Yikes! Ebay Passwords Hacked. Update Your Password. Direct Link

    Hackers are at it again.  If you have an EBay account you MUST change your password.  Here is the link to make the change.   Also remember that if you have used that password in other places now is the time to make those changes too.   I so deplore hackers!

I Just Love Selling the Little Things on Ebay.....For A Nice Profit. BOLO

 I know I've said it before but I'm saying it again.  I love selling small things on Ebay.  You can usually get them super cheap, the are easy to pack and ship and the return on investment is huge.  Check out this listing of mine here that just closed today for a good example.  I always pick up Loving Family furniture when I see it at garage sales or thrifts ( leave the houses though unless you are going to Craigs List them or sell at consignment.)

  I put up 6 of these listings in 30 minutes including photos and descriptions using my handy dandy EBay mobile app on my iPhone.  Not a bad dollar per hour.  I'm almost completely focused on Amazon right now so I have not listed much on Ebay in the last several weeks but come next week I'm back on the Ebay train as well.

Back On Blogger....Plus a Video from One Of My Favorite Ebay Video Bloggers

  Well for about 10001 technical reasons I'm back on Blogger.  It's funny that I make my money on the internet and yet I am completely baffled by Wordpress.  I know, I know it's easy but when you take someone like me who barely remembers her name half the time and ask her to remember passwords that look like this %^#$^&$%*% and dashboards and plug ins -  well it just does not work.  So although Blogger is not as frilly it's more my speed for the moment.

  I also wanted to take a moment to introduce you all to one of my favorite new You Tube finds.  Mom The Ebayer is one of my new You Tube Favorites.  Not only does she find almost all her Ebay goodies for free but she does it with class and style.  Check her out here.

Heavy Duty Scotch Packing Tape ONLY $12.96 Again on Amazon A Resale Shippers Dream

 

   How sweet it is.....  Remember how I said I was going to get my last shipment off to Amazon today?  Well that was the idea anyway.  I got 3 boxes all done and ready for pick up.  Went to box up the last two boxes and yep, out of tape.  I did not even have the cheasy cheapo tape I keep as a back up around.  Off to Amazon I went with my fingers crossed and thankfully they have the deal back on 6 rolls of the heavy duty Scotch Packing Tape I love.  $12.96 straight to my door with no waiting in line with a crazy two year old.  Allejuah !!!Guess who slpurged and upgraded shipping to have it here tomorrow? Oh you know who.  I figured it would save me the gas and hassle of dealing with holiday traffic. It's so nice when things work out.  Now to just get those last items sold and I will be an even happier camper.  Fingers are staying crossed as sales have been steady.  Next year I really need to ramp up my inventory earlier in the year.  I know people who have Amazon shipping out over 50+ items per day for them right now.  I'm selling just about everything I send in I just wish I had the time to send in more.  Perhaps I need a clone.  Yep, for sure a clone is needed but for now I'll be happy with my tape deal.

The One Noise I Don't Mind Getting Woken Up For....

  The Cha Ching sound my phone makes from an Ebay sale at 2am.. Gotta love that app and international buyers!!!!

Online Post Season Selling Tip and Savings ( Video)

  Ok savers and sellers the time is upon us to maximize our savings and our sales by making the most of our coupons and handy dandy store sales now.  It will bid us well in the post holiday weeks.  Here are a few of my post holiay selling ideas that are great to start to implement now.

  ( Pardon my crazy hair and five chins...)

  I would love to hear from other sellers some great things you sold last year after the holiday.  Planning is 9/10ths the battle my friends!

My Pledge

I am vowing that anything unlisted from my EBay inventory at the end of the day November 1st is going to be donated that day.

November and December I'm going to concentrate my selling efforts on Amazon. I'm going to one big used toy sale in Nov and will let myself buy only then for EBay until January 1st. There is just too much stuff and too little time.

After 11-1 I will be shipping and reworking listings to make them into lots but that's where it ends. I need more time for Amazon in Dec and I need more space in my basement for my kids to play. The other reason changing things up is because I want inventory for the first week of January to be a breeze.

What about you are you revving it up for the holidays, changing things up like me or scaling back?

10 Bids 12 Watchers 50 Views and 6 Days to Go

The facts on my 2002 Woody and Jessie Pull String Doll auction. I grabbed them at the consignment sale last week for $5. Posting from my phone or I'd add a link. I love to watch a good auction battle because they are becoming so rare.

Anyone else have something interesting up right now?

Update: It ended at $57. I wanted about $80. Oh we'll it was fun to watch but no more starting auctions so low.

It Was Not One But Two.

Yep you read that right not a second before I could get to them TWO American Girl mint condition period dolls were snatched up.

