My Best Sales This Week

I didn't really have 'big' sales this week individually but sales were UP! and it was a good week. Most of these items have been listed for a while and I didn't record how much I paid for them so I'll just list what they sold for. Not all sales are big but they add up. Although not big dollar I thought they were all interesting/fun sales. The kind of thing I like to pick up. 

Wallpaper Border sold for $17.99 free shipping.

Vintage Leather Coin Purses

Purchased for .75 and sold for 9.99 plus shipping

Italian Glass Pitcher. Sold for $27.95 free shipping

Vintage Snap Card Game. Sold for $13.99 free shipping.

Vintage Tape for Label Maker. Sold for $14.99 plus shipping.

This and That

Optimizing your Listings for Mobile Devices

In my eBay April Seller Newsletter I found out that 17.8% of my sales were from a mobile device. I thought that was interesting and it was higher than what I expected. For several months now I've made changes to optimize my listings for mobile devices. Some of the things I changed were: I quit using Seller Sourcebook templates with lots of html. I started using bullets in my description to make reading easier. I changed the size of all my photos to meet eBay's new requirements. I took their advice to keep descriptions short and sweet.  Before I made changes and was still using a template my listing came up all wonky on my android smart phone. Seeing that was good incentive to quit using the template. Now my listings look normal on my smart phone. eBay has some examples of how your listing may look on a mobile device if not optimized.  I think this is important. I don't shop from my phone but I do research on it and if a page isn't loading fast enough or I can see it's not loading correctly with text all screwed up I back out of it right away. I don't have patience for that especially because they load slowly anyway (my phone is a few years old). Look up some of your listings on your own mobile device. How do they look?

The New Storefront

I learned from eBay Scavengers that all store subscribers can now elect the new storefront. See my new storefront above. I am loving it. I have some work to do on my banner. I just created something basic because I don't know much about designing banners but even so I think the storefront looks so much better. I  took advantage of being able to pick the four featured items shown first (could we do that before?) and I chose a yellow theme so it looks cohesive. I'll change these out once a week but stick with some sort of theme. Do you have a store? Have you changed to the new storefront? How do you like it and what changes do you like most? 

Sales Are Up This Week

Sales have finally picked up. Praise the lords. I hope they continue to rise.  

My Best Sales this Week

Sales have continued to be slow. I attributed it to tax week when I listed hardly anything. Maybe one or two things a day if any. I learned a lot about doing my business taxes though and felt proud and relieved to get them done and in on time. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be but it will certainly be easier next year if I keep better records this year. I've started logging trips to the post office and thrifts and recording purchases as I make them in a spreadsheet. Also recording sales as they happen. I always assumed everything would be saved in ebay and paypal for when I needed it but those records only go back so far. I think for sales on ebay it's only three months. So I had to do quite a bit of digging to complete the taxes but I got it done!

After I got the taxes out of the way I started listing, listing and more listing hoping to get the sales moving again and it worked! Yesterday I had a $133 day which I haven't seen in a while. I've got a lot of shipping to do today including a typewriter. My favorite thing to ship…not. 

So on to some of my best recent sales.

The aforementioned typewriter. I think I paid $8 for this one. Usually vintage typewriters go for more so I was willing to pay that. This one turned out not to be such a popular brand/model. But still a decent sale.  Isn't it cute? It sold for $47.49 plus shipping.

I purchased this Liz jacket off the Halloween rack at the GW after Halloween for 75% off. I guess they thought it looked costumey. Not sure what one would 'be' wearing this jacket. Any ideas…post um in the comments :) It was $3 or $4 and sold for 34.95 with fs

And another curler related sale. I bought these perm rods for $3 and they sold for $47.49 plus shipping. 

There were over 100 in different sizes in this lot. Definitely pick these up if you see them for a good price. I'd known of this BOLO for a long time but this was the first time I found a large lot.  Do people still get perms? I had many a perm in my early years. I can recall that smell instantly. I'm glad I left that phase behind never to return.  So those were my best recent sales. I'm hoping the uptick continues! The weather is finally warming up in Wisconsin so garage sale season is just around the corner. Hoping to find some interesting items this summer. Oh. I wanted to mention. Yesterday I was at Goodwill and saw my first ever book scanner working the books. He had a cart with a bunch of books in it and was scanning each one. He was a young guy. What I noticed the most is that he looked so furtive. He kept glancing up like he was going to be stopped. It looked stressful. If I ever take up book scanning I'm going to remember to try not to look that way. Heck I think if he hadn't been so nervous he would have looked like he worked there and was doing something official. His presence did keep me away from the books though. I felt like he'd probably caught all the sellable ones. Good strategy book guy!  Have a great sellin' week. 

My Best Sales This Week

Things picked up this week which was great.


Upwords Game purchased for about $2 sold for $19.99 plus shipping

Barbie Newborn Set. Purchased a big bag of barbie items for $2. I've already sold many of the items so this I consider free to me. Sold for $19.95 plus shipping. 

Vintage Wool Tie Made in Peru. Paid $1 and sold for $23.74 plus shipping.

My favorite are these vintage metal curlers. Purchased for $1 sold for $40 best offer plus shipping. Aren't they cool?

How was your week? Are things picking up? 

BOLO - A Game of Thrones 1st Edition

The other day I was doing some research in the Anitquarian and Collectibles Books category on ebay. One thing I want to learn more about is how to correctly describe a books condition. When you sell books and you are asking a good amount of money for a book you need to be able to accurately describe its flaws.  In order to do that you need to know the parts of a book, how books are rated and what the terms are which are used to describe flaws…some I've learned are 'bumped', 'foxing', 'rubbing'. 

The most I've ever made on a book was $100 on an early edition Walt Whitman that I chanced upon in a very small thrift store. The buyer left feedback and said the book was better than I described. I think I was so afraid of not representing it accurately that I probably overstated its flaws. I'd rather do that than the other way around. 

It's fascinating to read the descriptions written by experienced collectible book sellers. And it is amazing the books that are sold on ebay. Very rare books that go for thousands of dollars. So the other day I decided to spend a little time perusing the category and quickly noticed a BOLO which surprised me, A Game of Thrones (my brain always reads this as A Game of Thorns). I've heard of the tv show Game of Thrones and I know it is really popular but that's as much as i know. I can't even tell you what it is about. Well it's based on a novel of the same name written in 1996. A first edition goes for $400+ dollars. You can bet I'll be looking for that from now on. It's got a silver dust jacket that should be easy to spy on a shelf of books and then a look inside will tell you if it is a first edition.

Here is a pic 

from this listing

and the sold listings. If it's signed you've really hit gold but either way a definite BOLO. Do any of you watch the show? Read the book? Maybe you have a first edition sitting on your own shelf?!