Welcome back to another episode of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
My name is Mike, also known as the used book guy on YouTube,
along with my friend and fellow full-time reseller, Johnny B.
We help people start and grow their reselling businesses from the ground up.
We also have a weekly zoom call and private discord for all YouTube members.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash use book guy to join the channel and gain
access to the full length podcast zoom call and private discord today.
Let's get into this week's episode.
What is up everybody?
Welcome into another episode of Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Mike next to Johnny, special guest today, Eduardo down underneath both of us here,
a toy part seller.
So this is kind of unique to me because it just part out tool.
So Eduardo, thanks for coming on the podcast today.
It was a little bit insight of like how you got into arting toys or like how
do you even come on to being an eBay seller and getting to your business
where it is today?
Well, thank you for having me on the show.
Thank you for inviting me.
I'm happy to share with you my humble experience.
I started selling toys probably in the pandemic because I have other businesses
and in the pandemic, they kind of all went to a halt when nothing was going on.
And I'm like, okay, so I have always been a toy collector.
I've been a GI Joe collector specifically.
And in the pandemic, I said, you know what?
What if I can sell a few things online and then, you know, make it like an
additional, make an additional income with the toys.
And, um, well, little did I know what was going to happen that it was
going to be good business.
And I was like, wow, you know, this works.
And I'm like, okay, I sold, I posted it.
I sold it.
I'm like, what if I post two and then I, what if I post 10 and then, you know,
I was selling and I guess I was the right moment to do it because the stimulus
money was out and people were buying like crazy.
So it was, it was like, it was a good experience.
So I say, you know, I have something interesting here.
And then little by little, I started seeing this takeoff in a way where I was
getting like real income, sometimes even better than some of the other
businesses I have.
And I'm like, this is interesting.
So I kind of decided to exploit it.
And then I found tech and then, you know, it went from there.
I started really learning about business because I had no idea how to do this.
Like really.
And that's where it all started.
And, you know, from there on, I'm still learning and I'm still growing.
So I think the most interesting thing, one of many, but probably the top of my
list, where are you from at Bardo?
Where do you sell from?
So I am from Panama, Central America.
I live in Panama.
I'm down here.
It's a challenge to say the least.
And yeah, I'm from down here and, you know, I pretty much try to do my eBay
store the same way all of the Americans do it.
And I've had, I found success doing it, but it's been definitely a challenge
being down here for many, many reasons.
And we can discuss those later, but it's just, it's been one crazy thing after another.
And is most of your customer base US based or is it another country or is it in fact Panama?
I would say no, no, Panama.
It's like 0%. I don't sell anything to Panamanians, nothing at all.
I mean, I have, I know a few people that collect toys and they buy a little thing
here, a little thing there from me every now and then, but like a, like a personal
thing, my, my real business is 60% or 70% America and then 30% the rest of the world.
And actually it was more before it was kind of getting to a 50 50.
But Panama has so many problems when it comes to shipping that I had to limit the
amount of international business that I was doing.
And then I mostly sell now to the United States, but I still have a good portion
of international and I ship international through the United States.
Cool.
Now, is it just you or do you have employees in a warehouse or something in the middle?
Yeah, I have, I have my, I have my warehouse and I have three people
working for me at the moment.
Cool.
And how many hours a week do you do eBay?
I pretty much do eBay all the time.
Like I'm, I'm, I'm all the time on eBay.
Of course, throughout my day, I have a bunch of things going on here and there,
but like, I, I think finding this, this gig or this business is, is, is, is
this gig or this business where I could not only do money or make money, but also
do it in what I love, which is collecting toys or in selling toys.
Man, that was like a great combination.
So I want to spend all my time in here because I really enjoy it.
To me, it's part of the fun.
And in one of the toy calls, I remember talking about this.
It's, I was saying like, Hey, when you do your eight hour shift, you know,
when you're ready to leave, I'm like, okay, I'm ready.
I've done, I've done everything I need to do.
I've done, I'm done for the day.
I'm out.
Now I bring out parts.
I want to source, I want to parse them and I want to, I want to do like separate
them by color and try to find out what I have.
Maybe I have a valuable part here and I have that.
So that part, which is necessary for the business becomes my hobby after hours.
And it's all part of the business in the end, but it's just, just what I like.
The that's it.
I don't know how to say it.
It just, it, it, it, whatever I do as a hobby also becomes part of the business,
but I'm doing it as a hobby mixed in with the business kind of, I don't know.
All right.
So you collect toys and you sell toys.
You get into a little bit of gray area here.
Now what happens you come up on a GI Joe figure that you don't have in your
collection, but it's worth, we'll say for this experiment, $150 that you, you're
like, all right, I don't have this GI Joe.
I can sell it for $150, but I am a collector.
What are you doing, dude?
Are you selling it?
Are you keeping it for yourself?
I'm selling it.
I don't, I don't collect anymore.
Oh, I've collected all my life and I enjoy toys and I've enjoyed them all my life.
And when I started this business, I learned that I love making money out of
toys more than I love the toys.
So I'm pretty much, you know, I just, I sell it.
I don't keep anything.
As a matter of fact, I'm selling all of my collection as I do this and I'm enjoying
it because of course, in that GI Joe niche, I know a ton of people that are
specialized and for example, I have, I have a buddy of mine that he has a huge
collection of wetsuit.
That's just one figure.
He has the prototypes.
He has everything about wetsuit.
So I sold him my factory samples and I sold him my, I'm trying to like find
people who are like, like kind of curated in a way where like, okay, I'm trying to
push these valuable cause I have a lot of one, one of one, like this is the only one
in the world, like the only one.
