Liquidating Inventory in Store

[houseofblair]

Due to health reasons, I am wanting to liquidate my entire ebay store.  The retail value is over $230,000.00.  I made a listing and started it at $19,000 and now I have lowered it to $10,000.  There are over 16,000 items and I will continue to add more each day until it sells.  Has anyone had any success at selling their entire inventory here on ebay?  Due to the size of my inventory, it will not be available to ship as the cost would be too cost prohibitive.  I have about 30 file cabinets organized that contain the bulk of my inventory.  Does anyone have any suggestions for trying to sell such a large volume?  I have contacted local auction services but the fees hover around 40%.  I have tried Craigslist in the past but get nothing but people trying to pull scams.  Any advice would be greatly appreciated.  

[houseofblair]

Thanks for looking at my items.  Once a year, beginning in January, I go through the inventory and reevaluate prices.  I probably should do it more often but given the number of items that I have, I just can't update all the time.  I do have best offer on the majority of my items but the majority of offers I get are truly low ball offers.  It seems that anything I list under $10, I get offers on it for .99 cents.  The value of the items in my store does not take into account the paintings, pictures and/or glass collectibles.  I just recently put the artwork in my ebay store.  I sold them before on e t s y and I sold over 2,500 of them.  I just decided to lump all my products into one site.  I also have had an Amazon account but found that it was not a very good fit.  Believe it or not, the advertisements from magazines seem to provide the better profit margin.  People collect them for various reasons.  For myself, I use them in collage work.  I do have a steady income from my items being sold.  I'm just getting older and having more physical problems as time goes on.   I will try and take pictures of my file cabinets.  I thought my description of everything in my store that is listed, would satisfy that aspect of what I am selling but pictures do help.  I do appreciate your advice.  

[houseofblair]

Thank you for your advice.  There are several auction houses here that I have bought from in the past that still will start their auctions at $2.00.  If you are a buyer, you also pay a 10% buyer's fee.  If you are the one selling through an auction house, the cheapest fee that I have been quoted is 30% and that was only on specific items.  

[deltilogical]

When I was thinking about auctions for this situation I was thinking of an auction where people actually attend and review the material, frankly a country auction type thing - but that means all the material needs to be moved to their floor.

[ten_o_nine]

Most of the value is in the work of listing those items, your work is done, and you have them listed, any buyer would have to relist, store, and manage inventory. I have hundreds of items sitting around because of that. I don't have the time to list, I would be dead before listing 16k items on eBay.

[albertabrightalberta]

I have a couple of comments:

1. You have the $10K listing but you also have 16K+ other listings. I assume that's because you're hoping to sell some of the items separately but is that fair to buyer? What if 100 items sell? How does the buyer know which of the other 15,900 listings he'll get?

2. You listed it as local pickup only. If selling as local pickup, why not just list on Craigslist? That way, buyers can go through the items to see if they want them. 

3. Lot listings MUST (per ebay policy) describe all items that are included in the sale. Mystery listings aren't allowed and not specifying what's in the lot is considered a mystery listing.

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-items/chance-listings-policy?id=4311&st=3&p...

[albertabrightalberta]

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@ten_o_nine wrote:

Most of the value is in the work of listing those items, your work is done, and you have them listed.

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But is the buyer expected to have to go through each of the 16000 listings to make sure everything is included? 

The lot listing was listed on November 10 and as such, presumably included the hundreds of items that have been sold separately between November 10 and today. 

[houseofblair]

Thank you for your response.  There will never be less than 16,000 items available.  I have another 2,500 in drafts that I am slowly releasing.  There is more like 18,000 items total.  Craigslist is a hodge podge of mixed results.  Mostly scammers.  I'm trying to be as fair as possible.  I'm not here to cheat anyone.  I have a ton more that I have not even bothered yet to scan and create additional drafts.  Probably about another 2,000 items there that will be included for the purchaser.  

[dhbookds]

I would place ads in papers/online facebook groups near by/not so nearby......Quitting for health reasons! Quality merchandise for ebay/on line sellers in the following categories..............  don't mention price til someone asks....  I think you'd have more luck selling by category rather than the full lot........

[worldcoinauctions]

Just for perspective, at one time about 15 years ago I was buying store surplus and returns by the truckful. Average price? 0.06 on the wholesale dollar. That was FOB so I still had the trucking expense, but overall it rarely went to 10% of wholesale at my dock. Not involved in that game anymore, but yeah, tough to unload it all. 

[luckythewinner]

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@houseofblair wrote:

I am wanting to liquidate my entire ebay store.  The retail value is over $230,000.00.  I made a listing and started it at $19,000 and now I have lowered it to $10,000.  There are over 16,000 items and I will continue to add more each day until it sells.    

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I looked at your listing and still have no idea what I would be getting for my $10K. I see pictures of the filing cabinets and the folders in the filing cabinets, but no pictures of what the items are. 

[nobody*s_perfect]

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@luckythewinner wrote: ... have no idea what I would be getting for my $10K. I see pictures of the filing cabinets and the folders in the filing cabinets, but no pictures of what the items are. 

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The pictures of the items can be seen in the seller's 16,000 listings. The filing cabinets illustrate how the items are being stored. For instance, in one of the images you can see "Street Rodder" on the file tabs, with the years sorted out. You can go to the seller's store and search on "Street Rodder" and get nice details about all 185 available issues.

[houseofblair]

Thank you for clarifying that.  The description of my listing I thought was clear "everything in my store" is included in the price.  There would not be a way to show pictures of all 16,000 items.  My items, as shown, are stored alphabetically and in file cabinets so that they do not receive any damage.  

[houseofblair]

Thank you for responding.  The listing has a description of what you are getting.  It is the entire contents of my ebay store.  The listings in my ebay store is exactly what you are buying.  I store my inventory in file cabinets in alphabetical order.  The file cabinets are not for sale though.  

[chapeau-noir]

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@houseofblair wrote:

Thank you for responding.  The listing has a description of what you are getting.  It is the entire contents of my ebay store.  The listings in my ebay store is exactly what you are buying.  I store my inventory in file cabinets in alphabetical order.  The file cabinets are not for sale though.  

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I can't find the listing to check but make sure you state that the filing cabinets are not included in the sale. It's like the cereal boxes with "serving suggestion only" because some bonehead has probably assumed they'd get the bowl, spoon and milk included.

[houseofblair]

Thank you for pointing that out.  I have updated the listing to reflect they are not included in the sale.