The tenth week of The $10,000 Garage Sale eBay Challenge is now history with the auctions that ended on Sunday evening. There were thirty-nine Challenge items listed and twenty-one of them sold for a total of only $320.69. The sell-through rate was a somewhat disappointing 54%.

There were a surprisingly small number of garage sales in Grand Forks last week. We had been having some pretty wet weather and I think the prospect of rain, which never materialized, over the weekend made many people opt for another weekend.

As a result, my Challenge purchases for the week only amounted to eighteen items. Among these though there are a few items that should do fairly well. I did manage to buy 11 current college textbooks for $.25 each at a garage sale put on by two young college students. Those went onto Amazon where seven have already sold for a total of a little over $370. I have a hard time understanding why they would put them out for a quarter each when they could have driven a mile and a half to Barnes & Nobles where I’m sure they could have gotten $150 or more for them. Aren’t we teaching our young people today respect for money?

At the end of the tenth week of the Challenge, here’s how things look to date.

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The ninth week of The $10,000 Garage Sale eBay Challenge has come and gone with the auctions that ended on Sunday and Monday evenings. There were fifty-one Challenge items listed and thirty-six of them sold for a total of $773.23. The sell-through rate was 71%.

With the completion of my current auctions next Sunday evening, the Challenge will be roughly half over. I’m guessing at that point my net profit will be approximately $3500 to $3600 to date. That will put me roughly $1500 short of the $5000 profit I should have half way through the Challenge.

One of the factors I took into consideration when arriving at the $10,000 figure for the Challenge was that most summers I will find two or three really good items at garage sales that will each bring between $700 and $1000 profit. So far this summer, I haven’t found one of those items yet. Experience tells me they are out there however, so I’m still confident my goal of $10,000 net profit for the five month period of time is attainable.

Here is how things look after the ninth week of the Challenge.

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Since The $10,000 Garage Sale eBay Challenge began more than two months ago, readership of The Auction Rebel has increased significantly. Along with that increase have come some questions regarding what the Challenge is all about, why I’m doing it, and what I’m trying to accomplish with it.

I have been active on eBay since 1998. I began by selling mostly antiques and collectibles and, with the exception of three “how-to” DVDs that I sell, those are still the things I sell today, concentrating on art pottery, antique and vintage toys, advertising, and ephemera.

Sometime in 2002 I started becoming active in several seller news groups and forums. I began noticing that, no matter what they recommended people sell, nearly everyone who dispensed advice about selling on eBay told people they could never be successful selling “used” items and that looking for inventory at garage sales was a total waste of time. If someone wanted to build a successful part-time or full time eBay business, selling new, or overstock items that they got from wholesalers, drop shippers, or retail outlets was the only way to go.

I disagree with that almost entirely.

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This update for The $10,000 Garage Sale eBay Challenge is a day later than usual because I decided to spend the 4th of July pretty much a “nothing to do with eBay” mode. I surrounded myself with family and we went to a vintage car show, took the grandchildren to a kids street fair, watched the parade, took in a free concert by several local bands, and ended the evening by watching the fireworks display.

No stress and very enjoyable. I hope enjoyed the Holiday as much as we did.

The auctions for the eighth week of The $10,000 Garage Sale eBay Challenge ended last Sunday evening. There were twenty-nine Challenge items listed and twenty-three of them sold for a total of $684.67. The sell-through rate was 79%.

Here is how things look after the eighth week of the Challenge.

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The auctions for the seventh week of The $10,000 Garage Sale eBay Challenge ended last Sunday evening. There were thirty-one Challenge items listed and twelve of them sold for a total of $355.65. The sell-through rate was 39%.

At first glance neither of those figures is very attractive. However, since eighteen of the thirty-one items were re-lists, I’ll take those results and move on. Ten of the thirteen new items sold, so my sell-through rate for new items was 77% which is perfectly acceptable.

After seven weeks of the Challenge, here’s how I sit. Note that I’ve added an additional column to the chart beginning this week so a running total is included.

As mentioned last week, there is no mileage expense shown for week seven because all the items listed last week were either re-lists or items I’d purchased the previous week but hadn’t had time to list before leaving on vacation.

