Mistake

So, it's been very slow this week.  We went out to eat with Tyler's parents after church and I got back in the car and immediately checked my phone.  I had sold something!  Something worth...$88.00?  I didn't have anything for that amount.  Well...I had at one time...but not anymore.

I found a set of eight teacups and eight salad plates by Victoria & Beale in their lovely Williamsburg design.  These can go for a pretty penny (especially the coffee mugs), and I had gotten the whole set at GW for $5.00! 

Before our vacation, someone bought three of the plates (listed at $11.00 each).  After vacation, the listings ended, so I just did "sell similar" and didn't think about it.  Well, NOTE TO SELF: when doing "sell similar", it doesn't take into account that someone bought three plates, so the listing still said I had eight plates!  Today, someone bought all eight of them for $88.00.  Crap.  So I messaged the buyer and explained the situation.  I offered her $33.00 and shipping back and I would ship the five plates I had, or I could just refund her money.  I haven't heard back from her yet. 

In non-eBay related news, I have recently become obsessed with Pinterest.  I have been a member for a while now, but didn't really pay any attention to it until Friday when I wanted to figure out a way to hang pictures in the baby's room.  Here's what Tyler and I made:

 It's a 1/4" board from Michael's with a Dr. Seuss quote.  The clothes pins are glued on and the ribbon on them have "A"s on them.  I have to get some pics developed to hang up.  I haven't sent pictures to get developed for months!

A scrapbook paper wreath!  The original design used a wreath form, but we couldn't find one that was the right size, so we used cake boards and cut a hole out of it.  Then I used 2"x4" scrapbook strips and glued them in a pattern.  Because we used the cake board, you could see the cardboard, so I wrapped some paper around the center and hid the edges with some pretty lace ribbon I got on clearance at Wal-mart.  It's on Addy's door.

So that was my weekend.  A serious eBay screw-up and some very cute crafts!

Eureka!

Ok, we're back from the beach.  The baby loved to play in our condo but hated the beach, the sand and the pool.  So...yeah.  It was fun, though.  Well, the bits when baby got sand in her eyes and cried for the entire duration of a dolphin tour were not too fun, but we survived.  Then the baby got sick.  The doctor says it's just teething, but the last time he said that, it was pneumonia (I know, right???).  She's better now, though and I've been listing my heart out.

I've read lots of stuff about people bellyaching about the new "best match" and I agree with a lot of it.  On Auction Bytes lots of people are like "oh, I'm going to leave eBay" yadda yadda yadda.  Well, I'm all out of whack on Best Match, too, but I won't be leaving eBay.  I've just got to  be smarter about what I list.

So I'm thinking about things and very slowly, a hypothesis forms in my head.  I go to my sold page to check if I'm right and I am!  I've not sold very much this week but guess what 90% of my listings had in the title and item specifics?  "New".  NWT clothes from the GW and TJ Maxx, clearance toys from Target, etc.

It could be a coincidence.  I'm going to keep an eye on this, but I know that eBay wants their website to be more "upscale mall" than "flea market", so it makes sense that Best Match would favor new items over used ones.  I did a couple of test searches and the BINs that showed up first for clothes and toys were all new.  I know that I usually only click through the first couple of pages of listings when looking for stuff...I wonder how many people will wade through the newer, higher-priced things to find the used ones?

What if this is true, though?  What if this is how it works now?  What does that mean for yard-salers and flea market pickers?  Unless you specialize in collectibles or older toys, it means we're screwed, friends. 

Have you noticed any sort of pattern?  Let me know, I could use a tip!

In Which I Do Not Complain

...ok, I'll complain a little.  My sales still suck.  But I've gotten away from the real point of blogging about eBay and that's to share what I'm selling and what's doing well.  So here's some recent sales:

Belk (a Southern department store) is having a huge clearance sale, like half of half.  I picked up two boy's shirts since they were $10.00 each.  I figure, hey, if they don't sell, I have the receipt and I can at least take them back.  I put them for auction starting at $16 each and they both have bids and watchers.  Hopefully I make more than $12.00 total on them.

I got this Le Creuset kettle at TJ Maxx.  It was on clearance for $20.00.  I checked completeds and was hoping I could get over $60.00 with free shipping for it, but it just sat there with a ton of watchers, but no buyers.  I changed it to $45.00 and charged for shipping and it sold fast.  I only made $25.00 on it, but I'll take it.  Again, I know it's risky to spend so much on something new, but if you keep the reciept and the store accepts returns on clearance items, it's pretty much fool-proof.

I do not understand these LaLaLoopsy dolls.  They're awkward and unposeable and heavy, but apparently people love them.  This one was at the GW for $4.00.  I sold her for $17.00 + shipping in about two days.

Vintage straw trivets.  Picked them up at a yard sale for .25 each and sold them last week at auction for $12.00.

