Ebay sellers thread (other platforms too)

[disneysteve]

Now that Passover dinner is behind us, I'm focusing on reselling again. I went to 2 thrift shops yesterday and spent $47.76 on china that will sell for $153. Today we went to 1 thrift shop and spent $41.52 on china that will sell for $152. Not huge numbers but it all adds up. There's a local live auction where I tend to get a lot of china. The next one is on 4/28 so hopefully I can get to that. Plus the usual estate sales. I haven't entered everything yet but I think I've got about $1,400 worth for my next trip to NC in May. I'd like to have at least $5,000 by then so I need to pick up the pace.

[disneysteve]

I went to 2 thrift shops yesterday and spent $47.76 on china that will sell for $153. Today we went to 1 thrift shop and spent $41.52 on china that will sell for $152.

Third thrifting day in a row. Today we went to 2 shops, spent $38.15, and selling the items for $185.

So 3-day total is $127.43 spent and $448 in sales.
I had to adjust yesterday's number downward because one set wasn't in good enough shape. I can probably still sell it on ebay though.

As of now, I've got $1,469 ready to go to NC next month. My goal is $5,000.

[QuarterMillionMan]

Good work. I'll be listing a laptop soon on eBay. Waiting on a DVD to install Windows 11.

[disneysteve]

Good work. I'll be listing a laptop soon on eBay. Waiting on a DVD to install Windows 11.

I actually haven't listed anything on ebay for a week. I need to do some this weekend. I brought a few items in from the garage the other night so I'll list those. I've also got other things sitting around waiting to be listed.

[disneysteve]

About 6 months ago I bought a set of china at a local auction. I paid $60 and sold a bunch of it to Replacements for $319. There were a bunch of pieces they weren't buying which I planned to list on ebay. Fast forward and I never got them listed. I finally got to them today but before putting them on ebay, I rechecked if Replacements might be buying them now. Sure enough, they're buying the cereal bowls for $18 each and I have 11 of them so that's $198. On ebay, I would have only gotten $6-10 each and it would have taken a lot longer to sell them and involved more work. That brings my total for the set to $517 and there are still pieces that I need to list on ebay.

[disneysteve]

Big score today. Someone on Marketplace was giving away two sets of Kaplan Bar Exam review books.

I sold the last of those books the other day. Total sales for the 9 books came to $559. Not quite as much as I had initially thought but I'm very happy with flipping them from free to $559 and it only took a couple of months to sell them all.

[QuarterMillionMan]

How did you ship the books and how much was the shipping. Media mail is the cheapest option at $3.26 per book (up to 1 lb). If you shipped all the books together I'm guessing the cost would be a lot more than $3.26 x 9 = $29.40.

[disneysteve]

How did you ship the books and how much was the shipping. Media mail is the cheapest option at $3.26 per book (up to 1 lb). If you shipped all the books together I'm guessing the cost would be a lot more than $3.26 x 9 = $29.40.

They were all shipped Media Mail, which actually starts at $4.63, not $3.26. Buyer pays postage so that's no issue. I did ship the set of 4 ($175 sale) with Ground Advantage for $10.17. The others were between 2 and 4 pounds each so $5.38, $6.13, or $6.88.

I didn't ship all together but it wouldn't be the 1lb price x 9 anyway as that's not how postage works. For Media Mail, for example, 1lb is $4.63 but 9lb is $10.63.

[QuarterMillionMan]

Promoted my listing for this Dell laptop which had only 4 views, 1 watcher, which I listed 2 days ago. 7 day auction probably won't sell so increasing the prospects to see by promoting it for an 8% fee.

[disneysteve]

Generally speaking, I think promoting is a sham that does little more than generate more income for ebay. I'm in a couple of large ebay seller groups and the consensus is that promoting has little to no effect on sales.

That said, your screenshot shows that you chose the Dynamic ad rate. That means the promotion rate can/will change daily based on ebay's algorithm, whatever that is. You did not choose a fixed 8% rate so you may be in for a big surprise when the item sells. You may get hit with an 8% fee. You could get lucky and have a 7 or 6% fee instead. Or you could discover that ebay decided to raise it to 12% or 15%.

[QuarterMillionMan]

Thanks for pointing that out. I just changed it to the fixed ad rate of 8%.

[disneysteve]

April 2025 wrap up

ebay:
$1,115.68 gross
$684.97 net

Replacements:
$200.00 gross
$171.21 net

Marketplace:
$55.00 gross
$52.00 net

Total:
$1,370.68 gross
$908.18 net

Another solid month. The ebay net is skewed by selling a number of items from our personal collection so "profit" is zeroed out for tax purposes. Real net was higher.

Replacements was low because I only shipped them one item (bought for $15 and sold for $200). Everything else is being accumulated for my next road trip on May 21. As of right now, I've got $2,723 ready to go and I'm still buying nearly every day. I'm hoping to get close to $5,000 by the time I go.