My listing fees for the current auctions are also somewhat high because I messed up listed several items in two categories. I need to start paying more attention to what I’m doing I guess.

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There were no $10,000 Garage Sale eBay Challenge items listed for week six of the Challenge because I wasn’t available to ship anything for eight days while fishing in Canada. The Challenge returned for week seven with a total of sixty-three garage sale items that were purchased over a two week period prior to leaving for Canada.

These items ended on Sunday evening with 36 of them selling for a total of $895.83 and a somewhat dismal sell-through rate of 57%.

Because I’m still pretty much in “catch-up” mode from being gone a week, and because of something else that has arisen since my return, I’m not going to list each of the individual sixty-three items. The total of what I paid for them is shown in the table below. Anyone interested in what the individual items were can check out my closed auction on eBay for the week.

Six weeks into the Challenge, here’s what things look like so far.

Note that there is no mileage expense shown for the auctions currently running this week. That is because these are all either re-lists from the previous week, or items I purchased before leaving for Canada but didn’t have time to list. Therefore, any mileage expense is included in the $45.08 from the previous week.

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The auctions for the fourth week of The $10,000 Garage Sale eBay Challenge ended last Sunday evening. There were twenty-three Challenge items listed and nineteen of them sold for a total of $500.79. The sell-through rate was 83%.

While there weren’t a great many garage sales in Grand Forks last weekend, there were two city-wide sales nearby. One in Fisher, MN (12 miles away) and the other in Larimore, ND (30 miles away). I was able to buy quite a few things and I currently have the listings for fifty-four written and ready to be launched. They won’t get to eBay for another week though, due to my upcoming fishing trip.

After four weeks of auctions for the Challenge, here’s what things look like so far.

Total profits for the first four weeks are $1090.84. That is about half of the $2000 a month average that will be needed to reach $10,000, but it’s about what I expected for the month of May. Things should pick up considerably in June and July.

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Another week of The $10,000 Garage Sale eBay Challenge has gone by and the most recent auctions ended on Monday evening.

Of the forty-four garage sale items on eBay last week twenty-nine sold for a total of $579.76 and a sell-through rate of 66%. Seven of the items that sold were re-lists from the previous week. Several of these received multiple bids and sold for more than the opening bid when they were previously listed.

The number of garages sales this last week was down considerably from the high numbers of the previous week. All three day weekends are very slow in Grand Forks, and there were only twenty-six sales on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I actually only went to the Thursday and Friday sales because we left town for the long weekend as many others did. The result is considerably less items listed on eBay this week.

Here’s what my sales and expenses look like after the fourth week of the Challenge:

Because only a little more than a day has passed since the auctions ended, I’m sure there will be some adjustments to the PayPal fees and the profit columns next week.

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The auctions for the garage sale purchases from week 2 of The $10,000 Garage Sale eBay Challenge ended Sunday evening and the purchases from the third week are now live on eBay. Due to the upcoming three-day weekend, these auctions will end Monday evening instead of Sunday.

Of the thirteen garage sale items listed last week eight sold for a total of $135.88 and a sell-through rate of 53%, down a little from the 55% achieved the first week. As you can see by a quick look at the table below, my net profit for the week was about a close to zero as I could get without getting frostbite.

This last weekend proved to be the bust-out weekend I predicted in If It’s Thursday It Must Be Book Day In Grand Forks. After having thirty-four fresh garage sales to go to on Thursday, there were more than fifty new sales that began on Friday and another fifty plus that started on Saturday.

Here’s what my sales and expenses look like so far after three weeks.

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The auctions for the first week’s purchases of The $10,000 Garage Sale eBay Challenge ended Sunday evening and the purchases from the second week are now live on eBay.

Only fifteen of the twenty-seven items listed sold for a somewhat disappointing 55% sell-through rate. The majority of those that did not sell will be re-listed next week and I expect that at least a half dozen of them will sell the second time around.

I’m estimating that I’ll need an overall sell-through rate of between 75% and 80% in order to offset the healthy mileage expenses this Challenge will incur. If that doesn’t happen, it will require two or three very big winners at sometime through the five months.

The Challenge is just beginning though and there are still plenty of weeks to go.

Here’s what things look like after the first week’s auctions.

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