That final nineteen auctions from my two weeks of buying at thrifts ended last night with nine auctions selling for a total of $193.43.

This is a sell-through rate of 46% which is disappointing since it’s down 20-30% from my norm. While the auctions didn’t bring in a huge amount of money, after inventory costs and eBay/PayPal fees are taken into account, they still produced a profit of close to 400% on my inventory investment.

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Last week I written that everything I was listing on eBay for a few weeks would be items that came from either local thrift shops or a weekly Saturday morning auction sale.

The first group of auctions I’d talked about ended on Sunday evening for a total of $493.32 with 20 of the 34 items selling. That’s a sell through rate of only 59% which is a little disappointing.

The twenty items that sold produced a profit of $427.32 before eBay and PayPal fees. Once the fees are paid that still provides between a 450% and 500% profit on my total investment of $66 which isn’t too bad.

All the auctions running this week, with the exception of the “Pleistocene Man In Minnesota” book which is a re-list, are for items that I purchased at local thrift shops last week (I skipped the auction sale on Saturday so I could finish up my Christmas shopping). My total investment for the nineteen items was $29.45. The three largest purchases were the Raggedy Ann & Andy items. I paid $8 for the music box and $6 each for the two others.

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Nineteen of the twenty-six items I had listed on eBay ended successfully earlier this evening for a sell through rate of 73%.

The only surprise in the auction was the ANZA Brand coffee tin which didn’t get an opening bid. I’d been confident that this would have brought somewhere in the $30 range. I’ll re-list it in two or three weeks and see what happens then.

I was a little disappointed withe the two Marlboro cookbooks that sold for $9.95 each. Normally I get between $15 and $25 for these when I find them.

Final prices on everything else that sold were pretty much in the range I’d expected them to end up in.

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The auctions for all the items I bought at estate and garage sales a week ago Saturday ended yesterday with some surprises and some disappointments.

They got off to a bad start due a mistake I made when listing the items. I messed up when scheduling when the auction management service I use should launch these auctions. I’d intended them to launch at 9:45 PM on Tuesday but wasn’t paying attention and scheduled them for 9:45 AM. I didn’t catch the error until the launch notices began showing up in my mail box.

How much this affected the outcome I’ll never know, but I’m confident that 7:45 AM on a Sunday morning isn’t the optimal time for ending an auction on the west coast.

Overall though, my investment of $65 in inventory didn’t fare too badly.

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This week I have 40 items listed on eBay under my PaperPleasures46 user ID. Some of these are re-lists that didn’t sell previously, some were purchased last week at local garage sales and the reminder were picked up at a flea market last Saturday.

By far the best garage sale purchase was a good sized box of books and plastic fast food glassed that I paid $2 for. The majority of the books went directly to the “donate” pile but three have been listed on Amazon for prices ranging from $22 to $39.

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I started 68 auctions on eBay last night that will run for five days and end next Sunday evening.

With the exception of the book “The Amish In America” and the items I picked up in Fargo last Thursday, everything listed this week was purchased on Saturday at garage sales.

Each year many of the small towns along US Hwy 75 that runs north and south along Minnesota’s western edge have one day when they hold city farmers markets, picnics, etc. Included in all this are hundreds of garage sales along the highway.

I started Saturday at Hallock, Mn. at 7 AM and ended up in Georgetown, Mn. around 5 that evening. Along the way I stopped at more garage sales than I care to count and bought hundreds of items.

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I had 42 eBay auctions end last night with only 19 of them resulting in sales. That equates to a disappointing sell-through rate of 45% but considering the large number of records I had listed it was somewhat expected.

The nineteen items that did sell brought a total of $547.13. My cost of the items that sold was $61.50. The total cost of all 42 items was $81.45. After all eBay and PayPal fees, even with the low sell-through, there is still approximately a 400% profit when everything is paid for.

The unsold magazines, and other paper items, will be moved into my store at TIAS. Most of the books will go onto Amazon with a few being added to the AAUW donation box and I’ll be running all new items next week.

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Last week’s eBay auctions ended last night and the Hamm’s Beer ashtray was the high point of the auction. It attracted eleven bids and sold for $357.25.

Other high spots from last week’s eBay auctions included the pink graniteware cannister set which sold for $112.45; the Time-Life American Country series selling for $109.50; the Warren Harding real estate course which brought $80 (I questioned whether it would even get a bid); and the Hopolong Cassidy pocket knife that sold for $62.00 which was twice as much as I thought it would bring.

The Dodge Viper GTS dealer package sold for a disappointing $36.68. I had really thought it would at least nudge the $100 mark if it didn’t go over it.

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No new purchases today. I will have 42 eBay auctions starting tonight and running for seven days. Everything being sold was purchased during the last week at garage sales, thrift shops and antique shops.

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The Hamm’s Beer ashtray I currently have listed on eBay is creating some excitement.

It had been listed on eBay for less than one hour last night when I received an email from a collector offering me $65 for it if I ended the auction and sold it to to him via eBay’s Buy-It-Now feature. I politely declined.

This morning when I checked my email I had an offer from someone else for $60 and an email from a third person giving me his phone number and saying it was “imperative” that I call him this evening about the Hamm’s ashtray I had listed on eBay.

My experience has been that as soon as people start throwing money at you and asking that you end an item early, it will nearly always sell for more than what is being offered.

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