There are 1,656 listings in his eBay shop and thousands of dollars of inventory on the shelves, waiting for anyone to come along and buy it. Then came one slow weekend. The reseller behind Hot Lunch says he had one sale on Saturday and three on Sunday.
Adding the numbers up for his video, he figured the weekend would come to less than $50. “So, what’s going on?” he asked.
A $480 Day One Week Earlier Made The Slump Sting
The week before, he says, several days topped $200 and many topped $150. One day hit about $480. He expected the trend to continue as the fourth quarter deepened.
Instead, Saturday brought one sale with about $11 in profit. Sunday brought three more.
His goal for the year is $50,000 in profit from reselling. Spread over the full year, that is about $137 profit per day. From where he stands now, he says it needs to be closer to $200 a day, so a two-day weekend should bring in close to $400, “instead of 50 bucks.”
“I’m Not Running A Two-Day Business”
He says he is a little worried, but he has sold on eBay long enough to know this happens. Some days he makes several hundred without changing anything, and other days he sells nothing at all.
The mistake, he believes, is reacting too quickly when sales slow. He does not want to slash all his prices, run piles of promotions or end and relist half his store after a couple of bad days.
“There are so many variables involved on all of these different platforms that are out of my control,” he says, so you never really know if a change caused the sales that follow. If sales drop for several weeks in a row, he would investigate. One weekend does not make him panic.
A 58-Piece Dish Set For $10 From His Lunch Break Thrift Store
He shops at a thrift store on his lunch break from his day job, nearly every day. This week he bought a set of dishes with a sign reading 58 pieces for $10.
His count came to 56 with the lids, or 53 or 54 once things were combined. Either way, it works out to about 20 or 21 cents a piece. A casserole dish, a cream and sugar set and a gravy boat with an under plate each cost around that.
The set is Imperial Stoneware made by Dalton in Japan, in a pattern called J3000 stone glaze, with floral plates called Mountain Song, J3003. He says it reminds him of the 1970s and early 1980s.
Why He Says He Let His Heart Decide
He admits the resale value is not great. A cup and saucer sells for $4.99 on Replacements.com, and he says that site usually charges about twice what an item actually sells for on eBay. He halves their price when he has no comps, so he cannot sell the pieces for $2 each and make shipping worthwhile.
“Sometimes I don’t take my own advice,” he says. Under the bright lights at home he noticed a chip on the gravy boat and another dish. The worst case, he figures, is using them in place of the IKEA dishes his family uses now, or selling pieces for a dollar each at a garage sale.
The store changes its sale sticker color every month. This month orange is 50% off, and in the last week of the month those stickers drop to a dollar. A larger set is marked $125, and he may buy it tomorrow if it is still there.
A Mini NES Console, A Motorcycle Part And Three Pens Saved The Night
Packing the weekend’s orders, he went through each one:
- An off-brand mini Nintendo with 620 built-in games, bought at a garage sale for $5 and sold on Mercari for $19.99, leaving $11.69 after fees.
- A Honda alternator cover for a 1974 CB 360, free from a Facebook Marketplace deal, sold for $11 and earned about $9.10.
- A Lucky Brand shirt with a Triumph motorcycles logo, bought for $2 and sold for $16.19, with about $11.45 profit.
- Three Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales books, free to him, sold on Vinted for $13.23.
While he packed, one more sale came in, and he says it was worth more than the rest of the weekend combined. It was three sealed Parker Vector fountain pens from 1996, bought at a garage sale for $2 each.
A buyer paid $67.47 for them, shipping to Japan, and he earned $59.25. The shipping charge was $14.29, but because he lives near eBay’s international shipping hub in Chicago, it cost him only $5.73.
Sunday’s $33 Became $93, But The Goal Is Still $12,832 Away
With the pens, Sunday’s profit climbed from about $33 to $93. “It’s a far cry from the 200 that I’m shooting for,” he says, but he was happy with the change.
He says sales can come in clumps, and it is not uncommon for him to go a day with none and then see four arrive between 10:30 and midnight. Mondays can mean 25 or 30 boxes, and he hopes for more as Christmas nears.
His average daily profit slipped back to $126 after Saturday. With about two months left, he says he is $12,832 from his target. “I’m not optimistic right now that that $50,000 is in sight.”
What Other Sellers Can Learn From One Slow Weekend
- Judge your store over weeks and months, not one or two days.
- Keep listing, packing and sourcing during a slump instead of overhauling prices.
- Track what you actually paid, because a $30 mistake and a free item look very different on the books.
- Check shipping rates for each order, since sometimes you make a little on shipping and sometimes you lose.
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