I'm pretty sure they were Julie and Molly. Perfect hair and fully clothed. They were priced at $9.99. I literally stood in shock as the mother handed them both to her 4 year old. Luckily the mother was thrilled with her find and so was the girl. She said they usually would not be able to afford something like this. I congratulated her on the find instead of crying. I would have felt worse if she didn't know how great her find was. She went on to tell me how well her daughter treats her dolls and how she really wanted a big girl doll like these. The second doll is going to a cousin for Christmas.

The good news is that this gives me hope that I will again find something this great and next time I'll be a second sooner.

Have you had anything great slip through your hands? Please share do I know I'm not alone.

Why I Love My UPS Man

For $6.42 my UPS guy is taking this all right from my house. Yes to saving gas and time. Schedule your pick ups at ups.com. It only takes a minute to set up an account.

No More Pooh

Please slap me if I pick up another Winnie the Pooh, Tigger or Eeyore for resale unless they are new with tags. Talk about a slow, low sale. Off to the consignment sale with most of these.

1/3 If By Sea

Just curious..... For those of you who do not ship internationally why not?

I would say 1/3 of my business is international on EBay. They rarely ask for a lower price on Best Offer and typically love BIN. When I list I always keep international buyers in mind and price high and add Best Offer. I find it interesting how many sellers are excluding the rest of the world.

I print my labels from EBay just like domestic and my carrier still picks them up. I do have a handful of countries I don't ship to ( Italy, Brazil and a few others) but all in all I'm happy to have international sales.

For those of you who don't ship international aside from telling my why I'm giving you a homework assignment. Here it is: In the pile you have to list I want you to pull out the item you think will sell for the most. Now look up the completed sales from high to low price. I would be surprised if the one that sold for the highest was not a BIN that ships world wide. I would also guess in most cases the lowest selling one was an auction that just ships to the US. Well....was I right??

Let me know how the homework goes. Oh and I'm going to try to get a yard sale finds post up in a day or two.

Quick Inventory Suggestion for Amazon

Just a quick blurb for those who sell on Amazon.  A great place to find discontinued or hard to find health items that go for big bucks are Dollar Store types of stores.  I have found some great flips at places that people do not traditionally think of when they think health and beauty.  Think outside the box for great profits.  This applies to EBay as well but I usually sell health and beauty on Amazon.

It Sold

Remember the BOLO vintage Monopoly game I posted about a few weeks ago? It sold for my full asking price of $42.99. Yipee!!! I can sure use the cash for Lego land next week.

Here's the trippy thing....the buyer paid $45 to have it shipped overnight. Wow! The even funnier thing is that he was the second buyer to ask for overnight shipping on the game and I've had three requests this week for overnight shipping. In my five years of selling I've never had that request before. To bad you have to pay a commission on shipping.

I Saw it On Craigslist....

This Craigslist posting was titled "To Everyone Who Yardsales" ( and I promise was not written by yours truely).

Hello I love to yard sales and finding great deals but it seems every weekend I go someone has been to the yard sale before it has even started. Please people if you post your sale for 6:oo am or 7:oo or so on than have your sale at that time... Please we are being fair to you for waiting until your posted time so it would be nice to get to your sale and not hear that everything was sold before I got there.... Trust me if your things are that good the people will come back.... Just saying... :)

  I think the author is a bit sick of early birds I'd say.

   I guess there are different rules of thought on yard sale etiquette.  Being that I can rarely get out of the house before nine due to kids I can say I'm not an early bird.  I do hate it though when I'm there at the start of the sale and I've dragged the kids with me because the sale advertised something I really wanted only to have the seller say " Sorry I sold it a person who came really early."  I guess the early bird gets the worm sometimes but there is a point where being very early is very rude I think. 

  What do you think an acceptable time to show up at a yard sale is if it says it starts at 8am?  Just curious.   I think 15 minutes early is fine and if it is a really cherry sale I might park my car across the street 30 minutes prior to establish a game plan and start my strategy or look up listings on Ebay.

Back to School Deal and Resale BOLO

  Ahhh... we are coming back to that time of year.  Back to school that is.  This has been a tough summer for me with the tots so I'm looking forward to back to school for the older two.

  The one downside of back to school is it can be darn expensive.  The lists my kids come home with for needed items is longer than Santa's list.  Luckily this year my oldest got his list for the coming year on the last day of school.  Hooray I can purchase in advance when the deals are hot and not picked over!