These were a re-release of vintage Budweiser pint glasses I got at a huge yard sale about a month ago.  Paid $2.00 for the set and just sold them tonight for $19.99 + shipping.

Vacation fund is going ok.  I'm also using it to buy things for vacation, which for some inexplicable reason included spending large amounts of money on "beach clothes" for baby at Gymboree.  But she's got to look good at the beach, right? 

We had a good weekend and did a lot of patriotic stuff with Tyler's family. 

Hope everyone has a great 4th!

Restless

So our vacation is just two weeks away! This makes me happy and also really crazy inside because eBay is being a punk. I was doing ok until I realized how much my monthly fees were this month. I'm embarassed to even say. It was a lot. I got hooked on doing auctions there for a couple of weeks and without my friggin TRS discount....it was a lot. So it was a major setback.

Yard sales have been terrible. We didn't get to go last week because we had to take Addy to the ER Friday night around 12. We didn't get home until 6:30 the next morning! They ran a gamut of tests on her to figure out what was causing her mystery fever and turns out she had mild pneumonia! The poor angel is feeling better, now, though!

Thrifting has been slow, too. I don't want to use my PayPal card for anything because I know sales are so slow...but then I know if I don't buy stuff, my sales will be worse...so it's like a Catch-22. And I'm buying all the wrong stuff! I've read Chico's is a great brand to sell and I found a ton of Chico's stuff suddenly a few weeks ago...nada. I mean, I've got Polo stuff up, Steve Madden, Le Creuset and NOTHING (all priced competitively, btw). It sucks.

So I'm restless and impatient and bummed. How's your week?

In Which Our Addy Helps

Don't you hate it when you don't have anything in your store you're super excited about?  That's how my week has been.  Nothing really Earth-shattering going on, several unpaid auctions and mediocre sales.  I just don't have anything listed that has me excited!  But, yard sales have been sub-par the past couple of weeks. 

I'm venturing out with our Addy tomorrow to hit a few that are close by that promise to have "too much to list!!!" so we'll see about that.

On the vacation front, I have officially paid for our condo!  Now I'm totally freaking out because I have about a month to make our gas and spending money.  I mean, Tybee's an eight hour drive and our Trip Car is a gas-sucking Jeep Liberty (the Subaru, while better on gas, is not to be trusted).

While my sales have been low-dollar, they have been fairly plentiful and I'm making daily trips to the post office.  It has been during these busy couple of weeks that I've realized how much I hate packing things in boxes.  I'm happy as can be to shove a shirt in a bubble mailer and be on my way, but boxes totally suck.  I guess I'm getting lazy.  Ok, not lazy.  Busier in other areas of life.  Addy has absolutely run me ragged this week, but I'm not complaining, just stating a fact.  She is such a little ball of energy and I would rather spend my time with her than trying to figure out how to fit a planter in a box that's three centimeters too small for it.  Here's her helping me pack stuff:

I didn't take a picture of her upending my huge bag of packing peanuts because I was too busy trying to keep her from pressing my printer's on/off button for the 500th time.

She's a silly goose.

I think I would actually take a break from eBay for awhile if it wasn't for having to cough up vacation dough.  Of course, now that I've shelled out approximately $1200 for our condo, which is nonrefundable unless they rent it out to someone else, I have to keep going.  Plus, Tyler and I got married on Tybee and Addy hasn't been to the beach yet, so if it doesn't happen, I'll feel like the worst mommy ever.

No pressure.

Mrs Cake

I changed the name of my store to Mrs Cake's Closet.  Mrs Cake is a minor character in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series and she's hilarious and awesome.  If you've never read a Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett, you really should.  He's a funny, funny man. 

So now that I'm Mrs Cake (there's no period after Mrs on purpose.  I know my grammar thankyouverymuch), I've obviously stopped trying to actively hunt down books.  They take up too much space and unless you have hundreds, there's no money to be made that I'm seeing.  I'm still going to give them a good looking-over wherever I go, but not in the desperate, sweaty way I had been. 

Also, here's my new eBay room:

 My walls are gray.  I thought this would be a good neutral color for pictures.  It works great for most, but light colored clothing does not show up so well.  I'll need to do something about that at some point.  That giant blob on the right is a bag of packing peanuts because peanuts are the best.

High tech printing station with #5 bubble mailers.  My philosophy has become "If it don't fit in a bubble-mailer, it probably ain't worth trying to ship."  Tyler really needs to sand and paint that dry wall patch.

Here's where the magic happens.  My desk is a 50's metal kitchen table with roses.  I got it at an antique store about 6 years ago and it was my Very First Purchase for any house I might live in.  While Tyler has tried, I'm pretty much never getting rid of it.

Let's all say it together: "hot mess"!  That's why closets have doors.

