This eBay Mistake Is Robbing You Blind

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:10]Hey everybody, welcome. Mike the Golden State Picker. I'm not in my garage in San Jose, California. This is the garage in North Carolina. We are in the process of doing some stuff all around the house. We're starting to straighten up a little area here for uh my eBay stuff, that kind of thing. We need to get a car and a golf cart in here consistently.

[00:00:31]So, it's going to have to be a very clean uh garage for this to all work because the weather outside here is a lot different in California and I don't want to leave my car outside when I'm back in California occasionally because it'll just bake the bake it, you know, and I don't want to have that happen.

[00:00:49]So, anyhow, uh that's what what I'm up to. I'm going to have this garage fixed up and all that kind of stuff. I still love doing these videos. Uh we will be a little bit slower as far as we're not going to be a full full-time reseller. We'll be a halftime reseller. Still kicking around making some good money for my uh retirement. See the East Coast, travel a little bit, all that kind of stuff.

[00:01:11]Hopefully that's what we're going to be doing. So again, super thanks for joining me on that. And we're going to talk about the main title of this video in a second. Uh, but we want to uh give you just a general idea of what I've been doing to get myself set up here.

[00:01:27]First, what I have been doing is I ship been shipping records from California. I have about probably 5,000 records now that I am starting to ship them media mail. They're cheap enough to ship media mail. We looked into a pod for a lot of stuff and they wanted like five grand for a very small pod. just didn't sound like it was very kosher the way the whole deal was being talked about.

[00:01:51]That's a lot of money, think about it, to ship some stuff that I want to sell and then some other stuff that we want to put in the house. We don't want to put a lot of the stuff in the house, but again, so the media mail was an option and that's what I'm doing. So, I'll go back in about four weeks and I will ship a bunch more and I'll continue to ship more with the whole idea of next late spring to be here more than in California. That's potentially what the goal is. We'll keep you informed as we go along. And my main subject right now is to get some stuff up. I'm using my wife's uh site here in North Carolina and I have my site in California that is completely shut down right now. So, it's very very difficult because I have a uh I have to shut it down for about 45 days and then I'm going to reopen it, put it on sale, and see if I can move some stuff in the last 2 weeks before I get home. So, it's it's a juggling act.

[00:02:48]Okay. But eventually I'll probably have both accounts here and then we'll basically be working from both accounts.

[00:02:55]It'll be kind of interesting to see how it all works out. But that's what I'm doing. I'm shipping the albums back here and uh I have I shipped out I think 350 albums with a specific goal of shipping 10 albums a day for at least 35 days out of the 40 35 days out of the 60 days that I'm here. So I've got some wiggle room. That'll put about 350 albums up.

[00:03:20]We'll talk about the sales we've had which have been phenomenal so far. So, we'll talk all about that in this video also. So, we got some stuff we found at a garage sale, too. We're going to talk about and the albums and some other another item that I sold. Okay. Hey, time to get into the main title of the video. You know, I have been watching uh when when I'm in my vinyl categories and I'm looking to price a record, I'm doing two things. I'm looking for souls and I'm looking for what is selling. Trying to find where my album fits. Now, albums can have a lot of variations. The runouts, there's a few things in there that can really make the difference. So, we have to be very, very careful. But what I'm seeing in the album category is a lot of this that is crushing people.

[00:04:03]And that is they're running auctions and they're making a dollar, $2, $4, $7 on albums that should be selling for $15 to $20 minimum basic albums, but they're throwing them up in the auction position. No reserve. It looks like when you see a no reserve and somebody puts a $2 uh bid in and that that's a winner, that's not going to work. Okay? So, I don't know what's happening here, but I see it in all categories where they're doing these auction type situations.

[00:04:36]You have to be aware that in an auction situation, it must have a lot of interest. This item must be special.

[00:04:45]Many people must want it. you're then hoping that they're going to bid against each other and drive your price up. You should have a reserve on very important, expensive items, that kind of thing. Um, I'm just not an auction guy. Last year I did zero auctions. Uh, occasionally I have tried an auction to see what would happen and I usually get mixed results.

[00:05:07]I was probably better off putting it up for a buy it now uh price and that's how I roll. I put everything up for pretty much buy it now pricing. Uh I do not do the auctions. That's just me and this is what's happening. I don't know if they're rookies. I don't I don't know.

[00:05:25]It seems so strange that that's what they're doing. I Another thing is I don't want to manage auctions. I really don't want to sit around and manage them. They're all ending at different days and so forth so on relist this auction because nothing happened. I don't want to do all that. Okay? Time is money. Think about it. There's many formulas out there that tell you that time is money. And you can figure out if this is worth it or not. For example, my lawn here, I have a two my backyard's huge here. My front yard is huge here.

