Post Your Wins

[james.hendrickson]

Took $705 profit today selling the VXX, bought last week at $21.75 , sold today at $25.50.

Excellent work QMM!!!! You won't go broke taking a profit.

[kork13]

Took $705 profit today selling the VXX, bought last week at $21.75 , sold today at $25.50.

Excellent work QMM!!!! You won't go broke taking a profit.

[sarcasm] BUT THE STCG TAXES!!! THEY'LL KILL YOUR GAINS!!! [/sarcasm]

Nice short play!

[kork13]

I'm very excited right now, and can't technically announce it publicly yet... But these forums are relatively anonymous, so good enough. This is a big win, and I'm gonna cheer a bit.

I just got notification from my commander that I've been selected for promotion!!

Financially, this will mean a couple things. First, it'll come with a pay increase of almost $1000/mo. But most importantly, the promotion also ensures that I won't be forced out due to non-promotion (the DoD's "up or out" policies suck), and I should become eligible for a military retirement in 6 years.

The military retirement will come with an immediate, life-long pension (+COLA). Combined with the medical retirement pension that DW is already receiving, they will fully cover all of our basic living expenses, not even considering our extensive investments or any job that either of us may take on. It also includes very inexpensive life-long health insurance coverage (looks like ~$650/yr for a family), but I'm honestly not totally familiar with that stuff yet.
In short: I am now very solidly on track to be FIRE'd in just 6 short years, at the age of 42.

[disneysteve]

That’s awesome, kork. Congratulations.

[james.hendrickson]

I'm very excited right now, and can't technically announce it publicly yet... But these forums are relatively anonymous, so good enough. This is a big win, and I'm gonna cheer a bit.

I just got notification from my commander that I've been selected for promotion!!

Financially, this will mean a couple things. First, it'll come with a pay increase of almost $1000/mo. But most importantly, the promotion also ensures that I won't be forced out due to non-promotion (the DoD's "up or out" policies suck), and I should become eligible for a military retirement in 6 years.

The military retirement will come with an immediate, life-long pension (+COLA). Combined with the medical retirement pension that DW is already receiving, they will fully cover all of our basic living expenses, not even considering our extensive investments or any job that either of us may take on. It also includes very inexpensive life-long health insurance coverage (looks like ~$650/yr for a family), but I'm honestly not totally familiar with that stuff yet.
In short: I am now very solidly on track to be FIRE'd in just 6 short years, at the age of 42.

Seriously Kork, great news man.

[disneysteve]

I don't usually share ebay wins here as they happen almost daily but this one is exceptional.

On 6/8 at an estate sale, I bought a crate filled with over 1,600 vintage bottle caps. Mostly beer but also some soda. Before buying them, I looked up a couple of the caps and found that some of them were selling for $5-15 each and one had gone for $17.95 so I was sure I'd make a decent profit if I could get them cheap enough and sell a few. I ended up paying $10 for the crate. And by the way, the crate happens to be a vintage wooden fruit crate that is itself worth $30-50.

The next night I started an auction for one of the caps and the following night two more, starting them at $9.99. The first item got a bid pretty early and then another a few days later for $10.50.

Shortly after I listed the third item, I got a private message from someone saying that I should not accept any offers on that cap as it is worth a lot, but if I wanted to sell it, he'd give me $50 for it. He went on to explain that the one I listed is the first that he knows of to come to market in a very long time. The last ones that turned up several years ago had been removed from a piece of folk art and all had a nail hole through the center. Mine was in near-mint condition in comparison. Nothing like it had ever surfaced as far as he knew.

The bid on the first cap stayed at $10.50 until the final seconds of the auction Thursday night, and then ebay magic happened and the winning bid was $157.50.

The second cap didn't get much action except for an initial bid until the very end last night when it sold for $83.99.

The third cap got bid up quickly to $50-something within a couple of days, then $98, and by yesterday morning $102.50, then $132.50 around dinner time. The auction ended last night and the winning bid was $609.99! That is by far the largest sale I've ever made on ebay (my previous high was $305).

I've continued to chat with the guy who warned me not to take offers on it. Really nice guy, serious collector. He's given me a fast education on these caps. He also said he was interested in buying some and has friends who would be as well. I gave him a list of what I have, which he shared with a fellow collector, and between them, they are buying 25 caps from me for $1,160. He is going to buy more from me but has to get some financial stuff in place to free up the cash for the deal. And he's still reaching out to some others in the collectors club who may be interested.

I also had a duplicate of the cap that sold for $157.50. I offered it to the second place bidder for $140 and he bought it.

So in just over a week, my $10 investment has already generated sales of $2,151.48 for 29 bottle caps from a lot of over 1,600 that I bought for $10.