So I'm trying to get those to a good home, but other than that, everything else gets
sold.
I don't have any attachments and I'm not buying, I haven't bought anything for my
collection in a very long time in five years.
Cool.
So how many listings do you do a day?
No, not really.
Like, like, okay, I should be doing 150 or a hundred listings, but I've been doing
20 for a long time and I haven't been the most consistent person at all.
Um, it's, it's been a struggle for me, like, I guess for everybody.
Um, it's kind of like the hardest part.
And yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine.
I was saying like, Hey, I pretty much have very good processes.
I have things going on for me.
I have a lot of work to do.
I have processes, I have things going on for me.
I figure it out a system to be able to ship consistently and efficiently and in time
on time, anywhere in the world without using my Panama postal service, which is crazy.
However, had I been, if I was able to list 150 or a hundred items per day, I would
just do a bunch of money.
Like it would be crazy, but I can't figure it out.
I'm trying to figure it out, but it's, it's still that I'm still there.
I'm trying to break that barrier and try to make it.
I'm trying to, I'm trying to get there eventually.
I've done it.
I've sat down and I have done 80.
I have done a hundred, but that's like a one shot.
And then the next day I can't even function.
So.
Cool.
So we're targeting 150.
We're listing a minimum of 20 and some days we're doing somewhere in between.
So our sales consistent for you doing it this way.
Yes.
Cool.
Um, now you don't have to tell me an exact figure, but a roundabout figure, how
much money does a parts toy seller make roughly?
Well, I mean, last year we did under $200,000 a year.
And I said that this year I wanted to make 200,000.
Um, obviously next year I want to do more, but the more, the more I want to do,
the more I discovered, not discovered, the more I realized that I have to kind of.
Go away a little bit from the parts because, because the parts are inexpensive
to a way, so it's hard to make $5 million selling 399 parts.
It's just crazy.
Not crazy.
Not impossible, not impossible, but it's just really hard.
So, you know, then you, maybe I can do lots, maybe I can do, and I have been
doing that I have been, now I have another niche where I'm not only selling to
collectors, but I'm selling to resellers where now I'm trying to sell lots and
those are working out the tests that I've done have worked out and, and those people
are happy.
So I, I'm, we're going to explore that a little bit more and we have enough toys
to be able to sell that as well, like sell lots and sell parts at the same time.
So I guess a question that may come up in our audience here is you live in Panama.
How are you getting these U S toys in your area?
You don't have to give specifics exactly like the flea market you go to, its name
or anything, right?
How are you accumulating these U S toys?
I mean, everything comes from online arbitrage, everything.
I also have deals in place with people.
I want to say, I'll just say people.
But I have deals in place where toys come to me.
People are dealing in those things over there in the States.
They call me every three months and they say, Hey, I'm going to ship you 600
pounds of accessories.
And, you know, I get a huge load of accessories there.
And in the same way we all, we've always talking in previous calls and stuff in
the group and all of that, we've been dealing with a lot of things that we
would be discussing how to do this effectively to have them know what I need,
what I'm looking for.
So when that comes in, it works.
It's a little bit harder with parts with toy parts, because, you know, when you
get 600 pounds of toy parts, it's you're going to get a little bit of everything.
You're going to get the $300 parts.
You're going to get the $50 parts.
You're going to get the a hundred dollar parts and you're going to get the one
dollar parts.
So it's kind of, you know, like a little bit of a, but, but then I'm trying to
be able to sort all that and then sell what I want to sell individually and
sell what I want to sell in lots and, and have different channels to channel all of
that out in different ways.
And just to get people's perspective, because I know how much these parts weigh
roughly.
So when you say 600 pounds of toy parts, how many pieces roughly do you think
that is?
I've never counted that, but I honestly never counted that, but,
more or less than 10,000 pieces or more than 10,000.
Way more, way more.
Yeah.
Like, like a bin, a bin could hold, I don't know, maybe, maybe five or 6,000
parts or even more of a regular bin.
Like my bins are like this size.
Um, like this size of bins, a bin like that full of parts could hold several
thousand parts.
So 600 pounds is 10 or 12 of those bins.
It's crazy.
It's, it's a lot.
So we're, we're way north of 50,000 pieces for just one order.
So that leads me to my next fun question.
How long does it take to process all that?
Go through each and every 50,000 plus pieces.
It's pretty quick, believe it or not.
Um, but the processing, it's not, so it's, it's for us is kind of like, it's
a game and it's a, it's, we're always working here.
And when we have lots that come in, we're like, everybody's rushing to finish
whatever they're doing is we all want to jump into the parts and kind of
process them together and we do it together.
We have a very specific process on how to do it.
But, um, we, the first thing we do is just dump the whole thing.
Well, let's say there's 10 bins.
We'll dump one bin or half a bin on a huge table that we have.
Then we start parsing.
We start parsing into different categories.
And the first category is, okay, this is, we have one category, which is what
we call to add to our store, meaning we already have it listed, it's already sold
or it might have been sold six months ago.
It's in zero.
We don't, we don't have any more.
We haven't had in a while, but it has to be added back to our store.
Cause that's already listed.
Cause we also keep all of our listings.
So we don't, our listings don't, we never lose them.
Um, anyway, long story short, we, one part, one, one
section will be all the stuff that we're adding to the store.
And the other section is, okay, this is what we don't know what it is.
And what we don't know what it is has like, it gets subdivided.
One is like, these are really cool.
This might be worth something.
Like we kind of already know because of our experience, we grab a part and we
know like, you know, this, this could be a hundred dollar part, this could be
a hundred and fifty dollar, but we have no idea what it is.
So basically we pull it to a side, which is where we're going to
investigate in the next few days.
