The Numbers: May 15-21, 2022

Here is an article with some more details about Too Good to Go. Also some criticisms which make important points about food insecure populations, but I don’t think that’s the point of the app. I will have to give the app a try the next time I’m in Philly without specific plans to eat somewhere and report back.

One of my favorite things about living near a city is the wide variety of good food available. Nothing better than finding a good hole in the wall place to have a meal…especially when I check eBay later and see that my sales paid for the meal. I had a night like that last week. Such a great feeling.

5/15/2022 – 5/21/2022

Total items in store: 2138 (down from 2144)

Items sold: 53 (39 via best offer, 3 via seller initiated offer, 26 via promoted listings)

Gross sales: $2750.96 (down 3% from one year ago)

Net sales: $2009.30 (down 1% from one year ago)

Quantity sold: 53 (up 8% from one year ago)

Average sales price: $51.90 (down 10% from one year ago)

Highest price sold (net): $469.64 — over a dozen cards to the same buyer, here are the high price and low price cards

Every week, I’ll get a buyer who purchases 2 or 3 cards, but I haven’t had a buyer grab a big pile of cards from my store like this in at least a few months. This buyer focused on football cards of current players with an individual low serial number and unique jersey piece and often an autograph. They purchased three or four cards of players from one team (the Colts, who are expected to do well next season), but overall it was a wide variety of players and sets. Some of these cards I’d had listed for a few weeks or months and others for longer. Some were promoted listings or on sale, and others weren’t.

If you’re into cards, I see the logic behind spending a few hundred dollars on unique individual cards instead of buying one or two boxes with no guarantee of what you’ll get. This is basically how I acquire my inventory, though I use auctions to buy and BIN/BO to sell. Since this buyer purchased rare, high quality cards, all they need is one or two of the players to play well next season (or beyond) and they can make back a good chunk of the money they spent if they choose to sell.

I have my offer settings set to auto decline offers which are below 50% to 75% of my asking price, and I think that’s particularly helpful with buyers like this. If I had my auto declines set lower, this would have been a complicated negotiation and lots of back and forth. Instead, I accepted the buyer’s offers as they came in and sent them an invoice with free shipping when they were done buying. Then they paid the next day. Nice and easy.

Lowest price sold (net): $9.70 — Jarrett Culver Panini Mosaic Blue Chips white prizm #01/25

While I’d love to sell $460 worth of cards to a single buyer every week, this is a much more predictable way to build a business. I bought this card of a recent first round draft pick for about $2.50 at auction, relisted as best offer and sold it a week later for $11.50 to a buyer located in the same state as the player’s team.

This card is a good example of modern card designs. A better player, more desirable set or lower serial numbering card can sell for quite a bit more. A card which features a worse player or lacks any serial numbering might sell for a few cents, or a lot of 10 for $2. Often these very low value cards are used as “filler” (packing material) or they’re bought and sold in bins full of cards for $0.25 or $0.50 at local trading card shows. Sometimes I will go to one of those shows if there is one near me, but there are so many more deals and steals on eBay.