The fifth week’s auction ended Sunday night with 24 of the 35 qualifying items selling for a total of $535.45 and a sell-through rate of 69%. I don’t remember my reasoning, but I put a BIN of $24.99 on one of the items and that sold within 24 hours for the BIN price. Amazon sales accounted for an additional $110.73.

Most things this week ended pretty close to where I’d expected them to except for the premiere issue of Domino magazine which could easily have brought another $40 to $60. Overall though, a few other items did a little better than expected so it pretty much washed out.

After the fifth week of the Challenge here’s how things look:

I don’t have any auctions running this week because I’m leaving for a week’s fishing in Canada on the 13th. Purchase from last week and this week will go live on eBay on the 14th and end on the 21st after I get back.

Popularity: 64% [?]

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Whether you realize it or not, at one time or another you have likely been exposed to a plastic canvas Kleenex box cover. They can be found in millions of homes across the country. And, while those Kleenex box covers may never be big sellers on eBay, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people around the world addicted to the plastic canvas craft.

And, these crafters aren’t making just tissue box covers. They are stitching away on purses, doll houses, refrigerator magnets, coasters, along with things you would never even think of. They spend a lot of money on patterns for their next creations and are constantly on the lookout for new patterns.

The most frequently seen patterns are four page leaflets although you will also find pattern booklets ranging from eight or ten to two dozen pages in size.

Used patterns can be found at garage sales, thrift stores, and book sales, often for $.10 or less per pattern. These patterns can be turned into nice profits on eBay if you know what to look for, how to buy them, and how to package them.
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Popularity: 73% [?]

Auctions for the fourth week of this year’s Challenged ended on Sunday night with 25 of 44 items selling for a sell-through rate of 57%. That’s still not as high a percentage as I’m used to, but it’s certainly better than what it was the last two weeks.

Auctions accounted for $723.23 in sales. That, plus a $39.99 fixed price listing, brought my total gross eBay sales to $763.22 for the week.

For another week, there were no really large sales. The highest priced item was $46.00 for one of the PC games. The two Nordmaendene i Amerika books were a real disappointment selling for $36.01 and $31.01 respectively. Roughly $15 less than I paid for them. I’ve had several of these over the years and previously all had sold for a minimum of $150 each.

After the fourth week of the Challenge here’s how things look:

The fixed price item that sold was listed with free shipping so the $4.72 figure under incidental fees is my shipping cost for the books

Here are the Challenge items I have on eBay this week:
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Popularity: 68% [?]

The first month of the 2009 Garage Sale Challenge is complete. Sales have been respectable but I certainly didn’t buy the kind of items I did last year during the first month.. That lack of bigger ticket items is reflected in the fact that my net profits for the month are down between $400 and $450 from what they were last year.

Here’s a list of the top 10 best selling items, with ties, from this year’s Challenge. Hopefully the list will give readers some idea of the kind of things that can be found at garage sales and thrift stores that sell well on eBay.
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Popularity: 70% [?]

The auctions for the third week of the 2009 Garage Sale Challenge ended Sunday night with only 11 of the 29 qualifying items selling for a sell through rate of a dismal 38%. While that is better than last week’s 29%, it’s still far below the 65% to 80% I’m accustomed to. I can’t remember ever having two weeks in a row this low before.

Part of the problem may have been that the auctions all ended on Sunday evening which was right in the middle of the 3-day Memorial Day weekend. Previously I’ve always with 3-day holiday weekends I’ve always ended my auctions on Monday evening but, I forgot that Memorial Day was early this year and the auctions were live before I realized it.

All the vintage Avalon Hill and 3M board games sold, but If it weren’t for them the week would have been a total disaster. The only auction that cracked the $50 barrier was a lot of four Avalon Hill war theme games that sold for $51.

Here’s how things look at the end of the third week of the Challenge.

Popularity: 73% [?]

You may not have noticed, but vampires are enjoying a resurgence in popularity. And not just among young people. A growing number of adults, particularly women, are fascinated with them.

That fascination has spilled over into the publishing field in the form of several series of novels by a number of authors. Many of these series sell quite well when offered on eBay.

For some ideas regarding what authors and series to look for, check out Vampires - Throw Away The Garlic And Welcome Them Into Your Home over at The 2009 Garage Sale Challenge blog. Be sure to read the comments also.

Photograph by Annafur.

Popularity: 73% [?]

The auctions for the second week of this year’s Garage Sale Challenge ended Sunday night with only 13 of the 45 qualifying items selling for a sell through rate of a dismal 29%. Neither the Meiwa Art Christmas dinnerware nor the Holmes & Edwards flatware attracted much attention at all. Since those two things made up more than half of the total listings, they pretty much killed my sell through rate.

None of the auction items cracked the $50 barrier. The highest priced item brought was the lot of 26 Quiltmaker magazines that brought $29.51. Helping my total sales out were three fixed price listings that sold during the week. Two romance paperback lots for $39.99 each and a lot of 4 Krystonian series books for $29.99.

Here’s how things look at the end of the second week of the Challenge.

The $17.67 that appears under Incidental Fees is my out-of-pocket postage cost since I had listed the three fixed price items that sold as “Free Shipping”.

Here are my Challenge purchases made during the week.
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Popularity: 35% [?]

The auctions for the first week of this year’s Garage Sale Challenge ended Sunday night with 23 of the 30 qualifying items sold for a sell through rate of 77%.

Three items cracked the $50 barrier. They were the set of 6 Western Horseman Legends books for $50.00; the Starbuck’s Firenze coffee mug for $51.00; and the Civil War set of books by Shelby Foote for $52.00.

Ten of the eleven items from the Library For American Freedoms lot of books I got at the East Grand Forks FOL sale for $5 sold for a total of $215.55 which didn’t hurt my profit for the week. If there was a disappointment for the week it was the set of Wagons West books that only brought $26.27. These often sell for nearly twice that amount.

Here’s how things look at the end of the first week of the Challenge.

Popularity: 27% [?]

The first weekend of the 2009 Garage Sale Challenge has come and gone. There are fourteen people taking part this year and many of them, along with myself, spent part of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday digging through what was being offered at local garage sales and thrift stores. You can read about how some of them did on the 2009 Garage Sale Challenge blog.

Friday I went to seventeen garage sales, a Friends Of The Library (FOL) book sale, and all the local thrift stores. On Saturday morning I went to another ten fresh garage sales and revisited all the thrift stores.

Nearly everything that I purchase for the Challenge was books and many of those came from the FOL sale.

Here’s what my expenses look like after the first weekend.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Yesterday evening I was reading a post on Mitzi’s Vintage+Goodness=Happiness blog titled Too much new on Etsy to fit it into one title!. In it she mentioned a group of 1970’s workplace safety posters she had recently acquired and listed.

Mitzi’s post started me thinking that I have quite a few food related advertising posters from the same time period sitting in that garage that I really should get on eBay. And that got me thinking about the day I threw away forty to fifty old posters that would, today, bring well over $20,000 on eBay.

Sometime in 1959, an issue of the now defunct Sports Car Graphic magazine came into my possession. That magazine spawned what was to become a life-long interest in Formula One auto racing and old sports cars.
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Popularity: 22% [?]