Yet another adventure in selling on eBay
I fail all the time. To the point, I rarely succeed in the many projects and missions I take on in life. I often start a project, define what success looks like, or at least create a hazy image in my head, and then start thinking about the possible ways in which I will fail. This thought process requires that I also consider what I will learn when I fail. Notice, I am not calling myself a failure. That’s a whole different ball of carnauba. No, this isn’t going to be a post about the psychological dealings that surround failing, more just an acknowledgment that what I am about to tell you is fairly normal practice for me.
I recently embarked on a mission of thinning out my collection. Everytime I get a wild hair on this topic, I fail. I either don’t thin out the amount expected from the collection, because the juice isn’t worth the squeeze, or I make a bad decision or two and end up taking losses that cut into the revenue generated. In the sports card selling world, margins are tight. One little mistake, be it with shipping, packaging, or just the way in which you sell, can be the difference in a win and a loss much of the time. This is especially true when dealing with low end/low value product.
The situation, if you can imagine, I have shoeboxes (two-column box from BCW, not the box your wife’s Jimmy Choo’s came in. I am not a neanderthal for crying out loud!) full of relic cards and low end auto’s, for this example baseball, that were probably the prize in many a wonderful sealed wax purchase over the course of the last 20 years. You know, the lone hit in the box that cost you $120, but it’s a napkin jersey relic of Rafael Ortega or Adam Jones. Typically these are space fillers for the average collector. You can get rid of herpes more easily than you can get rid of a napkin relic of a common player. Interestingly enough, there are people awake at 1:00am in the morning pining over these base relics of glory, all too happy to part with a Washington or two for the pleasure of having you ship it to them. So I got this idea…
The process involved posting these low end relic and auto cards to eBay via auction. Now, as a rule of thumb I hate auction style listings for sports cards. Let me rephrase that, I hate selling via auction style, I love buying via auction style. it’s typically the sure fire way to get a deal of sorts as a buyer. Also, yes I know, Feebay sucks , they take too much of your money, you should sell on social like all the other savvy sellers. I don’t like social for selling, for the same reason I don’t trust farts after a long night of booze. It’s all good until it’s not. Until you run into that one messy one. Anyway, back to the plan… I was going to sell these relic and auto cards by team. One team each night. I would start them at .99 and add about a $1.25 shipping. Everything gets shipped via eBay PWE for sports cards. We are talking an average of about 15 cards per night, auctioned individually. I learned a few things…
1) I don’t think people care or even take shipping into consideration. It’s like, one could charge $4 for shipping and the results would have been the same, but I would have cleared more in the end.
2) Most of the “hits” of the relic variety that get stuffed into product don’t age well. Even star players didn’t go for more than a couple bucks. It really makes you think about the boxes you buy and open with that “hit” in mind. Auto’s are almost as bad. Again, we go back to the gambling story from a few days ago.
3) There seems to be mental spending cliffs that run in $5 increments. This kind of fits in line with the shipping. In the world of sports cards and eBay, $2.24 and $4.99 are like, the same thing. But $6.99? Hell to the no! Tier 2 would be the $5.00-$9.99 grouping…..all the same! However, $11.99 might as well be $100 to the item in that tier. An example, I feel a card that can move for $5.99 can probably just as easily go for $9.49, but $10.99? Nope, that’s a bridge too far!
**These are thoughts one starts having when they go into large volume-low value listing and sales on a site like eBay. The over analysis is akin to insanity. However, there is such a concept known as Psychological Pricing!
4) I did this in November for baseball. Let’s talk about setting ourselves up for success for a minute. This ain’t it! Even the relics of players like Juan Soto, didn’t get many looks. If I added Stroud or Wembanyama to the title we would have been cooking with fire! Don’t sell baseball in the off-season with auction style listings dummy!
5) I listed 4 teams worth. That’s about 60 cards total give or take. More than half sold for the minimum .99 bid. About a quarter of them didn’t sell at all. All in all, I brought in about $100 including the shipping. Net Rev was around $40 after you take out shipping and some costs for supplies. The effort and time to list pack and ship about 45 cards…I don’t even want to say. That said, you do get into a rhythm. I know I am not the only one to spend tons of time for minimal gain, but man, did this feel somewhat foolish.
6) Ebay PWE for Sports Cards is a bit of a gong show. They say the envelope cannot be over 1/4 inch thick. To give an idea, two top loaded cards stacked on top of each other starts to get thick. I got back 2-3 items in return mail because they didn’t make it through the “feeder”. Now, I know they were not over a 1/4 inch think, and I can only imagine what the monitoring of the feeder looks like. I will just say, I don’t think the people monitoring the feeder are measuring out the envelopes and using their best effort to get your envelope through said feeder! Maybe the feeder could be the problem? Maybe the rollers (or guide rails?) are old and have managed to slip and come together a bit? Maybe two envelopes went through the feeder on top of each other…mating envelopes!!!!! Anyway, I had to make those packages thinner and reship, which you guessed it, costs money!
To conclude, I made so many mistakes, the fact that I brought in any profit (term used very loosely) in the end is shocking. It just wasn’t a successful venture. I have some thoughts for how I will go forth, but first I am going to go buy one blaster box with my profits! Wish me luck!