The fourth wall is blank with a hook stuck to it for picture-taking.  Very exciting.

Now for a BOLO flash:  Anything linen!  That is all.

I seem to have misplaced my TRS rating.

Oh, bother.  I can't seem to find it anywhere.  Oh, wait...it's because people don't read item descriptions and then they give you crummy ratings instead of contacting you when they're dissatisfied. 

So, I'm not a TRS anymore.  Which is lame.  You can only have a .50% rating in "item not as described" and due to an unfortunate string of jerks, mine is at a .53%.  Hopefully I'll be back in the running next time.

A couple weeks ago, eBay ran a listing promotion.  I think it was during May 10-13 you could list auction style free.  So I did.  I listed about 20 auctions, which is the most I've done since last summer.  It was pretty dang successful.  Screw sales, if something's sitting in my store that I'm itching to get rid of, I'm gonna put that sucker up for auction.  You may get a little lower than what you really wanted for it, but auctions sell stuff, and I've actually made more than what I was asking for BIN on several items.  Suckers. 

The best thing is, out of all my sales that I had with auctions, I only had to open one unpaid item case and they paid the next day!  I'm sure that'll never happen again.

It's been a long time since I've posted!  We've been moving and with school coming to a close (thank God), it's been a busy time around these parts.  However, I am now in full "I have to have enough money to pay for vacation" panic mode, so there will be more eBay related stuff happening now. 

I've got a list of BOLOs I want to talk about and I want to show you my new eBay room, but we've got to go grocery shopping, so I'll be discussing that next week.  I hope everyone is having excellent sales!

Whew.

I am exhausted.  We are trying to paint every room in our new house and the baby's been sick, so this week has been a big struggle.  We move all the furniture on Saturday.  My new house resolution is to be super organized and totally clean and awesome.  We'll see how long that lasts.  My eBay room is looking good though.  It's a nice gray color and Tyler's going to put up lots of shelving for me.  I'm also going to break down and order some mannequins.  I am totally loathe to pay $18.00 in shipping for plastic torsos, but with the amounts of dresses and things I've been buying, it would be stupid not to.

Speaking of dresses, I finally got rid of a gorgeous Ann Taylor dress on Monday, only to have the buyer tell me "it's lovely, but doesn't work" for her.  She's sending it back, so that's $40.00 I get to refund.  Hooray.  If it weren't a size 4, I would just keep it.

I've had no chance to thrift or list this week and my store is the emptiest it's been in a long time (145 items). 

One exciting thing this week (you know, other than closing on our first house), is that I paid the first half of our vacation rental for Tybee!  I am really hoping I can pull this out! 

Let's panic!

So, Ms. These-pants-aren't-new-even-though-they-have-tags decided to leave me negative feedback!  I was apologetic, I refunded her money...what else did she want???  Then, when I tried to log into eBay to comment on her feedback, eBay won't let me in!  It says my password is wrong when that's total bull!  PANIC!  Panicpanicpanic.

***Update***
eBay let me in.  I wrote "buyer recieved full refud as requested.  Item had tags and was never worn"  They don't give you enough space in those things.  I wanted to say:

"Buyer is obvious sociopath.  I would request that she remove this, but then she'd probably try to call in the FBI.  This is ridiculous, why can she even do this when I gave her a refund?  I hate eBay."

I think if you refund the full amount of an item, the transaction should be automatically cancelled and they shouldn't be able to leave feedback.  I have never had a buyer be this rude.  I've had returns on more expensive items (remember these were 14-bloody freakin-dollars) and no one has evern pulled this crap. 

Anger.

First neutral.

Well, I got my first neutral today.  It was for a Ralph Lauren sweater I've been trying to get rid of forever that went to a buyer in Norway.  They said there was a hole in the sweater near the logo.  I never saw this hole.  It's not that I don't think they're telling the truth, it just irritates me when I let stuff like that get by me.  It was a sweater my mom's had for a while and never wore, so she let me have it.  I guess even if stuff is new, there can be problems...like my wonderful pants that I got returned to me.  That case got closed, btw. 

The neutral's really got me down.  This is on the heels of several lackluster reviews.  Like I've said before, I hate it when people just say stuff like "satisfactory".  It's not that I want "OMG I LOVE IT", but when people leave stuff like that, I feel like they're not really happy with the item...does that make sense?  It seems to go in cycles.  People leave me really great, excited reviews and then for a week or two, it's like the cynics come out and decide to say "meh" to everything.

I mean, I would rather give a refund than have a neutral.  They only paid $12.00 for it, anyway...heck, I would've refunded it and let them keep the stupid thing to avoid a neutral. 

This is going to bother me all night.

Yard sale and BOLOs

The yard sale was very slow yesterday.  Well, we had a lot of people who wanted to spend about $.50 on everything.  Sold lots of books, DVDs and baby clothes.  I made about $200 for both days, so thank goodness we decided to have it on Friday, too!

