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One Amazon seller’s account of a perfectly average trip to a thrift store

By Peter Valley 14 Comments

I profile all the twists, turns, and finds from a perfectly average trip to the thrift store. (Or maybe just a little above average).

I noticed I’ve done a lot of posts on “outlier” stories of big yields and exceptional finds, so this post is long overdue: A perfectly “average” trip to a thrift store.

The (average) story

I spotted a thrift store that advertised on Craigslist, of all places, late one night. It stood out of two reasons. One, I’d never heard of it and it was only 20 minutes away. Two, it had a virtual record store built into its basement – fully alphabetized and organized. The photos in the ad looked amazing, so I had to check it out.

Its always immediately apparent if a thrift store is “real” thrift store, or one that feebly tries to cultivate an image of “respectability” and orderliness by throwing everything good in the dumpster (I’ve worked at these place. This is what they do.) This was definitely a “real” thrift store: Way more merchandise than room, and every shelf and table was brimming over with disorganized chaos. Just how me (and my bank account) like it.

I hit the VHS shelves first, and found some gems. Five very long tail documentary and instructional titles (ranked 500,000+) but each going for $20+. Will they ever sell? Who cares. They were 50 cents.

Also found were two rare, early-90s Alex Jones / Infowars.com documentaries on VHS. (I’m keeping these for myself).

Then I moved on to the CDs. I usually don’t give a lot of time to CDs, but I quickly noticed some business audio books mixed in (Brian Tracy, etc), so I spotted some potential. I ended up with 12 CDs, each in the $7 to $15 range. They were $1 each, so I was happy. CDs are very hit-or-miss, and in my experience do not do well when priced more than $3.99 above the lowest merchant fulfilled offer. So I allot my time to these sparingly, but at this particular store it was time well spent.

And because its important to treat yourself, I found the ultra-rare “Best of Phil Hendrie Show 2005” CD. If you don’t know who Phil Hendrie is, he’s created the most ingenious form of improv comedy ever devised by the human mind. His fans are also rabid, and every “Best of” Phil Hendrie CD on Amazon is going for $50+. The 2005 CD is apparently so rare, its not even listed on Amazon. I would price it at $100, but there’s no way I would part with it. I was definitely keeping this one.

They didn’t have many DVDs, but I quickly pulled found 4 selling for $10+. Three were how-to titles on making arts and crafts, and one was on repairing your credit. They were $2 each, so even at $10 I was still tripling my money after commissions.

Then: The books. The basement was filled with them. I could tell right away they were heavily, heavily picked over. Its part sixth-sense, part every sticker covering every barcode being scratched away, but it was obvious. This would be much more like a slow, methodical gold panning operation than bank robbery.

When a store has been previously visited by a thorough bookseller, you have to do a few things to extract profit:

  • Hit the bottom shelves. The lazy ones miss those.
  • Look up books without barcodes manually. The lazy ones miss those too.
  • Get comfortable buying books with high sales ranks (1 million+). A lot of booksellers need a quick turnaround, and won’t buy anything they can’t flip fast.

When it comes to looking up books manually, the trick is to have a deep knowledge of books, what categories hold their value, and what to give your time to. You can’t look up everything. I go into this in depth in Amazon Altitude (plug), but in short: You have to look for esoteric and arcane, and leave those Time-Life books alone.

And then there are just those books the last person missed, or ones put out since they were there. I wasn’t surprised when, by the time I was done, I had 75 books.

I know I called this an “average” trip to the bookstore, and I would put 75 books as a somewhat above average score. But I got this because I put my time in, looked a ton of books up by hand, and was very thorough. It took me about 90 minutes to get those 75 books.

And, the quality of the books was below average, because it was so picked over, which put me at a handicap. There’s a lesson here: I got an above average yield from an below average selection. You just have to put the work in.

I moved to the cassettes and records, where I found 4 cassettes and 1 record that had value.( Yes, you can sell these profitably via FBA. I wrote about this here and here.)

It got even better when I lumbered up to the register with everything, the cashier looked down at the 6 boxes I had filled, confronted herself with the daunting task of counting everything up, and just said “How about $50?” That amounted to a discount of almost 50%. (When you buy in volume, this actually happens more than you’d think.)

