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Total Items in Store: 20
Items Sold: 0
Cross-listed Poshmark: 15Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 2I had a 1000 item store in 2018-2020; but then moved to the Dominican Republic in April 2021 to renovate my MIL’s villa. It’s been a long hard road, but we are done in two weeks and it becomes an AirBnB until we can sell it. I had to close my eBay store and stop thrifting, as we moved with only a few suitcases. I tried to flip items here, but there is just no inventory, and no national postal system.
I move to Charleston SC in two weeks where my husband already is working; I had spent a week there in July setting up house and went thrifting. I just love it. I have 20 items up now and he ships if they sell. I can’t wait to get back to the US and resell!
Also looking for a used cheap Android phone for my renovation “helper” here in Cabarete. He has $50 to spend which is about a weekly salary here; I will help cover anything over that. I’m here until December renovating a family home to make into a vacation rental, and Clara network here works better on Android. I am in WA, Hawaii, and FL in parts of May and June so can have shipped there.
Yes, I loved rural PA. I grew up near Allentown in a 1775 built farmhouse actually called “Sleepy Hollow”. I do love antiques but rather they pass through my hands on their way to someone else! I forgot to list my COGs. I also use Easy Auction Tracker and like the consignment tracking column.
For the $667 of sales above, my COGs were $15 total. Of the 15 items sold, 7 were mine.
23 Aug – 30 Aug
Items sold: 15
Sales: $667.75
Consignment payout: $175
= $492.75
Most of my items listed in the last two months have been consignment items, since I am not going out to source much. I would like to, but I have a 6 year old, I picked up an online job, and am renovating a house to make into an AirBnB. I do not seek out consignment but a “church lady” from my church knew I sold on ebay; she gave me about 10 boxes of stuff as she emptied her house and asked me to sell anything valuable. I give her 50%. She had a few gems like a Zippo lighter and Carnival glass. However, she told her daughter who told her friend, who had a houseful of antiques from Pennsylvania (we’re in NC). I picked up the items and put in my storage building. It’s been great researching. I sold a Tiffany Favrile goblet for $450, a 1898 Worlds Fair souvenir for $150, a tea caddy for $100, and I have much more to go. This lady is in her 70s and would go “antiquing” in rural PA.Can you imagine finding a Tiffany goblet in a thrift store?! Lots more rural antiques to go. I give her a straight 50% cut; she gives me freedom to choose the prices, no time-line for sales, and I have donated a few items or sold “lots” of low-priced items on Facebook.
I bring that up because that client has a friend near Bethlehem, PA, who would like to sell her antiques collection too. She is in her 70s and asked whether I knew anyone who would do consignment. I am asking this community if you have any recommendations or would like to try it.
For the Norway caller: my sister lives in Belgium; she has an eBay store but also says “Vinted” is similar in the Europe area. She finds a ton of unique items in the thrift stores such as vintage wool blankets for one euro and sells for $200 or so to US clients. She uses free shipping. She finds awesome MCM curtains and furniture too. She is researching now how to ship MCM coffee tables over here because they are so cheap there. She would probably be happy to message with you about selling on eBay in Europe and shipping to US. Her store name is “belgiumyankee”, check our her for sale and “solds” for what she finds.
https://www.ebay.com/help/account/default/contacting-ebay-customer-service?id=4379
Scroll all the way to the bottom and look for dark blue print “other options” with a click down arrow; that is where I found “chat with us”
Hi all, I just used eBay Chat to resolve two returns in about 8 minutes. So much better than calling! I took photos of the page where the rep said “no defects” when I asked the question at the end of our session; I am supposed to get a transcript emailed as well. I saw the option on eBay’s “contacting customer service” page.
Week 12/1-12/7
Sales: $2,375
Items sold: 12
COGs: 75 cents
Consignment payout: $1100I sold a sailboat for $2200. I bought, and am renovating the hurricane-damaged home of my former 90 year old neighbor Frank. Frank also owned a storage unit with a 1974 Eastward Ho sailboat he started building in 1974! Frank moved to MD in Sept and asked me to sell the storage unit items; I get 50%. Storage unit lease ends Dec 31, so I was glad to sell it. It’s local pickup. I sold the boat on ebay and received a $500 deposit on purchase. I tried selling local but no bites after 4 months. No registration was ever done on boat or trailer so I created a bill of sale. Not hard to do. I could see myself doing this for friends for cars and boat, etc. if needed.
Other interesting sales was a $65 antique French copper pot “dhillerin”. I call it a “Frank find” since it was under the crawl space when I dragged everything out. Other Frank find sales was an ashtray from a local NC oil company for $12. His wife had a collection of 30+ so I have been selling them off; sold 9 so far. He left me a lot of stuff in the house that I have been selling.
