I work for a company that does commercial cleanouts and real estate cleanouts. They buy and resell foreclosure items, abandoned freight, large private collections, just about anything large enough to justify their involvement.
About 1/4 of it gets put on eBay, much of it gets auctioned in more appropriate arenas, and some gets sold locally by word of mouth.
Lately everything in every category is dead.
Right now we have a warehouse full of bicycle parts, vintage auto parts, aircraft parts, electronics parts, (resistors, transistors, capacitors, etc., think Radio Shack's old parts wall, vintage audio items, sporting goods, fishing tackle new and used outboard parts and on occasion, household items like towels, linens, and things found in places like Bed Bath and Beyond and such. Much of the latter gets sold locally to small businesses but not all of it.
Many items are collectible, we avoid items that attract kids since we had way too many "My son bid without my permission" situations or outright thefts of those type of items.
All of the items currently listed were red hot till about April, then it slowed down to a crawl but picked up a bit in June but then just died completely.
My two neighbors here do a ton of selling on ebay, one does DVD's the other jewelry and figurines, (dust collectors), plus some drop ship items. They are all complaining of zero sales for over a month.
Most of her items are super cheap, all under $20.
At work, we don't bother with anything under $25, and try not to list anything less than $40, even if it means selling some items in lots of 5 or 10.
They used to sell individual items but it got to be more trouble then it was worth to hunt down an item, box and label it for shipping for a $3 or $5 item. Its a loss everytime now that min. wage is over $15.50. I get paid both per ad and by commission and work from home since I retired, but they cut back big time in 2021 when things fell off then. They invested in a shredder at that point to prevent dumpster diving.
They get paid up front for the cleanout or removal, so selling the items is a bonus rather than sending them to a landfill. Especially if they're new, high end items or rare vintage parts.
Many items were generally just moved from one failing business and sold to another business but lately those businesses have also closed down or moved away to find cheaper labor.
It really hurts to watch often brand new vintage car or bike parts get ground up into bits and sold for scrap, or perfectly good furnishings and such being ground up into fluff and hauled to a landfill.
We do get to grab things for ourselves but if I took everything that they were crushing I'd need my own warehouse. It used to be that about 85% of everything sold, since about 2009, it dropped to about 35%, and lately maybe 5% or less.
Our rules are items are worth roughly 1/2 of sug. list price or avg. past selling price over a one year search. If it don't sell for that its off tot he shredder so as not to kill the value for future similar items.
Its not my rule but its what they do, as do most others doing the same thing. Its generally better in the long run to not sell it then to sell it at a loss or too cheap because that low ball sale will hurt the price of the next 50 you may be selling.
