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Week Ending 12/5/20
Total Items in Store: 15401
Total orders: 131
Total # of items sold: 141
Gross Sales: $3,076.58
Net after shipping – $2,231.57
Cost of Items Sold: ~$50
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Feeling peak 4th qtr sales, spending most of the day pulling items and shipping. Some older stuff has been selling, stuff I used to spend more on and was taking up a bunch of space. Glad they’re out the door. Hope everyone is listing as much as possible still. Plenty of time for more business before Christmas. 🙂
Incredible. War on Errorism and the Decline are two of my favorite records of all time. Those VHS tapes are going to be a good money maker. Some of the independently released punk VHS tapes are similar to cult horror or coliseum WWF tapes, there are some big time collectors for those. The Tiger Army wallet will probably go for a decent price as well. My all time favorite psychobilly band but they’ve never gotten big enough for their merch stuff to be mass produced. Seems to be a pretty good haul for the amount you spent. Congrats man 🙂
did you get any Punk stuff at all? I 100% contribute my mindset and DIY attitude to growing up listening to Punk Rock. Super jealous man. 99% of Indiana music merch I find is either Religious or Country, it sucks.
Gross sales – $2,950.06
Net after shipping costs – $2140.69
# of orders – 126
total # of items sold – 157
# of current listings – 15,461
Cost of goods sold – ~$20
# of returns – 0
Good week, super busy. Not much to report, just the same old Ebay grind. Just finished the podcast while getting some listings up. To me, shipping is like the simplest aspect the business. Granted, I send a *lot* of first class packages, but I have business policies for any kind of package and that policy is selected along with weights/dimensions while listing.
Here’s hoping you end your 38/39 item sold streak this week. Have a great rest of the week, everyone.
10/18/20 – 10/24/20.
Total Items Listed 15,279
# of orders – 87
# of items sold – 102
Gross Sales $2,159.41
Net (after shipping costs) $1,575.42
Highest order – Return buyer bought twice from us this week, photo lots. $165 + shipping.
COGS – approx $25-30.
New listings – a lot.
Money spent on new inventory – $0.
October has been slowww. I checked Oct 2019 and 2018 sales and we saw a drop for Oct both years. Good news is that we’re still up 17% over last October, even though we’re around 30% down from last month.
Congrats and good luck on the house hunting, we’re currently going through the same thing. This will be our first home, but it feels like the process for self employed is a bigger headache than being a w-2 wageslave. Two years tax returns, current year profit/loss sheets, figuring out what deductions can be added back to our net. Bleh.
Magazines are one of those niches that a lot of sellers don’t think about much but profit margins can be incredible.
Stuff like home and garden, wood working, national geographic, those are lower desired than other publications and sell cheaper and can be long tailed, but if you can get tons of them for free and don’t mind the grind, they’ll definitely make you some money.
We’re by no means complete experts in magazines, but we generally do sell 10+ magazines a day. Just some tips if you ever see some magazines while scavenging; condition/cover/content/rarity, these things all matter.
The magazine categories that sell the best of us are soaps, fashion, celebrity, gossip/tabloids, sci-fi, horror, Mens/Womens Interest, Pin-ups, and adult. Most sports mags are junk ,there are key issues of Sport Illustrated to look out for, but not many. Usually all the vintage sports magazines with sports cards included, attached to spine, will sell well.
Here are some of the vintage celebrity covers that have sold well to us and that we know has a collector base; Brooke Shields, Lynda Carter, Loni Anderson, Linda Evans, Olsen Twins, Pam Anderson, Larry Hagman(or any mag with Dallas/Dynasty actors on the cover), Dolly Parton, Liz Taylor, Delta Burke
The highest fashion magazine we’ve sold is a 1970s Lynda Carter cover for $150
Highest tabloid was a Jeffrey Dahmer cover for $120 (serial killer covers sell great)
Magazine catalogs sell great as well. Service Merchandise is a good one to look out for, they sell quick and for a good price.
Follow bigger magazine sellers like Mr. Magazine and DTACollectibles to get a better idea of what kind of magazines to scavenge.
Alright, I could go on and on gushing over this category, so I’ll stop now lol.
Have a great day 🙂
Thanks. Glad everything is going smooth for you two as well. Transitioning from an online business to several physical buildings inspires me to keep growing.
