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!