And then the rest goes to a, goes to different, goes to our, goes to our
parts, parsing section, which is another separate area in our warehouse where.
We have everything divided by color and by subject.
So we have hats, we have guns, we have bombs, we have barrels, tires,
doors, roof, stands, and then everything's in the, like, for example, the stands
have stands, red stands, blue stands, green stands, clear stands, black stands,
stands with one peg, two pegs, three pegs.
When we're done with the stands, then we're going to guns, guns with
sites, guns with holsters, gun with.
It's like, it's divided.
Um, shovel.
You're making book life sound like a breeze, man.
Yeah, yes.
It's really crazy.
We have like all these by color.
So why do we do that?
It's because we don't know what none of that is, but as we're identifying stuff,
we're like, Oh, so this piece has a, I don't know, a purple wheelbarrow.
Okay.
We'll go back to our little place and we'll, we'll look for the wheelbarrows.
We'll go to the color purple.
Boom.
There it is.
Oh, we got it.
So now we can complete the figure or so.
You know, all the stuff that's back there, we don't know what it is.
It's just, it's just back there.
We have canopies.
We have all sorts of things, hatches, doors, all that.
And there's, it's, there's incredible value in all of that,
but we don't know everything.
So as we ID, um, we kind of learn, um, what these things are.
And then it's, it's part, it's an ongoing process.
People are like, can you teach me how to identify parts?
And it's like, it's a very long process.
And, and you start learning and learning.
It's like, if I ask you, Hey, Johnny, can you show me what are the best books I can
buy?
It's like, you know, I could, I could tell you a couple of things.
Or pointers, but there's, there's experience behind it.
So when you look at a, at a hall, you're like, okay, I know these are going to be
good or not.
And then you're like, these, I don't know, but then you figure it out, you do your
research and you're like, these are good.
And it's just, it's a process.
So for us, it is a very long, long process in the sense that they're, they're sitting
there, they're not doing anything, you know, they're just, but we have them all
organized and we have them, um, uh, in a way that works for us.
And that's what we like about that room.
And then we always go back and we're finding stuff.
And then what we do is when our, when our drawers are overflowing.
So there's a drawer that the red missiles is overflowing.
Somebody will take that out and we'll investigate red missiles for the next two
weeks and then we'll, we'll come up.
Then we have another section of the warehouse where we have bins full of
already ID parts.
So it's bins full of already ID parts ready for pictures.
So, and then, and then our, our, our photo studio is taking pictures all the time.
And then, you know, they're just processing whatever comes in.
Um, and then that will just ended there, but pretty much that's like, I got a lot
of stuff, but you can just shoot your questions.
I got a pretty demented question for you.
So do you piece out like the actual figures, right?
So like you get a Barbie and she's together.
Do you like pop off the head and sell the head that you pop off the arms and sell
the arms, like, is that, is that a thing?
It is a thing.
Um, we don't do it as much now, um, before we were doing that, but now we don't do
that as much if we have the Barbie and it's complete, we'll sell it complete.
Um, but it like, it really, the, the, the, the correct answer would be depends
because what we do is we kind of look at the item and we see if this item has more
demand or we could make more money selling it by parts or individually.
For example, there's just a quick example.
Beast wars is a section of transformers.
Recently there was a movie, um, Beast Wars sell for 20, 30 bucks.
But if you take a Beast Wars action photo, you can see that it's
a Beast Wars action figure or a robot.
And you break it all down.
You can make a hundred dollars with the same robot and it sells and it sells quick.
Cause cause a lot of people are buying these online and they're buying lots and
they're by interchanging a lots of robots and whatever, and then they get a figure
and it's missing a foot or it's missing.
And then they need that foot and they don't care.
I mean, the figures were $30.
They don't mind paying $10 per foot.
They want their figure complete because they want to have it complete,
but they're, they can't find the foot.
So I rather for Beast Wars, I'd rather separate them and sell them, separate
it because I will make more money in GI Joe.
I would probably sell the toys complete, but there are certain vehicles that I
can get, for example, a tomahawk, which is the helicopter for the GI Joe is a
two, the two rotor helicopter, a tomahawk.
I can sell for $700, $800 complete in its box.
If I parse it, if I, if I break it down into parts, I can make maybe a hundred
or 150, so it's better to sell complete.
So you have to kind of see what, depending on the toy, the toy line, you'll
be able to make more or less money if the item is complete or not.
So off the, off that, I have an efficiency question.
So selling it, you're like your Beast Wars scenario, selling it for $20 versus
parting it out to go all the way to a hundred, would it be fast if you kept
just doing figure, figure, figure, figure versus deconstructing figure,
deconstructing figure, the time, the time per hour and the profit per hour in that.
What's the math translate?
Is it, is it worth the time to disassemble it all in that, in a Beast War kind of
scenario?
Well, in our case for Beast Wars, we pretty much have all the robots already.
All the listings are done.
We've done them throughout the years.
So, and mind you, that answer makes sense to me.
Okay.
But then on top of that, I have to say that when I buy these figures, I don't
get them all complete all the time.
So I might get an incomplete figure.
So what do I do now?
It's incomplete.
So I just, I'm like, you know what?
Just break it down.
And then we'll sell them because we have all the listings ready.
Some of them might be up, might be up and maybe let's say from a specific robot.
I haven't sold, I have never, I have eight arms and I've never sold an arm.
It has zero sold, never sold in five years, never sold one.
If we got another one, we'll do nine.
It stays there.
And then what happens is curiously enough, people come and then we have some
specific deals for, for our customers and they come in and they would buy large orders.
And then one guy is like, Hey, you know what?
