Flea Market Finds 11/4

As previously reported right here, today is the final day of 2012 for the flea market. It returns in April, but there is a new flea market in the works that is supposed to start in a month or so. Yay! 
On to the finds find. We found a vendor who had a box of wood type blocks that were used back in the day for newspapers. He was selling them for .50 cents each, so I picked the four coolest I could find. They are:

• Top - Christmas Greetings
• Left Center - Westborough Woman's Club
• Right Center - Engineering/Installation/Design Financing
• Bottom - Always In The Market For Antiques

I really like these.  I want to ink these and print them so when I list them the buyer can see the designs, but apparently we need a brayer to roll the ink on and then stamp them.  I tried using an ink pad and it did not work well.  That was it, but we did get to stop at the donut shop on the way home and I got 25 glazed chocolate donut holes.

After the flea market we went to the Goodwill where I picked up the Reyn Spooner shirts yesterday. There were several Go Barefoot Hawaiian shirts there and I picked up five.  We also found a Life Is Good t shirt, a cool Polo Sport t shirt, a Wilton Barney cake pan, microwave turntable, and Mr. Bacon vs Monsieur Tofu. I don't know what that is either.
In other news, the soon-to-be-world-famous Pioneer Valley Fashion Super Sunday Sale is going well, and I have sold several items.  The sale was scheduled to start at 1 minute past midnight this morning, but there was a glitch (I think setting the clocks back) and it did not start till 7 am. So I extended it by 7 hours. That's it for now, time to do some listing. Adios!

Tag Sale Treasure Hunt 11/3

With only 4 tag sales today, my hopes of finding something good were not too high. The first sale was a bust, the second was an estate sale. Even though I have never had great luck at estate sales, they intrigue me greatly. There was a large crowd there already when we arrived. I saw a man walking to his car carrying two nice Pyrex bowls. NOOOOOO!!  After a little poking around, I found a Pyrex Americana Cinderella bowl, #444. It has some scratches on it, so we are going to keep it. It was only $1.00.  We also found a pair of SAS shoes for $1.00.
The 3rd yard sale was terrible, and the fourth was at an address we had been to twice previous. Here I found a bag of K'Nex parts for $1.00.  I will add these to the K'Nex lot that I will list when I get at least a pound.
On the way home we decided to stop at a Goodwill that is close to our house. I found an Oreo coffee mug first. Then I spotted a Fire-King peach luster coffee cup. I have terrible luck reselling Fire-King, but I cannot resist it's charm. Spent a buck on that.
Then I made my way over to mens shirts. Nothing....nothing....nothing...wait what's this? A Reyn Spooner? Cool! Another one! And another! Holy cow! One more! 4 all together. There were also about 8-10 Go Barefoot Hawaiian shirts.  I had never heard of these, but I bought one anyway.  I think someone got rid of their Hawaiian shirt collection, cause they are all large.
Here they are!

New and Exciting Things!

New and exciting for me at least! Despite the sales slump, I have been moving forward with listing and such. I have achieved my goal of upgrading my store to Premium.  My plan was to wait until I hit 230 listings, as this is the magic number where it becomes cheaper to upgrade from Basic store to Premium. I hit 230 last night.  Fixed price listings are now .05 cents vs .20 cents. Of course the monthly fee is more, but if you stay above 230 listings you do save money. 
Autumn got a flyer from Vistaprint  for 250 free business cards, so we ordered the card pictured above. The cost was $4.50 for shipping. Not too bad.
About a month ago, I registered Pioneer Valley Fashion at Go Daddy. I finally got around to redirecting  it to my Ebay store. This makes finding it a lot easier than using the old Ebay store address.
I have embraced using a tripod when taking pictures for auctions. I used to point and shoot, and while usually good, my pictures left a little to be desired. I am by no means a pro at taking pictures, but this is a major step in the right direction.
I have gotten everything ready for my Sunday Sale. All items have been put into a second store category for easy access.
I have gotten all of the rubber stamps we bought listed on Ebay. I have sold 5 already for $16.95.  Not a lot, but we only paid $2.00 for the lot, and I still have 45 listed so I stand to make some decent money if they sell.  
As of now, there are only a few yard sales tomorrow, and Sunday is the last flea market. Hopefully there will be some last minute additions to the yard sale roster.

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

First, and most important, I want to give our best wishes to all the folks that have been affected by Sandy.  I lived on Long Island for most of my life and hope that everyone is okay, and everything gets back to normal as soon as possible.  I find it hard to stay focused on business with all that is happening, but go on we must.

The Good: Remember those rubber stamps Autumn scored for $2.00?  I have cleaned them up and listed 33 of them so far.  I still have about a dozen to list.  I have already sold 3 for $10.00, so the rest is gravy.