Here are the total stats for my “average trip to the thrift store”:

Books:

Total books: 75 (9 textbooks, 2 audio books, 15 books without barcodes, 49 misc books)
Average sales rank: 860,000 (this is definitely a worse-than-average number, pulled down by several $50+ books ranked 5 to 8 million, and 18 books total ranked worse than 1 million).
Total sales price for books (projected): $1,370.
Total profit on books (projected, using the 60% rule): $822.

Misc. Media:

CDs: 12
DVDs: 4
Cassettes: 4
Records: 1
VHS: 5
Average sales rank: 192,000
Total sales price for misc media (projected): $288
Total profit on misc media (projected, using the 60% rule): $173

TOTAL PROJECTED PROFIT: $995

And that concludes my story of a (just above) average trip to a thrift store.

-Peter Valley

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Filed Under: Amazon Sourcing Stories

Comments

  1. Dave C says

    at

    Peter,

    I noticed in your great post above that you mentioned “Updated suggested repricing methods to reflect the new option allowing the display of FBA offers only”. Can you expand on how to do that? I have a lot of trouble repricing in my Seller Central account and not underpricing items.

    Thanks,

    Dave

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    • Peter Valley says

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      No problem. Manage inventory > Click “low price settings” in upper-right > Select “listings with same fulfillment method”. There you go.

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  2. john iii says

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    i found a cd set in a thrift store yesterday, and there is exactly one copy listed on amazon and one copy listed on ebay. i vaguely remember reading on one of your posts coming across a rare cassette and pricing at a large number, im wondering what you think i should do. i cant find any recorded sales of this item on ebay or amazon, or google for that matter. just two people selling it. i’ll tell you what it is if you email me, i didnt wanna post in case its you selling it @ 995!

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    • Peter Valley says

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      Not me, I’m sure of that. Is it a music CD set, or audio book?

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  3. john iii says

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    somebody’s trying to make a monkey out of you

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    • Peter Valley says

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      The listing looks like it is for an audio cassette set. If you have the CD version, I would set up a product page for it. Then I would look into the book and author, and if it looks like they might have a “following”, i would price high. Probably not $1000-high, but possibly depending on what I could find out. Generally I list items for which I am the only seller at $99.

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      • john iii says

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        im just discovering fba, ive actually never listed anything on amazon been an ebayer for the last 10 years. i have my first shipment about ready, im partially overwhelmed by the volume of “rules” and stuff on amazon, trying to make sure i read it all first. ive been back reading your blog and ryan grant, a few others as well. this is all very new for me but i am very excited because im an avid ebay seller, and if this makes it easier than great!

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  4. Marshall says

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    Hey Pete,
    This was a great article. My question is, what is the 60% rule? Also, Do you recommend avoiding high rank books? You didn’t mention that you have to be ungated to sell DVDs, is this still the case? When starting out, How long does it take to get passed the profits merely paying for fees and shipping? Is there a magic number so to speak as to how many books a person should have in inventory to profit a large sum weekly?
    Thanks
    Marshall

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    • Peter Valley says

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      60% rule is that on average, across all sales, you will keep roughly 60% of the selling price. And yes, DVDs are still a partially gated category.

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  5. JG - Raphael II says

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    Dear Peter,

    Thanks so much for your info. Question: On Amazon, when I “add a product” and click “sell your”, often there are two listings for the same product, the exact same. I worry I’ll get in trouble with Amazon picking the wrong one to list on. Why are they allowing this. It happens a lot.

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    • Peter Valley says

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      If they’re genuinely exactly the same, always pick the one that has the right balance between price and sales rank history.

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  6. JG - Raphael II says

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    Dear Peter,

    I’ve been selling on Amazon FBA. Setting up a new account at Ebay. Should you use the name of your LLC or should you use a “display” name like you do on Amazon?

    Thanks so much,
    JG Raphael II

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    • Peter Valley says

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      Good question. That’s a question for a tax person, not myself. But I just use my store name.

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