Welcome to the new, What Sells on eBay series! I’ll be sharing everything that sold in my eBay store over the past month and how much money I made from it. I figured I would take my readers along with me on my trash panda journeys and show what I scavenge and successfully sell.
You’ll notice that I sell really random things and I think that’s the best tactic for someone like me who is just one person trying to make as much money as they can on the eBay platform.
The more categories you’re willing to sell in, the more opportunities you have to find buyers for your items. If you enjoy this series and want me to continue it, Please let me know by leaving a comment. I believe I will do a monthly post the first week of each month.
September was the slowest month I’ve had so far since getting serious about selling things back in April. I think it’s partly because September is a slow month anyways and I had to devote time to college instead of listing things.
eBay selling tips:
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This page covers all of my eBay selling knowledge.
This post covers how I list items for the best profit.
Most profitable item I’ve sold to date:
Vintage TNT CB radio amp. Total profit: $468.76
Numbers for the month of September
- Amount of Items sold: 25
- Gross sales: $523.91
- Cost of goods sold: $76.82
- Profits after all expenses: $370.33
- Average profit per item: $14.92
To track my numbers, I use a service called Easy Auctions Tracker. Easy Auctions Tracker connects directly to your eBay account and pulls all the fees associated with each sale to show you the true net profit. All you have to do is keep track of what you paid for each item! The best part about it is that it’s only $49.99 for an entire year subscription! This is much cheaper than any other bookkeeping software I’ve seen but more accurate than other options. Sign up through this link.
Items that sold
Vintage Nash Skateboard
- Purchased from: thrift store
- Cost: $3.74
- Sold: $19.99
- Profit: $13.49
The Sims complete collection
- Purchased from: estate sale
- Cost: $2.00
- Sold: $29.99
- Profit: $24.05
Little Mermaid Costume
- Purchased from: This is something my wife bought years ago
- Cost: $0.00 I’m saying the cost was 0 because it’s something we bought without the intent of selling.
- Sold: $20.00
- Profit: $16.64
Vintage Polaroid camera
- Purchased from: Estate Sale
- Cost: $5.00
- Sold: $12.99
- Profit: $6.44
Vintage Girl Scout Patches
- Purchased from: Thrift Store
- Cost: $5.00
- Sold: $27.00
- Profit: $18.30
Spider killer
- Purchased from: discount store
- Cost: $4.00
- Sold: $16.99
- Profit: $0.21 – I had to do free shipping on these to stay competitive. That’s what I don’t like about selling commodity items.
Vintage Levi’s denim coat
- Purchased from: yard sale
- Cost: $2.72
- Sold: $20.50
- Profit: $16.25
Plaid Skirt
- Purchased from: This came out of my wife’s closet
- Cost: $0.00
- Sold: $10.00
- Profit: $8.79
Rollerblades
- Purchased from: thrift store
- Cost: $2.66
- Sold: $14.00
- Profit: $11.65
Vintage Levi’s shirt
- Purchased from: yard sale
- Cost: $2.72
- Sold: $10.00
- Profit: $5.91
Woolrich beanie
- Purchased from: yard sale
- Cost: $2.72
- Sold: $9.99
- Profit: $6.07
Vintage Calculator
- Purchased from: yard sale
- Cost: $3.00
- Sold: $5.99
- Profit: $4.12 – I must have profited a decent amount from shipping discount
Levi’s denim jacket
- Purchased from: yard sale
- Cost: $2.72
- Sold: $30.00
- Profit: $24.90
Harley parts
- Purchased from: thrift store
- Cost: $18.19
- Sold: $40.00
- Profit: $14.49
Sketchers
- Purchased from: old shoes from my closet
- Cost: $0.00
- Sold: $6.00
- Profit: $5.01
Axe hair spray
- Purchased from: discount store
- Cost: $3.00
- Sold: $7.99
- Profit: $4.14 – must have made a little on shipping
Everquest PC game
- Purchased from: yard sale
- Cost: $1.25
- Sold: $39.99
- Profit: $33.67
Biltrite boots
- Purchased from: estate sale
- Cost: $2.00
- Sold: $20.00
- Profit: $15.75
Harley lens kit
- Purchased from: estate sale
- Cost: $5.00
- Sold: $25.00
- Profit: $17.20
Autographed Chipper Jones hat
- Purchased from: yard sale
- Cost: $2.00
- Sold: $35.00
- Profit: $28.73
Garneau saddle bag
- Purchased from: yard sale
- Cost: $2.72
- Sold: $25.00
- Profit: $19.26
Harley switches
- Purchased from: thrift store
- Cost: $0.00 – Think I was too lazy to divide the total cost of Harley parts I got one day.