I need one of those arms and they'll buy it.
Cause it's, it's hard when you do parts, it's really hard to have every single
part be a hundred percent desirable and a hundred percent sell through.
And because the reality is that, you know, not every single part of every
single toy is, has a fast sell time.
I have to have the right person come along when they, they have the robot that's missing
that exact same arm that I have.
And then that's why in reality, people don't do this business because it's
crazy what I'm trying to do here.
It's just crazy.
But the fact that I've been doing it long enough and the fact that we have
kept all over listings and the fact has made it possible where we, right now, we
only have 11,000 listings.
If we could have 50 or more, we could have a hundred thousand listings.
If we could have 50 or we could have a hundred, which is what I'm working towards.
I want to get there eventually.
When that happens, it's just, it's, it's going to be a totally different story.
But right now we're seeing incredible numbers and I'm, we're having fun and
everything's working well and, and we have what we have.
So imagine if we had all of that.
So it's just, we're just working towards that.
Cool.
Now on the imagine customers, you've been doing eBay a minute.
Now, how many on a day-to-day average basis or a year over year average basis,
how many of your customers are actually repeat recurring customers?
Well, as per my metrics, I have seen that we have around 30 to 40% recurring.
Wow.
60% is new.
That's impressive.
Actually.
Yeah.
Okay.
Right.
Now, I guess these are all collectors and we are pretty, we have become
pretty good in hammering the culture behind what we're doing.
So on top of building the store and doing all that and getting the pictures and
getting the product and all of that, we're also kind of building this community and
trying to have them come again and trying to get, and giving them coupons and giving
them, you know, reasons to come back.
And, and, and it's been a challenge like for everybody, but, but I guess because
it's a collector kind of market, because I have to say that my market is a collector.
Yeah.
When Christmas comes along, I'm not selling like to the mom that's going to buy a toy
for the kid to put under the tree.
Not really.
Like my, my customer is the collector.
So, so they come back, they like the service, they like the pictures, they like that.
What we sell is what we show.
They like all of that and, and, and they come back and they, you know, we have a
good returning business.
Multi-quantity orders.
Is that most of your orders are multi-quantity or are they buying one-offs
when they do shop?
Like we get both.
We get people buying one item.
We get a lot of that one item, one item, one item.
And then in the day, now we're getting three or four orders where we get, you know,
I don't know, 20, 23, 28 parts in one order.
So we're getting multiple orders that have multiple items in them.
And then we're also like, again, we're also getting resellers.
So sometimes I, as crazy as it may sound, I may put up a missile up and I would say,
okay, I have 130 of these missiles.
And then somebody comes and buys 80 missiles in a, in a snap.
Cause the missile is 299, right?
So they, they, they, they say, okay, give me 80 either because they're reselling or
because they're doing a custom or they're building a, a, a, um, a display with, I
don't know.
So they want to have more bombs or more, but they come in and they, they, so we,
we, the more we have the better.
So we try to, every single listing we put up, we try and get, okay, how many we
have?
So we have 30, we have 50, we put them all up and they sell.
What are some like limitations that you're like, or lines you're not willing
to cross and try to sell?
Like, do you do like board games?
Do you do nerf guns?
Like, do you have anything where you're like, Hey, we are not messing with this,
even though it's kind of considered a toy in the toy category.
There are certain lines, like for the most part here, like if you, if we see
Gundam, for example, we just stay away from Gundam.
Like we don't, we don't get into any of that.
We try to stay away from girl toys just because.
It's the same as saying, okay, so I'm a men's clothing seller or I'm a women's
clothing seller.
It's completely different.
And we have the, the, the men's categories pretty, pretty much like,
like, um, drill down.
So we kind of, so we try to stay away on, like before I say before, when I started
doing all this, I acquired a lot and we have tons of girls toys, but we don't
touch them.
We don't process them at the moment.
They're just there.
Um, and we try to stay away from them.
They're just there.
We don't actively buy anything girl toys, unless there's something specific that
we know that that will make us some buck or whatever.
But, um, we, we try those.
Um, I forget what they're called the, the, the sets, like the, the scenery,
terrain, little background sets that you use the figures to play on kind of deal.
Do you do those?
Like to do scenarios and stuff.
Yeah.
That big GI Joe battleship that takes like 10 tables worth of space.
A USS flag.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
There it is.
Yeah.
Well, here's one too.
That's, that's a teradrome.
That's another big one.
Yeah.
Anyway, yeah, I, I do these play sets, but I, I sell them by parts.
Uh, so I, I, when I find them, which is part, they're hard to find and they're
expensive.
Um, when I do, I sell them by parts.
And again, there's a hundred people trying to complete that thing.
So, you know, I'll sell every single piece of it really quickly because everybody
needs that.
And that's a $2,000 set.
So if you, so if you can buy a part for a hundred dollars or 150 or 80 or 50 or
30, you know, people are going to buy it.
Um, we just stay away from stuff.
That's kind of complicated.
We stay away from like the, the manga and, uh, the Asian kind of like it's
because it's, it's a whole different game.
It's, it's completely it.
We don't know about it either.
So it's, it's, there's, you know, you need knowledge to be in this game.
There's like, and, and every one of those little like, like, like, like Japanese,
uh, cartoons and stuff like that.
It's just, I mean, just, just to mention if you go like, if you even try to go
like Dragon Ball or, or Yugi-O way, it just becomes crazy immediately.
It's just something else.
Um, so I stay more on the, on the regular, uh, standard toys, uh, vintage
toys, but I, when we buy 600 pounds of toys or 300 pounds of toys, or even 100
pounds of toys, we'll get a little bit of everything.
