eBay the Right Way

eBay Seller Chat with Casey Parris the Rockstar Flipper: eBay, Shopify, Amazon, Wholesale - He Does it All 🎸

• Suzanne A. Wells • Episode 235

Share episode
Suzanne Wells:

You. Hey, there, eBay friends, welcome to episode 235 of eBay the right way. Today's date is September 17. 2025 my guest is Casey Paris, known as rock star flipper on YouTube. No announcements this week, so let's dive right in. Hey listeners, welcome back. I have a rock star with us today, and many of you know him as rock star flipper. So it is Casey Paris, and he is going to tell us about his amazing eBay journey and all the things he's doing now. So how are you doing today?

Unknown:

Hey, how are you I am doing awesome first. Thanks for having me. And hello to all the listeners who will end up listening and watching this interview. So thank you guys for taking the time.

Suzanne Wells:

Great, excellent. So I normally start off with how you got into eBay, and when that was Ooh.

Unknown:

So eBay started Officially, the account is 2009 I have two accounts now. My main one, my old one, is 2009 and then I started another one around 2013, or 14, when I got into social media, just to kind of have a backup account. So 16 years on eBay, and I was selling before then also I've been a reseller for 20 years. Total, exactly 20 years

Suzanne Wells:

this summer. So where were you selling before eBay,

Unknown:

the good old Craigslist is what I yeah, I sold on Craigslist for two and a half or three years. EBay existed, of course, but I didn't know much about it. And eBay at that time was like sending money and money orders through the mail, like, that's what we did so and I didn't I was young, and didn't know a lot about that, so it took me a little while to educate myself, but when I realized how they were open to the world, I was like, Well, right now, I'm only selling to my my little town, and then eBay is open to everybody. So that's when I realized, yeah, I should probably look into

Suzanne Wells:

this. So you remember those four guys that sort of started the YouTube world of eBay talking about eBay. It was bonafide Hustler, college picker, retro aficionado, and

Unknown:

I can't remember the other one. Steve

Suzanne Wells:

Reagan, yeah, yeah. Steve Reagan, okay, yeah, yep. So you did you come in after them slightly.

Unknown:

So Steve had just started, Chris was really one of the the originals. People don't realize that bonafide hustler started, probably, definitely before Steve and Eric, who is college picker, who's one of his good friends as well. He kind of got those two on. So Chris was already in, I would say probably in 2013 2014 maybe even before that, like Chris was the king, and he still is just going to yard sales and flea markets. And Chris lives in Austin, Texas, and so it's a huge thing down there. Like, he really had it big. And when I started, like, buying and selling on Craigslist, where I got a lot of stuff, here in Florida, we had a lot of flea markets. We had, like, we used to have four, we're down to two. Now. Two of them have closed up, unfortunately. But I started looking at his videos on YouTube, and I was like, wow, I need to go more to these things and find this stuff. Because he was showing what sold on eBay. Because when I started eBay, I knew what sold on Craigslist, but I didn't have an idea of, like, what's gonna do good on eBay, what's small enough to ship. And so watching his videos is how I figured out, like, this is stuff I should be looking for, right?

Suzanne Wells:

Yeah. And I, I remember Steve raken reached out to me because I was doing ebooks, teaching people how to do different things with eBooks. That's when you could sell them on eBay, yep. And then they did away with digital downloads. So I talked to him a lot and helped him get started with his ebooks, and he did very well with that for a while, and didn't he start off with bicycles?

Unknown:

Yeah, Chris, Chris did. Chris is like the bicycle King and Steve. Steve knew a little bit about bicycle stuff too. So when they got to be friends and working together, they really ramped up on, like, the bikes and stuff, absolutely for sure. Well, I used to love

Suzanne Wells:

watching their videos when it was all of them together, just the banter back and forth, and, you know, harassing each other, and we have like contests of who sold the most that week, and they were very helpful and entertaining. And I don't even know if they're doing it anymore. I know Steve has been bouncing around doing all kinds of different things.

Unknown:

Yeah. I mean, Chris kind of So, Chris, what? And he's a big health guy and gym workout, and he did a lot of personal training, and so he was kind of splitting his time. He still does a lot of videos on yard sales. He goes to flea markets and garage sales every weekend. As far as I know, when he's available. Steve started sourcing, you know, as of recently, the last year or two, started sourcing directly off eBay, actually. So he doesn't go out to the stores as much anymore, because he just has stuff shipped in, which is sort of the route that I took too going to stores is fun, the thrill of the hunt, you know, going and shopping prices, obviously, at least in Florida, prices went up. Everyone knows, we had a huge influx of people come to Florida, which was a lot of donations, but a lot of increase in price. So I get a lot of stuff shipped in as well. I don't go the route that Steve goes, but, yeah, I mean, back then, the thrill of a hunt was like our everyday sourcing, and we evolved, like everything. You adapt and change. But I still go out once in a while and I'm like, I look around the stores, flea markets, the two that we still have. It's fun. It's still great thing. You know, you can make money and have fun, and there are some people still getting full time off of it for sure,

Suzanne Wells:

yeah, and it's, it's a struggle sometimes, because there's so many more sellers now. And on the YouTube side of it, there's so many more YouTube channels that it's all about time, you know, I would love to to watch so much more than I do, but it's, it's time, you know? And I noticed a drop in my views over the last five years, like, significant because, well, I don't do shopping videos and that kind of stuff, but more on the teaching side and more like PBS, yeah.

Unknown:

I mean, a lot of people like YouTube turned it was a lot of education, a lot of how to but then it turned to a lot of entertainment side of it, where, like, if you aren't out, I call it like out in the trenches, like out showing the world, it's a little harder to get views. And there's some channels that you can definitely tell, like, that's their their niche, that they're out in the flea markets, you know, like strapping body cams on, or GoPros, and that kind of entertainment. People love that, because they want to see, like, what's going on, what's going on, what's in your area, what do you see? So I get it. I understand why that's a lot of entertainment. The problem with that, and I don't have a problem with it, but some people do, is that those folks, you spend a lot of time making those videos. When you got to go out, editing them, producing them, putting them up, you don't have as much time to be a seller. And a lot of people are pretty transparent about it, like, Hey, we're only half the time selling. We're going out for the entertainment. Because the YouTube views, when you get those kind of views, can be pretty good money. And absolutely, yeah, for sure, some of those people, you know, made a few 1000 a month. Some of those people were making 10, 15,000 a month. It was big, big money. So it was worth it for them to go out, if they only found 50 bucks or 100 bucks worth of profit, just seeing the stuff was enough for the video, and what they made on eBay was just, you know, extra cherry on top, I guess. And when I was outsourcing, I was focused like, I need to make 300 bucks, 500 bucks, 1000 bucks. I need to make this day worth it. I used to go, when I did pawn shops, I used to go to 10 to 12 pawn shops a day. Like I would go one hour, one hour, one hour, 10 minutes in between driving to the next one, I was focused, like, getting the footage for me was secondary at the time. Like I didn't care. It was like, I need inventory,

Suzanne Wells:

yeah, and like, there's several channels I follow, hustle at home. Mom, she's really good. But my gosh, these people that put out so many videos, like every other day, the shopping video, the reality TV type of stuff that, if you have never done videos, you have no idea how much time it takes to edit them and make them look great. I just don't know how they have time to do all this, unless they've hired someone to do their editing for them, which is totally reasonable. But with some of those people, it's like, how are you out so much getting all this footage and doing your store and shipping your stuff and having a life? And if they have kids, it's like, how do we find time? I couldn't either.