- Sold: $16.50
- Profit: $11.41
East Sport backpack
- Purchased from: yard sale
- Cost: $2.72
- Sold: $15.00
- Profit: $10.27
Under Armour Hoodie
- Purchased from: yard sale
- Cost: $1.00
- Sold: $19.99
- Profit: $16.46
AutoCAD book with 2008 software
- Purchased from: thrift store
- Cost: $2.66
- Sold: $46.00
- Profit: $37.12
And that’s it for September! If you noticed that a few of the items have the same exact cost ($2.72) that means I bought all of them at the same place and divided the total amount I paid by the amount of items I got.
As my sales grow, I will probably have to stop including photos in this series. If I start selling over one hundred items a month, it would take forever to upload all of the pictures and might slow down my site load time which would hurt my SEO ranking.
If you’re curious, you can check out my eBay store here.
To get all of my eBay selling tips, check out this page.
If you’re selling on eBay, let us know in the comments how your month went and any interesting scavenging story you have to share!
Nathan created Millionaire Dojo to document his journey to reaching a million dollar net worth and inspire others to follow the same path. Go here to read how he intends to become a millionaire and reach financial independence. If you’d like to contact Nathan, you can do so here.
Very cool. This whole flipping thing is something I’m getting more interested in and I’m thinking of trying my hand at it a little bit. Most of my selling is just selling stuff I find in the trash, but it really seems like if you have the grit and hustle, you can make some decent money flipping stuff.
Thanks! The barrier to entry is very low for flipping and it’s one of the easiest ways to make extra money I’ve come across. If you just use the tips I suggest on this page you’ll know pretty much everything you need to make money on eBay. And selling things out of the trash is great! Some people make their living by doing just that! Obviously, it takes time to list things but if you do it enough, you can earn enough to make a living and quit the 9-5. There’s a whole community of resellers out there selling $1,000-$5,000 a week.
I think you’re doing well but your prices seem a bit low.
Those girl scout patches my have gone for $5 or more each.
Finding good stuff to list and having the patience to wait for a high price are key.
Ah man, I should’ve tried that! If that were the case, I could’ve made 10x what I paid for them instead of 5x. I’m trying to do better with listing higher and letting it sit. Thanks for stopping by!
I haven’t been that active selling on eBay recently – I have a six month old son that I need to spend time with – but I have sold a few car service manuals for $40 or $50 that I picked up for only a buck recently.
I understand that! It can be hard to find the time to list things when you work full time and have a family to spend time with. That’s awesome about the car manuals! I love taking $1 and turning it into $50! I just did that yesterday with an old PC joystick. Much better return than the stock market haha.
Interesting what a wide range of products you buy. How do you guess what’s going to sell well?
I do think it’s a little cheat-y to call some of your items $0 just because you bought them without the intent of selling. You still paid money for them, after all. So it’s not really a profit. Still, I’m guessing you can’t possibly remember what you paid for them, so I guess that system probably has to stay intact.
If you don’t know if something is valuable, you can always search for it on eBay and set the filter to “sold” and see what it’s been selling for. Sometimes I don’t have good cell service and just have to wing it. I usually fill my car up with stuff for a hundred dollars or so. It’s all about buying as cheap as you can when you’re starting out.
That’s understandable to think I’m cheating my numbers by not including the original price for items we bought without the intent of selling. I’ve just about sold everything we’re willing to get rid of in our house so out of my 170+ current listings, less than 10 of them are things we didn’t buy to sell. And like you said, I just forgot how much we originally paid for the items so I didn’t know what to put. We probably didn’t actually profit on anything we didn’t originally buy to sell this month. Most people just get rid of the things they don’t use anymore though so at least we’re making some of our money back.
Really cool to see all of the things you’ve purchased. After I bought my bike off of Craigslist I copied the photos over and listed it for double just to see if I could resell and already had people interested within the week. I didn’t end up selling it but it was interesting to see what sprucing up the listing description could do.
Haha, that’s cool! Yeah, I’ve bought several refrigerators over the past few months and have resold all of them for at least double what I paid. It’s amazing how much money you can make just by putting in a little effort on the listings. There’s an app called Nextdoor that has a buy and sell section that I’ve had some luck on as well.