This flurry ended on a bang. The same customer purchased two t-shirts for a total price of $70. I fell asleep with visions of sugarplums…wait, that’s another story. I did sleep well.

Why the increase? Certainly some of it is simply the right people saw my listings for what they wanted. On top of that a few other factors came into play.

1. Better Purchasing

I remember reading one ebayer’s blog (if I could remember who, I would give credit) a while back. They had taken a good look at their store and determined that they were running a dollar store online.

Some things I formerly bought now get left on the thrift store shelf. I have always been able to find enough stuff to keep me busy listing. Deleting the items that won’t pay for the time it takes to list and ship is a nice step to take.

2. Increased Listing

When I had my heart attack and surgery in January, the number of listings naturally fell off. We are back to consistently having a thousand listings i our store. It dips slightly under when some things fall off or with high sales volume. But we work to get it back over again as quickly as possible.

The next goal is 1,100. Then 1,200, and so on.

3. New Listing Fees

With the new listing fees, we are doing more auctions than before. At least during the first half of the month when we have the 500 free listings. By mid-month, those are all used up. So we are selectively choosing which items to offer with an auction format rather than fixed price.

I am still a huge fan of fixed price, but the auctions add a little excitement to the ebay game. Yesterday two New England Patriot fans got into a little bidding way over a t-shirt. It wasn’t the best conditioned shirt we have ever sold, but it had a nice image. When the dust settled, we sold it for more than twice what would have made me happy.

How was your weekend?

With this post, I’m trying a new feature in my software. At the bottom of the article will be a picture gallery featuring one picture of an item from each of the major categories. I’m not sure if I will like it or not. Let me know what you think.

Dinnerware & Mugs

• Guy Harvey mug
• Otagiri golf mug
• Set of 4 Pottery Barn Colors salad plates (new with tags)

Island Wear

• 2 Tommy Bahama polo shirts with the embroidered sailfish logo.
• 2 Cooke Street Hawaiian shirts.
• 1 Cubavera shirt.
• 1 Reel Legends shirt.

Sports Wear

• Miami Hurricanes 2001 National Champions polo shirt
• Michael Vick, Atlanta Falcons jersey
• Jerome Bettis, Pittsburgh Steelers jersey
• Nebraska Cornhuskers sweatshirt
• New England Patriots t-shirt
• Boston Celtics t-shirt
• Florida Panthers t-shirt

Disney Wear

• Tigger Sweatshirt

Product Wear

• Harley-Davidson Motorcyles camouflage sleeveless t-shirt from Palm Beach, FL
• Catch the Captain Morgan Wave t-shirt

Other Mens Wear

• Polo by Ralph Lauren polo shirt with a special logo
• Bugatchi Uomo polo shirt
• Greg Norman polo shirt

Other Womens Wear

• Quacker Factory sweater

Recently, my wife had thrifted the identical design on another Quacker Factory sweater. The only difference is in the size.

Not a bad lot for just 35 minutes time from walking in to walking out.

Because our weather is warm year round, there is no yard sale season. That means that the same people have them over and over again. They continue trying to sell the same stuff that didn’t sell each month for the past eleven months.

Caribbean Joe Hawaiian Shirt – NWT

On this Saturday morning, I was on my way to our nearby thrift store. I had to wait until they opened at 9am, and I had to be back home by 10:30am.

On the way to the thrift store, I spotted a yard sale sign. I turned down the street and walked on up. By this time most of the good stuff was probably gone. But I did find this Caribbean Joe Hawaiian shirt still new with the tags. The tag has a price of $50 on it. I bought it for $1.

I was thrilled. So when I started my car back on the path to the thrift store, I noticed another sign at the next block. Guess what I did? Yep, I turned down that street to find two more sales.

Here are the items I purchased from those two neighbors.

1.  A Krup Espresso Maker. This cost me $5 and is in excellent condition. I have already made a nice cup of espresso, but will probably flip it.

2.  A Preakness horse racing glass. This annual event is about to happen, so I need to get this listed. Having lived in Louisville (home of the Kentucky Derby), we love these horse racing glasses. This cost $0.25.