Unknown:

And so the thing about it is like, and this is why, I guess my YouTube channel, it grows, but it's never gone like, you know, gangbusters, is because I don't have the time to put into it like that. And a lot of people don't see like the back end, at least on my end. I buy pallets and stuff. I buy wholesale. We have 1000s items come in. We gotta process that. We're only two people. I've had storage units. I've had employees. I hate it. I absolutely despise being a manager.

Suzanne Wells:

Me too. I don't want to manage people. I want to do the fun part, the treasure hunting,

Unknown:

right? Even the editing, like hiring. I tried to do like, hey, create me. Thumbnails, create me, titles, create me edits. I hated it. I didn't like how they do it. I'm a control freak. First one to admit it, and so I just don't go that route. It's just me and Caitlin, my fiance, and she handles the shipping, and I handle all the sorting and prepping and buying and selling and all that. And we're only two people like, if you're going through 1000s of items every day, when do I have time? And I'll give the audience a perfect example, if you're doing, say, a 20 minute video, or even 30 minute video, that could be two hours, three hours of it's

Suzanne Wells:

usually two to two and a half times the length of the content, whether it's podcast video. The editing is so much more than what you see.

Unknown:

Absolutely, if somebody recorded a 30 minute video, they probably spent 45 minutes to an hour just recording it, because there's cuts and times that you pause or say, um, and you gotta edit that. And then when you go to the actual physical editing, that's at least two times, if you have a 30 minute video, you're gonna spend an hour editing at minimum. So now you're up to an hour and a half to two hours of time. Then you got to create a thumbnail, you got to create a title, you got to create a description, and you could pre load some of it, and then you got to wait for it to process. Then you got to promote it on your social media. It's a lot. It's a half a day of work for some of these people. And I'm like, if I gave up three, four hours a day, I can't imagine how much wouldn't be getting done. Over on the inventory,

Suzanne Wells:

right? Do you reply to all the comments on your channel yourself, or is that automated for

Unknown:

you? No, I do it all myself. Generally, that's like a nighttime task, like when I'm sitting on the couch or in bed or whatever, I'll just sit on my computer for an hour or two. I respond to all my own emails, all my own comments, all my own messages. Nobody does that. Yeah, I've never I just can't imagine how that would go if somebody else responded

Suzanne Wells:

and I and I'm like, you, I've tried hiring out different parts of the business, and I think I'm my daughter says, You're just too picky. She did it for me for a while. She's like, You're too picky. I don't want to work for you. Yeah. I mean, that's your image. Be Rocky.

Unknown:

It is picky. Yes, like, particular, I like to say more, but it's, it's the thing where I've closed deals, where people have asked questions and I've thought on the fly, where I'm like, I could just respond, like, yeah, okay, or I can respond and go, Hey, that's a really great question. Did you know that I actually have a product X about that, or a video that you could watch about that? And then people go, watch that video, and then they start watching me and subscribing and that's extra or, Hey, did you know I actually sell those items on eBay? You might want to check them out, you know, to a collector, somebody that asked questions. So I know I've closed deals and made extra money because of the replies I put out versus what somebody else may have

Suzanne Wells:

put out. And I'm like, You, I want to do it myself, because I learned so much from other people and on YouTube, I might say something in my sales update video or whatever, and it's like, I don't know why this sells. I don't know why people want it, and I do that on purpose so that maybe somebody will tell me, and then I'll be a smarter seller. But I like to interact with my audience that way. I couldn't imagine having that automated or, you know, I want to talk to them

Unknown:

myself? Yeah, yeah, I do. I've learned a lot, a lot of people leave comments for me where they're like, you know, oh, did you know about this? And I generally, I'm like, No, I didn't know about it. And I'll go check or they'll leave me a link to a video, or they'll leave me like, you know, a link to their eBay. And they're like, here's how we do the photos on those items you were having an issue with. I'm like, Oh, wow. Okay, so yeah, for sure, I like

Suzanne Wells:

it's a great knowledge base. And you know, just because you're commenting and you don't have your own channel does not mean that you are not intelligent. You know who we're just talking about, how much time it takes to do all that. So let's go back to the eBay world. So you were selling stuff on Craigslist, and then you dove into eBay and to learn all of that. Yep.

Unknown:

Okay, yeah, so 2005 I moved to Florida. I'm from Baltimore. Originally. I was 20 years old, so I moved here. So I'm I'm 40 now, yep, I'm saying it. And so officially, in Florida, longer than Maryland, 2005 I moved here. I lived with my parents. I just finished second year of college, and I decided I wasn't gonna continue doing college in Maryland. I thought about doing it here, but I'm just not a school person. I was good at it, but I actually took business, believe it or not, how funny, right?

Suzanne Wells:

And, hey, college isn't for everybody. Yeah,

Unknown:

and looking back at it, I'm not mad, like I'm happy, I'm not, you know, I've got friends 3540 years old, that are 100,000 in student loan debt. So I'm like, well, so I'm like, Well, I don't have that. So I

Suzanne Wells:

don't have that. I may have a lot of money tied up in inventory, but that's like a savings account, the way, that's my investment.

Unknown:

