Fantastic Finds Friday!

We want to hear all about your Fantastic Finds! This features isn't about your exciting sales. It's about your exciting finds! There are so many places to find inventory: your closet, your garage, a yard sale, thrift stores, a consignment item you're selling for someone else. What did you find this week that you are excited about? It can be something you're excited to get listed OR something you're excited to keep! You can even post to your listing, if you'd like. Free advertising!

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Yesterday was my thrifting day and more importantly than finding a bunch of great stuff, it was nice to take the morning off with my hubby and just shop together.  I know...awwww....

I found a very nice Lands End goose down vest for myself.  I've been wanting one for awhile and with the cooler weather coming it's just what I needed.  For resale, I found a Disney Store "Beauty and the Beast Costume".  These are always popular and I need to get it listed right away since Halloween is fast approaching.  I paid $5.50 and I think I can get about $25.  I also found a new with tag Coldwater Creek down vest.  The tag reads $59.99 and I paid $8.50.  I think I can get about $30 for this one.  It's reversible too!  Happy eBaying!! :))

Lesley
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I had some super-awesome finds this week!! Remember this yard sale? Well, they had their half-off sale last weekend. You better believe I was there the instant the clock chimed 9:00!  Fortunately, I was able to leave all but my oldest daughter at home with my husband, so I could really focus.

Jansport and Hello Kitty bags

Gymboree, Columbia, Hello Kitty, Calvin Klein, Disney

Columbia, Speedo, Izod, North Face (pants, shorts, swim trunks, rash guards)

Izod, Columbia, Timberland, Cabela's, North Face (adult coats, vests, and fleece pullovers)

Rothschild, Hello Kitty, NFL, Rash Guards

I bought 107 pieces. All are new with tags and are names like:

• Rothschild
• Gymboree
• NFL (children's team jerseys, medical scrub pants, swimming trunks)
• Hello Kitty
• Converse
• Jansport
• Speedo
• Columbia
• Izod
• Disney
• North Face
• Life Is Good
• Michael Kors
• Nike Dri Fit
• Timberland
• Cabela's
• Dollie & Me (matching girl and doll dress)
• Calvin Klein

I spent more in that 2 hours than I spend in a weekend road trip! It was exhilarating, but scary at the same time. That was a big fat check! But, everything that I bought was roughly 10% of the retail prices! So I'm listing everything at 75% of retail. I'll have to play around with that, but I think that's where I'll leave it for now. If it's not selling by the end of October, I'll add a best offer onto them and accept as low as 50% of retail. That will still net me an awesome profit!

Jessica
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What about you?  If you found something this week that you are excited about please share your enthusiasm here!!

When weather threatens your eBay inventory!

I so thought I had my act together back in July when I wrote this blog post.  Who knew that a short month and a half later, a hurricane and tropical storm would threaten my business!

I have my eBay inventory stored in what, up until now, was always a clean and dry basement.  I never imagined that my basement would flood.  While I was on vacation in mid August, my neighbors told me how it rained like buckets when we were gone…they were kind enough to cut my grass because it had grown so long in a week.  Then the following week came Hurricane Irene, two weeks later came Tropical Storm Lee.

With the first storm we lost power and in came about 5 inches or water (covering 1500 square feet of basement space).  Anything in a bin started to float and then tip over.  Our shoe bins on the lowest shelf were threatened so we quickly started to move that inventory first…in the dark.

My hung clothes did not get wet as I thankfully did not have anything hanging that low, however I did have to raise them to a higher bar just in case.

The “just in case” came the following week with Tropical Storm Lee who gave us a total of 8 inches in our basement.

The stress of seeing that much water coming dangerously close to our stock was immense.  I put our stores on vacation as I couldn’t imagine finding anything while trudging in boots to search for inventory. It felt unfair to my customers.  I worried about the smell of water…..

Here you can see the water line.  This was about 5 inches of water.

The next storm would be worse bringing in 8 inches.

Here you can see some of my inventory hovering precariously over the water resting on my boys weight bench.  Yes, that's debris floating off to the right....

The next day we were able to rent a powerful sump pump and get out the water.  My husband and our boys worked tirelessly in cleanup and we purchased two heavy duty dehumidifiers to get the dampness out of the air.  Fortunately, that worked and my clothes were not affected.

Since the storm, we have moved things higher “just in case”.  We plan on investing in a heavier duty sump pump for our home.  Hopefully, this will never happen again.

All is back to normal now and my husband and I feel as though we've learned a valuable lesson.  Moral of the story, if you have items stored in your basement, be wise and plan for things like this.  There is nothing worse than scrambling in the dark with water all around your feet and ankles trying to save your personal belongings.