3.  A Ft. Campbell, KY mug with a picture of an Army helicopter and an Airborne patch. Another $0.25.

4.  A Rudolph and the Island of Misfit Toys plate. It has a great picture from the classic Christmas story on it. Cost – $0.50.

5.  A Peter Rabbit Christmas mug and plate by Wedgwood in England for $3.

6.  A LeBron James t-shirt for $0.25. I’m no Miami Heat fan, but a nice picture tee of the MVP of the NBA is worth a quarter.

7.  A ceramic Blue Jay piece by Andrea by Sadek for $1. We have had great success with pieces by Andrea by Sadek. The solds on eBay show these selling for up to $26.99 plus shipping.

I finally did make it to the thrift store and found some great shirts and stuff. I’ll post about that later. In the mean time, I probably should plan on hitting some more yard sales next Saturday.

It so happens that another line of women’s clothing has also proving to be profitable for us. Not as much as the Storybook Knits, but still our PayPal account grows. That brand is Quacker Factory. They have to get some credit just for the name. Some of their sweaters rival the Storybook Knits. They probably appeal to the same demographic. We have sold several of their items over the past month.

Here is a picture of the most recent Quacker Factory that we sold.

Quacker Factory Jacket

Our customer purchased this less than 24 hours after we listed it. The purchase price was $49 and it shipped to Oregon. You can click on the image above to see the completed listing.

Click on the image below to see the Quacker Factory listings that are current in our store.

Have you sold any items from Quacker Factory?

But I was surprised at some items that countries ban from being imported via the mail. Did you know that at least five European countries restrict the shipment of playing cards?  I would never have guessed that.  I’m not sure if that is due to some sort of casino influence or pinochle clubs that want only cards from their nations.

Spain, Greece and Denmark simply restrict “playing cards”.  Italy takes it a step further by banning “playing cards of any kind.”  The Germans do allow a little wiggle room on their ban. You cannot ship “playing cards, except in complete decks properly wrapped.” So you can send a brand new wrapped deck to Germany, but not just the King of Diamonds.  Perhaps Germans tired of having a junk drawer with partial decks of cards. I don’t know. If you can shed any light on this, please do.

Five other European nations do not restrict playing cards, but do have some unusual restrictions.  One cannot ship horror comics to Great Britain.  Archie comics are fine. Superman comics are okay. Just don’t ship any horror comics. I wonder how that one got on the list.

Switzerland does not allow radar detectors. Not sure why one would be needed since the autobahn is without speed limits when outside of the cities.

Don’t try shipping a funeral urn to France. It is not allowed. I did not see a restriction on caskets, so I’m not sure if it is an art issue or a cremation issue with the French.

Belgium restricts something that we have sold before – empty ink cartridges for printers.

Finally, Ireland does not allow goods made in prisons. I assume that the rationale is to protect Irish workers who cannot compete with the free labor of prisoners.

For this article, I only looked at European countries. I’ll have to check and see about other regions of the world. I’m curious about whether playing cards are banned elsewhere.

Have you ever shipped something that was forbidden?

We arrived early so that we could inspect the items we might want. In truth, we planned to go over one item only. There were other nice things, but I knew that I might have to spend most of our budget on that one item. We were after a set of Fitz and Floyd china. This set of about 70 pieces was from the Renaissance Peach line. They made the Renaissance line in more than 20 different colors. This set was made in 1975.

Fitz and Floyd Renaissance Peach China

The china set had a sticker on it that indicated that somebody had left a bid for it. That meant that we had competition that was not even there. I guess that meant that I couldn’t give them an evil stare .

As the auction got underway, I couldn’t resist bidding on 5 Edna Hibel collector plates in boxes. Each one was a lovely piece of art featuring a different mother and daughter from around the world. I won that early auction and hope to have them listed soon.

When the auction folks began to place the china set on a cart to move to the front of the auction block, we noticed that workers were dialing two phones. Did that mean that on top of the left bid, we would also have phone bidders? This was looking ominous. But I wanted this set.

