What Sold!

May was an absolute roller coaster of eBay sales.  At different times of the month, we were up 15% from last year or down 10%.  We had two $1,000 days and 1 day with absolutely no sales whatsoever.  Like, not a single one.  This hasn’t happened to us in years!  A quick call to eBay confirmed that our account was in good standing and they didn’t know what the issue was!  Our $0 day was sandwiched by two $400 days, so we’ll just write it off as a fluke, I guess! Overall, we did just under $10,000 for the month.  Steady, but not quite where we want to be.  In the next few months we’re hoping that our other side projects slow down a bit. so we can get back to buying pallets and hit our $30,000 month goal!  But that’s a post for another time… Let’s talk about what sold! When people want a …

Read moreTop eBay Hardgoods Sales: May 2019

In addition to our normal sourcing, this month we decided to see if we could make $1,000 from online arbitrage.  While we (barely) failed, we did branch out a lot more that we normally do in our sourcing.  We have a pretty solid routine and get the majority of our inventory from 4 thrift stores and 3-4 websites.  We headed back to some of our old haunts at Ross and Nordstrom Rack as well as trying our hand at Mercari-to-eBay flips.  Check out how we did! While Athleta identifies as a sportswear company, we’ve had the most luck with their non-sportswear items, namely dresses.  Dresses and knit items that you can find the style name for have the potential to sell for $30+ if you find them in a good size! Maybe it means I’m uncultured, but I had no idea what the Ryder Cup was until I found this shirt.  I always keep an …

Read moreTop eBay Clothing Sales: April 2019

Traditionally, this is the time of year that our sales start to slow.  The summer slump seems to start early for us, and we fight back by trying to ramp up our number of items before our sourcing budget starts to dwindle.  In the past, stocking up on hardgoods has been one of the best ways for us to weather the summer doldrums.  While summer-specific clothing still moves, our clothing stock is more focused on jackets, sweaters, jeans, etc. Our store is still made of 75% clothing, but we are trying to source at least 50% hardgoods when we thrift – so the balance is slowly shifting! Old intercom systems (and most other functional old technology) are always a great seller.  We only pick them up if we can find two or more together, because then you can test them and sell them as a functioning set.  Single units (that the sellers were unable to …

Read moreTop eBay Hardgoods Sales: April 2019

March was a slow month for us.  We slowed down a bit on listing and didn’t buy any liquidation lots this month though, so we have no one to blame but ourselves.  While we’re still over the $10,000 a month mark (our lower limit), we have fallen back to around the point we were at last year at this time.  While that’s not the worst, it’s definitely not where we want to be.  Our goal was to grow our gross sales 25% this year, so we better get moving if we want to hit that number! Last year at this time, “Marlboro Man” sherpa jackets were selling for around $300.  This one, in dirty condition and a vastly inferior color (natural brown is best), took more than 6 months to sell and we had to put it on sale to avoid keeping it during the summer.  Anything that is genuine sherpa will sell based on material …

Read moreTo eBay Clothing Sales: March 2019

We have spent the majority of March (and April so far) focusing on some other projects, so we have had to change the way that we do eBay a little bit. We are ever so slowly continuing to push our average sale price closer to $100. We’re just shy of $50 at the moment, but we are still clearing out our store of tons of items under $15. Our goal has been to net $100,000 this year while listing and shipping as few items as possible. Because of this, on our sourcing days we might go to three or four different thrift stores and only pick up 15 items total. However the higher and price per item fits well in our goal to list at least $500 of product per day. This leaves us way more time than we used to have for focusing on other income projects and spending time together as a family. …

Read moreTop eBay Hardgoods Sales: March 2019

February was a stellar month for us.  People go crazy preparing for 4th quarter sales every year but some of our best sales are in Q1.  I would assume it’s because everyone is home and depressed with the post-holiday blues and want to drown their sadness with used goods from eBay!  Whatever the reason is, we’re happy to meet that need! While we’ve been focused on designing a new supplement and “something else” for our soon to be launched fitness company, eBay sales have been slowly increasing and have consistently been over $10k a month. We normally wouldn’t get very excited by a Tommy jacket but this one was NWT and in an extremely good size!  Most stores only carry up to a 3XL so, if you wear a larger size than that, it can be extremely difficult to find things that fit properly.  Down jacket, huge size, mainstream brand, no brainer!  It took 2 …

Read moreTop eBay Clothing Sales: February 2019

February wasn’t a super exciting month but our sales are continuing to climb.  We’re up 16% from where we were at this time last year which, when we’re already working as much as possible, just shows that we’ve gotten better at what we do! Bose sells…and thrift stores know it.  Every time I find Bose equipment at a thrift store, no matter how old it is, it is priced sky high. What thrift store don’t seem to know though it that price does not correlate directly with size.  We can typically grab small speakers (easy to store, easy to ship) for under $10 while subwoofers (harder to ship, a pain a store, and the least likely item in a system to need replacing…) are usually priced at $40 or more.    I paid $10 for this pair, tested them thoroughly, and sold them two weeks later!​ Many people try to be low-key and hush hush …

Read moreTop eBay Hardgoods Sales: February 2019

Although our new year didn’t start with a huge bang, it was a definite improvement over January 2018.  (In case you weren’t around, we had an unwarranted 3-day suspension on eBay that lasted from January 1st to the 3rd…) Sales were up around 10% from last year at this time, which is probably a testament to our conviction to move away from thrifting to more liquidation and wholesale lots.  However, the majority of what we sold came from thrift stores because that’s what our eBay store and death-pile are still full of. It was a slightly slower month for clothing (since we’ve fallen hard for hardgoods lately), but we’ve still managed to put up some decent numbers.  Here are some of our more interesting/profitable eBay sales from the past month:​ Finding “Big E” Levi’s is pretty much like pulling money off a clothing rack.  This is the least valuable pair we’ve ever found as they …

Read moreTop eBay Clothing Sales: January 2019

We looked through our eBay Solds at the end of 2018 and did some heavy figuring.  What we found out was, while 2/3 of our store was made up of clothing, 2/3 of our sales were made up of hardgoods.  Our non-clothing items had twice the sell-through rate!  While hardgoods take more skill and are harder to find, we decided to make it a goal this year to bring our store up to at least half hard-goods and increase our overall sell-through rate to 40%.  This is the first month of effort and it’s going well so far!​ Let’s start off with a sale that was actually a bit of a disappointment. I saw this little pedal car being brought out from the back as I was checking out at a local thrift store. I recognized the brand “Steiff” as an excellent German maker of toys and stuffed animals that I’ve sold before and so …

Read moreTop eBay Hardgoods Sales: January 2019

Well.  It was a crazy month.  Kirstie and I have a ton of goals for these year and opportunities converged on us this month.  On the highest of notes, we’re finally moving out of our 700 square foot trailer where we’ve been living for 2.5 years, raising a baby for 7 months, and running 3 businesses.  We’ve also been ramping up our eBay listings as I prepare to quit my “real job” and transition into managing another one of our businesses full time come May.  But fear not, we’ll still be eBay-ing at a full-time level no matter what else is going on!  Sales-wise, March was an awesome month for us after a terrible February.  We were so focused on other things that we ignored eBay for month of February and ended up reaping the (lack of) rewards.  In fact, February was our 3rd lowest sales month on eBay (our first month was our lowest, …

Read moreTop eBay Sales: March 2017