No, for sure it is. And, um, so my dad's like, well, you know, you're 20, you can live with us. You just moved here. Like, you know, get get going. Figure out what you want to do. And I didn't want to get a job, like, down here in Florida at the time, it was like, work at the Walmart warehouse for $9 an hour, talking 20 years ago. And I'm like, do I want to work at a Walmart warehouse? You know, they had overnight shifts. And I'm like, No, I don't want to do that. And so I went on Craigslist, and I guess it was an accident, but I found stuff to resell, like car audio amplifiers, things like that. And so did that for a couple years. You know, my dad was like, well, you're making decent money. And I was saving it. I was putting everything away, and, um, and then I might figure out eBay. I'm like, well, it's got to be shippable, because I had bought and sold some bicycles, I did that. And I'm like, Well, I can't ship a bike. You can, but it's not really the easiest thing in the world. I didn't want to do that. I'm like, Yeah, I'm like, Yeah, I'm not interested in packing up a bicycle. So started getting small stuff, looking for things like at the yard sales, I'd look for action figures. I'd look for toys. I'd look for I knew a lot about a card game called Magic the Gathering, so knew about those. Yeah, and I would buy anything small enough, and just slowly start learning how to use eBay. And again, we. Did money orders. So that was, you know, probably around 2008 2009 I started looking into eBay, and the account says I officially started it in 2009 so that must have been when I, like, took the leap, like, okay, and I know I was packing a lot of magic cards, because we had a lot of envelopes, and the the little hard loaders, I don't think I have any around close by. Oh, maybe I do. So we take, like, the card, and then slide some in the top loader, put them in the envelope, and it was like, was it like 42 cents back then, right? Like a stamp. There was no tracking. You just slapped a stamp on it, and then you'd get a money order in the mail. It was crazy for the best, yeah, pretty much, yeah. And so I probably did a couple 1000 bucks the first year. I was still actively selling on Craigslist every day, because that's how I made money. My parents weren't going to let me stay with them if I wasn't making money, right? Because they knew I was trying to save to get my own place. I was 2122 they were like, we're not in a rush to get rid of you. And back then, it was tough. The economy went up in 2007 but we were coming into that almost crashing time, right? So things were wild, and they weren't in a rush to get rid of me. And I gave them money to help out, you know, as a young kid. And so they let me just keep doing it. And I was able to stack up money, stack up money, stack up money. And where we lived was an hour from Tampa, and so all the best deals were in Tampa. So I was driving. What I would do is I would drive from where we lived to a parking lot, and we just got cell phones, like, actual internet phones. So you can log in about 2007 2008 we get, like, palm priests, like palm pilots and stuff like that. Yes, and yeah, I was able to go on Craigslist and see what was available in Tampa, and sit there all day and message people and go, Oh, yeah, hey, I can get that because I'm close by, no matter where it was. And then I would come home with a trunk full of stuff at the end of the day and then start listing what I could on eBay. So saving the money was the idea to move closer to Tampa so I didn't have to. I was spending 456, 100 bucks a month in gas. It was crazy. And yeah, eventually I saved up enough to get an apartment.

Suzanne Wells:

Yeah, you remind me of one of my first coaching clients. A company reached out to me to coach people on Skype. That's how long ago

Unknown:

that was, that just got closed down recently.

Suzanne Wells:

One of my first clients was this 20 year old kid in Texas, and he was flipping couches on Craigslist, and you know, he would go with his pickup and get the couch and bring it back and then deliver it to the people and his he was on a, like, a ranch, you know, huge ranch with cattle, and he just didn't want that life. He wanted something else. So I was like, oh, Justin, yeah, we need to get you selling smaller things and get you on eBay. And, you know, he knew all about the equestrian industry with the saddles and the all the stuff for the horses and the boots, and he's in Texas, so he's going to find all that stuff. And I just felt I was like, this kid's a worker, if he is going to flip couches on. I was like, yeah, we can, we can find you some smaller things, like belt buckles. So yeah, for sure, y'all were hustling it back then on Craigslist. EBay is just such a different world. It shows a lot of work ethic to do what you were doing there. We didn't,

Unknown:

we didn't have any like, you gotta remember, there was no Facebook marketplace, there was no Instagram or Tiktok or any I mean, Facebook came out in 2007 so when I was started there, you barely even had Facebook to talk to people. MySpace never had a marketplace. And, you know, Etsy, I don't know, even know if Etsy existed. Amazon existed, but not for third party sellers until 2007 but nobody was selling on it in 2007 because it was like books and CDs and stuff like that. And so really, your option was Craigslist or eBay, which people didn't know. A lot of people didn't jump onto the eBay, you know thing, until right around that time. So Craigslist was just like the logical thing. I could message somebody in 20 minutes later, be meeting them to buy a piece of inventory, clean it up, and 20 minutes later have it back up for sale. So it just made sense in my head.

Suzanne Wells:

Yeah, absolutely. So when you transition to eBay, what kinds of things did you sell when you first started? And obviously not bicycles.

Unknown:

And no, I gave up on that. So car audio was a big thing down here in Florida, and when I was selling locally, I'd pick up, like, the speakers and the boxes. They sold really well, but they were too, too heavy to ship. But what did sell well was car audio amplifiers, like the they're, you know, they're about three or four pounds, and you usually put them in a nice so they sold really well. I could buy one. Somebody might list one on Craigslist for, say, 60 or $70 and I'd get them down to 40, but then it would go back on am or on eBay for like, 125, 115, and so make great money on those type of things. And they were easy to test. So I could just plug them into my car, because I had a car audio system in my car, and I could just unhook mine, hook that one in and test them right in a parking lot, meeting up with somebody. So that was super easy. Um. Um, I knew a lot about Magic the Gathering. It's a trading card game. Think of it like an adult Pokemon type thing. And um, so buying those, obviously, they're this big. I could buy a collection. Somebody would put on eBay for, say, $100 for 1000 cards, and then take them home and list them for five bucks, four bucks, three bucks a piece, and make two or $3 a piece. But I got 1000 cards, so that 100, $200 purchase might be 2000 worth of inventory, right? We were selling that the action figures and toys from yard sales. Garage sales were really great, like wrestling figures and spider man and Superman and and all the action heroes. You could buy a box of them at a yard sale for five bucks, right? And take them back, and they would be $10 figures, but you'd have 20 of them, 30 of them. So I've always been somebody that tries to buy in like bundles and lots. Always like, What can I get for 20, 3040, bucks, and then sell them, break them down into pieces? Always done that well.

Suzanne Wells:

And in Florida, isn't it, year round garage sales, not like it would be up north. So lots more opportunity all the time,

Unknown:

all the time, no snow, no cold weather, generally, and hurricane season, yeah, it sucks. We lose some time, but it's off and on. Like, right now we're in hurricane season, but it's, you know, 100 degrees outside, and people have yard sales, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And the other thing that people forget about Florida, and God love me for saying this, we are full of older folk, and so

Suzanne Wells:

it is a mecca for the elderly with all their stuff.

Unknown:

There is a ton of estate sales. There is 101 estate sale companies. There's 1001 estate sales every weekend. As morbid as that may sound, there just are a lot of older folk, and a lot of them do pass on and their families want to sell the stuff. They hire estate sale companies. And if you come to Florida, every road sign, every neighborhood, there's an estate sale every weekend. So well,

Suzanne Wells:

you know, I got invited to go to the villages, and that was called, yeah, the villages, and teach them how to sell their stuff on eBay. I thought about that. What I really want to do is just go down there and and do private picks and buy their stuff, take a U haul down there, and just, you could buy it outright from you. You could just felt like it was more of a an entertainment thing, like, are they really going to do this? Am I going to be wasting my time? I don't, I don't know.

