Tedious, but Necessary Tasks When Selling Online

Yesterday I woke up early (as I do every day, typically between 4:00-5:00 a.m.), made some coffee using my retro pour-over Chemex and started working. For me that meant listing “new” items in my Etsy store and packaging a few orders. Tedious but necessary to keep my business going. It’s been a struggle this month still I have big bills coming and need to keep focused!

So I spent the morning dipping into my bins of unlisted things. Thankfully I don’t have much left (other than my overflow of lab glass) but it is a common problem for most online sellers. Buying/acquiring often outstrips our ability to process items! Some sellers confess on social media that they have rooms and storage units full of stuff that is unlisted and I can understand how it happens.

I started listing with my excess vintage and antique snapshots. I collect old snaps usually buying them in lots and then put the ones I’m not keeping in a box to sell later. This time I pulled together a small lot of WWII military photos. This is the cutest one with a father and son in matching uniforms.

And I also listed this alabaster urn bought in early 2021. I was unsuccessful in finding out more about its age (certainly vintage, possibly antique, ancient??) and provenance so in the end I’ve priced it modestly.

A similar one on 1st Dibs is priced at $1800 but the prices on this site are always sky high.

I’ve had this small painting for sale for years. It was in a fabulous ’70s wood frame and a buyer wanted just the frame, so I removed the painting, sold her the frame and now I’ve relisted the painting for a modest price.

I also listed the pretty antique American-Brilliant-era crystal dish I bought a few weeks ago, though if hasn’t sold by Valentine’s Day I plan on using it as a candy dish. I do enjoy using and appreciating items before they find new homes.

But it is also that time of year when I need to gather all my financial bits for tax time. Despite the fact that I worked for years as a technical writer for QuickBooks (the small business accounting software), I am surprisingly low tech when it comes to tracking all my info and use tables and Google Sheets. So yesterday I was getting caught up entering my 2021 expenses. (I wish I were better at entering expenses immediately.)

And as it’s the beginning of a new year, I want to go through my oldest inventory items and see what I should just jettison. There comes a time when you just need let go of stale inventory that starts to feel like a millstone around your neck. (I may try to sell a few pieces on Facebook Marketplace to recoup my original purchase price.)

But to break the tedium and to give myself a bit of fun I popped into my neighborhood thrift store. Sadly, some of the shelves were fairly bare and other pickers were out in full force like locusts! (Lately I’ve noticed a few older (retired?) couples shopping together and they seem to be just starting out in the reselling biz given the conversations I overhear. But it can be a great way to earn a little extra money and I can’t blame them for giving it a go.)

So with no hard goods to tempt me I hit the purses. I love purses, but typically they don’t move quickly for me and I have to be picky about what I buy. I had this vintage Louis Feraud, Paris, purse in my basket but in the end took it out.

That may have been a mistake, but it looked very ’80s/early ’90s to me and a hard sell, plus prices for his pre-owned purses are all over the place. (If I remember correctly the thrift store price was around $15.) I left this for someone else.

But the purse I really, really liked was a small round red leather one that with a tassel and chain strap. It felt and looked like quality and bingo, turns out it’s a Jerome Dreyfuss, Paris, Remi purse.

Jeez Louise, his new purses sell in the mid-to upper hundreds of dollars. Here’s a sample with Euro prices of 560 ($612 USD) to 740 ($839 USD).

Similar pre-owned Remi bags are listed online from $170 – $329, so this turned out to be a darn good find and if it doesn’t sell, I’m happy to keep it.

So I’m plugging away…like we all do. It is more work than most newbies realize, but it also has its happy-dance moments that most jobs don’t.

Wising you happy hunting,

Karen