So, you know, I do get bored.
So we have a box, a bin where we put, where we're filling it, where every
time we, when we do the parsing that I told you at the beginning on the table,
we'll select all the parts that are board game parts and then we'll go to that bin.
So when that bin is full or when we think we have, we'll just maybe do a, a little
section in our store called like board game parts, and then we'll do, you know,
clue and you know, you know how many clue ropes I have and so how many clue, you
know, the, the, the tools that they use to kill the different people in the board
game, whatever.
I have a ton of those.
I have dice.
I have, you know, all kinds of crazy things that we don't actively sell, but
they're, we're, they're there, you know, we're keeping them there.
And then when we have like a decent amount, then we'll do even maybe a lot of,
you know, maybe 30 dice and we'll do a lot of that.
And we'll do a strawberry short gate lot, whatever we have from strawberry short
game, we'll let it go just to move it along, but we're kind of building them up
as we get, as we get parts, we'll just throw stuff in there and make them grow.
And when we have like a decent amount, then we'll go ahead and sell them.
All right.
I got the question.
I ask every eBay seller promoted listings.
Do you use them?
Are they required?
I mean, you're, you're, I mean, you already told us we can do six figures
ripping off GI Joe arms and legs and part them out.
There's, there's got to, is there some secrets doing this?
Like promoted listings are the big thing where people are like, you don't gotta
promote, you gotta promote.
What do you do and what do you think like the overall person should do?
I guess.
Before you answer tech does watch thieves.
Yes.
And I, I ask everybody, so don't feel bad.
I'm not just picking it up.
It's okay.
I don't mind.
Tech watching this tech knows pretty much what I do as well.
So before, when I was starting out, I was not promoting.
And I remember, I want to say names that I remember a couple of people in the group
were like, you gotta promote.
Like people that are doing really well in the group and they're like, they're
really experienced and like, man, you have to promote, you have to promote you.
You're missing out.
And I'm like, you know what?
Let me try it.
And I have to say that I tried it and my, my sales went a little bit up.
You know, they went, they went higher than before.
I have divided my story into kind of like into two sections where.
Probably 40% of the store is promoted and there's a 60% that's not promoted,
which are like all the things that I know I sell immediately.
The moment I list them or that when I say immediately is they'll sell on their
three months.
They're going to send you this month or maybe next, or maybe next week.
But those bars, I don't, I try not to promote them.
But then I do have the rest that I just do promote.
And then it's crazy because sometimes you look for a part and I'll be the only one
there and it's being promoted and you see two results, you know, you see my
regular listing and I'm like, you know, I should take it out, but I'm like, you
know, I already I'm on the, I'm on the horse.
I'm not going to kind of like stop promoting listings just to not affect
the performance in my store and then in my, my metrics.
But, but I do, I am kind of like slowly getting the stuff that I know it's unique
or hard to get or all of that.
I just, I'm taking it out.
So I don't, so I don't get dinged for my height.
Like I have figures that are $2,000.
So those things, I don't promote them.
I don't need to there.
It's the only one on eBay.
So why promote it?
I was going to say like, what, what's the most expensive part you have sold and
does it surprise you like that someone's going to be like, oh, I'm going to be
like, does it surprise you like that somebody's willing to pay $2,000 for GI Joe's
bazooka?
Like, does it shock you every time you sell something like this or are you just
like, I was a collector.
I know what it's worth to certain people, but I'm curious, like what's the smallest,
most valuable thing you've ever sold that you're just like, Hey, I don't know why
somebody just paid, you know, X amount of dollars for Michelangelo's nunchucks.
Right.
Well, yeah, it's first off, it really is, it blows you away.
You see these sales that people will pay $280, $270 for one single accessory to a
figure.
It blows you out away.
You're like, wow, you know, who's willing to spend 300 bucks on a little piece of
plastic.
However, when you look at the complete figure, the figure is worth $1,200.
So you're like, you know, then when you look at that side of the story, you're
like, well, it makes sense.
You know, you have a figure that's worth $1,200.
You're only missing the gun and this dude has it.
I'll spend the 200 bucks because in the end, I found this in my attic.
I had it from when I was a child.
So they didn't spend a thousand dollars to buy the figure.
So it makes sense for them to complete it, spending 200 bucks and completing
their expensive figure.
So it makes sense.
And if you ask me what's the more expensive part that I've sold, probably
around 280 to $300, that's kind of like, like when that's an expensive part.
And then figures, I have sold $6,000 figures.
I mean, that's just that's a complete figure sealed from prototype or whatever.
That's just something different.
It's not a part.
But and then they go for way more money.
And have I been nervous selling a $6,000 figure?
Yes, I have been nervous as well.
I guess I never know what's going to happen.
Yeah, like, all right.
You so you part out toys.
I mean, do people, your friends and family kind of think you're like a little bit off
the wagon here because like you sell parts of toys and this is what you do for like a
living?
Like, it sounds crazy.
Like, have I just had to walk up to somebody in the street like selling books?
OK, they're like, all right.
Yeah, there's bookstores everywhere.
But I mean, there's really no no stores where you can go just buy parts for toys.
That's why I do it.
That's why.
Because there's there's not really a place where you can go and find the parts.
It's we had one.
It was a little bitty boy, like maybe seven or eight.
There was a toy store and they had baskets kind of like you were describing of the gun
basket, the the rifle basket, the Barbie head basket.
And they had toys in general.
But I remember them having a particular display case.
Let me just say they went out of business because they did not advertise because it
didn't last till I was like nine years old.
It was like two years.
We went there to get cheap toys or weird one off toys.
But I remember that toy store.
I do.
Right.