The seller for the boat is a bit odd, but sailors often are. He has sent me 8 messages since the sale of very loquacious and nautical language about the boat and his happiness for it. Will likely be a character I’m sure.
On another side, I took a “contract job” of my former profession of being a military attorney. I am helping an enlisted Marine write an appeal for a performance evaluation that affected his promotion. Should take about 3-4 hours. I never want to be full-time again since I like being at home with my 5 year old, and renovating the house…but I feel okay doing a small job for someone that needs (and deserves) it. Yes, I am being paid, but charging a low attorney fee. Getting my feet back in the water.
Total Items in Store: 569
Items Sold: 14
Gross Sales: $459.30
Cost of Items Sold: $29.99
Highest Price Sold: $85 (RL vintage blazer)
Average Price Sold: $32.80
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 32One of my consignor’s antique cameras was returned, that was $219 back to buyer. He paid for shipping though, and said it was his mistake (wrong size).
I had picked up 7 liturgical robes at a Salvation Army about 10 days ago for $19 each; I left two behind that were badly stained. So far two have sold for $85 each. One item from my consignor’s storage unit sold for $50 (a rusted out dinghy trailer).
7/21-7/27
Total Sales: $2130.97
Items sold: 15
4 items were consignments of which I get 50%: $1575.88
My items + consignment payout= $1330.97 to me but I reduced by $200 in exchange for two Eames chairs of Frank the consignor.We moved from SC to NC in early July. We bought a hurricane-damaged house which is uninhabitable; the previous owner “Frank” was a collector who is 89 and left everything in the house. I have hundreds of items to list, mostly odd weird vintage stuff and old pottery. Most of it was upstairs so it was not flooded. He did have four special items that he had in an local junk shop for consignment, that he asked me to sell on ebay: 2 antique cameras, an antique Russian/Georgian sword, and he had vintage Cuisinart pieces in their boxes.
The short sword sold on auction for $1113.88. I had it listed for $750 BIN initially and had two offers of $350 within an hour (from same town, different user IDs). One messaged me saying “it’s torn up, it’s crap, I might as well sell to him…” I had done my research (I thought), but I decided that was a hint to put on auction. He shouldn’t have insulted my item!
Goal is to fix the house up by Nov 1, live on our sailboat and rent out home as Airbnb while we explore the oceans and come back to nest every six months or so. I keep my inventory in an old mechanic shop down the road from the new house, so it’s a good place to come back during renovations and eat, take showers, and list in the A/C at night before going back to our sailboat to sleep.
Highest priced items this week sold:
1) Sword at $1113.18 (consignment 50%)
2) 2 Hubbardton Forge former church iron sconces at $170 total. I had bought 5 at church yard sale for $25 total.
3) Two tablecloths and curtains of vintage Waverly pink bow fabric (80s looking) at $137. I had bought an entire homemade bedroom suite for $30 and still have 7 pieces left.
4) 7 Mikasa teacups for $108 total (were free)Frank has ANOTHER storage unit where I found these Eames chairs (he told me he bought them in NYC in the 60s). He asked me to sell the contents of that unit too and take 50%. It has a 27′ sailboat, 16′ skiff, and about 100 other marine-related items. So I am also advertising to local sailors and dealing in cash. A lot going on!
Thanks for the shout-out last week; I just got to listen to last week’s podcast yesterday. I hope no one thought I was dissing parents taking kids to school. I have a 4 year old and 17 year old, so one wakes up too early and the other has to be drug out of bed. But at least I and the 4 year old don’t have to leave the house running. I opened my PreK homeschool box yesterday while listening to the show, so that will be our regularly scheduled event each day now to make our “Plan of the Day” around, but I am so thankful we can take off still and teach her on the road.
12/23-12/29
Ebay items in store: 721; sold 12.
Sales: $651
COGs: $19
I sold a vintage GE mixer for $200 for an elderly friend, I don’t plan to take a consignment from that sale. It’s called the “Handy Annie” and was hard to research but finally found it on Worthpoint.
I also sold a 1980s denim acid-washed coat for $180. It is by Nike and was called the “Challenge” coat, apparently Agassi was their model for it in the 80s. That was only $5 at SA.Poshmark: 251 items, sold 3 items for $49, COGs were $11.
Mercari: 592 items, sold 2 items for $40, COGs were $2.
I’m working on a pile of “smalls” items like more military medals, belt buckles, ink cartridges, that I picked up in mid-December and need to get listed. Tomorrow we travel to New Bern, NC from SC. We are going to do renovation work on our metal building/mechanic shop that was flooded from Florence for 3 full days. Epoxy the floor, repaint walls, trim work, install doors, security system, etc. It is going to be my ebay office and storage, our engineering business office, and a “crash den” when we don’t want to spend the night on our sailboat. I would so rather paint walls than have to figure out the numbers that T-Satt loves. Thank God my partner is an engineer and can do it. I space out when numbers talk starts.