  This week at Toys R Us they have lots of back to school BOGO's.  Almost everything crayola is buy one get one.  I stocked up on crayons, colored pencils and dry erase markers.  I also got a few stocking stuffers: crayola crayons that are the twist up kind ( love those as they don't break easily but they are pricey if you pay full price) and two boxes of jumbo crayons for my toddler for Christmas.  All BOGO.  They are also offering a free lunch tote with a backpack purchase of $12.99 or more.  I scored mine for $4.99 per piece on a sweet Lands End deal in January but this weeks Toys R Us deal is still good.

  As a side note I think that art items are great for Toys For Tots and it's a great time to start thinking about that part of the holiday season as well.

  And now for the resale part of my ramblings.  The bottom of my sons back to school list said the following " no need for Trapper Keepers".  I have not thought about a Trapper Keeper in 20+ years but decided to look them up on EBay for kicks.  Check out my findings.  You know who will be looking for a nice condition Trapper Keeper now don't ya?????

  Many savings and thrifty scores to us all !!!!!!

Hot BOLO Tip

I was at the Disney Outlet near me last week stocking up and the manager let me in on a hot lead.

Disney is putting out Finding Nemo 2. You know what that means..... hot Nemo merchandise. Keep your eyes peeled for Dory and the gang at yard sales and thrifts. When another movie comes out the stuff from the first movie becomes hot again.

The manager also told me they would be releasing Toy Story 4 and 5 but they will go right to video. Toy Story stuff is always hot. I picked up two Toy Story items this week. One is super hot. I'll share later in the week.

My other tip from my FAB Disney Outlet trip is this: Be super friendly to the cashiers. I know it seems obvious but I'm ashamed of how some people treat cashiers. Anyway I struck ip a conversation with mine as he was ringing up my large haul and he said " do you have a coupon?". Me " I sure wish I did.". He ran right out back and gave me a 25% off coupon. He saved me $30 on top of my already ridiculous hot scores. Kindness literally pays sometimes.

Dear International Buyer.....

Please give your package more than three days to arrive before you start asking me where it is. I love selling international for the most part and typically there are no problems but every once in a while I get a buyer who thinks there item is being teleported.

I always answer in a professional way and advise them of any tracking etc. but it makes me a bit nuts when someone emails nearly every day about a package mailed first class international just last week.

Ok rant over. For those who still do not sell internationally this does not happen often and I would say 20-30% of my items go international. I guess it's just as likely to happen with a domestic customer but this one is international and just can't get there soon enough!

Using Your Gymbucks at the Gymboree Outlet.

Oh yes I did say that. You can now use your Gymbucks at the Gymboree Outlet. Yipee!!!! I used mine yesterday at the outlet and I would love to say I had time to post a picture but I did not. I can tell you however that I paid $27 out of pocket for 7 outfits for my girls for next summer. Booyah!!! Totally cute and inexpensive, love, love. There were several pieces that were $3.49 and under and that was before my Gymbucks.





My girls will wear them and then its off to the consignment sale where I will make most if not all of my money back that I spent buying them. I'd say its a sure money maker but my kids are messy and I do not sell anything with stains rips etc. so we will loose a few pieces even when I fight the good laundry fight.



For those who resell Gymboree please remember that the Outlet lines are slightly different than the regular store and there are those who believe that the quality is different. When selling Gymboree online if you are not sure if it is Outlet or not just look at the tag. If there is a box of yellow/ orange dots next to the name it is Outlet and should be identified as such in your listing.



For me I have found that given the saturation of Gymboree sellers on Ebay and the fact that this year I purchased a lot of my pieces at the Outlet that the consignment sale will be the better bang for my time and buck i think for reselling Gymboree. We will see though as I stand committed to nothing but the f

Vintage Games... Garage Sale Find and BOLO

I picked this Monopoly game up last weekend while out hitting the yard sales. I actually picked it up with a Perfection game and paid $1 for the pair. My intention was to bring it down to my husbands family house so all the grandkids could play it although they are still a little young for it now.

Fast forward to today when the thought popped into my head " hey this is still in the shrink wrap I wonder what I could get for it on Amazon even thought the box seems a bit warped". As I was attempting to scan the bar code with my iPhone to see what it was going for on Amazon I realized that there was in fact no bar code. You know what that means right???? OLD. Older games did not have bar codes.

My game is a 1961 number 9 Monopoly game still in the shrink wrap. This puppy sold recently in the same condition as mine for $29. Not to shabby and yes the kids will still be getting Perfection and yes I will be selling Monopoly and looking for a less valuable one for the kids to beat play with.

Quick Amazon selling tip: Monopoly games are collectible and have about 1000 themes. New in box Monopoly theme games are a great pick up of you can get them for under $10 to sell on Amazon. I sold a Star Wars one last Christmas for $80. Think of themes people collect and there is usually a Monopoly game for it and a customer to resell it to.

( Photocredit to macmillian528 as my game is not listed or photographed yet.)