Well, I mean, I mean, it's it's when people ask you, like, what do you do?
I have a store on eBay.
I don't I don't say I have a part store.
And when they start asking more and they're actually it's interesting how they go like,
hmm, interesting.
So you sell parts and you're making a living and you have a house and you have a family
and you have kids going to school and you have all this going on.
Man, how do you do this?
It's just, you know, they see that I'm doing it.
So it's like, you know, they're they're actually amazed because it's like it's so weird.
Like you just said, people don't, you know, either I'm an electrician or I'm a computer
engineer or I'm, you know, but I'm not an eBay toy part seller.
You know, I sell little missiles.
So to give people an idea, mentioned earlier, somewhere around two hundred thousand dollars
you make is a decent amount of money in the US.
But is that like a fortune in Panama?
Because we've had people in the UK and Australia is fairly comparable to the US.
But in Panama, how is that in comparison dollar per dollar?
It's comparable.
I mean, it really depends on the city of the United States that you want to compare it
to.
But Panama, well, for starters, Panama has the US dollar.
So US dollar is the main currency here.
So you don't want to convert anything.
We use the dollar.
So there are things that are less expensive than the US and there are things that are
more expensive than the US.
I mean, if you want to get an apartment or condo here in the center of the city, you're
looking at four hundred five hundred thousand dollars for an apartment or maybe seven hundred
dollars, depending on the section on the section of the city.
And there's areas where you can get one for two million dollars.
So it's just, you know, it's it's it's very terrible.
OK, yeah, yeah.
Very comparable to the United States.
If you go to like outer side of the city, you can get a home for, you know, maybe one
hundred and fifty thousand.
It's just a smaller home and you're outside of the city and the suburbs.
You know, there's a little bit, but you know, a meal would cost you 40, 50 bucks.
You know, if you go out to eat, that's where you're going to pay the same thing.
I was actually blown away when I went to San Francisco last year.
We were getting hot dogs and chips and pizza and paying one hundred and ten dollars.
I was like, with my wife and we were like, I'm like, I felt it was really expensive.
And right now we're going on vacation and we're going to London.
And I'm like, I'm looking at the prices over there.
I'm like, yeah, this is going to be crazy because London is very expensive as well.
But yeah, Panama is comparable for sure.
You're you kind of hit on the fact that you do have kids.
Do you like are your kids interested in your business or like they kind of just like,
yeah, that does this thing and keeps keeps the roof over our head.
Yeah. Well, they know I keep the roof over their heads.
They're not into the toys too much.
The bigger one is like, hey, daddy, can I work?
Can I come work with them?
They both work for me every now and then they come in and they're like,
I'll give them a bin and I'll sit they'll sit down and they'll parse the bin.
I'll separate the different parts and stuff like that.
I'll pay them 20, 30 bucks just for doing that.
Just to give them a little bit of cash because I'm going to give them the cash anyway.
Right. So why not have something done in the process and they would they learn
responsibility and all of that.
But it's not that I think that they want to like she's thinking I like
the bigger one wanted to do something and say, you know what?
If you if you want me to do this for you, you want to you have to promise me that
you're going to open your eBay store and you're going to start your business
and I'm going to help you through it.
I'm going to ship for you.
I have the shipping station.
I have everything here.
But you have to start your own thing.
And she's like, you have me tempted.
So she's thinking about it.
But like she you know, she's interested, but she's probably not going to sell toys.
She's trying to do something else.
But you know, yeah, they they're not like, oh my God, my dad sells toys.
I want to be but the little one comes in every now and then and she'll like,
Daddy, can you bring that bin down and can I play with those?
And then she'll sit down and wait and play with those, you know,
and I'll let I'll let them.
But yeah.
So I think we forgot to ask, we probably should have asked you way earlier on.
Is it buy it now or is it auctions for your parts store?
Buy it now.
I have auctions or do you do certain things with auctions or just not at all?
Yeah, lately I was playing around.
That's why if you look for lots in my store, I don't have any more because I auctioned them off.
I was I was testing the waters.
However, I don't know if it's because we're I'm not this is actually for the past three weeks.
I've been trying this as a new thing, so I don't know much about auctions.
The only thing I do know is that they're not selling as well as I wanted them to sell.
So I don't know if it's because it's summer slowdown or it's because
I shouldn't be doing lots because I'm like, damn, this is a lot that was worth 600 bucks.
And I got, you know, maybe 280.
So I was like, you know, it's not going where I wanted it to go.
But, you know, we did get a good influx of money just by doing lots.
It was it was so we are starting to with the one we already took a bunch of pictures
and we're going to upload some listings now in the next few weeks that I'm going to be out.
We're going to be listing these items, these lots, but we're going to try buy it now for the lots.
We've never done that either.
So we're going to try that now instead of auction.
We're going to do the lots, but buy it now and kind of price them accordingly and then,
you know, give them some room for them to make money as well.
But we're going to try that and see what happens.
How many photos per listing?
The our little process that we've made says that it has to be seven pictures minimum.
However, we're doing 18 now because now because all of our pictures have our logo.
And recently, you know, just as a safety precaution, I was like, you know,
what what if eBay turns around and says, you know, guys, you have two weeks.
I don't want no logos in no listings anymore.
And I have 11,000 items. What do I do?
Like, I can't retake all those pictures in two days.
It's just not going to happen.
So now we're doing the pictures.
We're taking a small set of pictures.
They're all white.
No, no logo.
So and we'll upload them.
So so that happens tomorrow.
I can call or I can hire somebody in one of these countries that they can just come in into a store
and delete all the pictures that have a logo and leave the ones that have white background.
And we're still in business.
So that's just a backup.
