Thrift. Flip. Repeat.
Who has a weird talent thanks to eBay?
I can’t be the only one.
For example, I am now pretty good at guessing the fabric contents of clothing without looking at the tags.
When shipping packages under one pound I can usually predict the weight within one ounce.
When I am at work and I see babies with their blankets in their strollers I sometimes think: Oooh! That’s a suchandsuch brand blanket, worth $xx. Nice!
None of these skills are particularly useful outside of eBay, I will admit. But there they are.
Who else has gained a weird eBay talent?
Here are a few of my better or faster flips from the past couple weeks.
We had a bit of down time between my boys’ basketball games on Saturday, so we stopped by a Goodwill. The first time I have been thrifting this year! I checked out the plush first, of course. It was painfully overpriced (most of the plush I was interested in were priced at $6.99 each(!), too much for me). But, those plush that had run their course and had not sold appeared to be bagged up and sold as a lot for $2.99. That’s more my speed. It was kinda hard to see what all was included, but I went ahead and picked up a couple of those plush bag lots, figuring I could at least make my money back.
So, the following two plush both have Disney tags . . . and I don’t recognize either one! I spent a fair amount of time looking this afternoon to no avail. Does anyone recognize them?
I just had the worst week of sales – probably the worst week I have had in years. Dismal. But instead of dwelling on it, I thought I would share with you something that has been selling. Costumes!
Seems random, right? Talking about costumes in January?
Costumes are one of my favorite things to sell. In September and October 2017, I sold a LOT of costumes, and those two months were some of my highest sales months ever.
Unfortunately I timed things wrong after Halloween that year and I missed out on all of the post-Halloween costume sales. I wait until stores have costumes at 90% off, and unfortunately I waited too long and missed out on the good sales. Which meant that when Halloween season 2018 rolled around my sales dropped dramatically from the year before because I had almost no costumes left to sell.
Fast forward to post-Halloween, 2018 and I was determined to stock up once again on costumes. And stock up I did. This year I timed it exactly right and shopped 90% off sales at three different stores, and purchased around $500 worth of costumes (making the retail cost around $5000!). Costumes are pretty easy to list, so I got them all up in a month or so. And guess what? They’re already selling. Below you will find images of costumes that I purchased in November, 2018 that have sold in the last month and a half or so. A handful of those shown have had multiple sales of the same costume.
The costumes above are mostly just bread and butter sales, nothing jaw dropping.
Yard sales are also a good place to pick up costumes, I have picked up some in years past selling for $$$! (Adult talking Eeyore/Pooh costumes have been my highest sellers!)
If you’re interested in past costume sales I have posted about them quite a bit in the past. You can find some of them HERE.
Have you had any costume related flips you were excited about? I would love to hear about them!
Maje is a high end brand, and can be worth quite a lot of money.
Check out completeds HERE.
Here are a few of my better or faster flips from the last week.
I had this blanket with a lot of 5 other Aden & Anais swaddlers, and was contacted a couple months ago asking if I would sell just this one on its own. It’s a lot of work to do that, so I declined. Earlier this week she asked again, and said she would pay $30 for just the one blanket (I had the entire lot listed for $45 + shipping). I decided it was worth my while after all.
I got the following water bottle for donating blood a couple weeks ago. It just sold today, and I got a really nice note from the buyer saying she knew they were only given to people who donate blood, and thanking me for being a blood donor. (One of my ongoing annual goals is to donate blood at least 5x each year.)
I think this jacket sold once before and was returned. I love the cute bow pockets. The buyer has already received it, and left enthusiastic feedback.
Overall my listing was fairly consistent and my sales ticked up a bit.
How were your sales this week?
I was helping a patron this week at the library who was trying to track down the tattoo book above. While the library does own some tattoo books, our collection is never as big as we would like because (1) the books are generally expensive and (2) they are some of the most frequently stolen and/or never returned books.
The specific book he was looking for sells for over $200 on Amazon, and has one recent sale on eBay for almost $150.
Pretty much any tattoo books I come across I would give at least a second look. There are definitely some titles worth picking up. Check out some eBay completeds here.
Happy hunting!
Here are some of my better sales from the last week or so. Some of it was really old inventory ~ always nice to see old listings go.
Plush and baby items are still my favorite things to sell. The following five items sold for $24.95 each.
The same person bought these two vintage items. The dress has a rather fabulous butt bow.
Did you have any good flips over the holidays? I would love to hear about them!
It’s hard to believe another year has come and gone. Things have changed quite a bit for me in the last few months, work-wise.
Before my kiddos were born I worked full-time as a librarian. After my oldest was born I resigned from my full-time job, and have been subbing ever since, working just a bit here and there. But in 2018 two of my coworkers retired. And, for whatever reason, the decision was made not to replace them. But of course the work still needs to be done. So, I have been subbing . . . almost every single day.
It’s good and bad. The best thing is that they will take pretty much any hours I can give so I generally just work when my boys are in school. I mostly enjoy my job. I like the people I work with, and I enjoy helping the patrons. The money is nice too.
But . . .
It means eBay is put on the backburner.
It means my schedule isn’t so much my own.
It means I have a backlog of yard sale treasures from last summer that have yet to be listed because my time is so much more limited.
It means my sales are WAY down.
I am still eBaying, but not to the extent I have in the past. When I am good (which I try to be most days) I get up at 5 a.m. and get 5 new items listed, and then package up my sales for the day to drop off at the PO on my way to work.
When I’m not so good a day or two or three can slip by with no new listings going up. My sales are down from the past year, which isn’t great but is to be expected.
I have no plans to quit eBaying, but there are also no signs that my work schedule will slow down in the near future, so this seems to be my new normal.
I do miss blogging and want to check in again more often, but if I’m somewhat sporadic I hope this helps explain why.
How did the last half of 2018 treat you? I would love to hear about it!