The Numbers: June 26-July 2, 2022

I listed nothing new this week for the first time in 5+ months, and instead spent a little while each day ending older listings, repricing and selling similar in batches of 50 to 100 items at a time.

At the beginning of the week, I was very selective in only ending items which were 6 months or older and had 0 or 1 watchers and no offers in the last year. I would end the items, sell similar with the bulk editor, drop the price by $10 and my minimum offer settings by the same amount. By the end of the week, I was ending, repricing and selling similar on most listings older than a few months, and sometimes I’d cut the price by $20 or even more.

I hadn’t done much in the way of end and sell similar, or any repricing, in about six months. I guess I was overdue because my sales were up almost $1000 on last week and about even with a year ago, which is better than it sounds because I had almost 1000 more items in my store a year ago and “feeding the beast” (aka new listings) took up a lot more of my time than it has this year.

I had a large order of about $500 which was mostly composed of $20 to 40 items with offers ranging from $15 to $30. From what I could tell, the buyer liked a few of my “newly” listed, newly repriced items, went digging through my store for more and sent offers on everything. I accepted every offer and they paid within a day. Truly the dream for any eBay seller.

It still would have been a nice week of sales even if that buyer never found my store. There were quite a few one off sales of ended and repriced items, including a few listings that were over a year old and hadn’t seen any offers in that time.

I have been pretty methodical about listing 5-10 items per day, every day, for the last six months. It was nice to take a break from that “grind” and still have a nice week of sales. The new bulk editor made the process of end and sell similar a breeze. It was much faster than the old bulk editor. I would definitely recommend trying this end, reprice and sell similar process if you haven’t, and especially something to keep in mind if you plan on taking a vacation but still want to keep the store active or want/need to take a break from creating new listings for a short time.

6/26/2022 – 7/2/2022

Total items in store: 2043 (down from 2091 last week)

Items sold: 64 (50 via best offer, 5 via seller initiated offer, 22 via promoted listings)

Gross sales: $2953.11 (up 1% from one year ago)

Net sales: $2082.51 (down 1% from one year ago)

Average sales price: $46.14 (down 16% from one year ago)

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

Highest price sold (net): $144.16 — Giancarlo Stanton 2010 Bowman 1/1 black printing plate rookie card

Giancarlo Stanton is one of the big home run hitting outfielders for the Yankees, who are having one of the best years in their storied history. This card is from when Stanton was coming up with his former team the Marlins and has the coveted rookie logo, but the real value is that a printing plate is used in the making of the card. While printing plates of lesser players regularly sell for $10 or less, the nicer ones with an autograph, jersey piece or simply a desirable card (like the Bowman rookie of a star Yankees player) can get up there in price.

A few years after this 2010 set was made, Stanton changed his name from Mike (his middle name and childhood name) to Giancarlo (his given name) after a trip to Europe. The name change is why I was able to acquire the card for a good price originally. Many fewer searches and listings for Mike Stanton than Giancarlo Stanton. I actually have another Mike Stanton printing plate from this set, and I’m sure it will find a good home sometime this summer if the Yankees continue winning with Stanton leading the way.

Lowest price sold (net): $11.35 — Ji-Hwan Bae Leaf Metal green autograph /10

One card of many from the large order. It was fascinating to see how this buyer selected the cards they were interested in, it was a real mix of players from different teams but they definitely had a certain type of autograph card they liked (lots of colorful ones with low serial numbers) and there was a clear focus on “undervalued” players who were either on the verge of making it to the big leagues or having a tough time right now but with the potential to do better in the future. There were a few items which didn’t fit this pattern (maybe for their personal collection?) but overall they seemed to have a similar buying mindset to my own.

I sent the buyer a pretty significant coupon, 30% off, in the hopes to entice them back to my store again in the future. I’ve had mixed results at best with the coupons. A few buyers really love them and come back to my store again and again with them, but the vast majority of my customers are one-off buyers and I get some repeat buyers who don’t use the coupon for whatever reason.