Unknown:

But a few would, a few would, yeah, and

Suzanne Wells:

I was in Atlanta at the time, so, you know, a little bit of a drive to get down there. But I thought that would be, that'd be great. Okay, I'll go down there and teach a couple classes, but I'll also network and give out my business cards. Yeah, no, there's going to do it yourself. Just contact me and I'll buy it from you.

Unknown:

So there's people that do that. So there's a lot of 55 and older communities here. You have to be 55 so there was, like, picker, I would call them pickers, I guess. But other sellers, and I met a few of them at some storage auctions back in the day that would go to the 55 and over communities because they had either a clubhouse or they had, like, a leasing office or a sales office. And they would go in there and say, Hey, this is my business card, you know. Can I pay? Can I advertise? Can I give out my cards? Can you give them out in the office? Can I, you know, give you a cut, and they would get so much inventory from that it was crazy. The other side to it is, and I think this story went viral on Instagram or Tiktok at some point. I have to find it. But there was a lady down here. I didn't know her very well, but I knew of her. She would go through the obituaries, and she would reach out and contact the families and just say, Hey, are you set up with an estate sale company? Are you set up with somebody to sell mom's goods, Dad's goods? Really sorry to hear about it. If you need help, just let me know. And she used to get so many deals. She would come in and they'd say, buy it out. Like, give us 1000 bucks. Buy everything. Yep. And so there's in Florida, suffice to say, there's a ton of opportunity to source down here, and you don't need Goodwill or Salvation Army. There's plenty of them, but there's other ways, for sure, yeah,

Suzanne Wells:

so you transitioned into used clothing at one point, didn't you?

Unknown:

Yeah. So I liked going to yard sales and garage sales, but I realized they were only a couple days a week, and so I was like, Well, what am I going to do the rest of the week? Like, where can I go? What can I buy? Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you know, Thursday? And so obviously it was, well, there's thrift stores, right? So let's go to thrift stores. And at the time, this is probably, I don't know, early, 2010s 2011 2012 somewhere in that time. And we have a bunch of thrift stores here. Again, we have a lot of people. So start going to the half off days. Salvation Army Wednesday, 50% off days. You could come out with 50, 6070, pieces of clothes. And I'm like, well, that's interesting, because we have three of them around me. Well, I can get 150 pieces of clothes. At the time, I was probably averaging around two bucks. 250 on half off days, they were all 1520, $25 items. I'm like, that's really good day. I'm getting 100 items, and I'm gonna make 15 bucks a piece on that's $1,500 day, and I can go to three salvation armies in three or four hours. So started doing that, bringing home big bags of clothes. We had so much at one time, we had 3900 pieces of clothes on the one account. And that's when I started the second account. So I kept, like, my electronics and my more expensive stuff on it, which I still do to this day, actually, and personal items also, I separate it. The one is in my name. It's Casey, the other one's in the business name. So anything personal I sell on that account, and anything like high end electronic I sell on that account, but yeah, all my clothes were on this one, and we were killing it. We were selling so much clothes that I had people asking me if I could sell them boxes of clothes. They were like, What are you paying for this? I'm like, two or three bucks. And they were like, I'll give you five like, they didn't have availability in their town. They were like, can you sell me 100 pieces? I'll give you five bucks a piece. Yeah, you're only gonna make 250 a piece, but you can get rid of all at once. And I was like, Well, I got plenty of inventory. Like, sure, right? Yeah. Started selling the wholesale boxes, and I was selling a box a day, making 200 bucks a day off of these boxes. And I was like, this is incredible, but it pushed me. I'm like, Well, now I gotta go get more inventory, so I'm gonna go to Goodwill, I'm gonna go to Salvation Army, I'm gonna go to, you know, the church thrift stores. And so that ended up being what I did for several years.

Suzanne Wells:

Actually, I think all of us have transitioned to that at one point, I did that for a little while, and it was just, it was problematic because, you know, I would miss something like, there's a button missing, you can't show every single picture in your listing, or there was a stain I didn't see, or something like that. And I didn't want to that rip people off selling them crappy merchandise and not standing by their their product. So I started on my Facebook group, something called inventory connect, where people could sell to each other, like, Oh, you're in this mecca of thrifting, and this person up in Minnesota who's disabled and can't get out, wanted to buy from a reputable seller. And that went on for a while, but then it it just became problematic, because there was, sometimes there was something wrong with an item in the box, and, you know, would get really mad, like you took my money, and I didn't want to, I did not want to be that person

Unknown:

that that happened, and I still do it to this day. So I created a Shopify store, and if somebody wanted to sell a couple 100 pieces of clothes, they could build three or four boxes, send me some photos, send me the information, weight, dimensions, I put it up, and then other people could buy I still do it to this day, but there have been issues where people have sent stuff that wasn't up to par. They didn't catch it, and the person on the receiving end of it was like, Hey, Casey, I got this box, and it's not good. And I'm like, Well, you know, I had to make a lot of disclaimers, a lot of stuff, where I'm like, I'm not personally inspecting this, and I was fully transparent. Look, I'm just connecting you guys, because these people want to sell the stuff. I'm one person. I can't take on all this inventory. Like, if I brought all this inventory in, even if I had the money for it, like, 10s of 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of dollars, I don't have the space. I don't have the time. And I did do it. At one point, I got tired of the third party. If you look back a few years ago, I bought out from Arizona 38,000 piece clothing seller, one of the biggest clothing sellers I've seen. And they they were retiring. They were older. The husband was about 60, and the wife was about 55 and the wife ran it, mostly the husband had a, like, an actual, like, executive position at a job, and they had saved up a lot of money. They had a lot of stocks during the boom. The last few years, they sold off everything, and they were retiring, and they're like, we're not going to do it anymore. And they sold it to me for $1.50 a piece. Delivered the shipping alone was two grand. Mind you, oh gosh, the truck to get it here was two grand. And that was luck, because it was should have been more.

Suzanne Wells:

But were you nervous about that huge purchase? Yeah, it was. You like, did you think about it for a few days?

Unknown:

Like, yeah, yeah. We went back and forth for about two weeks to finalize the deal. And the price was easy. We came to an agreement on price pretty quick. But I was like, you know, I don't want 36,000 pieces of junk to show up here, right? And so I went through their eBay store. Thank God that, you know there's some cross listing programs that I was able to use to transfer it from their store to my store. And so I didn't have to, I didn't have to re list 38,000 pieces, but I never intended on liquidating it one by one. Anyways, when it got here, I knew right away I was going to sell 100 piece boxes. I was like, well, 10 boxes is 1000 pieces. So really, I only have 3380 boxes here, which sounds like a lot, but if I could sell, you know, 30 or 40 a week, well, that's only 10 weeks, I'll have all this gone. And if I could just double my money, right? Because this was a $45,000 purchase, $50,000 purchase, whatever it was. And so I was like, Well, if I can double my money and make 50 grand in 10 weeks, well, I'm not gonna really argue about that, right? I'll pull out four bins for myself to have inventory. And we did. We put it in a storage unit. And, well, two storage units, actually, but so I had two storage units. I went to four, ended up with four storage units side by side by side. Thank God it was convenient. And I have a lot of videos. You have a lot of videos. Lot of videos about that time. And we started selling boxes every day. I was shipping 4567, boxes out every single day at three and 350, a box, which was a great deal for people that couldn't get inventory, because it ended up being really good inventory. Shout out to those people that sold it to me. It was quality. And, um. I was able to get it for a buck 50 delivered, and ship it to people for three, 350 sometimes some of the better stuff for four. So I was doubling my money on every single box that went out the door. And we did. We had that store, those two storage units, for about four months. So it took me 16 weeks till we liquidated it all. And we probably, I think I probably ended up making about 40 grand on that in four so it's 10,000 a month on just that inventory, in addition to everything else we were doing.