The issue you guys are having with Ebay international standard delivery is super weird to me. Out of the 100s of international orders I’ve sent with that service, only one item was “not received”. Buyer opened an item not received case. Ebay rep notated that the item is being held at the post office and buyer refused to pay import fees. Case closed in my favor. Super quick.
Global shipping became a pain for me. Not being able to send custom invoices when I’m getting combined orders daily is kind of a deal breaker for me. I’m hoping they keep both shipping methods, so sellers can choose which method fits their business model the best.
Great podcast as always.
I’m too tired to pull up this weeks #s, but we’re having an incredible month so far. I picked up another huge magazine lot. I spent $280 and have sold 2 magazines out of the lot so far for a total of $750. I sold a $20 mag as well, but that’s not as impressive. So yeah..the next 700 or so magazines will be pure profit.
Today was a big milestone for us. We hit 100k in gross sales. Finally. Feels like it’s been forever since I transitioned my business model away clothes/electronics/household and started focusing on paper and media. Lots of long hours. Seeing it pay off finally is a good feeling. Now on to 150k!
Look forward to next weeks show. Have a good one.
Hello, just finished up this weeks podcast while listing, great conversation as always. Ive been away from the board for a few weeks, I hadn’t heard of the conversation regarding selling high priced items on Ebay. Ryanne, your advice is spot on. I always add insurance and signature confirmation on expensive orders and just eat the cost, it’s not much. And I know it’s been a few weeks since discussed, but we absolutely always double box any high value or fragile order.
Speaking of, we’re sending out a high priced item tomorrow and will be doing exactly as you said, adding insurance and sig. confirmation. And even though they are paper items, we will be double boxing them. I just don’t see why anyone would take the risk and not do as much as they can to protect a package.
So a story about the high value item..
Last week I saw several lots of old Dog n Suds store promotional posters at an online auction. Each lot had 4 posters. I always start off by just posting my highest bid at the beginning of every auction, because I’ll completely space and forget to check the auction again on closing day. So I go and put a $25 dollar bid on the 8 lots. I end up forgetting about it and the week goes by and I get my invoice showing which items I’ve won. I had won 6 out of the 8 lots, paid $20-25 per lot. Knowing what I know now, I’m really kicking myself I didn’t pick up the other lots. (screenshot of auction listings https://imgur.com/XLdd2G7)
I’ve read and heard the opinion that worthpoint is useless because anyone can go back a year on terapeak or check google, but with old paper and advertising, sometimes worthpoint is the only place you can find any info on them. I checked worthpoint before bidding and saw that the last time these posters showed up was 2013-2014. No info on google. Image search just referenced back to worthpoint links.
The ones in 2013/14 sold for $20-30 each, with one going for around $60.
So I knew they were rare. The people I was bidding against either didn’t have worthpoint or did and judged their value at the price sold 7 years ago. I priced them high and sold 14 of them to a buyer who used to own a Dog n Suds in Ohio for $1425+shipping. We still have 10 more to sell, so just super happy with that purchase.
Past few weeks have been slow, $1,500-1,800 gross range. This week would have been about the same, but those posters more than made up for it. Half of our entire weeks sales came from Friday alone.
Aug 16-22
Current total of individual listing – 15,238
Gross sales (before fees/taxes/shipping) $4,162.96
Cost of items sold – estimate around $100-110, 14 posters was the bulk of it. A lot of sales from those magazines still. A lot of records, photos, postcards, and pins sold that have a COG under $1. I finally sold an amp that’s been sitting for years that I paid $7 for, took an offer of $150 + Shipping. I sold a 1st edition copy of the Vegetable for $125 that I got by mistake because the auctioneer gave my lot another buyer on accident. The lot of books I was supposed to get I only paid $2.50 for and I kept 4 books and tossed the rest.
# of orders – 109. Sold many combined items, haven’t added them up yet, probably an additional 10-15 items.
Money spent on Inventory this week – $244. From the auction I bought the dog n suds at, I got some other magazine and paper items.
Awesome week J&R, the quest for cheap items we can sell for $500+ is something I think we all wish we could do on a constant basis. I wonder how much of your customer base that would eliminate if all you had were $300-500+ antique/vintage buyers. Like, are there enough high end vintage collectors on Ebay that could sustain that model? It’s an interesting thought
Anyways, my week was kinda slow. Another week below $2k gross, bogus.
