Do you have a problem keeping the shelves stocked?

[Iron Patch]

Does the time you allow yourself to do this create a good balance for your buying and selling, or is one more of a struggle. I would think it's much more of a problem getting enough items than making the sale, because that's how it used to be for me too, but now it's the other way around that my buying can far exceed my ability to sell and I do have a lot of experience for the selling part. This of course is a positive thing, but it's also a source of frustration because this is not the type of business you can really expand and grow into something large, and because of that I constantly have to look for ways to be more efficient.


PS: This is not a topic I've been dying to post, more like just something to say on my first day of Winter because I think metal detecting is done.

 

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[Tallone]

I am still working full time so finding enough time to sell stuff is a bit of a problem for me. I could easily get carried away buying things but I need to be very selective so I don't acquire more things than I have time to process and sell. In a way, this is a good thing because it forces me to focus on things I am confident have value well beyond the purchase price.

 

[clovis97]

Buying is the easy part for me.

I wish that I had 3 full time people to list stuff for me so I could spend my time buying. I'd love to try to travel and pick sometime in my life, American Pickers style, but would spend most of my time hitting antique shops, flea markets, auctions, estate sales and the like.

 

[Iron Patch]

Buying is the easy part for me.

I wish that I had 3 full time people to list stuff for me so I could spend my time buying. I'd love to try to travel and pick sometime in my life, American Pickers style, but would spend most of my time hitting antique shops, flea markets, auctions, estate sales and the like.

yep, if I could just do the buying, make a note on each item and someone else sell it and ship it, I would be on cloud 9 with a hand full of cash!

 

[inspectorgadget]

yep, if I could just do the buying, make a note on each item and someone else sell it and ship it, I would be on cloud 9 with a hand full of cash!

This is easily done if you are willing to give up 30%! We currently have 5 individual people who sell for us & they make 30% of anything they sell. Well change that as only 2 of them makes 30% the other 3 make 25%. Lot's of people need 2nd incomes but yet they need to stay home (for many reasons) too. Only 2 of these people do we trust enough to have them handle the complete transaction from listing to shipping. We still pack & ship the items the other 3 people sell that are only making 25%. On the side of that I give my daughter 50% of anything she sells for me.

We buy lots of pallets of stuff at a certain local auction. Like 3-7 boxes full of mostly (but not only) "smalls" on each pallet. Kitchen ware & appliances, glass, brass, copper items, clothes, china, games, electronics, knives, framed pictures/paintings, toys or just about anything you can imagine. Cost is anywhere from $2 to $25 per pallet, they go even higher (a lot higher) but we never go that high unless there is a $200 item right in our face on a pallet that also has a lot of stuff you can't see or can't see very well.

We leave this place every week with 2 full size trucks with camper shells completely filled at about a $200-$400 total cost. And it's not at all unusual to get 1 single item in that trip that pays for everything we bought that day, the rest is 100% profit. Sometimes we get multiple items that are each worth hundreds in a day. Most items tho are of the $5 to $50 type & $10 to $30 being a very common price range. We list the best of the best items ourselves & with 5 other people + my daughter they (we) really can't still keep up with all that we buy. Also we run the total junk stuff back thru a different auction in boxed lots & average $5 per box that we only see $3.50 of but it's just junk so anything is better than just throwing it away!

We could buy a box truck & even buy more than we do now & give a lot of people a job too! We could expand to antique malls but this raises our overhead cost with no guarantees it will do us any good as stuff sells much faster on eBay than anywhere else.

That's where we are with it now.

If you are wanting to do this type of work alone I suggest you target higher dollar items for as cheap as you can get them & yet still double you're money if not more. I'm starting to prefer buying $200-$500 items & selling those items for $500-$1000. Buy & sell 5-10 of those type items per week & you end up making real good money + you don't need any help to list & ship 5-10 items a week. Not to mention you could do this & still work a regular job if you so wanted.

That's my 3 cent's (cause it was a little more than 2 cents worth).

 

[pat-tekker-cat]

inspectorgadget, it sounds like ya'll are doing great! I'm glad for ya'll and keep it up!
May I suggest a cargo container, they're pretty cheap!

I go through phases with it (as I'm not dependent on the income).
I go from, the house looking like "showroom" home, to looking like a warehouse! LOL!
Right now, I'm in warehouse stage. At least it's all profit, at this point.

 

[inspectorgadget]

inspectorgadget, it sounds like ya'll are doing great! I'm glad for ya'll and keep it up!
May I suggest a cargo container, they're pretty cheap!

I go through phases with it (as I'm not dependent on the income).
I go from, the house looking like "showroom" home, to looking like a warehouse! LOL!
Right now, I'm in warehouse stage. At least it's all profit, at this point.

