Ken & Deb Catching Up - Week 12

Sorry it’s been so long since we posted. We still here, still plugging along and still in the hole. I think we were more than a tad ambitious when we set our goals for the challenge. We’ve been buying more than we can get listed, in spite of a few weeks when we couldn’t get to sales. Deb is tied up this weekend so I’m going to try to get as much of it listed as I can rather than going to sales. Lets see if we can get into the black by the end of next week.

Week #	Week	Sales	Cost	List Fee	Fv Fee	PayPal Fee	Misc Fees	Mileage	Net Profit	Total
1	5/8/2008		105.50	8.40				53.03	-166.93
2	5/15/2008	353.33	27.85	13.80	25.80	16.73	2.99	71.71	194.45	27.53
3	5/22/2008	161.94	86.35	6.86	15.57	11.45		74.74	-33.03	-5.50
4	5/29/2008	314.36	584.50	3.15	24.62	13.06	5.52	44.44	-360.93	-366.44
5	6/5/2008	108.78	20.20	9.80	8.16	3.81	0.00	90.40	-23.58	-390.02
6	6/12/2008	155.09		2.80	12.94				139.35	-250.67
7	6/19/2008	56.98	73.00	2.45	4.71	3.55	0.00	48.48	-75.21	-325.88
8	6/26/2008	94.93	41.14	13.30	8.43	4.35		59.59	-31.88	-357.75
9	7/3/2008	155.70		5.60	13.21	6.60	0.00		130.29	-227.46
10	7/10/2008	66.46	183.40	4.06	4.94				-125.94	-353.40
11	7/17/2008	151.70	41.75	3.88	1.62			95.36	9.10	-344.30
12	7/24/2008	136.17			9.41	1.75			125.01	-219.30

Ken & Deb Weeks 3 & 4

Sales of items from Week two were not to exciting with a total of $161.94. Sales of items purchased in week three were much better with a total of $314.36. The big winners were two Starbucks ‘Country’ mugs, two teapots by Mary Englebreit and surprisingly a teapot shaped like a Yorkie Terrier. The later was Deb’s find. I would have walked right past it.

Memorial Day sales pretty much sucked here too. Saturday we spent $1.75 on a Hershey’s Candy Dish, a Ghirardelli Chocolate coffee mug, a chrome and glass bar cocktail shaker and a small Pidgeon Forge sugar bowl. Friday was a different story. We went to an ephemera auction where we spent $583.00 mostly on postcards and old photos. It’s going to take a while to get this all listed.

As luck would have it life interfered with doing eBay his week but we did get the following listed including a few items purchased in week three. All of these end on Monday evening.

• Two large lots of photos
• Atari XE Game System (from week 3)
• Hershey’s Collectible 2004 Candy Dish
• Vintage Chrome Glass Cocktail Shaker
• Deluxe Edition Monopoly Game (from week 3)
• Small Red Pyrex Refrigerator Dish with Lid (from week 3)
• Ghirardelli Chocolate - Coffee Mug - California Pantry
• Pidgeon Forge Pottery Covered Sugar Pot Dogwood Pattern

We also have a few items listed this week that were purchased before the beginning of the challenge. Now on to listing our week five purchases and that huge pile of ephemera that (cough cough) somebody left on our dining room table.

Ken & Deb 2008 Garage Sale Challenge

Week	Sales	Cost	List Fee	Fv Fee	PayPal Fee	Misc Fees	Mileage	Net Profit	Total
5/8		105.50	8.40				53.03	-166.93
5/15	353.33	27.85	13.80	25.80	16.73	2.99	71.71	194.45	27.53
5/22	161.94	86.35	6.86	15.57	11.45	0.00	74.74	-33.03	-5.50
5/29	314.36	584.50	3.15	24.62	13.06	5.52	44.44	-360.93	-199.51

Ken & Deb Week Two

Whew. It’s been a busy couple of weeks! I better get something posted about Week Two before I dive into photoing our Week Three purchases and Week Two fades completely into the rear view mirror.

Sales from Week One
The week one purchases we managed to get listed sold for a total of $353.33 making it probably the second best week we’ve had on eBay*. If we’re going to meet our goal for the challenge this needs to become more of an average week. Some highlights were the Catzilla Halloween Tray which sold for $29.00 (cost $1.74), the Borden Malted Milk Tin which sold for $39.37 (cost $1.25), an antique “Hold to Light” postcard $86.01 and this real photo postcard $43.29. The postcards came from a lot which cost $25.00. All told, this lot sold for $246.41. The automobile advertising postcards I mentioned last week were part of this lot. They did OK bringing from $7.00 to $9.00 a piece. In hindsight we could’ve asked a higher starting bid.

Ken & Deb Week One

On Saturday we went to six garage sales and one auction preview.

At the first couple of sales we bought a copy of “The Mathematics of Investing: A Complete Reference” for $3.00 (What was I thinking?) and two collectors plates for .50 all now in our garage sale pile.

Our third stop was an unadvertised sale a couple of doors away from another sale on our list. Deb grabbed a Candace Reiter Catzilla Ceramic Halloween Tray and bowl, two Ursula Dodge Goblins Trick or Treat Bowls and three bat/ghost salt & peppers for $7.00. She thought perhaps she’d payed too much but the Catzilla tray hit $24 within 12 hours of listing it. The Catzilla bowl also has a bid we also listed one of the Ursula Dodge bowls but so far no interest. The S&P’s went in the garage sale pile.

Ken & Deb’s Goal for the Challange

Our goal is to generate $5000 in net profit from inventory purchased between May 1 and September 30th at garage sales, auctions, estate sales and thrift shops. We might throw in a flea market or two as well. That is if we can find any surviving ones in our neck of the woods (central upstate New York). We sell on eBay as orangecatcollectibles we don’t sell on amazon at present.

The $5000 goal will be a stretch for us. We’re going to need to find better inventory and list it faster than we’ve been doing. But we think it’s doable and are looking forward to trying. We started selling last July and have learned a lot in the last eight months. We expect learn a lot more through trying to meet this goal for the challenge.