Suzanne Wells:

But that's an aggressive move. I mean, not everybody's gonna do something like that.

Unknown:

It was a big it was a big step. Yeah, it was a big step. I mean, a lot of people go out and spend 100 bucks at a thrift store, 200 bucks. And I do it all the time. And over the course of a month, you spend 3000 $4,000 right on inventory. You might spend 1000 bucks a week, or, you know, 500 a week. I just decided I'm going to take 40 grand, you know, my spending for the next four to six months and just do it all at once and not have to go back outsourcing, right? Yeah, because I was spending, I added it up, like 80 hours a month, 100 hours a month, sourcing on the road in the stores. And I'm like, well, I could just do all this and make you know, the entire sourcing trip took me an hour setting up the shipping to get it here. When it got here, we spent one day unloading it and one day setting it up. So I'm like, Okay, we spent two and a half days to source what would have took me all year to source circumstances?

Suzanne Wells:

Yeah, yeah. Well, that was quite an adventure. It was.

Unknown:

I've done a few things like that. Over the years, I bought a semi truck back in covid That was 100,000 pieces. Yeah, yeah. So I just at the time, like, when eBay started transitioning, and I did the clothing, and I did all the stuff I was doing, it was great to build it one by one, piece by piece, store by store. But I always think bigger. I've always thought bigger. I don't know why, but I'm just like, how can I get more? What can I do to you know? And people are like, how are you going to do your time, your shipping, your handling, your your sorting, your and I'm like, I'll figure it out. Just let me get it and get it in here, and we'll figure it out, right?

Suzanne Wells:

Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm constantly trying to bribe the people at thrift stores, like, I'll give you $100 if you let me go from the back where I've done it. Yeah, it's not sorted yet. I hadn't had any takers yet, but that's what it's before, and not that they're going to price everything up. But it's just I'm salivating, looking through those back doors, like all that stuff back there, what's what's hiding back there? But I, you know, we've had two different life paths. You know, a single mom and had kids, and I couldn't do really aggressive business things. I was always very careful, and so it's a different road, but, you know, you're definitely one to watch on, on how many different ways you've done eBay, because then you moved into wholesale and pallets and stuff like that.

Unknown:

Yeah. I mean, I went from Craigslist to, you know, making deals on, you know, like buying other people's inventory locally, to thrift stores. You know, eventually, when Facebook marketplace came out, you can buy lots. Even today, I recommend people go on there. You don't gotta buy a pallet or 38,000 pieces. I purchased a guy's collection, yeah, like a year ago, of Pokemon cards, and I think it cost me like 1200 bucks. And that was, like a$10,000 lot, and it took me a couple months to sell, but I made a few 1000 bucks off of it, and that was just one little deal. Little deal that fit in the trunk of the car off of Facebook marketplace, right? Like you don't have to have four storage units and go big like I did. I did that because I have, you know, big, lofty goals and a life that I like to live and things that I like to buy. But you can start a business with as little as a few 100 bucks and just go in there and buy bulk inventory right off of Facebook marketplace, you can go the word lot, l, o, t, just type in the word lot in Facebook marketplace, you'll find it like you just said the thrift store thing. I tried it too. I bought a pallet out of the goodwill outlets. They took me in the back and I saw, like, 5000 pallets unserved. I'm like, right? Could have done that. I bought one to try it out. It was okay. It wasn't really what I wanted to do, it was clothing, but they had bins of shoes, bins of hard goods, like pots and pans, which was interesting. They had bends of plush toys, bends of neckties. They've done all that stuff. I made really good luck going to the pawn shops, because, believe it or not, especially in a down economy, pawn shops are full of inventory that is stacked up in the back. Because most pawn shops don't have a lot of floor space, right, ton of inventory in the back. I would go into them, and I'd go, Hey, what's available in the back that's been sitting for a while? And they bring it out, and I'd get deals. I was buying, like, iPods, little iPod Touches and shuffles that were worth, you know, 100 bucks on ebay. They had it in the store for 50, but I knew had been sitting there. I'm like, can I give you 30? He'd say, yeah. They're like, we have five of them. I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna make 40 bucks on each one of those, bam, five iPods. Out the door, I went, I'd go to pawn shops all day. They had buy one, get one free, video games. I'd clear them out of video games. We had 5000 video games at Amazon at one point when I did FBA, a lot. And yeah, so going in and asking, going in the back, trying to buy, you know, if you can go into a store and buy one shirt, you can find a way to buy 10 or 15 or 20, there was a lot. There was a lady in my neighborhood during our community yard sale, she had, I don't know, 50 or 60 T shirts from her college son that were like, Armani Exchange Under Armor. And this was at a time when I could get 20 bucks a piece for him. She's like, just give me $1 a piece for all of them. Take all 50 shirts. I'm like, sure knows. Yeah. And just things like that, like so if you can buy one, you can find a way to buy 10. And if you can buy 10, you can buy 50, you can find ways.

Suzanne Wells:

Right now, I did a little snooping around your store in preparation for this, and so you have around 6000 items

Unknown:

right the main store has 6200, items right now. The other store, I think, is around 2000 and it's mostly electronics and toys on that one. This one is a lot. So I've been selling a lot of, like, it's called ephemera, like postcards. I saw a lot of trading cards, sports cards. I still have a few 100 pieces of clothes. I have a few 100 Hot Wheels in there. Hot Wheels have always been something. I buy collections of Hot Wheels. I just do really good on them. So I pay like, 25 cents a piece, or 50 cents a piece, I sell them for eight to$10 yeah, we make, like, you know, 450 to $5 a hot wheel. But I bought 1000 in this last collection. So I paid, I think I paid 400 bucks for it, and I'll make like, three or four grand off of it. Just love it. And they're, I sell like three or four a day. I'm like, I love it. And so you're definitely a volume seller. Yeah, I always buy volume now, it doesn't make sense for me to go out and only buy 10 of something or one of something anymore. I buy, you know, hundreds. I look for these lots constantly, and people send them. Now, with my following, I get a lot of emails of people wanting to sell. A guy emailed me, I think on Friday, he has 2100 pieces of jewelry. So we're trying. Jewelry is not really my forte, not a big choice.

