Gender Stereotypes on Ebay

See the pic below. Boys or Girls Toys? Boys?? Girls Too? Unisex? Help!! I can't tell!

First off, I'm not an eBay basher or perennial complainer and don't enjoy reading forums where that is what goes on…but..I just want to bring up a bit of a pet peeve of mine. It's probably not worth a whole blog post but oh well things are slow. My peeve is the gender stereotyping I see when shopping and selling on ebay (and Amazon) toys, games, and plush.

If you sell many toys you've probably noticed it. I'm selling more and more toys lately so I've started to really notice.

When you list a toy, plush or game one of the item specifics is 'gender'. You are supposed to choose if the toy is for a boy, a girl or unisex. Sometimes I just skip that item specific but I don't like to skip any item specifics if possible; I believe ebay when they say they will help sell your item. Alternatively, I want to put unisex for all my toys. I feel all children should be allowed to play with any toys no matter what society tells them. It's just play. Don't men hold babies, become daddies, cook food etc? But the part of me that wants to sell sell sell wonders, am I cutting off my nose to spite my face if I don't place the toy in the "appropriate" gender category? Will Mommy or Daddy not find it when they are shopping for junior? I don't know…As a seller who sells toys how do you approach this? Do you ignore this item specific, choose a gender or pick unisex? Again. I'm not too worried over the matter just ranting a little.

For the first time today I looked at it from the eyes of a shopper. When shopping on ebay for toys, categories actually change when you go from boy to girl to unisex. Just like they do when you go from mens clothes to ladies. Disney princess and Dora the Explorer if you choose girl toys. Batman spiderman and transformers if you pick boy. Unisex is the default option. Check it out. Pretend you are shopping for a toy and see how toys are presented based on whether you've selected boy, girl, or unisex.

When shopping for kids costumes you must pick boy or girl. There are no unisex costumes. So plan ahead when you shop because if your girl wants a Scream costume you're not going to find it under girls costumes. If she wants to be a scary monster that is actually scary and not a rainbow brite colored monster...again look under the boys costumes.

Girls Costumes

And Boys

I know its not a huge deal and this is not meant to be a mind blowing post. Its just something I'm conscious of every time I list a plush, game or toy. It's part of our culture which I wish ebay didn't support. But they are a corporation. Amazon pretty much does the same thing. Not everyone does though. If you go to the Melissa and Doug website which sells cool quality toys they do not distinguish between girls and boys toys. Just age groups. Back on ebay I'm sure most of the Melissa and Doug toys are categorized under boys or girls. Good try Melissa and Doug*.

In the comment section Lorraine posted a link to a perfect Youtube video for this post. Thanks Lorraine! See the video here..



*I have not received any free toys from Melissa and Doug. I wish I would though cause they are cool!

My Best Sales This Week

Children's Book Lot of 77 Books Sold for $55.99 plus ship. It's hard to say what I paid for these as I collected them over time and many were purchased at a shop that sells books for $5 for a large grocery bag.  The picture below is just a small portion of the lot that sold. 

Eileen Fisher Jacket. Paid $4. Sold for $61.66 free ship. 

NWT Apt 9 Pants. Paid $1. Sold for $22.99 free ship.

This week I saw on Craigslist that a nearby thrift store is having a moving sale. I've been doing so good plowing through my unlisted inventory but I couldn't resist doing some shopping here. Their prices were unbelievable. I paid less than 50 cents per item when I averaged everything out but I admit I went back to my old habit of buying things that don't have that great of a return. Ugh! I'm like a crack addict when things are so cheap. I just can't resist. I mean look below at some of the things I bought…Could you resist such cuteness? They also have free piles outside the store. I picked up some obscure vhs titles. One has two watchers already. 

This place is jam packed with stuff and they say there is 3X more in the basement. I actually quit going there a while back because it was scary like a hoarder house. I was afraid to touch anything lest the pile tumble down and bury me. Can you imagine moving a thrift store to another location? No wonder they are trying to get rid of stuff first. I will probably keep checking back there. So much for getting more organized in the near future..

My Best Sales This Week

Sales picked up a little bit this week and I reached 630 listed inventory.  Is anyone else having super slow sales in Feb/March? Feel free to look at my store and offer advice. I'm working through listing low selling items that I purchased and moving forward listing more items that bring in a higher return on investment. I'm making good headway on listing old inventory. Welcome all tips.

Vintage Leisure Suit Jacket. Paid $1.50. Sold for $39.99 with free ship

Vintage Rainfair Overcoat New Old Stock. Paid $7. Took a best offer of $40 plus shipping

Scary Stories Books Lot. Paid $4.50. Sold for $29.99 with free shipping. 

BOLO Folkmanis Hand Puppets

Yesterday I scored a couple of nice plush at Goodwill. At this store most of the plush are in a bin for 49 cents. One of the plush I picked up was a Folkmanis Bobcat Hand Puppet.

When I researched it I found that mine should sell for about $19.99 plus shipping but I also saw that some of this brand of puppets are worth far more. I've seen these puppets in stores before and noticed how cool they are. They make all kinds of different animals and they are well made. Check out the completeds sorted by price.  So if you are digging through the plush and find any puppets keep this brand in mind. Has anyone else ever sold one of these or know of other puppets that are good sellers? I did pick up three Restoration Hardware hand puppets during the same shopping trip but haven't taken pictures of them yet.

My Best Sales This Week

Another fairly slow week on ebay. I did get a lot of books listed though from my backlog and sold 6 of them. I also weeded through books and have some bags ready to re-donate.