Ha OMG ya I know EXACTLY what you are saying about going from the showroom look to the warehouse look!! The house I'm at now is at the point I almost just have a path from all the items boxed up that I'm storing! And my house isn't tiny, it's like 1500ft2 + a 2 car garage & the garage is half full too! Come spring time I'm having a monster garage sale with this stuff & what doesn't sell will go to an auction that does boxed lots.

We have a 4000 ft2 building my partner owns that he use to run a shop since 02 where he bought broke down, wrecked or even ones with no problems Fox body Mustangs (79-93) for real cheap & he parted them out & scrapped the rest. This business went down hill in 2010, couldn't get them for $250-$350 anymore as they could scrap the whole car their selves for more than that. Only overhead on this building now is utilities & taxes & he has a car lift in the building that we can use to work on our cars too! He still does Mustang parts on a smaller scale as he just goes to a junk yard 1 time per week & spends $100 to $200 on parts he can get $500-$750ish out of. I have my own things I do as well, actually I have several things I do on the side thus why my house is also so packed.

 

[Baltimore]

Well, I'm a college student, so I do this on the side. I must say, buying is much easier than selling, to the point where my room is in full warehouse mode. I don't mind though, and I live off campus with some friends so space really isn't an issue. So no, I have no issue keeping inventory around.

 

[jerseyben]

Well, I'm a college student, so I do this on the side. I must say, buying is much easier than selling, to the point where my room is in full warehouse mode. I don't mind though, and I live off campus with some friends so space really isn't an issue. So no, I have no issue keeping inventory around.

I know a whole bunch of folks who live in the Canton section of town. Even a few who live near Patterson Park.

 

[Tallone]

inspectorgadget wrote:

If you are wanting to do this type of work alone I suggest you target higher dollar items for as cheap as you can get them & yet still double you're money if not more. I'm starting to prefer buying $200-$500 items & selling those items for $500-$1000. Buy & sell 5-10 of those type items per week & you end up making real good money + you don't need any help to list & ship 5-10 items a week. Not to mention you could do this & still work a regular job if you so wanted.

I have only purchased a few things in this price range. Part of the reason is I am slow to take that big a risk on any one item. The bigger reason is a more practical matter. I just don't see many items that have that kind of profit potential and the few I do see are generally very large objects (like cars and furniture) that are a major problem to store, sell, and ship. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places.

 

[inspectorgadget]

inspectorgadget wrote:


I have only purchased a few things in this price range. Part of the reason is I am slow to take that big a risk on any one item. The bigger reason is a more practical matter. I just don't see many items that have that kind of profit potential and the few I do see are generally very large objects (like cars and furniture) that are a major problem to store, sell, and ship. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places.

I have some examples for ya that doesn't involve spending $500, more like $200 tops down to $100 or less.

1930's-1940's glass Aladdin Lamps or other even older Victorian era oil lamps. I have paid as little as $85 for an Aladdin & resold it for $450 & as much as $250 & sold it for $800. I have paid less for ones & sold them for much less but the rare Aladdin's are very valuable ($1700-$1800 isn't uncommon), the trick here is knowing the difference between a valuable one & a not so valuable one. And you have to be able to tell a repo from an original when it comes to Aladdin's. Pretty much any Victorian era oil lamp up thru the art nouveau era with an ornate upward facing glass shade & in complete undamaged condition has real good resale value + can often be bought way way under eBay value. I buy them when ever I can pay less for them than the glass shade is worth alone which are often worth $200 or more! Early Aladdin first gen burners & galleries are really valuable too!

Old 40's stamped steel toys, original GI Joes, pretty much any great condition Easton Press books even the modern editions! Once paid $300 for 3 boxes of Easton press books & all said, done & sold we got $2300 out of em. Same place we passed on 3 other boxes for $800 & the guy who bought them got almost $5K out of them darn it!

Another example is coins, one auction I go to you can get non silver coins pretty cheap. I have countless times bought an early 1800's coin (like a large cent or a half cent) for $35ish to $60ish & sold it for $250ish. Yet the silver coins at this auction often go for 2 times what they go for on eBay. Also look at some of the "newer" Proof sets that are rare, there are several years that have oddities that make them much more valuable than the rest & these are often looked right over by even the average coin collector.

