Scavenger Life

Trash to Cash. A podcast about making a living on eBay.

Scavenger Life Episode 296: Are You Keeping Up With Your Inventory System?


When we hit 4000 items, our inventory system has not been able to keep up. Items are spread out on two different properties, in about 4 different buildings. This week we couldn’t find two items. One was eventually spotted and shipped, but the other was never found. Not good. This is why we’re preparing to build ‘our own personal warehouse’ on a plot of land behind our house. But since we’re gluttons for punishment and have to do things 2x bigger than what we first planned, it’s going to take a lot of money and time. We’re patient.

Hope you are having a great week!

Join the conversation in the forum>>

Our Store Week January 29-February 4, 2017

Store #1
Total Items in Store: 5514
Items Sold: 48
Cost of Items Sold: $260
Total Sales: $1,754.72
Highest Price Sold: $180 (vintage chandelier)
Average Price Sold: $36.95
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 130
———-
Bonanza/Trugether:
Sold 0 items for 0
———-
Store #2
Total Items in Store: 987
Items Sold: 7
Cost of Items Sold: $20
Total Sales: $176.83
Highest Price Sold: $40 (Vintage cumberbund)
Average Price Sold: $25.26
Returns: 0
Number of items listed this week: 20

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Scavenger Life Episode 295: The Challenges of Changing Your Strategy


In our New Years Goals for 2017, a big one is to start scavenging higher dollar items. But this is easier said than done. We went to a fancy auction this week to try out our new strategy. Can we buy items for $50+ that will sell for $200+? This is much different from our current strategy of buying for $1 and selling for $30.

First, we have to find a place that sells more expensive inventory since our local thrift store and garage sale usually only sells items below a certain threshold. Then we have to determine if paying $50 for an item means we can sell it for a significantly higher cost. Then we have to make sure we can be patient enough for that item to sell if it’s not a quick seller. Can we handle holding onto those inventory costs for as long as we usually do? You can listen here to find out how we did at the auction.

Here are the forum conversations we mentioned in this podcast:
–If another seller copies your description and photos, use VERO to take down seller’s copying you
–Would you give a seller a defect in this case?
—Creating a “Sale Event” and using Markdown Manager
–We noticed some scavengers met up in Indiana. Sometimes its just fun to go scavenging together and have a coffee

We had a great week on eBay. Wish it was like this all year.

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Our Store Week January 22-28, 2017

Store #1
Total Items in Store: 5384
Items Sold: 66
Cost of Items Sold: $260
Total Sales: $2,303.17
Highest Price Sold: $150 (vintage military jacket)
Average Price Sold: $34.89
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $250
Number of items listed this week: 75
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Bonanza/Trugether:
Sold 1 items for $?
———-
Store #2
Total Items in Store: 983
Items Sold: 4
Cost of Items Sold: $4
Total Sales: $138.01
Highest Price Sold: $70 (Vintage military pants)
Average Price Sold: $34.50
Returns: 0
Number of items listed this week: 20

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Scavenger Life Episode 294: Finding the Valuable Caches and Going All In


In our career of scavenging, nothing is more exciting than finding a Cache. What’s a cache? It’s that huge box of items that you buy for one price at an auction or thrift store. Different caches we’ve found are grocery carts of old pens, boxes of pottery, piles of military clothing, rolls of fabric, buckets of old nails, treasure troves of trucker hats. Usually no one wants these items because it’s too much of one thing. Someone just wants to get rid of them and that’s good! This means it’s cheap! Martin over at Garbage Finds recently talked about boxes of perfume he’s found in the trash and is selling for big money.

The huge lot of items is always overwhelming and takes up too much space space, but if you are determined and methodical, then you’ll be making a ton of money over time. We call it “making a new pipeline”. These items usually sell slowly because we price them at what they’re worth. We can make several hundred dollars a month over several years. It’s the slow dime vs the fast nickel in action. So paying $20 for a box of military clothing might pay our electric bill for months and months.

In other news, we set up our payroll system to pay our first W-2 employee using Square. $30/month and the service takes care of withholding/ paying all taxes to State and Feds. It was scary and overwhelming at first, but setting up payroll has been easy and uncomplicated. There are plenty of other online services that do the same thing.

Couple of good conversations on the forum:
—Discussion about how to handle credit card charge backs and buyers claiming items didn’t arrive. The answer is always “look at the tracking”. If it says Delivered, you’re in the clear.
–Stuff My Mom Threw Away talked about the tension of being a minimalist and eBay seller. We also own very little stuff, but you wouldn’t know it if you walked into our house and saw piles of unlisted inventory. I think that tension is good because we never let these piles disappear into our house. That’s when you become a hoarder.

We had another solid week of sales on eBay. Hope you had a good week!

Join the conversation in the forum>>

Our Store Week January 15-21, 2017

Store #1
Total Items in Store: 5317
Items Sold: 42
Cost of Items Sold: $105
Total Sales: $1,839.84
Highest Price Sold: $200 (vintage guitar pedal)
Average Price Sold: $38.33
Returns: 2
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 90
———-
Bonanza/Trugether:
Sold 2 items for $75 (jacket, vtg markers)
———-
Store #2
Total Items in Store: 963
Items Sold: 7
Cost of Items Sold: $12
Total Sales: $279.47
Highest Price Sold: $70 (Vintage military backpack)
Average Price Sold: $39.92
Returns: 0
Number of items listed this week: 0

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Scavenger Life Episode 293: How To Hire Your First Employee


This week we had a good meeting with our accountant to discuss hiring an employee and other things we want to do this year for our business. We cannot stress enough how helpful it is to have a knowledgeable person in business on our side. Since we’ve formed a relationship with his small accounting firm, he meets us for free and makes sure we’re doing things correctly when it comes to paperwork and taxes. It’s one small business helping another small business.

