirate Ship you’ll come to love it. It integrates seamlessly with ebay and etsy and is just so easy to use. Do make sure you sign up for Simple Export Rate by chatting with them, this is so you can get cheap 1st class International when you need it.
I too LOVE Pirateship!! I do simple export rate as well and have never had a problem. I started out doing GSP but never got sales through it. I got maybe one every few months? Now I get approx. 2 overseas sales a month. I have approx. 135 listings right now. I know SL has had issues, but I’ve never had one, and I’ve sent to several countries including Italy!
Here’s a couple numbers since I just got a couple international sales:
Ebay: 2 pound item to Aus would have been $20.10, $17.95 through PS.
Ebay: 8 ounce item to Canada would have been 9.00, 7.95 through PS.Nothing drastic there, but I don’t mind saving a few bucks. Also, I find their intl labels even easier than ebay’s, lol.
I’m no stranger to making money off trash, but I love my trash to treasure moment this week. Found several wooden Halloween yard figures on the road a couple months ago after going to some kind of sad garage sales. They had issues like severe paint chipping and rusty nails but I figured someone could repurpose them. I immediately threw them up on Facebook Marketplace and sold them for $20 in the course of maybe a month. For those new to putting stuff on Marketplace it pays to be patient just like on ebay.
Today I told Ebay that I’d be interested in Managed Payments if they were to offer it to me (there’s a form you can fill out.) I started doing direct international last year and haven’t looked back. I’ve only encountered one person in Brazil that asked about their package but it eventually got there. I’ve even shipped to Italy once with no issues (Italy is often a country people won’t sell to because of a long list of prohibited items.)
Now I will admit, I don’t do tons of volume and operate a store with less than 200 items, so ymmv. But one of the reasons I started doing direct is because I wasn’t getting many international sales through GSP. I figured I’d try shipping direct to try and get more sales, and I can say it’s definitely worked. I love shipping to Canada especially, Canada seems pretty low risk in my experience. Pirate Ship has been especially helpful in selling intl because of their simple export rate, which is much cheaper than Ebay’s rates. Simple Export Rate also includes door to door tracking to 45 countries per their site.
Anyway, I know that Ryanne and Jay love the GSP program, and of course nothing wrong with that, but I’d encourage any sellers on the fence about direct shipping to give it a shot.
I’m only adding to the chorus here, but I grew up in a family of stutterers, namely my mother and my brother. When I was young I used to want my mom to get more help for her speech and found it frustrating to wait on her sometimes. My husband also used to have a pretty bad stutter when he was younger, and still does it every once in a while, but it’s hard to notice. He found that getting a job and talking to people helped him (not that it would help everyone, it just helped him.)
I’m shocked that anyone would mention it, but people on the internet tend to be a lot more rude hiding behind a computer. I’m glad you took the time to educate others and not take it personally.
I like the reddit idea. I find this forum clunky and feel like the other subjects outside of the current podcast are kind of hidden and I never see them unless I just happen to remember to go there. I’ve been doing reddit for years and I think you would be able to see the subjects and topics easier. You could also ask for moderators, I don’t think that Scav Life mods would have too big of a job.
I’m really glad that I sold those 1930s Iranian photos I had listed a few months back. Even then, I was told by someone here that they could have been pulled. They were on for several months though. I guess if I came across something like that again, I would just find a facebook group that might be interested.
I thought relisting just gives the listing the same number and Sell Similar gives it a whole new number and treats it like a new listing. Perhaps that’s what he’s doing? I have done this in the past with stale listings.
Sales have crawled to a complete halt and to make matters worse, I haven’t been able to list. When I tried the other night, ebay was down. These are my May sales, and even with having to move I got a couple of pretty nice sales in. At the rate June is going though, I won’t have much to show for next time.
Nice tape find. I actually don’t see a lot of grunge/rock cassettes, I think it’s partially due to living in the deep south where there’s lots of country and religious tapes mostly. Last time I had a grunge lot up, it was sold in a week, but that was probably a couple years ago.
Scavenge of the week: I went to a garage sale on Friday, ended up being kids and baby stuff. I left after a few minutes and went down the road but realized I was going the wrong way. Turned around and spotted some 35mm slides in a trash pile on the side of the road. I stopped so fast! It ended up being a lot more than I thought. Literally hundreds of MCM 1957-70 slides of families at home, Christmas, Easter, graduation, Ohio State University graduation in the 50s. Most interesting to me was a box of advertising slides from a company called Stran-Steel that basically made prefab steel buildings. It’s about 50 slides ranging in building plans, tire factories, mainframe computers, one beehive hairdo, and a couple of very mad men type photos.
Problem is, no clue how to price. I’m thinking of auctioning just the Stran-Steel slides starting at $100. Might be worth something, might be worthless. Stuff like this is always difficult for me and I end up sitting on it, not sure what to do.
I actually forgot to comment last week about Pirate Ship. I was like, no guys, it’s totally free!! I check it against ebay all the time on priority items. Here’s a hot tip for ya: if you go to Pirate Ship and ask in chat (in pirate speak of course!) to get their Simple Export Rate for international rates, they’ll sign you up immediately. It basically lets you save on international packages. It cost me only $10 to ship something light to Malaysia, normally around $15, and $13 to ship to Canada, which normally would have been $17. Only bad thing is they don’t take PP.
I have a fun Scavenge of the Week: last Wednesday my husband and I were walking home late from karaoke in Downtown Baton Rouge. I saw a Starbucks bag just on the ground near the Capitol building and figured it was trash but I decided to find out for sure. I looked inside under the tissue paper and found a box. Wanna guess what was in it? Sure enough, a brand new Starbucks mug! A Louisiana Starbucks mug at that. Crazy huh? It’s only worth between 20-30 but it was free!
Just another note, I’ve said before that I get pretty obsessed with views and watchers. It’s easier to look at with less than 150 items though. The other day I’m glad I looked because a PSP (Playstation handheld console) was getting watchers way too fast. I thought I priced it well but with that many watchers I thought I might have underpriced it. Priced it for $10 more and it sold the next day. On the other hand I had a purse that I almost dropped the price on for $10 less because it wasn’t getting many views or watchers. Sold last night for my original asking price. It really is hard to tell sometimes.