Finally the auction began. Within seconds the price was already at the level of what our previous highest auction purchase was. I hadn’t even been able to get a bid in yet. Quickly bidders dropped out and we were left with one competitor. I knew I had them when they hesitated prior to their final bid and I countered as quickly as I could.

Once – Twice – Sold! The set was ours. A lady on our aisle immediately looked at us and said, “Great purchase.” She told us that she had this set in a different color from early in her marriage. She said it had cost them a fortune. We ended up paying right over twice the amount of our previous high purchase. That was also a nice china set that made us a few thousand dollars.

I have listed all of this set in 16 different listings. The listed price of all pieces is about 6.5 times what we paid for the set. That would be a nice return. We’ll let you know how it goes.

Arabella

Last week we shipped out a beautiful figurine which we had taken in to list for somebody else. As is our custom, we get half when an item sells for somebody else. So imagine our joy when we heard the cha-ching sound less than 24 hours after listing this figurine.

When I first examined this figurine, I was excited because it was such a nice piece. It was a Franklin Mint product and marked as a 75th Anniversary item. Both of those things pleased me.

As I researched the item, my excitement dwindled. The piece is named Arabella. That being the name of the first character in the first novel by Georgette Heyer. That sounded great but then I learned that Heyer was a romance novelist.

Ugh. All I could picture was a correlating statue of Fabio. At least Heyer wrote historically based romance novels.

So I listed it. When it sold so quickly, I had that same thought that most of us have on quick sales. Did I price it too low? I quickly changed my thinking. Why feel poorly over a quick sale? Especially one that was profitable.

We shipped it to a customer in Los Angeles.

Selling Price = $95

Sweaters are not normal attire down here. I wear shorts almost everywhere – even in the dead of winter. Of course, the dead of winter might see us slip down into the 60′s.  Then watch out.  Everybody is wearing coats and long pants.

When one of my wife’s coworkers asked us to sell some stuff for her, I wasn’t sure what to make of all the heavy sweaters she brought over. Even more quizzical was the overt decorations on the sweaters.  But I started listing and immediately they began selling.

Storybook Knits Sweater

The most popular brand of these sweaters we are selling are Storybook Knits for the Home Shopping Network.  Even as springtime spread our warm weather across the country, they continued to sell.

In the past few weeks we have sold ten of these sweaters for over $400.  One of them even went to Australia.

When we sell for other people, we split the money. So we made over $200 on these sweaters without having to spend any money.  You can click on the link above or the picture to see the current listings we have for this brand.

We now are buying them for less than $4 at our thrift stores and will keep all of the money.  I guess some of the retirees who have moved to Florida from the snowy north have brought those heavy sweaters with them.  We’ll be glad to sell them back to people up north.

I am assuming that most of these sweaters have been sold on The Home Shopping Network for pretty good money.  One of the things I like about these is that they have a style name for many of them.

Be on the lookout for these Storybook Knits.

Wrangler Western Shirt

Since we sell so many mens shirts, I wanted to expand my knowledge of Western shirts. Even though my roots are in Oklahoma, I don’t think I have ever worn a western shirt. I wanted to see what the best brands were to add to my BOLO* list.

So I searched the completed listings on ebay. I think that is the past 3 months of listings. I then determined which brand of western shirts had the most sales and the best percentage of sales. That is what percentage sold out of the total number of listings for that time period. I also blocked from the search anything under $30.  I want to find ones that will make me a great return on my investment. Here are the results.

1.  Wrangler

2.  Pendleton

3.  Scully

4.  Rockmount

5.  Levi’s

6.  H Bar C

7.  True Religion

8.  Panhandle Slim

9.  Roper

10.  Ralph Lauren

Keep in mind with some of the more popular brands (like Levi’s), there will be more variables to consider.  Also keep in mind that the results might be different during a different season of the year.

If you sell western shirts, let me know how this list stacks up with what you have experienced.

*BOLO – Be On the LookOut