I had this Kelty internal frame backpack out there and had to get $20.00 for it.  I only used it once, but no one was interested, so when I got home, I snapped a few shots and threw it up on eBay for $75.00 OBO.  It sold about 2 hours later for my full asking price!

These retail new for about $140.00.  I bought it about three years ago for significantly more, but all it took was one overnight trip sleeping with a rock in my back, cooped up in a two person tent with Tyler and our 50 pound dog to realize camping is not for me.  It's not a heavy pack, but the internal frame will make it tricky to ship.

BOLO alert:  I bought a black version of this bicycling skort a few months ago from the SA and it sold really quickly for about $30.00.  I found this one yesterday:

It looks great and is super clean, so I posted it last night for $27.00 and it sold this morning to a girl who bought that and a pair of Columbia capris I wore once.  The brand is Terry and they specialize strictly in women's cycling gear.  Their stuff is so cute (and pricey), it almost makes me wish I was interested in bicycling!

Another BOLO:  John Le Carre books!  He's the author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which was recently made into a big movie and has boosted his book's popularity.  His protagonist, George Smiley is like the anti-James Bond spy and my husband loves his books.  A local thrift shop we have has a ton of the books in hard back with dust jackets that are first trade editions.  They're $1.00, and Tyler told me that they sell for a good amount online, so I went and got some.  These two sold to the same person last night for $15.00 each!

Not bad for a $2.00 investment!  They also sold quick..in about a day. 

So what was an excrutiatingly slow week has turned into a very profitable weekend!  This is one of the best eBay weekends I have had in a while and I'm very glad for it!  Our chances of taking a great vacation are looking better and better!

Purging

I love to get rid of stuff.  I have zero sentimental attachment to anything.  I mean, I wouldn't sell my husband or child, but if the price was right, I could let mom go.  That's why selling bags of clothes and other items super cheap at our yard sale is so satisfying. 

I was taking stuff over to my parent's house yesterday when dad told me it was supposed to rain this morning (no rain so far, though!).  So, being the genius I am, I said "well, let's do some of it this afternoon!"  And we did.  We were not prepared and ended up being the annoying people who are digging stuff out of boxes while people are showing up, but we were "open" for about three hours and I got rid of a ton of baby clothes (fill a bag for $5.00....iknowright? crazy), knick-knacks that aren't selling on eBay, and some junk we just had sitting around serving no purpose.  I even remembered to take the stuff off eBay after I sold it!  Hooray!

I made a little over $100 yesterday, which I think is good considering it wasn't for very long.  Hopefully this morning will be hopping.  We went through more stuff and have a few more Sterilites full of junk to sell.  So, here's to having enough by the end of the day for a new, used dining room set!

Oh yeah? Your face is not as described.

Well, apparently I was riding high on my American Girl doll streak (which netted me about $300) when I told Tyler I could pay for our entire vacation with eBay earnings.  This week has been totally dead.  I've got watchers, but no buyers.  And I have one crazy buyer who is currently making my life hell.

I sold some Ralph Lauren pants that were new with tags.  I said they were new with tags because they were NEW and had TAGS ON THEM.  I said in the listing that they had been in the closet for a while so they were not "brand new" and the tags were wrinkled, which was true.  My mom's had them for at least a year.  So someone finally bought them for $14.00.  On Tuesday I get an "item not as described" message from them saying they're returning the pants because they were not new.

I'm sorry.  What?  I informed her that they were new and I wanted to say "because no one is stupid enough to walk around in pants with the bloody tags on", but I didn't.  I said I was sorry she wasn't happy and told her I would gladly take the return.  After my message, she opened a freaking case.  I've never had a case opened.  The people just send me the return and I give them their money (in her case, FOURTEEN DOLLARS, mind you) back.  She said I "raised a red flag" when I asked her to send the pants to my parent's house since we're going to be moving and I want to be sure they get to the right place.  I sent her a message explaining, as I had already explained to her, that there was no shady business going on and I didn't want the pants to get lost in the moving shuffle.  And then I cussed loudly at my computer.

So that's been my week.  I'm off work tomorrow because we're going to have a yard sale on Saturday since there is entirely too much crap in our house and I don't want to pack it when we move and I need to get it all together.  This will involve me indiscriminately throwing stuff into bags to take over to my parent's house that I will probably sell at the yard sale and then forget to take off eBay only to sell it on there sometime next week.  Because my life works like that.

On the bright side, everything is a go so far on the house buying front and we close on our first house on the 30th!  The owners are even putting a new roof on it.  I'm not the sort of person to use "blessed" as an adjective because I think God has more on his plate than our mortgage, but we are blessed to have gotten this house.