We took the big step towards hiring our first W-2 employee. The girl whose been taking photos/listing has become so valuable to us that we want to make her feel like she has some stability in our job. We worked with her since November and know that her help makes us money and our life easier.

  • The IRS has a good summary of how to determine if your help can be paid as a 1099 contractor or W-2 employee.
  • The Small Business Administration has a good workflow of how to hire your first employee.
  • We’re using the online service, Square, to help manage her hours/pay + file the right paperwork each month with the State/Feds. There are a lot of online services that do payroll which is a huge benefit. It’s all done online. Our accountant says he could do it for us, but just laughed when he found out that Square does it for only $30 a month.
  • We decided to pay her $12/hr. It’ll be about $13/hr after paying employment taxes. She was psyched when we offered her this pay because it’s a good rate in our area. We promised 15 flexible hours each week which is perfect for her since she’s still in college. We could certainly offer her much less, but it’s a good business move for us. We want her to come motivated and to stick around as long as she enjoys the work. We need her more than she needs us!
  • Here’s a good link to how the US is built on small businesses. Interestingly most small businesses are sole proprietorships. You don’t have to make it complicated to open up shop.

Overall it’s a fairly simple process. Just took us time to learn and ask questions.

We had a good week on eBay. Hope these sales continue till the summer.

Here is a link to Ryanne’s Screenshots of the eBay Returns Program Beta.

We slashed our prices on Amazon to get rid of our inventory. Turns out if you sell stuff for super cheap, people will buy it! Unless we find a special kind of inventory for FBA, our Amazon experiment is over. Fun while it lasted.

Good conversations on the forum this week. Here’s a good thread debating what to do when another seller copies your listing on eBay.

And lastly, say congratulations to Nandry, the Teen Thrifter. She’s getting married to her high school sweet heart. You can listen to the interview we did with her here. She’s so smart and hard working that we know she has a bright future.

Join the conversation in the forum>>

Our Store Week January 8-14, 2017

Store #1
Total Items in Store: 5280
Items Sold: 60
Cost of Items Sold: $120
Total Sales: $1,985.50
Highest Price Sold: $200 (two vintage wool rugs)
Average Price Sold: $33.09
Returns: 4
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $20
Number of items listed this week: 180
———-
Bonanza/Trugether:
Sold 0 items for $0
———-
Store #2
Total Items in Store: 970
Items Sold: 7
Cost of Items Sold: $13
Total Sales: $290.97
Highest Price Sold: $125 (Set of framed prints)
Average Price Sold: $41.56
Returns: 0
Number of items listed this week: 0

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Scavenger Life Episode 292: Busy Scavenger Week


It’s been a busy week. We shipped over 100 items that sold during the two weeks we were on holiday vacation. And now we’re just starting to get some returns from people who say items didn’t fit, etc. One of the items is the $1600 necklace we sold, so listen in to hear how we’re dealing with it. Easy come, easy go. There’s no crying in scavenging.

As mentioned before, we found another way to lower our monthly expenses. First we lowered our cell phone bill. Then we cut our monthly internet bill in half just by asking. Now we’ve lowered our insurance.

Car insurance for two people on two old cars: $404 (was $759) SAVED $355
Our home: $394 (was $631) Saved $237
Rental #1: $403 (was $667) Saved $264
Rental #2: $987 (was $1180) Saved $193 (This house is farther from the volunteer fire station so insurance is more)
YEARLY SAVINGS: $1049

The easiest way to lower our rates was to raise our deductible. Our home had a $100 deductible! We changed it to $10,000. We’re good savers and are willing to bear the risk if a problem occurs that’s under $10k. Why pay more each year so we can make a claim for a broke window? We’ll fix our own window if it breaks (and it probably won’t)! We just need insurance if the whole house burns down. MMM explains the strategy here. This savings is a house payment.

It’s also tax time for us. We like to get our numbers done early, turned in, and paid off. We already have an appointment with our accountant this week. Here’s a quick rundown of how we prepare our profit/expenses for him.

If you sell on Amazon FBA, long term storage fees start February 17. We’ll be paying an extra $400 to keep our stuff in their warehouses. Here’s a good thread on why Amazon isn’t a good match for our way of scavenging.

Hope you had a good week!

Join the conversation in the forum>>

Our Store Week January 1-7, 2017

Store #1
Total Items in Store: 5129
Items Sold: 32
Cost of Items Sold: $65
Total Sales: $1,406.20
Highest Price Sold: $150 (Bike Racing Jersey)
Average Price Sold: $43.94
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $8
Number of items listed this week: 0
———-
Bonanza/Trugether:
Sold 1 items for $24
———-
Store #2
Total Items in Store: 974
Items Sold: 8
Cost of Items Sold: $15
Total Sales: $320.07
Highest Price Sold: $86 (Blue jeans)
Average Price Sold: $40
Returns: 0
Number of items listed this week: 0

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