I (Don't) Have the Power (Yet)

For those of you who read my post about ebay powerselling (from what feels like 10 years ago) you'll note I had grand ambitions to become a powerseller by this Christmas season to reduce the cut ebay takes from each sale.  I planned on adding more polybags, smaller sets and the like to boost my total sales numbers.  I didn't have enough complete sets that were retired or purchased sufficiently below retail (Canadian retail) to move, so I was hoping to go smaller and faster, Ninjago-like, if you will, on my quest to get my total sales over 100 in the year over year period.  What follows is a cautionary tale:

Early 2013: All is well!  I scored loads of polybags at cheap prices, tried to choose ones that I thought were cool or had minifigs.  I began listing them and started to make a few sales.  I smiled a lot, despite the cold weather, and visions of success in 10 or so short months seemed imminent, a foregone conclusion.

Spring 2013: My decision to stock up on Avengers polys, a few Friends polys and Monster Fighters polys is paying off.  I've boosted month over month sales to about 45-50 and am halfway to my goal with a whole lot of time left.

Late Spring 2013: We had a baby.  I added another part time job.  We decided to quickly have me finish the basement renovations so that we could put our house for sale in the future as babies require almost as much storage as a part-time Lego business.  I had some sets to part out with minifigs that were reasonably desirable and could quickly add to my selling totals, but somehow that never happened.  I suspect it was baby related.

Fall 2013: I was around 82 total sales in year over year, had a finished basement but powerselling status seemed unreachable.  I started to list bigger sets for the holidays anyway, both on my account and my wife's, admitting defeat.

I never lost money, and in fact made some sweet bank this holiday season, but I didn't maximize my Lego ROI%, falling short of becoming a Powerseller.  In a perfect world, those Harry Potter Castle sales would have left a little more money in my pocket rather than in Mr. Ebay's, but a few too many challenges came up during the year to derail me.

How can this apply to you?  I suppose the Lego investing lesson to take away is that the plans you lay from year to year regarding investing/flipping/holding/parting out, etc., can be completely changed in ways you could never imagine when you make the initial purchases or decisions.  I tend to preach conservative investing, despite how enticing sales & deals are.  You have no idea what the future holds and having a manageable and reasonable plan will allow you to still make profits even if things don't go according to plan.

Veegs