Thrifting Scores

Here are just a few of the sales I have had from the toy "collector" estate sale. This gut had a lot of stuff!!

 

This is a box of Walt Disney monorail accessories. I love finding Disney stuff at garage sales and thrifts. Eventually it all sells.

I paid $15.00 for the monorail set and it sold for $255.00!

Buyer paid shipping. And the buyer lives in the same city as me.

 

Elvis has left the building! I love velvet paintings.

Paid $2.00. Sold for $54.00 buyer paid shipping

 

 

This was in a box with other nuts and bolts.

Paid $1.00. Sold for $39.99 buyer paid shipping.

 

This was part of another monorail set that included the trains. Since there were pieces missing I broke the set up into seperate listings.

The set was $15.00 and you can see this set sold for $51.99. Buyer paid shipping.

 

Country bear jamboree ceramic bank, paid $1.00. Sold for $29.99

 

This is just a few of the sales. Overall, I am pleased with my purchases. I ended up spending close to $145.00. That was a lot if money for me to spend. Usually I don't go that high.

 

To date, I have grossed almost $600.00 from the items I bought at this sale. I can live with that.

 

I Went To This Garage Sale.....

My church ladies know I sell on EBay and are always looking out for garage sales for me. This particular sale was in a small mobile home park. ( 7 homes). The gentleman that owned this was deceased and his family was selling his treasures.

The front driveway,the front porch were full of stuff. Literally overflowing with his lifelong collections.

 

These pictures were from his 60 foot long shed in his backyard. The building was neat and orderly and contained a wide variety of Toys! lots and lots of toys. Talk about being overwhelmed!! I was!!

 

 

There was Disney toys and collectibles......

 

 

All types of transportation...........

 

 

 

And somethings I had no idea what they were..........

 

 

Dolls............

 

 

 

And then there was this in his backyard.......Mickey Mouse on a giant spring.

 

He stood at least 6 feet tall.

 

I did pick a bunch of stuff and will share what has been selling in my next post.

 

Motivation Is Improving

My eBay motivation is improving. There for a while I was losing the listing battle. And that lack of motivation was reflected in my sales. I am not beating myself up for it.....it is what it is. :-)

 

This week I have been listing almost every day and it has stimulated my sales which I am happy about. You have to list daily to keep the sales going, at least it is what works for me.

 

Hear is a few of the items that have sold:

 

Lady Hamilton 1985 Dinner Fork Oneida Community Cube VTG Silverplate Flatware $14.99. I paid $0.20 for each piece.

 

Vintage Fisher Price Sesame Street Clubhouse Green Round Door Goes Round $8.49. I paid $4.00 for the whole clubhouse and some little people.

There is still a few more pieces available.

 

 

Disasters of Cape Cod. In pre-owned vintage condition. No major rips or tears, but there are a few small rips and some creasing/dents. Best offer of $50.00 accepted. I paid $0.25 for it.

 

 

 

Axis and allies game pieces. This was a German set for $13.89. I paid $1.99 for the whole game so the cost is insignificantly low. I have sold other country pieces a couple of weeks ago.

 

 

 

Here's to staying motivated!

 

 

 

Doldrums: eBay ups and downs

The last two weeks have been so-so with regards to eBay. What I have discovered is that listing daily DOES stimulate sales. Two weeks ago, I slowed down on my listing and my sales reflected it. This week, I start red my daily listing of at least 5 items, and already the cha-chings are happening.

 

Last week, we were busy researching vehicles to purchase and making trips to dealerships to try and drive. Most of my free time was spent on the internet communicating with different dealers and haggling over prices before we even visited the dealerships. It was a bit exhausting! We did finally find the vehicles we liked and purchased them. So glad that ordeal is over!

 

Now, let's talk about eBay stuff!!

 

 

This is a game I purchased at GW for $1.99. Games by Avalon Hill have a lot of pieces and as games they sell pretty well. When I bought it, it was open and I knew I would have to count pieces. When I opened the box and saw how many pieces there were, I actually thought about taking it back!!

 

But, I did a little research on completeds and saw that the game pieces were selling. There are 9 ( or 10, I will have to double check!) countries represented in this game and each country has approximately 65 pieces.

 

I broke each set down into 20 piece sets which provided three sets per country.

 

Each set is priced at 15.99 (free ship). Surprisingly, three sets of game pieces have already sold!! A customer in California bought one set about two weeks ago, and just yesterday he bought two more!

 

Just this morning I had another from this game. These are all the tokens that are included. I counted them and at the time I thought I was wasting my time!

 

Sold for $29.99 ( free shipping)

Needless to say, I am pleasantly surprised! I have bought a couple more games at GW and have listed parts and pieces of them as well. This may become a serious niche for my store.

 

These backgammon pieces are from a vintage 1973 Plesantime game.

I don't know of they will sell as quickly as the Axis and Allies game pieces, but it is worth a shot.

