Monday, August 14, 2006

Weirdness abounds!

Well, the Store has been very, very busy lately. Basically I am spending a HUGE chunk of my day in front of a computer, editing already posted items (to add in the cards from Alan that were already up) or writing up completely new ones (for those cards from Alan that I didn't have copies of before). I have occasional breaks to take photographs, eat a meal, or, of course, to fill the many many orders which come rolling in.

Some of the latest: all three Fine condition Revised Taigas for $22.50 each to a gentleman in Belgium; two sets of 5-issue limited series Jonah Hex comic books for $20 each; James' return yesterday to buy the complete Antiquities set for $500.

But the oddest thing to happen lately was a discovery I made when I was playing with the Traffic Reports that I can get for my Store. I can see how many visitors the store has had, which items are the most often viewed, what domains are referring people to the store (mostly eBay itself, of course) and what search terms most often end up with people coming to the store.

When I was checking out the referring domains I noticed that the first and second most were the usual eBay.com and eBay.ca (the Canadian eBay). But #3 puzzled me. It was from magictraders.com - a site dedicated to the sale and trade of Magic cards. I did a little digging and found out that the referral was coming from a Forum discussion where the gent who won the Mox Ruby from me was asking peoples' opinions of whether he got a good deal or not (I'll let you read the discussion yourself if you're interested). He included a link to the item itself, and (as of this writing), 180 people have clicked on that and seen the Mox in question. Now, how many (if any) of them went on to purchase cards form me, I have no idea. But it was really kind of odd to be getting traffic from such an unexpected source.

On the Lot front, "Lot 4" (Alan's cards) have gone into the black finally, and anything I sell from here on is profit. Good deal. "Lot 1" and "Lot 2" still have some work to do. And, of course, since I haven't even looked at "Lot 3" since the cards came in, that one has a LONG way to go!

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Biggest order yet!

Okay, new records were set last night as order after order came rolling in from a gentleman in Kentucky (howdy, James!). As I sat at the computer working on inventory I kept getting new email after new email announcing "eBay Store Item Sold!"

Final tally was somewhere on the order of 260 cards for around $400. It took six invoices to get the whole order together. A lot of the cards were from Alan's collection, and many were from the cards I'm selling for him on commission.

And to make things even crazier, James then went on, after I shipped out his cards to him this morning, to win an auction for 70 cards this afternoon. AND after I had that all packaged up (upon his telling me he was not buying any more), he came back tonight and bought EVEN MORE! This is my kind of customer!

On the Alan front, I am a mere $2 shy of recouping the money I invested in buying his collection - and the really big ticket items haven't even sold yet! Also, the commission items have thus far brought in $1400+ (for me - over $2800 total). Definitely the best investment I have made in quite some time. Thank you, Alan!

I have gotten Alan's cards up through Fallen Empires in the Store now - and have started on Ice Age. Still 10 more expansions to go after that, plus the Unlimited, Revised, 4th and 5th edition cards. I'm not sure I'll be able to get everything up before the August 22 store listing fee price increase!

Well, I'm off to read a little and go to bed early tonight - I'm way to tired to work on Store stuff any more today. But tomorrow it's back to the grindstone!

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Update

Okay, then - I promised an update on the Mox auction if nothing else.

The (in my opinion poor shape) Mox Ruby ended up selling for $209.16. Not bad at all!

Also today the Legends complete set sold for $1100 and one of the two Antiquities complete sets sold for $500. And a Mana Drain from Legends went for $120.

All in all, a very good day. Actually, my last 24-hour total sales is $1949.91 right now. It's really rather incredible. Getting Alan's collection was perhaps one of the smartest business moves I've ever made. Thank you, Alan!

Work-wise, I have gotten Alan's cards from the Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends and The Dark sets up. That leaves only Chronicles (not much there), Fallen Empires, Ice Age, Homelands, Alliances, Mirage, Visions, Weatherlight, Tempest, Stronghold, Exodus, Urza's Saga and Urza's Legacy. Oh, and the cards from the basic sets, Unlimited, Revised, Fourth Edition and Fifth Edition.

And I haven't even looked at Lot 3 yet!

WOW I still have a lot of work to do! And I'm taking 10 credits at Montgomery College this fall, so I'd better get my act together!

Monday, August 07, 2006

MtG: Mox Ruby - Unlimited RARE Magic Card Poor Power 9

Sorry there's been no update in a while. I've been very busy!

Alan's collection is VERY extensive. His cards added to mine more than double the stock that I had in my Store, and a lot of it is REALLY good stuff.

I took the first couple of days to get the stuff up that I'm selling on commission. Many of those have sold over the last week - in fact I'm now an honest-to-goodness Power Seller in my own right, having sold over $1800 worth of items in the last 7 days alone!

One of the items which I got when I bought the bulk of his collection was a Mox Ruby which was not in really great shape. I was not at all sure what to ask for it, so I decided to take Josh's advice from a month or so ago and "let the eBayers decide" what it was worth. I listed it for auction starting at $9.99 and sat back. I accidentally made the auction a 3-day instead of the 7-day I had intended, and did not notice until it had a bid, so I couldn't change it.

As of this writing, it's been bid up to $152.50.

The auction ends early tomorrow afternoon, and I'll report then on the final price.

Oh, speaking of final prices, the Collector's Edition I had up for auction ended at $631.12 - short of the $800 that a similar set had gone for just a few days earlier, but not too shabby. There's still another copy in the Store (asking price $900) and one more which I will auction off later.

Oh, and Lot 2 has almost paid for itself, with a good number of cards still to go.

More later, when I have time (maybe in a month?).