[00:05:55]This person mows my lawn, trims it, edges it. $55 about twice a month. Is that $55 worth it to give to him or me to go mow the lawn? It's obvious for him to mow the lawn. That's a very simple thing. It's the same thing with auctions and stuff.

[00:06:15]Where is your time best spent? Is it spent calculating every package?

[00:06:21]I don't know. This calculate every single package. You've seen me talk about calculated shipping. Calculated shipping is a timeconsumer.

[00:06:30]It means you have to weigh or guess each size. That's extra steps. So, that too is another area to think about. But the one area that really is dangerous is doing auctions improperly. You must know what you're doing in the auction space to make it work. Okay? Some things do, some things don't. So, keep that in mind. All right. Now, uh that should that that's the basics of the video right there when it comes to that subject. That's what I always wanted to talk about. Be careful. Be really really careful. All right. Now, I want to get into a few things that Adam and I found at well, I found for myself at the garage sales. Adam got a few things and so did I. Uh, it is very different here.

[00:07:16]And the reason it's different for me is it's a sometimes can be a 30 minute drive. It can be great distances between garage sales. It's different. I have to learn a whole new system, a whole new routine, a whole new way of thinking here compared to California. Now, I'm pretty pretty good at almost everything.

[00:07:36]I can pretty much fit in most categories, but it still requires me because my eyes have been trained to look for certain things, and now I'm having to kind of retrain my eyes to make sure I'm looking for other things, too. All right, so let's get into what we what we found. We have What happened?

[00:07:53]This one. Let's start with this one.

[00:07:55]It's hidden. As I left California, I found a bunch of Snap-on and some Mac stuff. Well, I found a little Mac die cutter. nice little uh pneumatic tool.

[00:08:04]Uh and it was $5. Okay, this will probably get me 30. Okay, so a nice $30 here on this that was at a garage sale.

[00:08:14]Gentleman gave us the rundown about all kinds of uh die cutting tools, all kinds of stuff that he had. And he said, "Hey, that I'll I'll take $5 for that." I said, "Sweet."

[00:08:25]Now, went to another garage sale. And I love it when garage sales, they get a little confused, the people that if you see a lot of people mulling around a garage sale, there's probably good pricing is what I'm saying. And there was at this one particular garage sale, there were uh I think three girls and the and the father and there were like, you know, a lot of sporting gear. And here's a nice glove. This is a Rawlings.

[00:08:48]Okay. And it is just a super It's a fastback. It's very, very nice. Look at the condition. Super nice condition on this one.

[00:08:58]$5. Nob brainer. This will sell between $40 and $50 all day long. You've seen me find these in San Jose. It's no different. Okay. So, I'm keeping my eyes out for that. And also, she had some baseball bats. Okay. We talk about baseball bats. And this was there. And they wanted $5 for this little Louisville Slugger. And uh you need to know Prime 917. So, Louisville Slugger, Prime 917. There is a model number on these. You can see it right here. I'll try to show you. There is a model number right under my nail. Okay. So, you can find that. Now, what we need to know is this drop 10. They call it a drop 10 or minus 10. You see that minus 10 right there? That means the bat is 30 in long and 20 in in weight. Okay? You'll measure the bat 30 in drop 10 20 ounces.

[00:09:55]It's just the way it's done. So, this bat for five will probably get me about $40 on that bat. Now, don't forget about older bats. We've talked about older bats. Here is an East.

[00:10:09]And some of these East can go for a couple hundred or more, so keep your eye out. This does not have the grip. No problem. This one, the gentleman had this bat and an older like glove. And Adam was looking for a glove to play catch with Austin, my grandson. And so the guy goes, I want $5 for both. And I I just was debating this. You know, I don't want to become I hate to say it, a a hoarder. I want to be careful here because I only have so much space now to work with and I have to be very very careful. And then he dropped it to $3 for both. And at that point, I I said, I'll take it. So for $3, the same principle applies. There's a drop three. This is a uh hard ball bat here. Okay. And anyhow, I gave the glove to Adam to play catch with my grandson Austin. And this will get me same thing, $40 to $50 on that right there. And I'm working my way around here. Sorry. I got one, two, three, four. Yeah, I got one more here. I took a fly on a bigger item. How about this? Oh my goodness.

