Business This Week: $23.56/hr - Cool Numbers & Cool Stuff

It's been a great week for Burrage Mining Company, so I wanted to share some cool numbers & cool stuff!

First, just a TL;DR numbers summary for the week:
ESTIMATED $ PER HOUR FOR THIS WEEK: $23.56

(NUMBER OF ITEMS PURCHASED: 42
MONEY SPENT ON NEW INVENTORY: $67.5
MONEY SPENT DRIVING: $57.69 (cost to operate the Cube is approx 0.185 per mile)
FOOD MONEY: $20.34
so, TOTAL COST OF SOURCING: $145.53
[PER ITEM: $3.46 (ouch)]

but, EXPECTED PROFIT: $754 (approx, after eBay fees)
HOURS WORKED + TO BE WORKED: 32)

Inventory has been one of my biggest costs in this business. I knew that cost needed to come down if I was to be successful. So, I did my first major experiment with one of the cheapest ways to get manageable amounts of inventory: the Goodwill Outlet, or the "weigh & pay." You dig through gigantic bins of items, filling literal trashbags with your finds, and are charged by the pound at checkout; my nearest outlet charges $1.39/lb. (Someday I want to buy my first storage unit, but that's not for a while.)

After an hour and a half's drive - grand total of $29.60 in vehicle operating costs, pretty painful - and three hours of digging, I picked up about 27 items with an average value of approx $8.77/item. Now, this is a truly abysmal average profit, but each of the items I picked up is easy to research, photograph, list, and ship; relatively small time investment for small profit. Fine with me; I knew going into the Weigh & Pay Experiment that I'd be getting a bunch of cheap items with a bunch of low profits. And there's always the chance of finding something actually valuable. I'll definitely go again some time, but it will be on a day when I have time to stop at other area thrifts to try to bring up the numbers a bit more.

The most valuable item I picked up there (a new with tags Christmas stocking) should bring $40.

Today's "yard saling" was unusually successful; found two items which should bring in $100 and $125 - $200. The first was a Fisher Price new in box castle toy from 2014. I grabbed it for $5 because it was new, didn't even check the value while I was at the yard sale. Later I found out its value and was pleasantly surprised. The second valuable item I found was an "ultrasound bone healing" device (I LOVE to sell questionable medical devices) I paid $20 for at an estate sale. I was very hesitant to make such an investment, even though eBay solds were showing a solid $100+ value, because the sale of certain medical devices is restricted on eBay, but I did it anyway. Worst case scenario, I sell it locally for half of what it's worth.

Craziest find of the day: I've been picking up every sealed cross stitch kit I run across. They're usually priced very low, and some are worth a LOT. I'd been planning to just buy a whole bunch of them at $.50 - $1.00 each and bundle them for one large sale. I got like 8 or 10 kits today and was researching to see if any were particularly valuable on their own and found that one had recently sold for $45! Not bad for a $.50 investment! The rest turned out to be worth more than expected, too, so that was nice.

And I found this guy. I had two brass animals on my mantel. Now I have three. As of today, I collect brass animals. Congratulations to me!!!!!

The past week was also unusually successful; I happened to find a painting valued at between $150 and $250. I am in love with it - seriously - but it's being listed tomorrow.

Cool sale this week - I paid $5 for an ancient (1966 is really old for a toy set with liquid components) item-making kit with plastic "goop" that had leaked all over the container. I purchased this item MONTHS ago and it sat around because I did not want to mess with listing it. When I finally got it off the "Unlisted Shelf," I was going to set a price of around $40, but saw that it was actually in great condition compared to others of its type. Put it up for $83, received an offer for $70, and it was out the door within 12 hours of me finally listing it.

All in all, a lucky week for Burrage Mining Co!

Another SUPERRRRRR HIGHLIGHT of the week is that I finally FINALLY got my pile of unlisted items listed! Some of this stuff had been sitting around since LAST JANUARY. These were things that required a lot of research and/or a lot of work, so they'd been put off and put off. The evolution of my ability to take quality photos due to figuring out my lighting was also a big factor in getting caught up. It feels fantastic to not have 40 stupid unlisted (read: HOARDED) items hanging over my head anymore!

It's been a lot of work and effort and waking up early, but this has been a great and super interesting week - just wanted to snapshot it here! :)