The 2008 Garage Sale Challenge

Hello from hot and sunny Bakersfield, California!

This is my first post, so it’s a bit of this ‘n that to get rolling …

I’ve been selling on eBay for 9+ years now.  In September ‘06, I decided to open an eBay store to specialize in women’s plus size clothing, so I created a brand new eBay account and user ID, victoria*claire.  My eBay store is called victoria-claire-wholesale, which is rather vague, but it’s what I ended up with due to the fact that there was another user with the name VictoriaClaire (without the * in the middle) and eBay wouldn’t let me use “another user’s ID” to name my store.

The store kick off was awesome.  I was selling a mixture of plus-size tops, high-end designer jeans (purchased at Nordstrom Rack stores), and the had-to-have holiday toys of 2006 (biggies were Nintendo DS Lite, Baby Alive, Moon Sand, and Star Wars Lego sets, all purchased at retail and all in very short supply in most locales, so profits were extremely high).  I earned my Silver Power Level status 3 months to the day after starting with the new user ID and store, as eBay requires a 3 month track record to qualify as a Power Seller.

2007 started off great, with strong clothing sales through the summer months.  As the weather cooled, my wholesale sources for clothing (I live less than 2 hours from the Los Angeles Garment District) started turning out some of the ugliest, lowest quality garments I had ever seen … things that were of such poor quality that I refused to sell them.  Despite having access to the entire Garment District, I couldn’t find acceptable inventory at my customer’s price point.  Combine low inventory levels with a struggling economy, and damn wham! … my sales took a huge dive.  Toys picked up the slack once again for the holiday season, but by Christmas I knew I needed a new direction and mix of products, because my clothing sales were less than 50% of what they had been a year earlier.

While taking a break over the holidays, I discovered Gary’s blog, and also Lynn Dralle’s, and I was inspired to start selling collectibles, books, and kitschy garage sale finds.  This is definitely the new direction I was looking for, as it combines two of my favorite activities:  travel and junking.  I love shopping at garage sales, estate sales, book sales, thrift stores, church sales, flea markets, swap meets, pawn shops, and anywhere else that unique items can be found.

I’ve been focusing on collectibles since the beginning of the year, and sales have been good enough to maintain my Silver Power Seller status, averaging around $2000 per month, before expenses.  I’d like to triple that before the end of the year.  To reach that goal, I have a number of smaller goals, which include the following:

1.  Strive for 100 active auctions at all times. This one is easy some weeks, and not nearly as easy other weeks, especially when I’m out of town or right after I get back from a trip.

2.  List 10 to 15 items per day, 7 days per week.  This is also difficult when I’m traveling, but I’m working on it and seem to have good weeks and not quite so successful weeks for meeting this sub-goal.  The easiest way for me to accomplish this is to do my listings before doing anything else online, including reading my email and checking my eBay stats.  I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but once I start reading email or checking on my listings and sales, time gets away from me and it’s difficult to kick out 10 to 15 new auction listings.

3.  Write briefer descriptions, when possible, so that more items get listed in less time.

4.  Break up “sets” of items — dinnerware, glasses, silverware, etc. — into individual items or pairs of items, rather than selling entire sets as a single auction.  This results in higher profits and also in higher numbers of active listings.

5.  Stay on top of items that don’t sell at auction, moving them more quickly into my eBay store (this one has really fallen off during the past 2 weeks, and needs immediate attention).

Although I normally travel at least once a month for pleasure (and always do some eBay shopping, to write off the trip), for the past 4 months I’ve been taking frequent week-long trips to my mother’s home in Fremont, California, 250+ miles north of Bakersfield.  My mom died at the end of March 2007, and most of a year went by before my brothers felt ready to open probate, to start going through Mom’s stuff, and to get the house ready to sell. 

My mother was a thrift store junkie and collector, whose collections slowly took over an entire 2800 square foot home … piled, stacked, wedged, packed in boxes or bags, or simply tossed onto the top of a pile.  As she aged, she became increasingly agoraphobic and eventually stopped going out altogether.  She really was one of those crazy ladies with a house full of cats (26 cats, including one with six toes on each paw, when I visited her in 1992).  She didn’t have a computer or an Internet connection, but she did have HSN, QVC, catalogs, dozens of magazine subscriptions, credit cards, and a telephone, so the shopping never ended.

Have you seen the video segements Oprah did on hoarding?  The home Oprah featured looked great compared to my mom’s house, which was coming apart at the seams.  There was actually ivy growing through the roof and ceilings, and into 3 rooms.  And, yes, you could see the sky through the holes …

I was raised by my grandmother, so was not close to my mom or brothers, and we had been estranged for almost 20 years.  In a strange twist of fate, I became administrator of the estate, so I was the one who got to/had to dig through everything looking for the things we wanted to keep.  I’ve been working with a wonderful estate liquidator who did all the truly messy stuff, and who pronounced the house officially empty this morning. 

It’s been grueling work, but also rewarding.  I found my Barbie dolls from the early 60s, my grade school report cards, and pictures of my grandparents as children at the beginning of the 20th century, before the first World War.  I have boxes of ephemera to sort, some of my mom’s pink Miss America depression glass to keep and use, and all sorts of odds and ends.  I also have a few things that will end up on eBay, and a few that already have, including a spun aluminum ashtray my dad used throughout my childhood, designed by Russel Wright.  I had never heard of Russel Wright until I listed this mid-century ashtray a week ago, and I was joyfully astonished that it sold for $255.00 on Sunday afternoon.  Too bad it won’t count toward the Challenge, huh?

That’s more than enough rambling for a getting-to-know-you post.  I’ll finalize my Challenge sales goal and add it to my next post, which will be blessedly shorter :o)

Victoria