[00:11:14]Oh, I got to pick it up. I took a fly on this is an ice maker. It's a Frigid Air ice maker. It was $10 in really, really good condition. So, I said, "You know what? I'm going to take a fly." It has all of the parts and um the people were very, very nice. They said, "Hey, we had descaled it and it works fine." And I always like to know maybe why. I said, "You know what? What was the the deal behind it?" And in this town I live in in Jacksonville, it's full of Marines, full of military, and they're always moving. and they moved from an apartment which didn't have an ice maker in their unit they said and now they moved into a house that does have the ice maker so they didn't need it. So 10 bucks maybe 6575 plus some shipping. That is going to be a calculated shipping. Not so much for myself. If I was here, I might not.

[00:12:05]Okay. But because I'm still going to go back to California, I'm going to try and make this one easy on Adam because while I'm in California, what happens? Adam ships my items that I sold on my wife's store. He lives two doors down. So he comes over. Now I've got him a nice workbench, the scale, the whole nine yards. I'll have a printer here for him.

[00:12:27]He'll just bring his laptop over. Boom.

[00:12:29]Go find the record. I'll have them all alphabetized. All that kind of stuff.

[00:12:33]Got another little bug right there. Have them all alphabetized and he'll take care of all of that. That's what's going to happen. That's how it works. So this particular item, I want to have it calculated so he doesn't have to fight that. That's why. Okay. I got a reason behind everything. H. Okay. Now, let's talk about before we get into what we sold and I will talk about how much I've sold since I've been here. Okay, I've been here I've been here 20 20 days and I have another I can't remember. I got another quite a few but 20 days. I've been here just 20 days. So, 3 weeks basically. We sold 68 items. Of the 68 items, I believe 65 of them were albums.

[00:13:20]65 albums in 20 days. That's like three albums a day. That's great for starting out just putting them on my wife's. She has hard she has only about 100 feedback. So, I've got to build that feedback up. And this is a great way to do it. It's a little trickier area because if I screw up a grading, I could get a negative. That can happen anywhere. So, I got to be very careful with the way I grade my records. Uh, it's it's a fine line there. So, uh, I've been getting a lot of feedback that the albums are popping out great. What does that tell you? When you start to see the feedback come back on your albums and they're all being positive, that tells you that you are grading those records correctly. Okay? I always tend to undergrade, meaning I will do very good. plus is where I would mostly fit for an excellent record. To get excellent, it has to be has to be look pretty good to me. And I have been listing some in excellent condition cuz I do have several in excellent condition. So 65 albums so far. You ask how much gross sales for everything. I mean 65 albums, 68 items total, $1,85 in total sales in that 20-day period, netting me about $1,200. Okay, not bad.

[00:14:37]That's how it works. That's how I'm That's I'm planning to get It's taken us three years. This is This September, we will be in this house 3 years already.

[00:14:45]We're pushing to slowly build up so when we come here, everything we've got done is ready to go. We just live. That's the goal. It's been a little hectic at times. We've had a lot of issues here and there, but who hasn't? So, that's what's happening basically is everything is coming into place the way we want it to and hopefully it goes that way. All right, let's get into what we sold. We got about 16 17. We're going to fly through them. The one item that's not an album is this one. This is Freedom Alert. I have sold several of these.

[00:15:17]Personal response. I bundled this at a lady's estate sale type thing uh a while back with Adam. So, I made a lot of money on all the stuff that I bought from her. And uh this the uh this got I think it was 22 plus 13 on the ship. 23 + 13 for shipping on that. So, that was a nice little uh easy sale. Is it I I this one here, this one I sold uh a bunch of fire hoses, a bunch of other stuff out of it. So, pretty cool. Now, this one I got to hang I got to block a little bit. We're going to go into the album section in here. I wanted to show you this one. It's risk A, but I'm going to block it just just for the same.

[00:15:59]Okay, it's called music for hangovers.

[00:16:02]And it's basically you're seeing it's over there. You're seeing that one.

[00:16:05]There you go. I just blocking it just to show you. Music for hangovers. It's a very interesting thing. Why? Because it's an album. You think it's a record, but it's not a record. It's a gag gift.

[00:16:17]And inside it says, I bought this album for you as a gift. Sorry I couldn't afford the record. So, that's what's going on on that one. And and hangovers.

[00:16:28]But look at I'm telling you, some of these these uh albums like this, 22 and I got $8 for shipping. So, that was super super nice on that one. Oops.

[00:16:40]Better flip it the other way. Whoops.

[00:16:41]Better flip it the other way. Okay.

[00:16:44]Let's get into a bunch of other ones.

[00:16:45]Hey, look for Miles Davis.

