The Numbers: June 19-25, 2022

I am doing these numbers after enjoying today’s Too Good To Go surprise bag from the local coffee shop a short walk up the street in my small town. My bag contained two scones, two chocolate croissants and a small container of carrot sticks in some kind of sesame dressing, all for $3.99. I don’t eat a lot of sweets or carbs when I’m not obsessed with a new food waste app (thanks J&R, sincerely Craig Rex’s waistline). So I loved to see a savory, healthy snack in there. I can’t imagine the shops or the app make a ton of profit since prices are so low, but I hope everyone makes just enough that this app continues to be widely used.

I had a really nice experience at a library sale late last week as well, lots of good quality items and a very friendly staff. So it’s been a very positive week of a scavenging life even if eBay is still pretty slow.

In contrast to eBay, my consignment sales remain strong. This month was my third consecutive with over $6,000 in consignment sales and the last two months are very close to one another in terms of quantity of items sold and total dollars. Before you get too jealous, those numbers are gross, not net. My monthly profits have been about half that since I pay a fee every time a card is processed and added to my port, and I have sent in a few hundred cards every week for the last 3-4 months, so those $0.50 and $1 charges (sometimes more) really add up. 95% of the cards I’ve sent in over the last few months have been processed by this point, which means I won’t pay as much in processing fees in July but my sales will likely slow down. Stuff that is priced well sells very quickly on COMC, often within minutes. It’s a unique marketplace. Everyone in the trading card world is complaining about how slow sales are on every platform, but I wasn’t selling on consignment last year, so I’m really happy with my sales, and eBay still has its bursts of activity now and then.

@maybel9 had a great post in last week’s thread about ending 10 to 20 items each week to sell similar. I haven’t done that since January, so I’m going to play around with it this week in small batches and will report back.

6/19/2022 – 6/25/2022

Total items in store: 2091 (down from 2123 last week)

Items sold: 34 (22 via best offer, 4 via seller initiated offer, 16 via promoted listings)

Gross sales: $1880.83 (down 43% from one year ago)

Net sales: $1344.73 (down 45% from one year ago)

Average sales price: $55.32 (down 15% from one year ago)

Time spent searching through online auction listings for new trading cards inventory: 11 hours (down from 14 hours last week)

Highest price sold (net): $140.95 — Richard Mentor Johnson 2018 Historic Autographs cut signature

Richard Mentor Johnson was the ninth vice president. I don’t love a lot of the contemporary political trading card sets for a bunch of different reasons. But this oversized autographed “card” is a little piece of Americana. I paid about $50 and listed it for $250. I knew that this would be worth something in that range to the right collector. My buyer had sent an offer a few months back of $150, and I countered to no response. But after I put a 10% public coupon on all my listings last week, the buyer tried again with a $175 offer, and I wasn’t going to haggle over $10 or $20 when things are so slow.

Lowest price sold (net): $11.15 — Pete Pihos 1975 Fleer autograph PSA DNA authenticated

One of the mega card sellers whose auctions I look through every week (in fact that’s next up after I submit this post and drop off this weekend’s mail at the post office) ran a bunch of auctions last year with many multiples of the same item ending at the same day and time, or a day or two apart. I was fortunate enough to win a large quantity of these auctions for $2.27, $3.02, $4.26, prices like that. Every 3 or 4 weeks since, I’ve sold an autograph of Pete Pihos  for $10 to $15. He is an old-time football player who made it to the Hall of Fame in 1970, but he’s not famous enough that I knew that before Googling. I’ve also had quite a few sales of autographs of Red Sox manager Bill Carrigan, and I sold my first signature of the civil rights leader Barbara Jordan this week on the Juneteenth holiday.

Since I had so many duplicates, I also sent some of these autographed items to sell through my consignment port though they sell much slowly there, even though they are also cross-posted to eBay. Before the last few months, I had only ever sold on eBay so it is really interesting to see what sells on different platforms.