And now we're doing about 18 pictures and every action figure that's complete
or vehicle that's complete also has now video.
So we're always trying to stay ahead, you know, from the competition.
Nobody's doing this.
People that are doing parts have one picture.
That's it. Maybe two.
That'd be me.
You go to people like Wheeljack's Lab, which is a big store,
and they have three pictures, two pictures.
That's it.
So we want to have all the pictures, all the videos, all the information.
So people we have the most item specifics than anybody.
We are number one on eBay in the parts category and we are number 24 out of 289,000 sellers
right here down in Panama.
This crazy guy has number 24 on eBay.
It's just crazy.
There's a lot of people selling and we're trying to make our store the best possible store.
So I have a fun question for you, and this is going to put you on the spot slightly.
60 seconds or less, give us all the best toy information tips a new seller wanting to get
into parts could do in 60 seconds or less.
Oh my God.
Don't get into parts.
It's crazy.
That's all we need.
We don't even need 60 seconds.
I mean, that's all folks.
Well, no, I mean, it's just a process.
Start with what you know, start selling toys that you know, start with one brand.
Don't try to branch out to everything.
Learn that toy line, do well in it, then start doing a couple more.
Ask you sell what you know, start researching a little bit into other toy lines, see what sells.
And it's just a process, but little by little go and then expand
and then grow from there.
Don't try to do this.
I mean, parts is a really hard business.
I wouldn't push anybody to do it.
Like if you say, hey, I have a hundred thousand dollars and I want to invest in toys
and do a toy store, I would never tell you go do parts.
It's just you'll burn all your money and it's not an easy startup.
I had other businesses.
I had other ways of making money.
So that helped me in the process of doing what I'm doing now.
But I had that cushion that not everybody has and that it's just not easy.
And it's very competitive.
So just go little by little, start with the complete figures, complete toys,
and then branch out of that and see how it goes.
What type of inventory system do you need to have 11,000 different little parts
in a way where you can easily go find this when you get an order?
Because I can't even begin.
Listen, your generic eBay reseller has those cardboard boxes and then the,
you know, the Ziploc bags with the skew on it.
That can't exist in your business because you can fit a thousand in one of those cardboard boxes.
How does this look like in your business?
I don't even know where to begin.
Like it's crazy.
We've been developing our own system and it's worked really well for us,
but it has some drawbacks.
And I've talked about this in the group.
I've talked to this about tech and pretty much like it's not an easy,
the problems that we have are not easy to fix.
And pretty much tech said like, well, you like you have two options.
Either you start from scratch, you undo everything and start from scratch again.
I'm not going to do that.
That's crazy for me.
I'm not going to do that.
Or you just, you know, continue a different route, but I've tried different routes and it doesn't.
The problems, I don't want to get into that right now, but the problems that we do have
with our inventory system are not easy to overcome because it's not only putting away
the stuff that you list, but it's also adding replenishables to those already listed items
that are already put away in a different place.
And it's just, and when you have hundreds of them, imagine, imagine you have a hundred items
and you have to add them to the store.
Do you walk a hundred times to different areas of your warehouse where all these parts are
and put them in the same place?
You don't.
So if you're going to put them in a new place, how do you keep that up with the skew system
so that you don't lose items?
Let's say out of a thousand items that we sell, we find, you know,
we find 950 of them, but there's 50 that go missing.
Fortunately enough, for the most part, those 50, we have backups.
So we can go to the GI Joe section and dig out another helmet, even if it's not in the
location that we set up, we can replenish, we can just fulfill the order.
You know, you know, and when not, I have to cancel an order.
You know, it has happened.
It doesn't happen a lot, but it has happened and it frustrates me because I feel that it's
it's a it's one of those growing pains where I'm like, if I'm going to accelerate and I'm
going to grow and I'm going to have 50,000 listings or a hundred thousand listings,
I need to figure out a way to fix it because it's not it's going to amplify itself.
The problem is going to amplify itself, especially with the speed of sales and all that.
It's going to be, you know, if I start getting 200 sales a day or a hundred, it's, you know,
I don't know.
I wouldn't know how to do that at the moment.
I don't think I can handle 200 or 300 sales a day.
It's going to be.
I would have to come up with your own system and the only comparable sellers that I could
think of are maybe jewelry because they deal in a lot of smalls and maybe the car guys
because they deal in compact smalls, essentially.
Right.
And actually, I was talking to a few of the top parts, the car parts guys, and they've
had this problem, too.
They have the same problem, like where you can't and it's just something because it's
human error, like sometimes I process those those ad-ups where we're adding and sometimes
I'll add the part either I'll forget to update the skew or I purposely know that I'm updating
the skew, but for some reason it doesn't save.
So you save it and you think it's safe, but it's not safe.
So when you actually sell the part, you can't find you don't know where it is.
And there's thousands of parts.
So how do you it's just today we had an example of that today.
We were fulfilling an order that was very large and we had two items that we couldn't
find from that large, large order.
And we went we've done things to kind of compensate.
Like we have a whole section of our warehouse, whereas in this section, we only put things
that we add to the store.
There's no new items in this section.
So we have to find something and we have to go through all the bins.
It's on this side of the row, any, you know, this side of the of the warehouse only.
And we don't have to go around the whole warehouse because that would be crazy.
So at least we're doing things like that.
And we're doing things like if I add it is in this side.
If she adds it is in that side.
So so we're like, OK, we sold this part and we can't find it.
I could who did who added it to store like, oh, it was me.
It was her.
Then we'll search on that side of the warehouse and we're all pitching and helping, you know,
kind of like that's what we do.
And if not, we'll just go to our backups and try and pull another part if we can.
