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 :)

Success Is Mine!

... for one more week anyway. I didn't do it. I didn't shop. Instead, I came home and took pictures to list! The more I see my unlisted inventory pile shrink, the easier it is to avoid shopping and making that pile grow again. I'm getting there. Slowly but surely.

Some fun sales today:

Even American Girl dolls lost a shoe now and then. I had only 1 of Kirsten's meet outfit shoes, but ones I realized that a pair sells for almost $25.00, I decided to list this one by itself, just in case someone else needed one. It sold a lot faster than I expected! It went to Oregon for $9.99 + shipping.

These Dockers shorts are going to Greece for my full asking price of $29.99 + shipping.

My microwave turntables sell in spurts. I hadn't sold any for about a month, and now I've sold 3 in the last week or so. I have Best Offer on all my turntables, but all three of these have sold for my full price. This one was $29.99 + shipping. It was a big one - 16"!

I had this skirt listed pretty high ($39.99) because it was different - not your ordinary denim skirt. I had several watchers on it, but no bites. Someone messaged me last night, asking if I'd consider an offer. I added the Best Offer option, and woke up this morning to a $32.75 offer. Good enough!

These are Worishofers. I've never heard of that brand before. I found a pair of their sandals back in November. They looked like they were a quality sandals, so I bought them and have gotten zero interest in them. For some reason, I decided to pick these up anyway. I just got around to listing them 2 days ago, and they sold the next morning for $35! I'm not convinced that's an official BOLO brand though.

I have had this frog forEVER. That blue ruler is a 12" ruler. This thing is enormous, which is why I put off listing it for so long. I think I had it for 4 or 5 months before I finally decided to list it. I just couldn't figure out how I would ship something like that. I finally bit the bullet and listed it in November. There was only one other one that had recently sold for around $90, so I priced mine at $129.99 or best offer. That first week, I got several offers:  $10, $1, another $10, and $25. lol. No.  I recently reduced the price to $99.99 or best offer and finally accepted an offer for $50 yesterday. Plus $16-something shipping to Ohio. I had only paid $1 for it, so I'm quite happy with that profit margin. The thing takes up half a shelf and is just plain IN the WAY, so it was time to send him on his merry way.

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I'm listing some more odds 'n' ends tonight. Those always take me forever, because I have to research each item. And then I stop in between listings to write a blog post (ahem). Back to the grindstone! Can't sell it if it isn't listed!

My Top eBay Moments Last Week

I missed my Top eBay Moments post again. It was a hectic weekend around here :)

My eBay week was very slow. I have been riding a very high sales wave for a couple months now, so I'm not going to complain about one slow week. I sold 51 items. A LOT of them were very low dollar. So not only did I not sell as much as I usually do, but I had to work harder for less money this week. But I'm clearing out some of my lower-end inventory, so I guess that's good.

I am SOOOO glad to be rid of this thing. My sister-in-law picked it up at a yard sale for a quarter, a really long time ago. It's really big and bulky, and I just wanted it gone, so I auctioned it. Not surprisingly, it only went for my opening bid. Have I ever mentioned how I hate auctions? But whatever. It's gone.

• Acquired On: 12/4/2010 (yes, 2010) from my sister-in-law
• Listed On: ???
• Sold On: 4/7/12
• Paid: .25
• Sold For: $6.99 + shipping (woot!)

I sold this 2 quart Ball jar for a friend of mine. After researching it, I set it at what I thought was a fair-to-highish price, but it sold within 2 or 3 days. I wish I knew more about these things, and what made this one go so quickly.

• Acquired On: 3/23/12 (friend in Harrisburg)
• Listed On: 3/2/12
• Sold On: 3/5/12
• Paid: -0-
• Sold For: $14.99 + shipping

Another denim skirt. My denim skirt collection is shrinking. I need to get out there and find more, but I'm on a thrifting fast. *whimper*  This one is Tommy Hilfiger.

• Acquired On: 2/17/12 (Harrisburg road trip)
• Listed On: 2/19/12
• Sold On: 4/6/12
• Paid: $1.00
• Sold For: $16.99 + shipping

This was my sister-in-law's Boy Scout leader shirt. Scout stuff sells well. I sold her pants very quickly. The shirt took a little longer, but that's probably because I didn't bother to take any of the patches off.