My best sales were

A Wooden Spoon Rack $34.99 plus shipping. I paid a couple of dollars for it originally to keep but never used it for what I bought it for.  I misquoted the shipping and ended up eating $10 in extra shipping so I really only made $24.99. I hate when that happens. The buyer was from Thailand and for some reason ebay was not showing them a shipping cost so I had to go to the USPS site and calculate it. I was off…but I'd already told the buyer what it would cost and they had already paid. Whatcha gonna do? I figured it was still a decent sale.

LL Bean Hurricane Cloth Shirt 32.95 plus shipping. Paid $1.50 for it.

One of my book sales. Notice the title. It's what drew me to the book in the first place. 

A question for my fellow re-sellers. Do you get a shipping discount when you print your shipping labels through ebay and are you a top rated seller? I'm wondering if only top rated sellers get the discount. The reason I ask is because I saw another blogpost where the seller gave back the difference after the discount to the buyer. She wasn't sure if what she did was right. The majority of commenters felt she did the right/nice things. I told her I keep the difference because I earned the discount being a top rated seller. Maybe I'm wrong though. Maybe everyone gets that discount and maybe most people give it back to the buyer. Before I realized the difference was because of the discount I gave it back to the buyers a couple of times figuring it was an issue of weight difference. Now that I realize it's my discount I keep it. Sometimes it can be up to $10 if it's international shipping priority. How do you feel about it? It's not exactly a perk if you have to give it to the buyer its it? 

My Best Sales This Week

Sales were dismal this week. I had only one sale that I can really call 'best'. The rest, few as they were, were just low dollar book sales. It was pretty disheartening. On the other hand I reached my highest ever listed inventory of 597. Will reach 600 today. Reaching my highest inventory number was part of why my sales week was depressing. It felt like I was doing it all for nothing. Sales this week were barely $100! 

I've been concentrating on working through my backlog of books inventory. These are mostly low dollar listings for single books or creating lots of books. I did list three large lots this week. My plan is to keep working through old inventory and then to start buying new inventory that has a higher return. Maybe I should just donate all of this backlog and move on right away instead of wasting my time on it..it feels like throwing money away though if I donate it. Money I spent on the inventory. But on the other hand I'm throwing my time away on listing items I know aren't going to bring in much money. What would you do?

So back to my sales for the week. My best sale was this set of Salt and Pepper shakers. Paid $2 and sold for $28 with free shipping. They are made by artist Karen Donleavy

My other sales were all books or patterns. The two best were these. 

$12 plus shipping

$9.49 plus shipping

I'm hoping for better sales this week. 

Selling Children's Book Lots

I'm clearing out my backlog of book inventory so I've been putting together some children's books lots. I thought I'd write a post describing the process in case any of you are interested in getting in to it. I used to travel a lot to visit family and went through a couple of towns that had thrifts with good book deals. At one you could fill a paper grocery bag for $5 and the other priced their children's books between 10 and 25 cents. I'd pick through and buy all the children's books in good condition or interesting vintage ones as well. For the price I couldn't go wrong. I would rarely spend more than a quarter on a book.

What I do next is separate the books into age groups. To determine the age group I looked most of them up on Barnes and Nobles website under the product information. For some reason Amazon doesn't often have that information. After handling children's books for a while you'll be able to tell what age group it is just by the thickness, size of text and whether it has chapters or not. Most of the books I bought fell into the following age categories: 3-5, 7-10, and 9-12. 

I usually list books in lots of 30 - 50 books and try to get 75 cent to a dollar for each book..sometimes a little more than a dollar. It depends on the age group and size of lot etc. 

Here is one of my current listings.

Large lots of series can be very lucrative but unless you get a complete series in one buy they require storing the books as you build up your lot. I don't focus on those. 

The next step is photographing and describing the books. I usually photograph a stack of them for the gallery pic and then photograph them in groups of 3 or 4 so that each title is pictured. You can also scan each book so it is a nice thing to be able to do if you are working at night and can't take pictures due to lack of light. If it's a smaller lot I list each title in the description. If it is a larger lot I don't. I figure people can look at the pictures to see what titles are there. I then describe the condition of the lot as good to very good as I just don't pick up books that aren't at least 'good'. Below I've copied Ebay's definition of 'good'. I also note that some of the books may have a previous owners name written inside. Ex Library books are worth less and it should be noted if your lot contains any of those as well.

A book that has been read but is in good condition. Very minimal damage to the cover including scuff marks, but no holes or tears. The dust jacket for hard covers may not be included. Binding has minimal wear. The majority of pages are undamaged with minimal creasing or tearing, minimal pencil underlining of text, no highlighting of text, no writing in margins. No missing pages. See the seller’s listing for full details and description of any imperfections.

Keywords are also important when listing books. People sometimes look for lots that contain medal/award winners and books on the AR Accelerated Reader list. So if I've got those in the lot I put keywords in the title to reflect that like AR, Newberry etc. Here is a great website where you can check to see if a title is on the AR list. Award winning books usually indicate on the cover which award they have won with a seal, like the one below. 

Other keywords that are useful are 'teacher', 'home school', and 'library'. 

The start of a school year is the best time to sell them as teachers build up their libraries and home school parents purchase their books. I list them all year. You can also put together lots for holidays. I've sold several lots of Christmas books. Right now I have listed a lot of Valentine books and a Black History lot. 

Bookselling is quite a bit of work and takes quite a bit of storage space but if you enjoy books like I do you may want to check it out. I currently have 173 book listings in my store. Most of them are listings for just single books that will sell for enough on their own so they don't go in a lot. Now that I do not have a good source for cheap books I'm looking to clear out my book inventory. I will still keep my eye out for vintage and specialty books but probably won't be selling in lots. 

I hope this was helpful for anyone thinking of selling books. If you have questions or helpful tips post them in the comments.