Unproductive

So I had big plans for my spring break week off.  I was going to list, list, list.  Here is why I can't do that:

I had taken some pics while she was napping and was trying to write a couple sentences real quick.  She was settled down with her baby piano game on the iPad (I know, I know...rotten), but once mommy started typing, all bets were off.

Saggin britches.

So tonight I listed five things, for a total of 160, which is the most I've had up in a while.  Yesterday and today have been slower than earlier this week (today was dead) and it turns out the woman doing our mortgage is a total airhead and didn't tell us we have to get her the downpayment on Monday, which we were $400 short on.  Guess who had $400 in her Paypal vacation account?  Me.  So now the vacation fund is back to zilch.  Oh well.  We shall persevere. 

Like A Boss!

Guess how much I paid for this...

And this...

And this...

And this...

$10.00!  Yard saleing like a boss!  Ok, so I went to a yard sale yesterday at a rich house just two blocks away from us.  When I walked around to the back of a large and well-manicured yard, a box full of these ladies was at my feet.  My mouth dropped open when I saw a small sticker on Samantha that said "$10.00 box".  With a shaking finger I pointed to the box and asked "has this sold?"  The lady running it told me it hadn't and I practically threw myself at the box.  I said "I'll take this, this is mine, I'm going to put it somewhere."  She looked at me like I was crazy.  Crazy like a fox!

I found a stack of books for resale and a cool Ben Franklin quote print for us and wound up paying $21.00 for everything. 

I drove home and ran into the living room with my box.  I picked through it and tested each doll for "standability".  They all stood up!  The strings on Felicity and Kirsten were sort of loose, but oh, well.  I've put Josefina up for $80.00 and already have 8 watchers.  Addy went up for $95.00 because she's in great shape and I have 2 watchers.  Samantha's on auction starting at $15.00 (they go for about $50.00 at auction, which is better than the BIN prices) and she has 8 watchers. 

Now for the FASTEST flip ever:  I put off listing Kirsten and Felicity (first pic) because I wasn't sure how to do it.  I decided I would list them together.  Kirsten is in rough shape.  Her hair is horribly matted and Felicity has no clothes (which apparently does not really matter).  Baby is taking a nap, so I figured, I'll go ahead and take pics and group them as a lot.  I listed them starting at $20.00 with a BIN option of $75.00.  Within about 60 seconds, they sold!  Did I price them too low?  Obviously.  But look, I paid about $2.00 for each of them.  Tyler and I have decided that 100% of my eBay earnings will go toward vacation since our house buying adventures will take all our vacation savings, too.  $75.00 is almost a whole night in a gorgeous vacation rental and I'll take that any day! 

Troubleshooting.

So, people, my husband included, are asking me why I don't just have a Big Sale.  Because, according to Omniture, I'm getting LESS THAN 50 views a day for the past week or so.  I mean, what's the point of having a sale when no one's even looking at your stuff?  This morning, I was reading Auction Bytes blog and they talked about how, staring June 1, people with 1 day handling time and 14 day return policies are basically going to get bumped up in the searches. 

This got me thinking...which is dangerous because I am having severe allergies and thinking is really difficult right now.

Knowing eBay, they may have already put this into effect without telling anyone.  My handling time is 2 days because I'm lazy.  What if this is hurting me?  I've already changed my return policies, but perhaps I should change my handling time, too and see what that does. 

So, I did.  I changed all my handling times to 1 day and checked my return policies.  I also caved and decided to run a Big Sale and see if changing my policies and discouting prices will increase my views.  We will certainly see. 

Frustrated

Well, I didn't post any pictures of me failing on the prom dress packing front because it actually fit nicely in a larger size box.  I slipped a dry cleaning bag around it and out it went! 

That being said, I have not had much at all in the way of sales for the past week.  It's depressing.  I don't think I'm getting much in the way of views (omniture says about 50 a day...terrible), so I don't know if it's me not doing it right or eBay screwing me over.  Yard sales last weekend were a total bust, so it's not like I have a lot of cheap stuff to list this week.  In fact, I haven't listed anything since Sunday.  Not selling stuff is not good motivation to list/buy anything else.

We are also looking at houses like crazy.  We're in a lower price range, so it's frustrating to see house after unsuitable house.  I think our real estate agent was getting frustrated too.  Not with us, but with the quality of houses and misleading listings of other real estate agents.  I mean, we went to see a few that the listing agents said were "above average" that were total nightmares.  We put an offer in on one with the stipulation that the lady put a railing on the front porch so the house would be approved for FHA, but she refused.  We have an offer in right now on another house and the seller just asked for an extension to consider the offer...so that's more waiting.

Waiting on the phone to ring, waiting for someone to buy some of my crap...and oh yeah, waiting for Addy to get over her double ear infection...*big sigh*.