• Acquired On: ? February?
• Listed On: 3/9/12
• Sold On: 4/9/12
• Paid: -0-
• Sold For: $19.99 + shipping

These Jeanstar jeans sold this week. I was getting them ready to ship when I realized they had been cut off and hemmed. I had included the correct measurements in the listing, but they were obviously hand-hemmed and didn't look very professionally done. I contacted the buyer and explained what happened and offered to cancel. She decided to cancel. Now I can't decide whether I should relist these (mentioning the hemming) or if I should just redonate. I'm leaning toward redonating, because I seem to get a lot of buyers who can't (or don't) read. No sense borrowing trouble.

• Acquired On: 2/21/12 (Goodwill)
• Listed On: 3/8/12
• Sold On: 4/7/12
• Paid: $4.99
• Sold For: $25.00 + shipping (cancelled and refunded)

It's not often that Clarks sell super-quickly. They are a slow and steady seller. But these sold quickly. These were from the Artisan collection.

• Acquired On: 2/17/12 (Harrisburg road trip)
• Listed On: 3/31/12
• Sold On: 4/7/12
• Paid: $4.99
• Sold For: $25.00 + shipping

I finally auctioned these Doc Martens. I've had them forever with absolutely zero interest. I started them at a price I would be content with, and again, they sold for my opening bid. But I'm fine with that. They're gone. Good riddance.

• Acquired On: 3/12/11 from my sister-in-law
• Listed On: ??
• Sold On: 4/7/12
• Paid: $3.97
• Sold For: $29.99 + shipping

I love finding Ariats! Even these older styles sell well for me. I have had 2 or 3 pairs of Ariats similar to this Western style, and they've all sold within the first 2 or 3 months, and for pretty good prices. Ariats are ridiculously expensive new!

• Acquired: 10/20/11 (ok, maybe these didn't sell in 2 or 3 months...) (Harrisburg road trip)
• Listed On: ?
• Sold On: 4/7/12
• Paid: $4.99
• Sold For: $39.00 + shipping

I hope this week picks up a bit! How was your week last week?

My Top eBay Moments This Week

Sales were pretty steady this week. I sold 68 items. Even my shoe sales have picked up. I sold a good mix of old inventory and new. I didn't have any returns. I had one pair of Clarks break (ugh), so I refunded her. I had an unpaid item case close for a suede eraser. It's ridiculous how many of my UPI's are for items under $10.

I sold several more Rothschild jackets this week. Hallelujah! I'm so glad to see those finally going. I don't know if it's because I lowered the price, or if it's because springtime is here. But either way, they're moving out, and at a price I can be happy with.

I think I also mentioned that I had sold a couple pair of men's Florsheim dress shoes this week too. They were very stale. I dropped the price on them and they sold quickly. I will no longer be afraid to pick them up. I'll just price them immediately at my new lower price ($35) instead of hoping for $50+.

This bowl has become a thorn in my side. I dropped the price ridiculously low and it's finally good. Good riddance.

• Acquired On: 1/24/11 (Harrisburg road trip)
• Listed On: ? This one was relisted and auctioned and relisted so many times I lost count.
• Sold On: 3/12/12
• Paid: $5.29
• Sold For: $10.00 + shipping.  Yep, that one was worth the wait. <eyeroll>

This are Basic Editions, which I think is a K-Mart brand. I would never have bought them, except they were NWT and they were the half-price color that day. I overpriced them and added best offer. I went back and forth with a buyer this morning and she finally accepted my price. I'm not jumping for joy over the price, but I still got 10x my investment, and considering they are K-Mart shorts, I'm ok with that.

• Acquired On: 1/11/12 (Goodwill)
• Listed On: 1/12/12
• Sold On: 3/17/12
• Paid: $1.49
• Sold For: $13.99 + shipping

I have a bad feeling about these Clarks. They are old. They sold right before my decision to go through and cull my currently listed Clarks. I tugged and pulled and bent and stretched them. I shoved my too-big foot into them and stepped around, and they didn't break. So I've got my fingers crossed that they'll be alright. Ugh. I really need to get that done. I don't want to sell anymore old Clarks. Quite frankly, I don't want to sell anymore Clarks period, but I'd like to at least get some of my money back out of the nicest ones.

• Acquired On: 5/5/11 (Harrisburg road trip)
• Listed On: ? (relisted as Sell Similar on 3/7/12)
• Sold On: 3/15/12
• Paid: $2.99
• Sold For: $15.00 + shipping

I don't know what on earth possessed me to sell this western Wrangler shirt as low as I did. It must have been a slow sales day. I know I can get $24.99 out of these, but I accepted a ridiculously low offer this week.