My Top eBay Moments This Week

I fell into another black hole this week. This one lasted for TWO days. I didn't call eBay this time - I wanted to just wait and see what would happen. After two days of nothing, yesterday was a $250+ day! I'm going to continue to monitor my store visits and patterns, but the next time this happens (and there WILL be a next time - probably next Tuesday), I'll wait it out a day or two and hopefully that's all it will take.

I had 87 sales! 38 of those were shoe care products at very small dollar amounts, which causes extra work for less money. But I figure if I'm going to be ordering those products for myself and our eBay Underground members, I might as well order extras to sell. Only 12 of my sales were shoes. My shoe wall has a LOT of holes in it. I need to get out for a shoe sourcing road trip.

I have one unpaid item case open right now (for shoe cream, of all things), and I had to cancel one order to Venezuela. Add that one to your blocked countries list. Too complicated.

Are my Top eBay Moments posts getting too long? I have a hard time narrowing it down sometimes, but if you're getting bored with the long posts, please let me know! I want you to keep reading, so if that means I should pare these posts down a bit, I'll certainly do so.

This wasn't a big sale in an of itself. 16 Scrabble racks for $14.99. However, in the past couple of weeks, I also sold the 6 boards for $24.99 and I sold the 500 tiles  for $50 minus $4.90 shipping. So for my $4-5 investment in these Scrabble games, I got $89.98! Always buy Scrabble games.

I bought a set of 6 of these Rudolph plush characters last January (half off) for $7.95. I have only the Santa left. This Yukon Cornelius sold this week for $21.99. The 5 that have sold totalled $117.97!!

This Frosty sings and dances, and his cheeks light up red. And trust me - it's annoying. I paid $1.90 for him in July, and I was glad to see him go this week for $24.99.

I bought these Fire King mugs in August for $4.24. I tried to auction them to no avail (why am I ever surprised by that?). They sold this week for $24.99. Good enough.

I was pretty amazed by the "special something" of these SAS shoes when I found them. I bought them in June for $2.99, and they sold this week for $35.

 I ALWAYS buy Ariats when I find them, which isn't often. I bought these in May for $2.98 and sold them this week for $35.

Another good SAS sale. I had a lot of inquiries about these, but no takers until this week. Paid $2.99 in June. Sold for $40.

There was a really really old man that went to the same church that I went to growing up. When I was in high school, he randomly stopped by our house and gave me these Beethoven sonata books. There were at least as old as he was, and he was ooooolllld. I never really understood why he gave them to me, but I enjoyed playing out of them for several years. I went to college (piano performance major) and ended up buying a new edition of the same books, so these just went onto the shelf. They are HUGE and HEAVY. They held no sentimental value, but I didn't know if they held any monetary value. I listed them for $99.99 or best offer and they just sat there. Very few hits, no watchers, no offers. A month or so ago, I dropped them to $69.99 or best offer, and I accepted an offer for $55 this week!

Another great sale! I bought this lot in May for $5.29 and listed it pretty high with best offer. I got a couple ridiculously low offers on them, and I was just starting to wonder if I needed to redo the lot. These books are mixed grade levels, which probably had something to do with why it wasn't selling for what I wanted. I finally ended up selling them yesterday for $65 with free shipping. It fit perfectly into a side-loading medium flat rate box, so I was only out $9.97 for the shipping.

And this was my favorite sale of the week! I bought these Ariat boots for $5.00 at a yard sale over Labor Day weekend. They needed fixed up a bit, because the lady selling them put the price on masking tape right over the toe. When I took the tape off, it took some of the color off. Grr. But my Meltonian fixed them up nicely, and they sold within 4 days of listing them for $65!

What did you sell this week?

This Week's Shopping Trip

My 4 year old and I had a date over the weekend. After our movie and dinner, I asked her what she wanted to do next, and she said she wanted to go shopping. Of course, we rarely do retail, so to her, shopping means thrift stores. What a great date she is!

I've sold these rollers at least 4 times, so I was thrilled to find another set for $2.99.

And I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw FOUR of these older style military jackets - NEW with tags - for only $3.99 each! I've sold my husband's old used ones for around $10 before, so I'm excited to see these sell.

Later in the week, I had an hour to kill between two appointments, and what do we do when we have time to kill?? We shop! I only had 20 minutes of actual shopping time, but I made it count! Here's what I got:

I had my eye on these a couple weeks ago. I picked one up and saw the $9.99 price tag and almost laughed out loud. Then I almost laughed out loud even harder when I realized that price was for EACH picture! So I put them back down and left. Apparently everyone else thought that was a funny price too, because they repriced them this week to $1.99 each. Much better. I have no experience selling this sort of thing, but they're really cute and in great condition, so we'll see.