Hindsight is 20/20

So, of course, when I'm listing, it's very rare that I actually stop to think of the logistics of shipping an item.  My brain doesn't work that way.

My old prom dress sold for $62.00 + $14.25 shipping.  I'm happy with that for sure.  However.  It is seven layers of crinoline.  If the top weren't so heavily beaded, it could stand up by itself (which, of course, was a prerequisite of any prom dress I had).  I have realized that shipping this could, possibly, be a huge pain in my butt.  The buyer already paid, so I'll have to start on this tomorrow. 

I have had a couple of sales every day this week, which certainly isn't going to make me rich, but is enough to keep me from whining about it constantly.  I have realized that I have GOT TO get back to yard sales now that the season is starting up.  There's not many in town and I can't go too far up the road since we're looking at a couple of houses tomorrow, so I've got two on my list.  One says "everything $1" and one is a three family yard sale, so we'll see how that goes.

If my dress packing turns out to be as ridiculous as I think it will be, I will try to take some pictures of me failing big time with accompanying expletives.  Should be fun.

*chirp*

Lawks a mercy.  I haven't sold anything since Saturday.  I'm hardly getting any views.  This perplexes me because I have more things up than ever, lots of big brand names, larger sizes, even several items that are new with tags.  I'm assuming part of this is because I'm getting lost in the crowd.  I am reading that people are being tight with money because tax season is coming up, but not EVERYONE in the world is doing this.  Surely someone would want a NWT Talbot's skirt, a prom dress, or some name-brand men's clothing? 

Tyler and I are getting serious about the house buying business so I've been too preoccupied with that to really stress over eBay crap, but not hearing my little "ka-ching" in three days is getting pretty old. 

I get to go to jury duty tomorrow.  Notice how I say "get to" and not "have to".  That's how much I hate going to my job.  Baby will be at day care and I think I only have to go in for orientation, so that leaves me some good thrifting time since I'm supposed to be done by 10:30.  I figure I'll devote an hour or two to that and then go pick up Addy.  Although, it seems like any purchases will be in vain, I did set a listing goal of 175 for the month and I'm at 161, so maybe I can at least accomplish something.

Please Advise.

Well, here's some stuff I just listed today and yesterday.  I actually made it to the estate sale and it had nada, so I trekked to my GW's and Salvation Army:

This is actually my senior prom dress.  I really can't tell from the completeds what I should list this as, but I started an auction at $60 and put BIN for $115.00.  It's in really good shape and I shelled out about $500 for it new.  And, yes I did pay for it, by the way, because mother told me there was no way she was going to.

 This is a David's Bridal bridesmaid dress in a size 22W.  It's in great shape.  This picture also reason #58 of why I need a bloody mannequin.  The shipping on them is so expensive, though!

I thought this was basically the best shirt ever.  It's unbranded (I think the tag was torn out, but it's hard to tell) and it's all embroidered work on here.  Men's size XL, paid $4.50, sold today for $34.99.  Tyler laughed at it when I showed him, but it had 5 watchers before it sold, so HA!  I love quick flips.  I love them even more because they've been so few and far between lately.

I am also having thoughts.  I love selling men's clothes.  I do well with men's clothes (better than books, lately) and I've never had a man send a return back or complain about their stuff.  I am thinking about considering entertaining the possibility of whether to open another basic store wherein I would sell only men's stuff.  Does anyone out there have two basic stores?  Can I have two basic stores?  Is it a giant PITA?  Please advise.

Oh, dear.

I don't know about you, but when I have a yard sale I want to go to, I want to be one of the first suckers there.  I'm off school today, so I figured I'd try to find some indoor sales and take the baby along.  There's an estate sale not too far from our house that starts at 9 (right now!) and I'm here writing this blog!

It's the baby's fault.

We're trying to break Addy of her night time bottles, and of bottles in general.  I have people telling me 80 different things: "oh we broke ours of that before they were one", "oh, just do whatever you want, she's your baby", "oh, she must be spoiled!".  And blah blah blah.  I hate it.  It's been going ok, but last night from 2:00-3:30 she was very upset about the situation.  I finally caved and gave her a bottle, of which she only ate about 3 ounces.  She woke back up at 6, we played a bit, and then she crashed an hour ago.  I was kind of itching to make it to my first estate sale of the season on time, but I'll take a happy well-rested baby over somone's old crap any day.  So I guess I'll just wait it out.

This week has been painfully slow, eBay wise.  Sunday was excellent, so I thought my "end everything and then list it again and pray that it sells" tactic was working, but this week was awful.  I am a big nerd and keep a line graph of my daily sales week by week, and Thursday is always good for me, even during January and February when it was so slow.  Did I have any sales yesterday?  Heck no.  In fact, my stupid Omniture thingy said I only had about 40 people even look at my stuff (I would post a picture of that, but it's down right now...like always). 