12/16/18 – 12/22/18
Ebay store items: 680 (ALL items on three platforms start on ebay, then are copied onto Posh and Mercari if appropriate)
Ebay Sold: 14
Sales: $673.50
Avg price: $22
COGs: $30
Consignment payout: $71Poshmark: 285 items cross-listed from ebay
Sold: 5
Sales: $91
COGs: $16Mercari: 590 items cross-listed from ebay. No sales.
Total sales: $764
Items sold: 19
COGs: $46
Avg: $40 an item
Returns: maybe one pending, buyer said necklace had broken clasp but I was waiting to hear backHigh priced items were a NWT pair wool hunting pants “Codet” brand (Canadian) for $79, a ruby and gold ring for $122.50, a large wooden block knife holder for $65, large sealed ink cartridge in box for $70, and an Oriental fabric print for $50. I never thought that print would sell. It was part of an auction lot I spent $1 online for four vases, three framed prints and this fabric one. I sold two of the vases already for $80 and now this print. I’ve had them all a year. Eventually everything sells. I held tight on the high price for the ink cartridge. I priced at $80. I had offers of $25, 35 on Ebay and Mercari, but those were the “ink hounds” just like there are “silver and gold”, looking to buy cheap and re-sell themselves.
I haven’t done any outside scavenging for two weeks. Christmas was a blast staying at home with my family. We all edited our closets and belongings after receiving gifts, so I suppose I did scavenge our belongings and thus listed 23 items. The other bags filled a sedan and went to a local charity. Next week we travel to Sun Valley, Idaho for a work conference. Now that I am retired, I can go with my husband and take our 4 year old and we can stay for a week visiting family and staying at the resort hotel for the 2 day conference. We will use ebay money to have fun on the slopes there and the 4 year old will see snow for the first time (that she remembers). I love owning our time (my husband owns his own engineering practice and controls his time too). Not sure if there will be any inexpensive thrift stores in Ketchum, Idaho since it’s a resort town, but our family lives in other small towns, so we might find some gems too like R&J did.
Report on: Atomic Starburst Casserole Dish return
Customer shipped the casserole dish back. I refunded via PayPal minus the $12.87 that ebay charged me for the shipping label. Customer opened a case and ebay gave them the money. I called ebay and the rep agreed with me and reversed the case; refunded me the $12.87. I don’t know if they took it from customer or whether it came from eBay’s coffers.
Re-listed the casserole dish; of course I blocked that buyer!
Dec 9-15
Ebay store items: 674
Items sold: 16
Sales: $1,049.
COGs: $97.10
Avg price: $67
Highest selling items: $200 vintage Coke advertising banner; $250 vintage St. John knit skirt suit; $295 gold necklace (consignment); $50 80s prom dress; $49 for 80s Natori lingerie gown.Mercari: 540
Items sold: 3
Sales: $134
COGs: $6
Avg price: $44
Highest selling: $92 for Ben Seibel MCM brass bookends; can sell for up to $300 but mine were badly dinged up. I used the Mercari “Make an offer” to likers and someone bought right away.Poshmark: 275
Items sold: 5
Sales: $114
COGs: $12
Avg price: $22
Highest selling: $42 Doncaster 80s wool skirt (brands similar to Pendleton).TOTAL SALES: $1,297.00
Most fun: $24 for “Marshall Junior HS” letterman patch from the 1950s; sold overnight after listing to Japan. Also, I am surprised by how quickly vintage Pendleton will sell on Posh. I usually pass on the Pendleton skirts and suits when I see them, since they don’t sell for much on ebay, but Posh users seem to pay $30-60 for a Pendleton skirt or cute skirt. I noticed that when researching the Doncaster skirt that I paid $1 for. I typically don’t pay more than $1-3 for clothing. The St. John’s suit was $12 at a charity thrift shop, but I knew it would flip for a high price. The Coke banner I bought for $75 hoping to sell for $400-500 but it turned out to be a fairly common banner. It was from an antique mall.
The gold necklace was a consignment item, so I will pay 50% to the owner. The buyer received it this week and already messaged me saying she doesn’t think it is 22k gold (it is, but not marked). So we will see if she returns it. I don’t pay the 50% to the consignment clients until 30 days has passed anyway.
I do feel like a millionaire. I live across from a grade school and can drink coffee in bed while the “car drop off” line snakes around the block at 7:30 am. We make our “Plan of the Day” over breakfast and aren’t running out the door. I don’t like to think of my life choices being justified by an hourly wage. My current bills are paid, our future expenses are planned out and investments made, so we shall enjoy life without regrets.