1970-S Level 7, small date cent $100
1979-S Clear S $115
1981-S Clear S $300
1983-S Prestige Set $110
1990-S No S Cent $6,500
1992-S Prestige Set $120
1995-S Prestige Set $250
1995-S Silver $100
1995-S Silver Premium $100
1996-S Prestige Set $500
1997-S Prestige Set $225
1997-S Silver $100
1997-S Silver Premium $100
1999-S Silver $275
2001-S $125
2001-S Silver $140

These can often be bought at auctions for 1/10th (sometimes even much less) than their resale value. Unless someone else there is a serious Proof set collector/dealer. Now note doing this & finding the rare sets requires very close examination of the coins & you got to know the differences of each set to look for.

There are endless smaller items & also art is something to learn about, one friend deals almost only in art only & often pays $50-$100 for paintings that he gets $500 or more out of.. This over the next few years is the next step in learning for my auction garage sale adventures!

 

[Baltimore]

I know a whole bunch of folks who live in the Canton section of town. Even a few who live near Patterson Park.

Nice, thats a cool area! There's a great greek diner in canton called sip & bite, if you're ever there check it out. I live north east of there, up in Bolton Hill.
(No thread hijacking intended).

 

[SilverForBrains]

makes sense about the silver coins at auctions, seems like everyone thinks they can make money finding silver coins for cheap!

 

[Iron Patch]

This is easily done if you are willing to give up 30%! We currently have 5 individual people who sell for us & they make 30% of anything they sell. Well change that as only 2 of them makes 30% the other 3 make 25%. Lot's of people need 2nd incomes but yet they need to stay home (for many reasons) too. Only 2 of these people do we trust enough to have them handle the complete transaction from listing to shipping. We still pack & ship the items the other 3 people sell that are only making 25%. On the side of that I give my daughter 50% of anything she sells for me.

We buy lots of pallets of stuff at a certain local auction. Like 3-7 boxes full of mostly (but not only) "smalls" on each pallet. Kitchen ware & appliances, glass, brass, copper items, clothes, china, games, electronics, knives, framed pictures/paintings, toys or just about anything you can imagine. Cost is anywhere from $2 to $25 per pallet, they go even higher (a lot higher) but we never go that high unless there is a $200 item right in our face on a pallet that also has a lot of stuff you can't see or can't see very well.

We leave this place every week with 2 full size trucks with camper shells completely filled at about a $200-$400 total cost. And it's not at all unusual to get 1 single item in that trip that pays for everything we bought that day, the rest is 100% profit. Sometimes we get multiple items that are each worth hundreds in a day. Most items tho are of the $5 to $50 type & $10 to $30 being a very common price range. We list the best of the best items ourselves & with 5 other people + my daughter they (we) really can't still keep up with all that we buy. Also we run the total junk stuff back thru a different auction in boxed lots & average $5 per box that we only see $3.50 of but it's just junk so anything is better than just throwing it away!

We could buy a box truck & even buy more than we do now & give a lot of people a job too! We could expand to antique malls but this raises our overhead cost with no guarantees it will do us any good as stuff sells much faster on eBay than anywhere else.

That's where we are with it now.

If you are wanting to do this type of work alone I suggest you target higher dollar items for as cheap as you can get them & yet still double you're money if not more. I'm starting to prefer buying $200-$500 items & selling those items for $500-$1000. Buy & sell 5-10 of those type items per week & you end up making real good money + you don't need any help to list & ship 5-10 items a week. Not to mention you could do this & still work a regular job if you so wanted.

That's my 3 cent's (cause it was a little more than 2 cents worth).

Good post, but doesn't really apply to me because what we do is extremely different. For starters a good chunk of my profit is from volume, so taking 25-30% off would leave me negative on many items. I also have to make constant decisions, many are small ones, but it plays a big role in getting the most out of my items. Some are questions I could answer, others are things I really have to do myself, or much prefer to do it because it matters.


PS: If the oppostunity was here to do what you do I would jump on it, but I don't believe it is, or anything close.

 

[inspectorgadget]

For starters a good chunk of my profit is from volume, so taking 25-30% off would leave me negative on many items.

Hold on a second don't you realize when selling in volume it makes way more since to sell more than you could possibly sell alone! Example 70% of $100,000 is greater than 100% of $50,000 & you end up doing much much more work for that 100% of $50K. A few years ago I thought the same way you are thinking right now but I promise you have it back words. I make more money & do less work now than before I promise (or at least the work I do is easier now than it was before). More buying & less actual selling but yet more research & proof reading!

I 100% fully understand how you feel about getting the most out of your items & doing it yourself is the only way to insure that! But with high volume this is only partially true especially if you have the right people listing the items, ones who understand the better job they do the more money they make. You don't want slack offs working for ya, nobody anywhere does! We review all the ads & fix or make adjustments to them as needed, but hey that's life in the big city. The rule of thumb here is if someone (a potential buyer) has to ask a question then the ad isn't written well enough or the pictures are inadequate or both & you wont be doing our ads long if that's the case.