The Bad: This past week I have had 4 returns.  I accept returns for whatever reason, and have had very few to date.  Of the 4, I have gotten 2 and refunded the buyer's money and relisted the item.  The other 2 have not arrived yet.  In fact one left me positive feedback.  So who knows?  All the returns (3 pairs of shoes, 1 pet costume) were due to not fitting properly.

The Ugly: Sales are in the crapper.  June and July were terrible, August and September were great, October started okay, and finished dismally.  I averaged 3 items sold every day in August and September, October was less that 2. In the past 5 days I have made $19.96. I try very hard to implement whatever "suggestions" Ebay comes up with (large photos, Fast and Free shipping, optimized listing for mobile customers, 1 day handling, tracking uploading).  Now the new one, according to Tina at My Secret Ebay Diary, whom I trust very much, is "Inverse Document Length". I interpret this to mean that it is not good to have an overly long description, as the more words you use means the more keywords you have and this is known as "keyword stuffing" and is no good. I do have a long "fine print" section, which I am deleting mainly because it is covered elsewhere, and no one reads it anyway.

I am going to have a sale on Sunday to see if this helps, and I am making some tweaks here and there. Saturday is yard sale day, so until then, have a good one and happy Ebaying!

Flea Market Finds 10/28

As usual on Sunday, we took a trip to the flea market this morning. Sandy is due to arrive sometime tomorrow so we weren't too optimistic about finding things.  We were not disappointed.  It was chilly and windy, there were very few vendors set up, and when we talked to the owner, he said next Sunday will be it till the spring.  Here is what I found:

• 1 Microwave turntable, $1.00

Yep...that's it.  I was hoping to find some cool Pyrex after scoring 2 Pyrex Promotional Casserole dishes yesterday.  Or some Legos, or something....but no dice. Since next Sunday is the end, we are hoping that there will be a lot of vendors trying to get in on the last minute action.
I got about a dozen items listed today, so all was not lost. Tomorrow and Tuesday will be listing days, provided the power doesn't go out due to Sandy.  Almost one year ago, we had a snowstorm that blanketed our area with wet, heavy snow that knocked out power for 3 days. Wednesday we are going to the Salvation Armies south of us. Good luck to all in the path of Sandy, be careful and be well.

Tag Sale Treasure Hunt 10/27

It's Saturday, and that means only one thing....yard sales!  We went to about a dozen or so today, and did pretty well again.  We spent about 3 hours going to and fro; and we scored the following:

• 2 pounds 9 ounces of Legos, .50 cents!
• 2 Vintage 1959 Pyrex Twin Server Promotional Dishes, $1.00 for both
• Viewmaster and 10 discs, $1.00
• Punchy Hawaiian Punch phone $2.50 - SOLD! $39.99
• Beige Rotary Phone $1.00

Last but not least, Autumn scored a huge lot of rubber stamps for $2.00:

 This is less than half of them.  We're I'm gonna clean these babies up and get 'em listed!  Depending on design and size, these can bring up to $8-$10 bucks a piece.  Most will be less, but for $2.00 it's a winner!
I'm off to separate out the Legos and clean up that phone.  Tomorrow we will be off to the Olde Hadley Flea Market, so tune in then for the results!

Thrift Store(ies)

On Wednesday all of our local Salvation Armies (we have 6 or so in our general area) have Family Day, which means 4 out of the 5 price tag colors are 50% off.  We rotate the stores we go to so we always have fresh items to buy.  After a slow couple of weeks we did quite well yesterday at just one store.  This particular store is one of the busier ones, but it was PACKED yesterday! Autumn found 3 nice pairs of shoes (UGG, SAS, and Dansko), and I found (above left-right):

• A vintage 60's or so Boy Scout uniform (with pants and 2 patches in the pocket) $9.99
• The North Face A5 Series short sleeve shirt $2.49
• Polo Sport micro fleece pullover jacket $2.99
• Women's Under Armour shirt $1.99
• Men's Under Armour shirt $1.99
• Nike Windbreaker $3.99

I also found a pair of Tommy Bahama silk shorts, a Castelli cycling jersey, a pair of Pearl Izumi cycling shorts, and a pair of Columbia Titanium shorts. The good thing about the thrift stores is they are a steady source of merchandise all year long, which is great when the season ends on yard sales and the flea market closes. We also have a few Goodwills and 2 Savers south of us.  I like the selection that Savers has, but they are far more expensive that the Salvation Army.  We generally only go to Savers when they have a 50% off sale (usually on holidays).  I plan on listing today and tomorrow  (as much as possible), and then off to the yard sales on Saturday.