Suzanne Wells:

Very tedious. I find it very tedious. And I'm like you, trying to find more online, because it's just it's just easier, and covid made that marketplace

Unknown:

that that's what I really perfected sourcing from my computer. I said to myself, during covid and before covid. I said it before I even knew that was a thing. I said, I gotta find a way where I don't if I can't get it by sitting on my couch, on my computer and having it shipped into me, I don't want it if I got to get up and drive and go and do stuff, because I did put a lot of miles on a car. One year, I put like, 25,000 miles on a car one year, and I was driving thrift stores, pawn shops, garage sales, just driving around. I'm like, I don't want to do that. It's a lot of gas, a lot of maintenance, lot of maintenance, a lot of upkeep, and a lot of time if I can't get it. So then when we got locked down, I'm like, Well, I guess I don't really have a choice now of finding stuff. Like, this is where I have to be every day. So yeah, during covid is when I really locked in. Like, how am I going to find stuff and networking, talking to people, Facebook groups, Instagram came out in, you know, 2000 I guess 2019, and people started using it. Facebook marketplace was starting to grow. And I'm like, This is it? If I look all day, I will find deals. And I would get a lot of nos. I'd get emails. People were like, No, I need$5,000 I'm like, Look, it's worth six grand. I can give you 1000 bucks, and I'd get an email back a week later. You still paying 1000 all the time. So you got it, you'll get some doors closed, but there's so much inventory available online. There's so many ways to connect with people now, going to the stores, awesome way, if that's what you want to do. It's just it's a lot of time. And for somebody who wants to scale, at some point, you got to find a better way to have it shipped in at

Suzanne Wells:

scale. Yeah, and but it's kind of your therapy. If you're, you know, work at home, you're at your computer the time. It's like, I need one of my followers, Tina, she calls it the boredom buster. Like, I'm just going to go up to Goodwill for half an hour just to get out of here and maybe find some

Unknown:

stuff I am guilty of it. I'll be out in town doing something else, and I'll pass like, I know I'm getting ready to come to the goodwill. And I'll goodwill, and I'll turn it and I'll just walk through it and check out stuff. But yeah, and it's great. And there's a lot of areas that are still really good, like, have good prices. Florida is not if you live in Florida, our good wills, at least in this area, are priced very high. It's tough to walk in there and make a living, like, to get enough. But there's a lot of areas that are still good. Still good, still have half off salvation armies, where you can get a few 100 items a week, and you can build a business like an actual 510,$1,000 a month business just going in thrift stores or going to garage sales. There's plenty of stuff and plenty of areas to do that. You don't have to scale or go big. And some people don't want to scale. Some people just want to be, you know, a little extra money, little smaller business. Whatever your business model is, there's ways to do it, but if you are looking to scale in today's world, you can do it for sure, 100%

Suzanne Wells:

Well, I gotta ask, with this much merchandise, are you doing all the listing? No, guilty

Unknown:

as charged. So yeah. So three solutions to that. So I do I don't do any photos. My fiancee is a photographer by trade. She owns a photography business. She will just sit down and photograph 500 items in a day, like she'll just go all day, spend her whole day, and then she can just sit at her computer and list. She will drop those into a Google Drive we both have access to. And so at any point, I can go, Hey, I'm going to list 20 items real quick, and I'll tell her I'm pulling those 20 out of the Google Drive. So then she doesn't have the photo. She doesn't even know they exist. And I'll just ask her, what are the SKU numbers we're using? Because we have a SKU system. So I'm like, what are the SKU numbers available? I'm going to do 20 polo shirts, because we have, like, bins for polos. We have smaller bins for cards. And she'll go, Okay, we're on SKU 1312, all right, I'm taking 1312, through 1332, and so I'll do that. The. Second way that we do it is, which I guess we're going to talk about in a minute. I have a listing service. I've had one for three years where I have call them vas, they they aren't vas, but they are. But I've had that for going on three years this Christmas, and where we can just upload those photos to my team and they'll make the listings into draft source. So we've been doing that for three years. We also now, we're in beta right now, but we have an automated listing service that you drop the photos and it creates the listing for you. We're in beta. We're going to launch this month fully. We only did a small test group, like, I think 40 people are on it right now, but we're working with them fixing the last couple of things, and it should be going live anytime now, but So yeah, those three things of how I've been listing. It's why I have 6200, listings. If it was just me and Kate, we'd never, never get that high. Also, if you do sports cards, eBay has a bulk listing tool for sports cards. It's supposed to be for other categories soon or now, but I've tested it. It doesn't really work for a lot, but for sports cards, it does. You drop the photo in, and it creates the title, the item specifics, the year of the card, the player's name, the sport, the team. It does everything, and you can even pre program it for a description, where it'll take the title and drop it into the description as line one, and then it'll put a template into the rest of it. The only thing you have to fill in is the price, and it presets the eBay standard card, shipping your handling your returns, all that. It does all of it in the block tool. Really great for trading cards. It won't do for postcards. I've tried. It won't do for Pokemon cards. I've tried at some point it will, but right now, it's, you know, just really sports cards. But for us, that's how we were able to generate like, 200 a day, easy.

Suzanne Wells:

Oh, gosh, that's amazing. Good for you. Okay, alright, so you have just come at this business from every angle.

Unknown:

I like to make money. Like to sell stuff. Are you on other platforms, or is it just Yeah. So my wholesale store is through Shopify. A lot of people ask about Shopify. It doesn't have built in traffic. You have to either have a following, have an email list, or pay for the ads. So if you don't have a following, Shopify is really not a great thing, but if you do, or you're willing to pay the ads, and it makes sense, they only charge 2% so that's the upside. I can put all my wholesale lots on Shopify, and I only get charged 2% so it's a great deal for me to do it, because I can send out the link to my Shopify store, and all my audience can go look to see what the wholesale lots are. Lots are. I also do Amazon. Now we have backed off of Amazon a lot, and I'll tell you the truth on this one, their policies, procedures are horrendous. I absolutely despise them. The sales are amazing. Don't get me wrong, the prices you get, the sales, the sales volume, but they're they're gating. I used to like I said, we had 1000s of video games at Amazon FBA and during covid like 2018, 1920, they have restricted almost every asin that I had on video games. They've just Nintendo between all that stuff. You can't sell this, you can't sell this, you can't sell this. If I had to do it now, it'd be impossible to have video games there. And I'll tell you in 2017 we did $740,000 on Amazon. Are you kidding? Not at all. And that was and we were only operating at 25% still, great money was like 170,000

Suzanne Wells:

but Amazon has changed. I went through that too. I was one of the early adopters. I think I started in 2009 Wow.