We have such little overhead it's ridiculous & I understand everyone might not be able to do what we do at the cost we do it at but we would still be making really good money if we paid out another $1500 per month so while it helps to have low overhead it doesn't make or break us. The average $10 pallets we buy will almost always yield $200 to $300 in sales sometimes much more & rarely much less. So we 20 to 30 times our money on these pallets minus any & all costs which again isn't much when your profit margin is so high.

 

[Iron Patch]

Hold on a second don't you realize when selling in volume it makes way more since to sell more than you could possibly sell alone! Example 70% of $100,000 is greater than 100% of $50,000 & you end up doing much much more work for that 100% of $50K. A few years ago I thought the same way you are thinking right now but I promise you have it back words. I make more money & do less work now than before I promise (or at least the work I do is easier now than it was before). More buying & less actual selling but yet more research & proof reading!

I 100% fully understand how you feel about getting the most out of your items & doing it yourself is the only way to insure that! But with high volume this is only partially true especially if you have the right people listing the items, ones who understand the better job they do the more money they make. You don't want slack offs working for ya, nobody anywhere does! We review all the ads & fix or make adjustments to them as needed, but hey that's life in the big city. The rule of thumb here is if someone (a potential buyer) has to ask a question then the ad isn't written well enough or the pictures are inadequate or both & you wont be doing our ads long if that's the case.

We have such little overhead it's ridiculous & I understand everyone might not be able to do what we do at the cost we do it at but we would still be making really good money if we paid out another $1500 per month so while it helps to have low overhead it doesn't make or break us. The average $10 pallets we buy will almost always yield $200 to $300 in sales sometimes much more & rarely much less. So we 20 to 30 times our money on these pallets minus any & all costs which again isn't much when your profit margin is so high.

It's hard to explain, but trust me, it can't work that way for me.

70% of $100,000 is greater than 100% of $50,000... true, but more sales doesn't always mean more profit and if a lot of my items went from a 20% gain to a 10% loss the numbers would tell quite a different story.

 

[Beachkid23]

I have a ton of inventory. Get more every weekend. I go for anything be it a .25 cent item to $300. As long as the .25-$2 will get around $18 return. There seems to be a ton of $2-5 items that get me $30-50 back. Example, old tools, toys and glass items. So I'm happy with those. However I really want the $100 and up returns. Just not always available or it's something for $80 that will get you a return of $110 or so and it weighs a lot. I live the small stuff though. Keeps shipping costs down. Best items I find to resell is gold and silver jewelry.

 

[trdhrdr007]

We have such little overhead it's ridiculous & I understand everyone might not be able to do what we do at the cost we do it at but we would still be making really good money if we paid out another $1500 per month so while it helps to have low overhead it doesn't make or break us. The average $10 pallets we buy will almost always yield $200 to $300 in sales sometimes much more & rarely much less. So we 20 to 30 times our money on these pallets minus any & all costs which again isn't much when your profit margin is so high.

I'm pretty sure the key difference between your operation & what Iron Patch has going on is margin. From reading his posts I'm reasonably certain his profit margin on items starts around 10%.....& a lot of his items run in the 10-25% range. You can't afford to pay someone else 30% if your profit margin is less than that.

 

[Iron Patch]

I'm pretty sure the key difference between your operation & what Iron Patch has going on is margin. From reading his posts I'm reasonably certain his profit margin on items starts around 10%.....& a lot of his items run in the 10-25% range. You can't afford to pay someone else 30% if your profit margin is less than that.

Yes, and when I first started I used to cherry pick the best deals, but eventually I got quicker at moving the stuff, and given all I have to do is push a few buttons, take a picture, and throw the item in an envelope... why wouldn't I do that for $5. Then as I gained a greater ability to sell I figured why don't I just that 100 times as part of my week. So now about 12 years later my week consists of lots of lower end stuff, but some that cost a bit more too. As for higher % stuff, I definitely do, probably quite a bit, but don't think a whole lot about it. I believe in one deal at a time and just staying very busy. I should also add there's a lot of competition for my buying, and that's actually the main reason the big % are tough and I have to do volume. But I don't see that as a bad thing because I bet most on here will have their gig expire long before me. All it takes is one other guy at your favorite little auction and the big gains are over.

 

[Rusted_Iron]

I hope you got to read this post in its original form. I've decided to save it for another project I'm working on.

I'll just say that it's possible to move a lot of items at a $5 margin, but a lot of people today are not even giving themselves $5 margins. There really is a "high cost to low prices". That's all I'm going to say for now.