[QuarterMillionMan]

It's fun when the bidders leap frog each other watching the numbers keep goinng higher and higher, nice scores on those caps.

[james.hendrickson]

I don't usually share ebay wins here as they happen almost daily but this one is exceptional.

disneysteve, I got up morning and read this. Totally made my morning great! I love stories like this.

[disneysteve]

So in just over a week, my $10 investment has already generated sales of $2,151.48 for 29 bottle caps from a lot of over 1,600 that I bought for $10.

Just sold 4 more for another $150 so my total is up to $2,301.48. Not bad for a $10 investment 10 days ago. Sure beats what our portfolio has been doing.

[kork13]

Just sold 4 more for another $150 so my total is up to $2,301.48. Not bad for a $10 investment 10 days ago. Sure beats what our portfolio has been doing.

That's really pretty incredible. And that's selling just with 33 out of 1600 that you bought... yikes! I had no concept that old bottle caps would be so valuable & fiercely sought after.

Have you been cherry-picking certain bottlecaps that you've identified as being more highly desired, or just randomly listing a handful of them out of the pile? Do you expect that you'll be able to sell most of the 1600 for such high profits? Even if you only average $25 each (seems that's on the far low-end!), you'd potentially be looking at upwards of $40k in profits!

[QuarterMillionMan]

Good questions Kork. I would love to have a project like that.

[disneysteve]

That's really pretty incredible. And that's selling just with 33 out of 1600 that you bought... yikes! I had no concept that old bottle caps would be so valuable & fiercely sought after.

Have you been cherry-picking certain bottlecaps that you've identified as being more highly desired, or just randomly listing a handful of them out of the pile? Do you expect that you'll be able to sell most of the 1600 for such high profits? Even if you only average $25 each (seems that's on the far low-end!), you'd potentially be looking at upwards of $40k in profits!

I had no idea either. As I said, I had done some quick research while at the sale and saw that they were going for $5-15. And my estimation skills were way off as I was guessing there were 200-300 caps in the box, not over 1,600. So I bought them thinking I might make a few hundred dollars, which I would have been perfectly happy with on a $10 buy.

I knew nothing about the caps beyond that so when I started listing them, I chose a couple that had particularly good graphics rather than just being plain with the name of the beer. Great graphics on any sort of advertising item typically translates to more desirable and more valuable, but I had absolutely no idea how right I was going to be.

Sadly, there are only a handful of deep-pocketed serious collectors who will pay top dollar like this. The cap that sold for $609.99 I might get $500 or so for another one if I'm lucky. After that, the price will probably quickly fall to $100 and below. I had 6 of the one that sold for $157.50. I sold the 2nd one for $140 and the same guy paid me $150 for the remaining 4, so you can see how quickly the value drops off. That one happened to be a Puerto Rican beer and he said there are really only 4 serious collectors of that brand, him being one of them and the guy who bought the first one being another. He figures he can sell one or maybe two of the other 4 and just keep the others for himself or for trading. But still, that means I got $447.50 for 6 bottle caps.

I don't realistically expect to sell all 1,650 caps. Most of them, like 1,000 or more, are all the same Pabst cap. I may be able to sell them in bulk for people to use for crafts or folk art, maybe lots of 100, but I'll probably get less than $1/cap that way. I also have to be very careful not to flood the market. Some of the caps I have are super rare, but if I suddenly put 25 of them on the market, they're no longer rare. I'll need to space them out and put one up for sale only every 2 or 3 months. From the attention and messages I'm getting, the stash I bought seems to be one of the most significant finds in a very long time.

The guy who is buying the 25 caps from me is a dealer and wants to buy some things in quantity. I don't know yet what that means but from the way he was talking, probably 5-10 of several different caps so maybe 30-50 caps all together.

However it turns out, I'm already at $2,300. If I can get $50-100 for maybe 10 more and then $5-25 for a couple dozen, that will be another thousand or so and I'll be a very happy camper.

[QuarterMillionMan]

Good strategy not to flood the market and spread out the sales of your items and not cannabalize your own sales. As for shipping did you get insurance? I would even eat some of the shipping costs if I didn't choose the correct shipping at the time of listing the items not knowing the items would bid so high. All good problems to have.

[disneysteve]

As for shipping did you get insurance?

Insurance is generally felt to be a rip-off in the reselling community unless you are selling something very fragile. Even then, getting them to actually pay a claim is a challenge. A bottle cap isn't going to get broken. Even if the package gets stomped on, the bottle cap is going to be just fine. And despite all you hear about USPS, it's exceedingly rare for them to actually lose a package, especially a first-class package.

If I had a lot of money invested in these, I might insure them, but considering they essentially cost me nothing, I'm just shipping first class package rate without insurance.

[QuarterMillionMan]