 

 

Here are a few pictures of a Monopoly game I bought this weekend. The game is from 1961 and it is in Arabic.

 

At first I was pretty excited to find it and instantly threw it in the cart and bought it. Then when I got it home, I figured out that it was missing the deed cards! Duh!!

I don't think that there is much money to be made on the remaining pieces so I will probably be taking it back to GW.

 

 

 

I have a few more games to part out and list. Truth be told, it is therapeutic to separate and coordinate the pieces.

 

Happy Thrifting!!

 

• Do you part out games and sell the pieces?

 

 

Revisiting My July Goals: Hello September!!

I set a lofty goal of $3000.00 gross for my eBay sales in July of this year. Did I reach that goal? Ahhh.....no but it sure was close!! My gross sales were $2225.00 or 74% of the $3000.00 goal.

Last month my gross sales were $1086.00 or 36% of the $3000.00 goal.I had a 49% increase over last month.

I also set a goal to get my listings up to 1000 by the end of the year. At the beginning of July, they were hovering at 500. As of last night, they were just over 650. I have been listing at least 5 items daily. I truly believe this has helped my sales. Listing, listing,listing, even if it is a few items a day has definitely helped me to reach my goals.

 

Here are a few of my sales from last week:

I don't usually look for concert t-shirts. Last week was the exception. I found two Pantera shirts. At first, I had no clue if this was even a band. But I checked completeds on eBay and determined that the shirts were worth the $1.49 investment.

 

This shirt sold within a day for $49.99. Free ship

 

Again, I usually don't buy random dinner plates. But I found the name John Zak on the back and I recalled he designs dinnerware for Disney.

These plates were $0.50 each. And they dingy looking,covered with utensil marks. Bar keeper's friend works wonders on cleaning the utensil marks.

A set of two sold for $34.99 shipping paid by customer

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last week was a pretty good week on eBay!

Here is how last week went:

Active listings: 647

Cost of items sold: $29.00

Number of sales: 15

Total sales: $574.00

Amount spent on new inventory: $45.00

Average selling price: $38.00

International sales: 2

Returns: 0

Feedback: all positive this week
Hope your week was awesome!!

 

 

 

 

Money Monday: Two Weeks Behind

Time flies when you stay busy! And that is a good thing. For the last two weeks I have been pleasantly surprised with how busy eBay has been.

 

I have set a mini-goal to list AT LEAST five items daily. By doing this, I am not so overwhelmed with trying to build my store inventory. Some days, even listing just five items can be a challenge.

 

Sales have been consistent over the last two weeks. Many of my sales were my Fire King dinnerware collection. I am glad that it is finding its way to a new home.

One of my best sales these last two weeks is this 1930 Jaro Hess litho/poster. It shows the geography of the land of make believe, with all the fairy tales and nursery rhymes

I found it all rolled up with other posters in a bucket at a thrift store. I carefully unrolled all the posters, they were all vintage and exceptionally pretty. But this one caught my eye. Even though it was rolled up you could instantly tell the the quality by the feel of the paper and the beautiful graphics.

It was originally marked $1.00 but the thrift store was having a 75% off sale on all art work. My cost was 0.25 cents.

They

 

The poster also had a big huge rip of 16" from the left side into the middle of the poster. That made me a little sad, but I knew it had value even with the rip.

After checking completeds, my intuition was correct. This particular poster without rips in it has sold for $275.00. When I saw that, I was really excited!!

I wanted to be competitive but I didn't want to give it away, even though I only paid a quarter for it. I priced it at 199.00 and took a best offer of $150.00!!

 

Here is how last two weeks went:

Active listings: 644

Cost of items sold: $45.00

Number of sales: 32

Total sales: $950.00

Amount spent on new inventory: $45.00

Average selling price: $31.00

International sales: 4

Returns: 1

Feedback: all positive this week

Last but not least, here are some of my coffe mugs sales.

Each mug cost on the average, about 0.50 cents.

The average selling price of the mugs was 27.00 with free shipping.

 

Have a great week!

 

 

Money Monday: Much Improved

Sales were much improved last week. As I read through my blog list, it seems that it pretty much true for the majority of eBay sellers. Isn't it nice to hear the "cha-ching" on your phone when you have a sale? I still get excited when I hear it.

 

Last week I was busy with chores around together house so my listing numbers are about the same. We have a lot of fix it projects to complete before the end of the year. Sometimes it is hard to find a balance between eBay and things that need to get done around the house.

 

One of those projects is both eBay and house related. I am trying to get my inventory under control so I know where items are and how many I have of each. Definitely a thankless task, but needs to be done. This project will definitely take more time to complete.

See the Banker's Boxes in the picture? I am attempting to put my mug inventory in them. It is time consuming, but at least I can see what I have, tweak the listing and improve the picture quality. I am also trying to include 12 pictures into my listings. eBay provides twelve free pictures, and I figure of I can use all of them ( at least on my new listings) my items will place higher in the search.