Unknown:

I didn't start till 14 or 15 with books

Suzanne Wells:

and toys. That was a big thing in the mom community, was the toys at Christmas, going up to Costco and getting the toys and all that. And I got into groceries, oh, you know, like Limited Edition things and stuff. It's regional. I did so well. And I did that for maybe four years, and we just would identify something that would sell well. And my daughter and I, we drove to, you know, we go to 10 Publix in a day picking up the flavored star kiss tuna in the pouches. A lot of it went to military addresses or that kind of all about this. And so, yeah, I love that business. And then they started. It was probably 2013 or 14. They started all this gating stuff, yeah, and then stuff you weren't allowed to sell. I had several $100 worth of Dunkin Donuts, coffee at FBA, and they told me I could sell it, yep, and you have to pay this much money to get it back. And I did, but everybody got coffee for Christmas for a couple years. But, yeah, Amazon just, it just changed too much. It's too complicated. And you were just, you'd have anxiety attacks like, what am I gonna wake up to tomorrow that I'm not allowed to do?

Unknown:

No control. I am. I said in the beginning of this video, I'm a control freak. And waking up the first couple that happened to me, I was like, Okay, not that big of a deal. They weren't really items. I sold a lot of. I was like, eh, that sucks, but whatever. Then when they cut Apple, I used to sell a ton of I used iPods, used iPads. I could get great deals on. I knew a lot about them. When they cut Apple, that was like half the income. That was half. Video games were half, and Apple products were half, or. Were headphones, like, I could get beats, like, people would have three year old Beats headphones, and I could get them because they got new ones. And I'd get them cheap. Nope, they cut all that stuff. And I'm like, I can't keep waking up every day, losing a source of income every single day, and products I have, I got to spend money to get back. We just, we can't rely on this. So by the end of covid, we went from 740,000 on our max year to like, 150,000 50,000 in gross revenues. To this day, I do some FBM, I still have some stuff at FBA. I think this year, if we hit 30 or 40 grand on Amazon, I'd be surprised. We do not rely on Amazon at all. It is a nice extra little 1500 or $2,000 check every month. But if I don't get it and tomorrow, everything was closed, so be it. It got so bad. I'm a big remote control seller. People probably know that I buy pallets remote controls. It sounds crazy, but it's one of my niches. And they started banning brands like the you can think of, like your TVs, like Sony, Samsung, Sanyo, JVC, RCA, stuff like that. They would start blocking some of these brands, of all these remotes, so immediately I couldn't sell them.

Suzanne Wells:

Yeah, it was crippling. I mean, it was crippling because what as grocery sellers? I found these seasonal UGA Pop Tarts one year, and they were, like, $3 at Walmart. And I went to, like, every Walmart, and I was selling those for $25 a box. You know, college, collegiate stuff is crazy. But the the problem would be Amazon itself would get that product. And so the third party sellers, you had no no leverage, because they would just out price you. And, okay, you can't do that anymore. Amazon's got it, Amazon's got it. And it was, it was, you know, it gave me stomach aches.

Unknown:

So my neighbor does 3 million a year on Amazon, and he's, my gosh, he's been going downhill a lot, and he operates at like, 20 or 30% but he was selling a lot of grocery stuff. He did during the holidays. He did gingerbread kits, which was fantastic. Yeah, that got banned. He did Jelly Belly. That got blocked. He did the advent calendars, those, a lot of those, like the Harry Potter ones they used to do. Well, he did a knife set, like a Christmas gift knife bundle, like in the wood blocks, like really nice set. Amazon ended up buying the company that made those knives and cut him off. He would buy those sets for 50 bucks, and they were selling for 150 bucks, and they bought the company. He had a letter of approval from the company saying, you can sell our product. He contacted Amazon. He goes, Hey, I got gated in these. I got a letter. They're like, we bought them, and you can't sell it anymore. I'm like, home. He would make 2030 grand, just too

Suzanne Wells:

volatile of a marketplace. And that's when I decided to go back to eBay 100% and focus more on collectibles, the unique items that you know they're not making anymore, and that nobody can get 1000s of them in stock because they just don't exist.

Unknown:

So we have a lady on our on our program that sells vintage Christmas ornaments, uh huh, they're like 100 bucks a piece. She has like 5000 in her store. She makes so much money. I'm like, what? And she goes, You can't get these. These are 90s, like, Hallmark 90s, Jeffrey Breen, or Breen, or some I know, all these brands I've never heard of a little before. My time and 100 bucks an ornament. And she's, like, paying $20 a piece for him. I'm like, what? Like, this is incredible. Like, just finding something unique, something out there, you know, just carving out your position, I guess, is what you know,

Suzanne Wells:

but also being able to adapt, because it's just a changing environment the entire time. Let's see, I started in 2003 so you just have to be able to pivot and and do new things and figure out what's trending, or find, I hate the word niche, but that's what it is. So anyway, we've been chatting for a while here. I wanted to say, Oh, wow, for you to talk about what's happening on your YouTube channel, because you're going in some new directions and you're pivoting. So what's happening there?

Unknown:

Yeah, so, um, the YouTube channel like something I learned over I've had the channel since 20. I created it in 15, but I didn't start really uploading till 16. So you're talking about nine years, almost 10 years. Like we discussed back then, a lot of people, there weren't as many people selling. So not a lot of people were educated on how to use eBay, or how to use these different things. And over the course of the last 10 years, I found that a ton of people have started eBay, grown eBay, they've done Facebook, they've done all stuff. They learn how to use it. All. They know how to use these platforms. And so when you do a video on something like, you know how to sell on eBay over time. Everybody knows how to do it. They don't have to watch the videos anymore, right? And there's only so much content. Like, we like to do the update videos. When eBay does updates, which is great. Everybody watches them to know what the new features are, the new fees, or the new whatever. And those videos always get good views, but there's still a small, you know, group of people that watch that stuff and and people don't need to continue to watch the same type of videos over and over and over again and eat. And YouTube is kind of a changing and adapting thing where people want to. What's going on now, what's new, what's the hottest thing? They want a little bit of entertainment, but also on YouTube. And this is sad to say, because I hate it, and I've always hated it, but it's true, people want the things that are kind of shocking, the things that are like, the stories that are behind the scenes, the stories that are like, going to get them having a discussion, right? Because Youtube values engagement. They value comments and people coming back. And so what do you mean, like, the Cracker Barrel dispute? Yeah, exactly. And that's one. And so you know what I do is reselling related. But even before now, even before this year, going back years, I've done videos about like, stores going out of business, because sometimes resellers could go buy inventory, like, when Michaels, or whatever Joanne's goes out of business, or showing like, hey, this store went out of business because it's a brick and mortar and online selling rules, right? Like they were always sort of intertwined and relevant, or they had a little thing to do with each other the tax laws. Like, I don't try to get into politics. I hate politics. But when tax laws come out, it matters to us. Like we need to know this, what is the $20,000 What's the 1099, laws? What is that going to mean for the tax bracket increase if you sell so much on eBay versus this or that? Those are all important things. People think I make those because I'm being political. I'm like, No, that matters for those of us that are actually owning our own businesses or reselling or, you know that that? Well, I can't remember what it was called. This the CTA, where you had to register your business and put all your information in right, where they kept going back and forth on it. And so I've been making these videos for years about other things, not just reselling, but business finances, all that stuff. And so this year came along, and believe it or not, the economy is not great, like, there's a lot of people struggling, and a lot of people ask me all the time, my friends, family, personal, neighbors, how can I make extra money? And I'm like, Well, you guys know what I do, and I point them to my YouTube channel, and all they all ever say to me is like, why are groceries so much? Why is credit card debt so bad? I need to resell because my car payments so higher interest is so high, and they're talking about these topics, and I'm like, Man, these topics are really important to people, and it's why a lot of us do what we do. And so I was like, I need to cover these topics. And I still put out the reselling content. I mean, we just did the reselling content. Reselling content on eBay changes last week and the automatic update or two weeks ago. And so I'm just trying to mix it up and put in a lot of different stuff and, like, just not make the channel tunnel visioned, right? Like, make it a big thing. And so, yeah, I've pivoted a lot on the YouTube channel, and the views have been okay. There's been a few that have gone off and a few that have been flops, but it's important. I just think people should talk about these topics and see it, and not just be one one sided.