If we don't make it to the estate sale, there's a couple consignment sales going on in town and I'll also be heading to the GW, so hopefully I can find some stuff.  I figure since I'm obviously not going to be busy shipping anything, I should make a goal for this month, listing-wise.  I am at 153 right now, thanks to some kid's clothes donations from my sister-in-law, so I think it wouldn't be asking too much to get to about 175 by the end of the month.  I would say 200, but where the hell would I put all that stuff, know what I'm sayin?

I'll post pics if I find anything that I don't instantly regret buying.

Watcheritis

I have a bad case of it.  Watcheritis is what happens when you have a great thing up with lots of watchers who never buy it.  I actually had many things that were infected with this terrible disorder, so I went a little crazy this morning and I ended everything and did sell similar. 

Extreme?  Perhaps.

However, ending 135 things (I did not end fairly recent stuff) only cost me about $20.00 and I figure if one of those things sell, I'll be even.  I also jusitified this in my head by figuring that I'll have to change my return policy to 14 days instead of 7 soon, anyway, so let's just get it out of the way now.

I went thrifting today and Thursday afternoon and picked up some pretty good stuff.

These Nine West shoes are real stunners.  And they're my size!  About four years ago, you would have had to pry them off my cold, dead feet, but priorities and tastes change and now I couldn't imagine wearing them for any length of time.   They retail for $87.00 and these are in very good shape, so I'm asking $34.99.  Paid $4.50

I've had my eye on this shirt at our local Goodwill for a while now (and no one else has bought it, so maybe that's a bad thing).  It's a size XL and has Scooby and other characters coming out of the pocket.  This week, it was the 1/2 off color so I figured I'd go for it.  I have it up for $24.99 and it's already got a watcher.  Paid $2.25

You know, I used to be apprehensive of paying the full Goodwill price for Polo shirts, which is $4.75.  Today, however, since none of them were the 1/2 off color, I figured "what the hell".  I mean, I will gladly pay $4.75 for a sure thing.  I have this one listed for $24.99.  It's 16x32.

Just listed this one today as well and it already sold for $28.99.  See what I mean about a sure thing?

Well, that's what I've got for today.  Hopefully my extreme measures have cured my Watcheritis!

Resume.

As you guys know, I've hit a wall when it comes to the old profession.  So, today, while my glorious angels were writing a creative essay (we have to do one in every class, every grading period) about what they would do if they lost one of their senses (we're studying the neurological system), I was trying to make a resume.  Here's what I got:

Obviously edited to deter crazy internet weirdos.

Poetry?  I can write it.  Short stories?  Done.  Essays?  No problem, fool.  Resumes?  Not so much.

Does having terrible eBay sales count as a skill?

So now, some eBay news:

...

I don't have any.  This past week has been "buy stuff and then don't pay and don't respond to communication" week.  I've dealt with this twice.  My auctions are doing well.  I sold a lot of 5 of Tyler's Old Navy polos he won't wear for a whopping $12.82 and I have these up for auction right now:

Probably paid a total of $4.00 for all four pieces.  They're each a little over a yard.  The Looney Tunes have a bid at $9.99 with five watchers and Garfield has one bid of $7.99 with five watchers, too so maybe I'll get a little from those.  I always buy character fabric and last weekend, our Goodwill had all of these, which made me happy.  It may not go for much, but I know it's a sure thing and I'll take that any time.

Goals part 546

Hey, here's a good goal:  sell something!  Weekends always suck, but I will wake up every Saturday morning thinking "I feel some good sales today!" and I will always be wrong.

February is slightly better than January, but March better start getting it's act together because I've finally settled on a goal.

Tybee Island, GA was mine and Tyler's first vacation together.  It is small, relaxed and slighty quirky.  You should go!  But not while I'm there because I like it uncrowded.  We loved it so much we went back the next year and got married there.  Look, here we are:

Anyway, we also went the following year when I was just barely pregant with Addy Mae.  Which really wasn't that relaxing because our New-To-Us Subaru decided to crap out on us the minute we got there and our dads had to tow the Jeep down so we could enjoy our vacation (our dads are awesome). 

Last year, I was so pumped to take our little baby to "our beach", but having a baby takes a lot of money! (Who knew, amiright?)  So, we didn't get to go.  Which was really heartbreaking since Tybee means so much to us.

We plan to go this year, but I really hate when vacations put a financial struggle on you.  I mean, if you have to watch every penny you spend, then what's the bloody point?  That's no vacation, my friend.

So my goal is to get some vague amount of money together.  At least enough to stay a couple of extra days if we wanted to, or to spend a night somewhere swank in Savannah.  We'll probably go in early June to avoid the major hotness.  I'll have to crunch some numbers and get back with the total I would want to have.