• Acquired On: 1/3/12 (local thrift store)
• Listed On: 1/4/12
• Sold On: 3/14/12
• Paid: $2.00
• Sold For: $16.00 + shipping

This pattern was given to me several years ago. I actually made the nurse costume for my daughter. I knew the pattern was 100% complete. There were none others listed, so I listed it high and hoped for the best. It sold pretty quickly for my full asking price. Then yesterday, the buyer actually called me to thank me profusely for having this pattern available, because she'd been looking for it for two years. It was kind of weird, but it made me smile to know that I had made her so happy.

• Acquired On: 2006?
• Listed On: 3/2/12
• Sold On: 3/13/12
• Paid: -0-
• Sold For: $19.99 + shipping

This skirt is Tweeds brand. I'd never heard of it, and the retail price wasn't on the tag. But it was super-cute and just in time for spring/summer, so I thought I'd take a chance on it. I got a really low offer on it the other day. I counter-offered, and in the meantime, someone else bought it for full price. It always makes me feel good to know that my pricing isn't too far off base and that there are people out there who are willing to pay full price.

• Acquired On: 1/25/12 (Goodwill)
• Listed On: 1/29/12
• Sold On: 3/16/12
• Paid: $2.39
• Sold For: $24.99 + shipping

These just sold this morning. I wasn't sure they'd sell at all. See the end of the top strap, where there's a long thread hanging? It's supposed to have a black plastic stopper on it. Of course, I disclosed that in the listing. I knew I wouldn't be able to get the $25-30 that I usually get for kids' Keens, but I figured I'd add best offer and take what I could get. I listed it at $29.99 OBO and got a really nice offer today. Some people DO know how to make respectable offers :)

• Acquired On: 11/26/11 (my sister-in-law picked them up for me)
• Listed On: 12/11/11
• Sold On: 3/17/12
• Paid: $4.90
• Sold For: $26.00 - shipping, which will probably be around $3.00

I mentioned this Oh Mamma maternity dress back when I first listed it. Someone asked if I had put a basketball under it, but nope - that's an actual maternity mannequin belly. This one also didn't have a retail price on it, so my pricing was just a shot in the dark. It sold last night for my full asking price.

• Acquired On: 1/25/12 (Goodwill)
• Listed On: 1/29/12
• Sold On: 3/16/12
• Paid: $3.99
• Sold For: $39.99 + shipping

What were your favorites this week?

Working Through the Mountain

I've been getting so much listed! You know I have all these boxes and boxes of fresh inventory to get listed. I decided to start with the homeschool material, because it's the bulkiest and heaviest, but it's also the easiest to list. Snap one picture of the cover. Use a short description template. Change the details and done. I got 12 listed Friday, 13 listed Saturday, and 20 listed tonight. That's one box of curriculum. There's still 2 more half-boxes of curriculum over there.

I'm cracking down on myself. I WILL get through that pile as quickly as possible. Next up I'll do the basket of clothing, because it's also pretty quick and easy. I'm concerned about what might happen to this stuff if I leave it out here too long. If I let my guard down, my three-year-old will get into it all and ruin it. Ack.

I know I promised pictures of stuff as I get it listed. Do you really want to see pictures of 40-some homeschool books? Use your imagination :) But here are the listings, if you're really that interested. A couple of them were my own materials, but most of them are from Melissa. (Hi, Melissa!)

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Last summer, I set a financial goal for myself. I wanted to save $10,000 by December 2012 so we could hire someone to completely finish our basement. We desperately need as much upstairs living space as we can get, especially as the kids get older. We have 4 kids sharing 2 bedrooms right now. Our oldest really needs her own room. No 12 year old girl should have to share a room with her 4 year old sister. So the plan was to get the basement finished and move my eBay stuff downstairs.

There are a couple hitches in this plan. #1 - no matter how well the basement is finished, there will always be dampness. I can't risk ruining my inventory by storing it in an always-damp basement. #2 - once my husband graduates from nursing school, he plans to get a job nearer to our church (an hour away) and we hope to move closer to that town. Why sink $10k into a sub-par basement, only to move 2 years later?

So there's a new financial goal - save $5,000 by the end of this summer. I really don't foresee any problems with that, as long as I stay focused and quit blowing my money on stupid stuff. Ahem. I'm going to buy a monstrous storage shed. My current eBay room is 10' x 10'. I've got my eye on a 14' x 24' shed.

My $5,000 goal should be enough to buy the shed, baseboard heat, and a window air conditioning unit. I'm very, VERY excited about this goal. It's less expensive (yay for my bank account!), it'll happen significantly sooner than the basement would (yay for my daughter!), and we can take it with us when we move (yay for common sense!) I'm looking forward to having all my eBay mess OUT of our house (yay for everyone's sanity!)