Suzanne Wells:

Yeah, I agree. Well, I like some of the new stuff you're putting up, so it does get people talking a lot of controversies out there right now. So anyway, well, that kind of wraps up our time. What are you up to for the rest of the day? Yeah.

Unknown:

So today was after a holiday. We just did a bunch of shipping. I totally forgot it was a Tuesday. I thought it was Monday. Everybody works that way after a holiday, I think. And so it's two o'clock here in the East Coast, in Florida, so I'm going to spend the rest of the day. We've got a ton of photos we photographed last week, so trying to get a lot of inventory up this week, because we didn't list much last week. And then I'll probably record some content, and that's generally my day, half day reselling and half day content.

Suzanne Wells:

That's pretty much it great. Well, it was great to finally meet you after all these years. Yeah. I mean,

Unknown:

for sure, like, we've seen each other, obviously, on all the videos and all the content and online, and we've never done, like, sat down and did

Suzanne Wells:

I know? But it's like, as a creator, it's, you know, you're constantly editing and finding new guests and doing all that, and sometimes it's just hard to leisurely watch you sit

Unknown:

down. Yeah, watching. I get asked that a lot, do I watch a lot of content? And I try to like I listen to a lot. I'll be honest, I listen to it. I put it on the background. I do listen to podcasts. I listen to YouTube videos in the background, if it's somebody sitting there at a desk or talking and discussing stuff, I don't need to watch it, right? Like, I can

Suzanne Wells:

just listen. Yeah? You can listen. You know, I'm really refining my business to more online ordering and smalls, and it's really hard to make those parameters where, oh, I know that would sell, yeah, but I don't that's too big. I don't want

Unknown:

that. So it's tough. I get offered so much trying

Suzanne Wells:

to identify more products that fit that. Just because I'm a single person, it's just me. I don't want a storage unit. I don't want to have to leave home to go inventory. I just don't want to I want to I want to have it all here, accessible, and so I pay a lot of attention to what other people are selling, and, you know, smalls and, like, what kind of things would work for that. And it is, it is working. I'm doing more ephemera. So I'm kind of in a learning phase right now, again, of just always getting, getting, maybe away from so much clothing, because that's what I did for years, because that's what was accessible in thrift stores, right? Oh, 90% of the thrift store is clothing, so just kind of bloom where I was planted, kind of thing. Not a whole lot of changes in store for me. Status, bro. Keep it all going. You know,

Unknown:

you are doing the same thing I am. Like. We're moving out all those clothes. And here's the thing, like a shelf that I have holds five or holds five shelves of two bends each, so 10 bends, and if you put 40 pieces of clothes in it, you get 400 maybe you get 500 and I figured out that the postcard, sports cards and other stuff, the smaller bends could be double stacked, so I could carry 30 of them, and they do like 500 I could get 15,000 pieces of inventory on one shelf. And so if I had 500 pieces of clothes listed, and I sell, you know, three or four day versus 15,000 pieces of postcards, sports cards, other stuff, how many would I sell per day? You know, a few per 1000 myself. And I started doing the math, and I'm like, with one or two shelves of sports cards, if I filled my garage full of clothing, I'd sell more. They're smaller, they're easier to ship. The materials are lighter. My cost of goods is cheaper, and they're just way easier to list. You know, yeah, we gotta get up more quantity, but it just makes more sense. And and I hate clothing, if we're going to be totally honest.

Suzanne Wells:

Well, and I'm more of in a refining stage, and you keep refining this business as it goes along, keep evolving, and you learn, like, yeah, I don't want to do that. I tried that, that backfired, that didn't work, and you're constantly doing that, and find that sweet spot where everything's working and you love what you're doing. Like, I love this selling sports cards and all. And that just says, I have no interest in that. I want to do, like, small, beautiful things, like brooches, or no jewelry. But brooches are kind of easier because they're very unique and they're popular again, yeah,

Unknown:

we have a watch seller here in my neighborhood that does really well. He does, you know, couple watches a day, but they're in the Not, not Rolex. I'm not not Rolex. I'm not talking about designer I'm talking about like, $100 watches. $150 watches. He pays 25 and $50 for he goes to pawn shops, he goes online to watch groups, he goes on Facebook marketplace, and he doesn't go outsourcing a whole, whole lot. He has, I'd say he's probably got four or 500 watches listed. And the guy does 15 grand a month on eBay. Good for him. And those four or 500 watches fit in like, three bins. Excellent. Yeah, yeah, bags them, tags them, and puts them in. And I'm like, That's a great business that takes up this much space,

Suzanne Wells:

right? I'm I'm following the people that do this from an RV, or do this from a tiny house, or, you know, like they've got it figured out. Anyway, I will let you go. And thanks again for for coming on and chatting, and maybe we'll reconnect. Yeah, let's down the road and catch up,

Unknown:

please. During Christmas fourth quarter, I need to do more of these sit downs. So thank you for bringing me on here, getting me out of my cave.

Suzanne Wells:

Wells, yeah, I hear you on that. Well, thanks again. It was good to meet

Unknown:

you. Thanks. Bye, bye.

Suzanne Wells:

Next week, my guest is Craig, who is newish to eBay, but has been a reseller in other venues for most of his adult life. So he knows the world of reselling and is learning the eBay platform. He's had great success and posted some very cool sales on the Facebook group. So I hope you will tune in for that episode next week, and thank you all for supporting this podcast and listening and telling your friends about it. I hope you have a successful week on eBay. Talk to you next week. Bye, everybody you.