 

I had a couple of good sales last week. My best sale was the Indiana Blue Teal Thumbprint Tumblers. These tumblers were part of the church estate sale over a month ago. I paid $5.00 for the whole box of glasses (48 total). That was the specific price on the box, but if I average all the listings by the $50.00 I spent for the WHOLE lot, the price would be closer to 0.83 cents a listing. ($50.00 divided by 66 listings)

 

Back to the tumblers. Monday, a customer bought ALL 12 of the tumblers! She paid $151.00 with F/S.

 

 

Mug sales this week were pretty good. This is the best one, I think. Four Zodiac mugs ( vintage Federal glass) sold for $45.99 and shipped internationally to England. The buyer paid $65.00 in shipping, can you believe it? If they would have sold in US i would have paid shipping. All four mugs cost about $3.00 total.

 

 

 

 

Last week was a pretty good week on eBay!

Here is how last week went:

Active listings: 615

Cost of items sold: $27.50

Number of sales: 20

Total sales: $485.00

Amount spent on new inventory: $30.00

Average selling price: $24.00

International sales: 2

Returns: 0

Feedback: all positive this week

Hope your week was awesome!!

 

 

 

 

Money Monday: What's The Prediction

Last week I tried to concentrate on listing more of the Fire King but that is just going to be an on going process.

 

I did hit up the Goodwill and one garage sale. The Goodwill did provide a few good items one of which has already sold.

 

Yes, this lovely bright green afghan sold in three days for 32.15 ( f/s) I paid $1.99.

 

Here is the other Afghan I found for $1.99. It's available :-)

When I go to GoodWill I usually check put the plush. Lately, they have been putting together bags of plush for $4.99. The bags they use are the same ones that comforter sets come in, so they are pretty good size.

Plowing throughout the bags of plush, I see these feet. Do you see it? I could not grab that bag fast enough!!

 

After I got it out of the bag and had a good look I saw that it is a newer Duffy Mickey Mouse. That's okay!!! I am excited to have found one. It's almost like a can mark that off my bucket list :-)

 

 

 

Cool mug sale of last week: paid .0.99 and it sold for $29.99. (f/s)

You just never know!

Three boxes of Tarot cards. It was fill a bag with books for 1.00. The Tarot cards were included. After all was said and done, they ended up costing about 0.20 cents each.

 

 

 

 

 

I checked the completeds and it appears that the I Ching cards may be the most valuable. We will see what happens. I did not test any of them out to see what they predicted.... Just not in to all that.

Here is how last week went:

 

Active listings: 612

Cost of items sold: $24.50

Number of sales: 13

Total sales: $313.00

Amount spent on new inventory: $35.00

Average selling price: $24.00

International sales: 1

Returns: 0

Feedback: all positive this week

Hope your week was awesome!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Revisiting July's Goals and Hello August!

I set a lofty goal of $3000.00 gross for my eBay sales last month. Did I reach that goal? Ahhh.....no. My gross sales were $1086.00 or 36% of the $3000.00 goal.

I also set a goal to get my listings up to 1000 by the end of the year. At the beginning of July, they were hovering at 500. As of last night, they were just over 600.

I am still working on tweaking my categories and sub- catagories. Here is a link to my mug category and it sub-categories. I think I need to add another sub-category titled " made in Japan". I have a lot of vintage mugs that are made in Japan.

I also wanted to raise my average selling price to the $35.00 - $40.00. Of course I would love to sell a bunch of items in that price range, but truthfully many of my items are not priced that high. I source many low cost items ( mostly mugs) and try to flip them quickly.

Packing and shipping mugs via the FOMO method is quick and easy work. So I will be happy to sell a bunch of mugs and boost sales that way. To do that I will keep the price the same unless I need to add a but to compensate for free shipping. And I will run frequent markdowns in that category to stimulate sales. Whatever works!

For August the goals will stay pretty much the same. Strive to reach $3000.00 in gross sales, increase my listings to eventually reach 1000. (hopefully by the end of the year)

Raise average selling price? Well, at this point a sale is a sale. :-)

Estate Sale Update

Almost two weeks ago I was fortunate enough to attend an estate sale at my church. The estate sale was that of a member who has been getting older and not doing well and she went to live with her family. It was her wishes that whatever her family didn't want to save and keep, that the church have a sale and benefit from whatever was sold.

I am happy to report that I have sold enough items to break even on my investment of $50.00.

The first sale of $37.19 was the vintage Penguin ice bucket. It went to England.

The next sale was the Regalware Dutch oven for $23.24 shipping paid by buyer.

And now whatever sells from this lot will be profit ( minus fees.etc.). In fact this morning, the lighthouse cookie cutter sold for $17.59 f/s.

I haven't had any hits on the dinnerware or glassware, I suspect they will be slow to sell. But,that is okay. I am confident they will their way to just the right buyer eventually.

Have you had any experiences buying from Estate sales?