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Today's sales have been great! Very steady, all day long. I've finally found the magic price to get my Florsheim shoes moving. I've had quite a few pairs just sitting here for over a year. I sold 3 pairs in the last week and a half, after I lowered my price. $35 is the magic number. Yay for getting rid of old inventory! (Lots of celebrating in this post)

I'm so sick of this bowl. SICK of it! I sold a set of 3 nesting bowls in this Gooseberry pattern awhile ago for $70, so I thought for sure this single large bowl would do well. Nope. I've tried EVERYTHING to move this stupid thing. Sales, high prices, low prices, best offer, free shipping. Nothing. I'm sick of it. It was time for it to go, so I knocked the price down to $10 + shipping and it finally sold. Stupid thing.

Here's one pair of the Florsheims that I sold today. The other pair was burgundy loafers, and they're going to Canada.

I bought this set of Goosebumps books awhile ago at Goodwill when the whole set was the half-price color. I paid $8 for all of them. I just didn't feel like messing with them and taking pics and describing the condition, so there they sat (in my way on my packaging table, I might add) for weeks. I finally listed them the other day and they sold already this morning. Oops. Underpriced. But they're gone, and I'm totally happy with the price I got for them. They're actually headed to a town 45 minutes north of me.

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I also had two large shoe cream orders today - one for 10 jars to the UK and one for 11 jars to Washington state. My stock is getting dangerously low on that stuff. I'll need to place an order this weekend, I suspect.

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Guess that's it. This time change has us all so messed up. We have an ugly, over-scheduled day tomorrow, so we're taking a planned no-school day. Too bad I can't spend it being productive, rather than running all over creation for appointments and meetings. Ugh.

My Doors Are Opened!

I've had a slow-ish week or so on eBay. Yes, I've had a few high-sales days, but mostly, I've just been cruising along at a lowish level. I spent most of my weekend listing, and I got a total of 85 new items listed Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. That seems to have done the trick, because my cash register was cha-chinging all day long today!

I'm also running a huge 25% off clearance sale on over 400 items, so between those two factors, I've done quite well.

I sold a lot of items for great prices that I'm thrilled with. But I also sold a lot of items for low prices that I'm just happy to be rid of. Sometimes you have to know when to cut your losses and let your stale junk inventory go to a new home.

Like this, for example:

I originally bought it intending to actually use it. Ha! Like I have time for that nonsense. I listed it in September and only ever got one low offer on it. This weekend, it was 25% off, marked down to $22.49. I just accepted a $15 offer on it. Yes, I was hoping for more than that, considering it's new in the box, but I know when enough is enough. I'm sure someone is thrilled with the bargain :)

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I had someone offer me $25 for these Allen Edmonds the other day. $25! I have them listed for $149.99 or best offer. He felt the need to tell me that they were "very overpriced, considering their sole modification and condition of the structure."  Yeah well ... I sold them today for $90. So there.

Sometimes it just feels good to be immature about things.

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Here's a sale I don't understand.

I just listed these Tupperware Shelf Savers last night, for $14.99. They sold already today. I checked the other listings for these same items, and mine were literally the most expensive ones. So why did my buyer choose mine over the pair for $8.99? I have no idea. There were several less expensive ones that were being sold by Top Rated Sellers, so I know it wasn't that. I checked on some of the other listings and saw that they were in good condition, no mention of melting, warping, smells, etc... Who knows. But who am I to question why they chose mine? :)

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Here's another example of letting something go, just to turn it over and move on.

Now, I've only had these since December, which for me, is pretty recent. So much of my inventory is slower moving. But these are bulky and were taking up a lot of valuable storage space. Also, this was the ONLY interest anyone had expressed in these at all, so I figured I'd take the bird in the hand on this one.  They sold for $50, so I'm not complaining!

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I was all caught up on my packaging this afternoon, and I was feeling pretty smug about that. But I had enough sales this afternoon that I'm going to have a lot to do in the morning anyway. Good thing I got the first half of the day's sales packaged early!

I'm anxious to see what this week holds, sales-wise. I plan to work on my overflowing basket of clothes over the next couple days. Then I really ought to get to that mountain of shoes that I've accumulated. Selling shoes is my first love, after all. And I've neglected them to the point where I think I'm down to only 140 pairs or so. I had over 300 pairs at one point, so 140 is a pathetically low inventory level. It's just so much quicker and easier to list NWT clothing than it is to polish and list shoes. But I must do it. I've got some great brands in that shoe pile. Lots of potential money. Can't sell it if I don't list it.

Quite possibly the most disturbing image I've ever posted here....