[00:16:48]This is Miles Davis Brew double album. Okay. And again, when it comes to albums, I know there's a lot of people out there that ask me, "Mike, do you put the Matrix or the Run Out or anything like that in your listing?" Let me explain really quickly how I think.

[00:17:04]Okay, first thing I do is I know a lot of artists, Miles Davis, some of his albums can go for some very good money.

[00:17:11]So, I do a search for this album. Then, I turn it into highest first. I want to know what the highest records are for this. Why? Then, we got to figure out why. And a lot of times it's going to be due to the label, okay, and the matrix or the runout or whatever they want to call that, okay? I don't get too technical with it. You shouldn't either, okay? I'm not a complete record collector, okay? So then I'm looking.

[00:17:37]So, okay, I say, "Let me see." I I take a little glance at the runout, the matrix. No, doesn't seem to fit. Simple.

[00:17:44]End of story. It's not going to be one of the highest. Now, I got to find out where it fits. label, uh, the n numbers, everything, and then I go from there.

[00:17:53]Now, I look at my condition, and then I start to work from that angle. So, I don't get too hung up on the matrix and all of that other stuff. A lot of people say, "Oh, yeah, yeah, that's just another thing that, you know, about 99% of the records are pretty common. There are uh you know a lot of them that can be worth some money and I've sold some and I'll talk about one or two in here in a second. But this one, this one got 29 plus $7 for the shipping. Okay, so I got 29 for that. Now I got to pile this one cuz this one was okay. Um I'll talk about another runout situation that I had cuz there's several in a second.

[00:18:31]Frank Zappa. Great. This is very very good condition. This is one that was in excellent condition. And this is Frank Zappa. We had 27 plus free on the shipping for Frank Zappa. Super nice.

[00:18:44]Now Neil Young. Love him or hate him. I like Neil Young. I I I grew up really listening to Neil Young. And this is decade of three record set. I had this one and I played it to death. I went to the midnight movies and saw Rush Never Sleeps over and over. There's a Neil Young Harvest that I just looked at and talking about Matrix.

[00:19:04]in it. It said um it had a word that I needed and it was there and then it needed the initials HL Hugo something.

[00:19:13]Okay. And that was there. That brings that album up to a potential of $100.

[00:19:20]Okay. So, I did the same thing. Search by highest and I said, "Hey, let me go check my matrix, my run out." Yeah, I do. Let's double check everything as much as you can and then you find out where you put it at. So anyhow, Decade went for 20 plus free shipping. Again, every category has little nuances that can create you problems, okay, each way.

[00:19:42]So you got to be very, very careful.

[00:19:44]Fleetwood Mac Tusk. Okay, basic album.

[00:19:48]$20 plus free on the shipping on Tusk.

[00:19:51]Now, here's an interesting band. This is Dila.

[00:19:57]All right, let me see if I can show you.

[00:19:59]Look at it. Now, my son, who is married to Pal, who is from the Philippines.

[00:20:06]Yeah, I hope Pal is watching. This is one of the first Filipino bands with a record deal out of San Francisco during the hippie era. Okay, this is Dacula.

[00:20:17]And they were, if you take a look, take a look at them. And who would you say they patterned themselves after a little bit?

[00:20:24]Santana. Okay. So, anyhow, they were considered the fir one of the first Filipino rock band type thing or Latin bands or whatever signed. So, this record can sell for some decent money.

[00:20:36]And Dadia got 26 plus free on the shipping sign. So, that's cool. Here we go. The Cars Heartbeat City. I think you probably saw one of these in that uh auction situation. Okay. And the cars got what the cars get? I got to look for it. 16 plus free on the shipping. I'll tell you the one thing about North Carolina that's different than than uh California. It's a four-letter word.

[00:21:03]Bugs. There's bug. Big flying bugs. I mean, flying the size of cars. No, but you know what I'm saying. If you're living in the south and stuff like that, you know that the bugs are big. So, hey, Bob Marley, the legend, the best of Bob Marley, the great Bob Marley. and Bob Marley. It got 20 plus seven. And another thing people ask me is how do you decide if you're doing free or if you're doing uh putting a dollar amount on shipping. It's all about feel. That's it for me. It's no different. Where is everything fitting in? How can I psychologically get my album in front of more eyes? That kind of thing. That's all I'm trying to do. I got to psychologically figure out which way to get people to look at my listing. That's it. And it's just an up and down feel.

[00:21:56]Here is the great Ario Speed Wagon. I've saw them many times and this is great to to learn on. It's in the shrink wrap.