Current items in store – 15,128
Gross sales – $1,920.63
#of orders – 83
Total # of items sold – 101
Cogs – ~$20-25
Again, most sales were from the free magazine haul. Stuff I paid for that was over a buck – Barbie Midge lot – $10, Multiplex Tuner – $5, Disney Board Game – $2
Rest of items were smalls/glassware that I paid under a buck for.
I spent over $800 at an auction this week. Pretty high amount, used to spending a lot less than that. But, I should be able to get over 1,000 listings out of the haul, so my COG should be right around were I like it, around our under a buck an item.
CEDS, Movie Posters, Hubcaps, Magazines, a crap load of Train ephemera; thats about all the items I picked up at the auction consisted of. Super excited to tear into it, I just have a mountain of crap I have to process and list first.
Now, back to work. Hope everyone has a great and profitable week on the bay.
Yeah, I think I’m feeling that im running out of time or something. Probably just due to the daily grind, when I look at it on a macro scale, we are growing pretty rapidly. We’re less than 2k away from our total 2019 gross sales.
That magazine haul from last summer really was an incredible find. I doubt I’ll ever come across that much stuff for free again. We’re getting down to the end of the magazines unfortunately. I figure I have enough unlisted to last until fall/winter.
Hello all, nice episode. Hearing Jay saying he was 35 before you guys bought a house was a bit comforting for me. We’re planning on having enough of a down payment to buy a home next year, so it’s nice to be reminded that it’s not abnormal to be in my position. Life insurance is a big step. Buying something that reminds me of my fleeting mortality is a step I’m not ready to take yet. Heck, I don’t even have or understand how health insurance works.
As for Ebay this week, we did a little over 4k in gross sales, which does make up for the sluggish sales last week and I think is a personal record for us. Our week started off strong Sunday, with that Dolly Parton Jacket selling for $375 that I talked about on the board. Then we had another big sale the next day. We sold a comic that was missing it’s front/back cover and had a large tear in the back for $500. I buy these kind of “junk” comics a lot at auctions because it’s one of those things that are often overlooked. This one came from a lot that I picked up two years ago for $2.50. It broke down to around a quarter a comic, 90% of them were thrown away.
July 19-25
#listings – 15,001
Gross sales – $4,117.98
#orders – 131
total # of items sold – 142
Cost of goods sold – $3 for the Dolly Jacket, 0.25 for comic, $4 for a wrestling promo, $5 for a large hand saw, $2 for a fishing lure, $7 for a Marvel Puzzle, $2 for some board game parts. Everything else sold was either from the large magazine haul we got for free or items we paid a dollar or less for, (records, hats, pins, postcards, Mugs, comics, sheet music, piano rolls, other smalls)
Estimated total cost of goods sold, ~$30
Sales so far today? $57..lol. Ebb and flow.
Anyways, hope everyone had a great week.
I had about a 5 day stretch of slow sales last week but things are now way up again. Ebb and flow.
Thanks 🙂
Here is a screen shots of some jackets I got at that auction. I actually paid less for the dolly jacket than I thought. I paid $6.0 for hers and a Sony music jacket. Just a really good buy. This specific auction I buy off of, I just don’t think many people know about it. Also, the auctioneer starts bidding off a $1 and you can increment bids by $0.25. Over the past year, I’ve almost exclusively moved all my sourcing to online local auctions.
Thanks man, a little over a year ago my wife quit her job to work at home with me. We wanted to start aggressively paying off debt. We started paying off debt using the snowball method. We paid off all our credit cards and our medical debt. We had a baby in Jan of 2019 so a few months before her birth, I bought a brand new car for the first time in my life, just because I felt safer with them in that rather than our old Truck and/or van. So we aggressively paid that down as well and should be paid off this year. Soon we’ll just have student loans left that we will focus on. We’re also trying to take any extra income and put it towards a house down payment.
Other than that, just living and business expenses. Even though it’s a decent income, we were in such a hole financially that it never seems to be enough. Life didn’t even really start to stabilize for me until my early 30s. So I have a decade of mistakes to payoff.