Hopefully I don't have to refund any of those glass things I mailed last week, because that would suck.

No. More. Glass.

I finally sold these:

I picked these up probably as far back as August at an estate sale thinking, "oh this will be so easy to sell!"  And there they sat.  I tried lower prices, higher prices, and then I eventually said "I have 9 of these.  Buy one as a replacement or whatever."  After I listed them as replacements, someone messaged me wondering how much for all of them?  I said $45.00 and $10.00 shipping and she bought them.  Well, she was in Texas, so shipping was $18.00 and the amount of packing materials I had to buy (I ran out of peantus and had to resort to getting more at Target for $6.00!!) was about $10 total, so I made about $20.00 on these and it took an hour of cussing and shaking my fist at the packing Gods to get them in the stupid box.

Not worth it.

Do you know what?  I'm done with glass stuff.  I just finshed packing my frames (the buyer actually paid, horray!) and those were a pain, too.  After the stuff I have up sells, I am going to try very hard to not buy large glass things again.  Fenton figurines?  Fine.  Mugs?  Ok.  NINE BLOODY FIRE KING BOWLS? Never again.

Unless the profit margin is gigantic, it's just not worth it.  Maybe it's just me, but other than the frames, I haven't ever sold one large glass piece that's made the stress of packing it and hoping it gets there OK worth it. 

Shirts and books are much easier.

Rant over.

Apathy

If there's one thing I'm excellent at, it's being apathetic.  That's how I've been towards eBay recently.  This week's been slow, but last week was OK.  My frames went for $102.50.  Yay!  But the buyer hasn't paid.  Boo.

So we'll see how that goes.  I hope everyone's week is going better than mine.  I would like to try to get to one of our smaller thrifts tomorrow after work, so if I do, I'll post some pics of my finds!

Dude, frames!

Ok, collective eBay blogging community.  We have been missing out on something that is probably right under our noses!  Frames!  Tyler's mom gave me a box full of old frames this weekend and look at these completeds! Over $100 for "shabby chic" frames and vintage frames.  Next time you go a-thrifting or yard saleing, buy some frames!  It doesn't matter if they're beat up or missing the backs and glass.  If they are, paint them white, sand them a little and say they're shabby chic!

Here's my collection:

I've got them listed as "art deco" and "ornate".  They've been up since about 8 last night and I've already got watchers and one bid of $15.00 (I started them where most of the higher priced ones start).  I will be really shocked if they sell for under $40.00. 

I'll worry about shipping them later.

But seriously...frames.

Spend it all in one place.

So, we're still broke this week, but we've filed taxes and hopefully our return will help us get back on our feet.  Mom let me borrow $20.00 (I mean, what am I? 16?) so I went where I could get the most bang for my buck, the Salvation Army.

I filled my cart up with stuff and sifted through it at the end and wound up spending $19.15!  Whoo.  Here are the things I bought.  These are their stories.

So, when you first walk in to the SA, there's two big bins of plush and broken toys.  This guy was on the top.  I pounced on him.  He's by Steven Smith and he's a Grateful Dead Dancing Bear.  If you have a tag on them, they can go for about $64.00.  I've got him BIN for $45.00

There were 43 of these Pocket Classics in a shoe box and I wanted them.  When I first looked at them, the two right up front were Sherlock Holmes.  I have an unhealthy obsession with the Holmes and Watson duo and I knew they were meant for me.  But I was NOT going to pay .49 a piece and I was not going to split them up.  As I was browsing the men's suits, they announed that all children's books were now $0.10 a piece.  I ran back there and almost knocked a kid over. These were obviously a classroom set, but I have them up for $29.99 OBO...I kept the two Holmes books for myself.

I was browsing through the dresses and fell in love with this wool jumper.  It's just so fun and retro.  It's 100% wool by Herman Geist.  Completeds aren't that impressive for his sweaters and whatnot, but I've had some interest already at BIN for $29.99

So many people have been blogging about long denim skirts.  I have one of my mom's old ones up and have 3 watchers, but no bites yet.  But I saw this dress and saw that it's by my old pal Ralph Lauren, so I picked it up.  BIN $29.99

Ok, I am not sure about these jeans.  They say they are Levi's 505.  I have some questions on the authenticity, but everything I look up about them says they're real.  The red tab is blank, which is apparently OK.  My biggest problem is that there is no tag on the inside waist band.  There's a tag near the pocket that says Levi's and the size (a very skinny 29x30), but I'm still unsure.  I went ahead and listed them and in the listing, I included all the points that vouch for their authenticity.  BIN OBO for $39.99.

Check this guy out!  He's HUGE, 11" tall, ceramic and weighs a ton.  It's a piggy bank and an owl, so I had to get it.  Paid $3.99 up for BIN OBO $34.99.

My sales are still yucky, but hopefully my $19.15 pays off!