I recently sold a lot of 22 Nintendo games for $51 at auction. I wish they'd gone higher, but my investment was so low that I was still happy with $51. Goodwill had a huge box of these the other day, but they wanted $1.99 each for them. I asked if I could buy the whole box for less, but they had just put them out that day, so they said no. I picked out what I thought were probably the good ones. I was wrong about Zelda. It's the gold cartridge that does so well, but I should do ok with mine. I also sold Mario 1, 2, and 3 in a lot for $23, so I'll hang on to this 1 and 2 until I find 3. Adding Dr. Mario in with that should get me even more. Tetris ... meh ...

I ALWAYS buy Josef Seibels when I find them, and they ALWAYS sell within 2 weeks. And mary janes? Even better! I also always buy SAS when they're in good shape. They're a pretty high seller.

And last but not least, I picked this up without even checking it on my phone, because I thought surely it would do "alright."  I was right! Definitely worth the $2.99 risk :)

Make It Happen Monday!

Well drat. I missed my goal by $14 this week. Can't win 'em all, I guess. But no matter - I'm still quite happy with the number I did reach, so I'll celebrate that, and make a new goal for this week!

You know, there's a lot more to goals than just dollar amounts. Yes, of course, that's the main point of selling on eBay, but I don't want us to get so focused on that that we get disappointed and discouraged when we don't reach those goals. I didn't reach my goal this week, but I got a lot of listing done!

Here are some other goals to consider:

• List a certain number of items each week
• Get your eBay area organized
• Take stock of all your shipping supplies, and order whatever you're short on
• Buy a certain number of items each week

And don't forget personal goals as well:

• Drink a certain number of glasses of water each week
• Exercise a certain number of days each week
• Spend a certain amount of time on a non-eBay related hobby (I am SO far behind on my pleasure reading!)
• Spend an afternoon out of the house (stroll through the park, go for ice cream with the kids, sit on a bench by the river ... clear your mind of eBay for the afternoon)
• Be in bed by a certain time each night
• Wake up by a certain time each morning

There's so much more to focus on than just sales dollars! This week, I want you to go ahead and choose a sales amount goal, but also choose 1 or 2 other non-dollar eBay goals, as well as 1 or 2 non-eBay goals.

Come join us on eBay Underground and let us know what you're working toward this week!

Highlights From This Week's eBay Underground Discussions

It's been a busy week on eBay Underground!

This week, we've been discussing cake pans. What have been your best and worst selling cake pans?

We've also been lamenting the hassle of e-checks together. What's your opinion? Should we be allowed to refuse e-checks?

 
 
Some of us are Barbie sellers. Some of us are Barbie collectors. Some of us know nothing about Barbies (ahem ... ). Which group are you in?







 
We've been celebrating with Ruth, who finally got her Top Rated Seller status back! This is so exciting because from Thanksgiving Day to Christmas Day, Top Rated Sellers will get a 40% discount on final value fees if they meet certain conditions (one day handling and a free shipping option). Congratulations, Ruth - just in time for the holiday shopping season!!

We're also singing the praises of using third-party listing services to make your listing time so much more efficient. I didn't chime in on that thread, but I also use SSB and LOVE it! I will definitely be renewing when my year is up. I can't say enough good things about it!

As much as we all like to think it is, it turns out life ISN'T all about eBay. We've got some great off-topic conversations going, like coupons and babies! (Yay for babies! Congratulations, Megan!)






And as always, I'd like to invite you to join us on eBay Underground for even more great topics, or you're welcome to start your own!

Fantastic Finds Friday

We want to hear all about your Fantastic Finds! This features isn't about your exciting sales. It's about your exciting finds! There are so many places to find inventory: your closet, your garage, a yard sale, thrift stores, a consignment item you're selling for someone else. What did you find this week that you are excited about? It can be something you're excited to get listed OR something you're excited to keep! You can even post to your listing, if you'd like. Free advertising!

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~Lesley

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Would you believe I didn't shop at ALL this week??? I know! Me either. But it's true. I did find one thing that I'm super-duper excited about though! I've had a huge pile of boxes of unlisted inventory on each side of the treadmill for MONTHS. I finally worked my way through one of the piles and found .... MY FLOOR!! Wow! Now, to finish up the other pile....

 ~Jessica

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What did you find this week? Anything exciting?