Friday, April 03, 2020

Ebay Reselling Update: March 2020 Sales and Stuff

EBAY Reselling Update:
March 2020 Sales

I am thinking of making this a regular or semi-regular series of posts. Might come up with a snappy pun-filled title. I don't want to make this an exclusive Ebay Blog though. It all actually depends on if I continue to make sales on that platform, which depend on a few obvious contributing factors like listing the items for sale and people actually buying the items. I also think in some ways I give too much info in these things sometimes. That is something else to ponder. Anyway another Month has gone by and with a smidgen of listing effort (I still need to pick my butt up and go to town on listing) I sold a few more things off of Ebay for March 2020.

Since I haven't been doing any listing of stuff my store is now down to only 22 items. I need to motivate myself to do more listing. I'll have more time to list in the next 2 weeks. There are a few delaying factors that I won't go into here online, or to anyone for that matter anywhere. Sometimes I don't inform others of some of my life's minutiae.

So What Sold in March 2020?
  1. Unopened 2016 Leaf Draft 5 card pack Football Trading cards: $1 Free Shipping
  2. Unopened 2016 Leaf Babe Ruth Collection 5 pack Baseball trading cards $1.50 Free Shipping
  3. Unopened 2016 Leaf Babe Ruth Collection 5 pack Baseball trading cards $1.50 Free Shipping
  4. 2000 ECW Wrestling: Champion Clashers Stickers set 5 stickers $15 plus shipping*
  5. The Stardust Voyages by Steven Tall 1975 paperback $6.99 plus shipping
  6. Word Bringer by Edward Llewellyn 1986 paperback $4.45 plus shipping
  7. The Inverted World by Christopher Priest 1974 paperback $2.99 Free Shipping
*The ECW wrestling stickers were originally sold in packages of the ECW Champion Clashers Action Figures packages. I don't know how many different figures there were in the set of figures. It was apparently random as to which sticker went with which figure at times. I think there is only the 5 stickers. I also think the ones I had gotten as part of a free collection I received from a friend. Probably from the 2nd or 3rd wave of cards from that collection. Also my original listed price was a bit high at $25 for the stickers. I didn't see any trace of the stickers being sold separately and some of the figures still mint on card/in box I think went for up to $25 with shipping included. The stickers sat at that price for a while. Then I noticed they had a watcher, after a week or so I decided to send the watcher an offer of $18 they immediately counter-offered with $15 still with the shipping attached. I thought for a while and later that evening accepted the counter-offer to get the stickers sold.

About a day and a half to 2 days after selling the ECW stickers I got a surprise of another buyer making a purchase of 3 books. One of the books had 3 watchers so someone watching that book decided to make a 3 book purchase. They paid the shipping I had on two of the books and the watched book had free shipping. At first I was going to refund some of the shipping, but I had largely underestimated the cost of shipping 3 books in one box, that ended up going 2 day shipping. I thought it was going to go first class, oops. So I actually paid double in shipping vs what I had charged for shipping.

I recently got a digital postal scale that can handle up to 25 pounds. Anything heavier than that I'll probably have problems lifting myself anyway. I was actually wanting to get one for 50 pound limit but that one was too damn expensive at Office Depot. I spent more than I really wanted to on the scale I got but what the heck? Now I need to find a good flat surface to use it on.

Back to the shipping costs thing. I am going to try to avoid doing the Free Shipping, or at least make sure the item I'm using it for is listed for $5.00 or more (and never goes on a discount sale). If the $2.99 book (the one that was being watched) had sold just by itself I would have lost money due to the shipping. As it is I think I might have broken even on the deal. I'm not exactly sure of the cost of goods since it was so long ago that I had bought that lot of sci-fi books but I made up for it some on the sales price of the books. The Paypal and Ebay fees cut into any total profit for the sale. I'm going to call that one even. The packs of cards that have Free Shipping I usually lose a little since I don't do PWEs for Ebay stuff and the minimum cost of a first class package is close to $4 now days. I still need to find that healthy shipping cost balance. I like to keep things relatively low since I myself don't like paying a ton for shipping. That scale I bought will help in that matter, that and putting the real item weight for each item instead of having everything listed at about an ounce or whatever.

OH and since I have delayed some in finishing this post to publish it, I sold one item from a multi count item (a pack of trading cards) on Wednesday 01 Apr 2020 which will insure there is similar kind of post at the end of this month.

Some related links:
My Ebay Store: CaptKirk42s Federation Trading Post
My YouTube channel: klandersen42
Up On Ebay Videos: Episode 01 | Episode 02