[00:22:03]This is called the hype sticker. It helps a little bit in the value. Not overall unless it was really an expensive album. It was brand new sealed, but people still like that.

[00:22:13]There are people that collect that kind of stuff. So, this is 20 plus free on the shipping. The great Oh, wait. This one goes over here. Yep. So, I want to talk about it. Uh, this one doesn't.

[00:22:23]Here it is. Phil Collins. No jacket required. Okay. Poor Phil. He's in such bad health, right? There was a documentary on him and he can no longer play the drums. He can barely sit. It's really tough to watch. And uh Phil, I'm sorry. What did Phil get? Uh, I can't remember. I think it was $15 plus free shipping. 15 plus free. I'm going the wrong direction here. Okay, here's a really cool one. Don Mlan, American Pie.

[00:22:54]Great song. And it has a song. I think Vincent is Castles on here. Vincent and I don't think Castles is on here. But what was interesting here is think about this. I want you to look. This is an abridged version of an album uh previously released. I don't know exactly. Okay. So, I looked to make sure that this album was fitting in its price zone is what I'm trying to say. Again, many albums don't sell between $15 and $20 with shipping or free shipping. So, generally speaking, okay, there's a lot out there, but I'm just trying to give you a general feel for common albums.

[00:23:32]And MLAN got 15 plus free. Now, the next situation when you start to sell albums, this is an important one. And this is this is very important to think about.

[00:23:44]You will get people who will offer four items, four albums. And that happens many times. I just sold a six six albums to one person. And now this is four albums to one person. I'm going to put all the totals up as I talk about them. And then at the end, I'm going to explain to you kind of how you have to work it. Okay? And it's pretty it's pretty simple. So here's David Bowie. Uh Scary Monsters. Bowie is hot. He's passed away, but David Bowie, Scary Monsters, uh, it sold for 15 plus free.

[00:24:18]I'm just stating what what's going on here. Purple Rain, Prince, and the Revolution with the poster. That helps.

[00:24:25]You got to check to make sure everything's in these albums from the lyric sheet to posters to other things like Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon had a sticker, had a poster. So again, that all plays into the condition. And that prince got 22. The great ZZ top eliminator. That one got 12. Guess what happened? I was It was overnight. And these four albums were not the original.

[00:24:51]He lost one because it sold while I was sleeping. Okay. But he came back in and put another one in which was ZZ Top instead of the other one that sold. And here's another Prince and the Revolution Parade album. So he got all four of these. Now, the situation you're in here, uh, I believe all of these were free shipping. Okay, so let's think.

[00:25:15]It is a minimum of $5 to ship a record under a pound for something plus the cover. 525 is what I figured it to be, not counting the fees that eBay is going to charge on the $5.25.

[00:25:30]15%, right? 50. So 60.70.

[00:25:34]So he puts in an offer and you have to calculate out, okay, if I sold each one of these individually, it would be 525,525,5 $21 to ship all four of those to four different people. He's one person.

[00:25:49]What's he offering? He's basically offering what I saw a $20 discount or so because one of the albums that I did sell uh one of the albums had had um uh had shipping on it. That was uh Prince in the Purple Ring for $7.95. Okay, so that album, okay, is uh on the other column, but you got to you got to do the math and see if it's going to work out for you and you want to get rid of them.

[00:26:15]And that's what I did. I looked at some of these records. Princeton per Rain album was probably the most valuable of the bunch, if you want to call it that.

[00:26:24]So that's what I did. I accepted his offer because the math added up selling four individual versus selling all of them to him. A lot of nuances, a lot of stuff to think about. It's not too hard.

[00:26:36]You just got to you just got to start to learn once you really like I know the album category for myself. I'm not an expert 100%, but I understand how it works. So that's what you're doing.

[00:26:48]100 miles an hour in North Carolina. 100 miles an hour in my garage. Love it. So uh there you go. That is my first garage video from North Carolina. Hope I gave you some information. That's what I'm always trying to do. Subtly giving you some information to think about how everything works for me and maybe you pick up on a tip or two and it works out for you. Be wary of those auctions.

[00:27:11]Don't screw those up. Uh yeah, the auction area in eBay, you can mess that up a lot. So there you go. All right.

[00:27:19]Super thanks to everybody. If you like my videos, hit the subscribe, the like, and the bell notification. Don't know if it's going to be the Golden State picker all the time or if it's going to be switched over to a different name or whatever. I have no clue. If you want to leave a name for a new picker, that's great. Put a comment down below for uh maybe what I should consider calling myself if I finally decide to sell it all without Golden State Picker. So, let me know. Anyhow, thanks again and I'll see you in my next