More About Miche

I bought another lot of Miche bags and shells from my Facebook group the other day. This one was a bag, 2 different sets of handles, a purse organizer, and 2 shells for $45. I was a little uneasy about that price. It felt high. I knew I would definitely get my investment back, but I was hoping to at least double my money. I wasn't sure I'd be able to do that. I got them Tuesday morning, listed them Tuesday evening. Wednesday morning, I sold the organizer for $14.99 + shipping. Thursday morning I sold the purse and handles for $29.99.  For those of you who may be math-challenged, that's the $45 I invested in the lot! So I still have 2 shells left to sell, which will be pure profit. Yay!  I need to stop second-guessing myself. I've been doing this long enough that I really should have more confidence in my business decisions.

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Since I've discovered this group, my progress toward saving up for my storage shed has drastically slowed. :-(  Therefore, I am setting a budget for myself. Every weekend, I will take out a fixed amount of money. That money has to last me for the weekend's yard sales AND for my facebook yard sale shopping. The only way I can spend more than that is if I also sell items on Facebook. So if I take out $100 and sell $20 worth of stuff, I can spend $120 that week, and NOT a penny more! I feel like I've been bleeding money the past 2 weeks. Yes, I've been getting great stuff, both to resell and to keep. The prices that I will be able to sell the stuff for will more than pay for the stuff I'm keeping, but I've been buying too much of it. I have to pace myself. I've been dipping into my business checking account too much the last two weeks.

I have been spending more on items than I normally would have at a yard sale, but I am justifying that with the simple fact that I'm not running all over creation to yard sales looking for stuff. I'm hand-selecting what I want to buy from the comfort of my desk, and I am working my meet-ups around times that I am already in town. So it's worth paying a little bit more for an item to save on gas mileage.

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I still have not set foot inside a thrift store since March 26. The twitching has subsided. I drove past there the other day and just smiled. I didn't call out to it or weep. :)  I'm just kidding about that part of course, but my point is, the longer I'm away from it, the less desperate I feel. Is that because I have broken my addiction? Or is that because I have replaced it with a new addiction? (Facebook group...) I'll let you decide :-D

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On the eBay sales front .... meh .... I mentioned the other day that I was in a deep, dark black hole for quite some time. I have still managed to avoid breaking my streak. I have had at least one sale every day during 2012. I have no $0 days. But they had dropped to about a third of what I had gotten used to. They are slowly creeping back up. Still nothing to write home about (or to write here about, apparently...), but better than they had been.

Some sales of interest from the last two weeks:

This has been laying in my "stupid junk I don't want to waste time listing" pile for quite some time. I finally listed it, never dreaming it would actually sell, but sell it did! During the first month too! It's just a small chunk of fabric, a little under a yard, but it sold for $7.99 + shipping.

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These came from the same pile :)  They are my husband's military shoes from years ago. They've been in our closet for as long as I can remember. I literally had to clean a layer of dust off of them before I could list them. Neither of us cared how much they sold for, so I just put $15 on them. They sold this week during a sale, so they went to Canada for $12 + shipping. Good enough for us.

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I absolutely fell in LOVE with the color of this Pyrex dish when I bought it last July. I bought it for $5 to resell, but I didn't have my phone with me, so I couldn't look it up to make sure it would do well. I loved the color, but I have absolutely zero use for a divided casserole dish, so I knew I wouldn't use it if it was a dud. Turns out it WAS a dud. It sat in my store for nearly a whole year before finally selling this week for a whopping $14.99 + shipping.

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I've had these since January, but just got around to listing them a couple weeks ago. They sold fairly quickly, which I suspected they would. Not sure why that wasn't enough of a reason to get me to list them earlier. $25.

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This is the Miche bag I just sold yesterday. I love the concept of Miche, but I really don't like the design/shape of this particular bag. Oh, and I don't like to pay more than $5 for my purses :-D  This sold for $29.99 and is on its way to Canada as we speak. Well technically, it's still in my mail lady's trunk on the way to the post office, but you get the point...

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This Miche shell was from the first batch that I bought. I'm doing alright with that batch. I paid $87 for 7 shells. I've sold 2 of them so far for $65, so I'll do just fine with them.  This one sold for $29.99 + shipping.

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I'm annoyed about this one. I've had it listed for several months now (possibly since November or December?) I've done my research. It is definitely an authentic Dooney & Bourke. I have gotten no offers, questions, anything on it. I was starting to get disappointed when I got an offer the other week for $40. I took it, without even counter-offering. I didn't pay anything for it, so I was perfectly happy with that amount. But the buyer still hasn't paid for it. Grr.

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And this sale came during a particularly dark, anti-eBay day, when the only sales I'd been getting were jar after jar after JAR of shoe cream.

More American Girl clothes. At the time that I listed these, mine was the ONLY 100% complete flapper costume. I'm surprised it didn't sell sooner than it did, but I'm pleased that it sold for my full asking price of $49.99.  To recap the American Girl project, I paid $31 for the lot and got 21 listings out of it. To date, I have sold 12 of those listings for a total of $458.88. One of the sold listings was a doll, and I still have 2 dolls left to sell. Not bad!

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I can't promise that I'm back to posting daily, but I can promise to make a better effort at posting more often than I have been. I miss blogging. I'll aim for every other day :)