If not, then we'll say I'm sorry.
I think the big takeaway overall that I've gotten from this call, it's not that you can't
find the parts to sell like what you do.
It's the processes.
And that's how you've gotten to where you're at today.
Just like I'm literally blind blown that you have all these little pieces laying around
somewhere.
You get tens of thousands of these.
God knows how often it's the processes.
That's why there will never be Eduardo 2.0 because it's too hard to figure out.
I mean, it's all credit's due to you for actually pulling in, you know, the past four years,
five years you've been building this business.
It's not something you can just stumble into like books.
Anybody can go scan books, put them on a bookshelf, easily go pick the book.
Right.
Your processes are completely different and refined and they're always going to be changing
as you continue to grow.
But it's just eye opening because I always try to tell people the products out there,
but if you don't have the processes, you're never going to be able to get anywhere significantly
because you still take forever to do this part of the business or this part of the business.
And somebody like myself who's all about, I don't want to be in my business all day every
day.
I want to get as much time back as I can.
And even somebody that wants to grow, the time is your most valuable thing in this business.
And if you're not efficient across the board, it's going to kill you at the end of the day.
I mean, you probably do some of these listings.
You're doing 18 photos for a little, you know, missile.
And as much as I hate to say, you're probably listing 18 photo listings 10 times faster
than somebody who's just sitting there taking all day to do one stupid listing for one t-shirt.
And they're doing maybe six photos.
So I mean, kudos to you for developing these processes.
So that means that that's going to be your future.
You just kind of hit it on the head.
You're still figuring it out.
And that's how you're going to get to 300 sales a day and be able to easily go find
the item and pack it and ship it.
Yeah.
Thank you, man.
It's still a work in progress.
There's a lot to do, a lot.
But like you said, we've had to develop our own things, our own process, our own...
Because there's nothing already out there that I can go and copy.
Like I've been looking over YouTube.
And then I take ideas from everybody.
I take ideas from the Lego people.
I take ideas from collectors that are doing this or that.
And then I take ideas from big stores, like real toy stores.
What are they doing?
How are they ordering?
How can I combine?
And I'm trying to mix in as much as I can.
Then I'm in a group with like-minded people where all these people are winning.
And I'm like, how do we get there?
How do we do that?
How do we figure it out?
And then how do we make that work in this niche?
Which is kind of weird and crazy at the same time.
But like if tomorrow I really put up a goal where I say I want to make...
Let's say I want to make a million dollars in sales.
I know for sure that it's not going to come only from parts.
It cannot.
I believe it can't happen unless I have, I don't know, 100,000 or 300,000 parts up
and they're selling constantly all day long.
It's just...
It's very hard.
And then how do I get those 300 parts up?
It's just... It's not... I don't know.
I don't want to say it's not doable, but it's just... It's crazy.
I don't know.
We would have to start adding, okay, I'm going to have to call Hasbro and say,
hey, send me a container of your new lines.
All that you did and then I'm going to sell those too because new stuff sells too.
And I have a little bit of that and I'm doing...
I already... I am already doing that.
I'm already selling sealed brand new toys mixed in with...
And again, all those things have helped me be able to develop the parts store
because I have all these other things happening in the store where I'm also selling it.
I sell board games and I've sold action figures, the new MOTU toy lines that are in Target
and Walmart and all that.
I have all that up in my store as well.
So by doing all of that, I'm able to kind of get to the place I am now,
but it's an interesting and long process.
So do you have anything you're chasing that you haven't gotten your hands as far as a park goes
that you really want to get for your store essentially?
Yeah, there's a couple of parts like street chart parts.
We're always looking for those because they sell really well.
It's a very good toy line and they sell fast, but they're very hard to find,
but some street chart parts and there's like a Batman...
Batman Batmobile engine, like the center of the...
The Batmobile has like an engine, that's like a turbine.
One of those vehicles has a launching missile that launches a turbine, say it or not.
It's like a missile.
That missile is always missing.
It goes to an $800 car and the missile sells for $150.
And with all the thousands and thousands and thousands of parts that we process,
I can't find one.
It's crazy.
And I have three in stock.
I have three here that I recently got, but it's crazy.
I can't find them.
I can't have more than those three and I'm looking for those.
Every time we're doing a lot, we're all looking for those parts.
And there's more than just Street Shark and Batman,
but we're always looking for these hard to find parts.
There's Ninja Turtle parts that are expensive.
A bunch of them we're looking all the time, but they're hard to find.
So I've recently gotten into CDs.
I noticed with CDs, I'm having a lot of plastic waste because of broken plastic, essentially.
I can't even have come to imagine.
What do you do with your waste?
The junk that's broken, chewed on, you melt it and make, I don't know, basketballs out of it.
So I have this.
It's like a trash can.
It's a big eBay box with all the parts that are broken.
And when everybody, everyone that processes parts has one of these in their thing, in their desk.
And pretty much when it fills up, we have bins and we have the bins stacked up.
We have bins and bins of broken parts and they sell.
You make lots.
You put them on the table and you make a pile like that and you sell it.
And then people buy them for customs, for dioramas.
And you're going to have like a broken machine.
And it doesn't matter because there was an explosion and the thing broke.
And then they'll paint it with exploding thing and they'll make a diagram and I'll sell it for,
I don't know, $19.99, $10 shipping.
And you get, I don't know, 20 pounds of...
And people will do that.
And then they get also... Broken CDs apparently.
Yeah, but I don't know about CDs, but the toy parts are...
Because sometimes it'll have like a chew mark, but the part is good.
So they can use it for a diorama or something.
And they don't want to paint on an expensive part.
They'd rather paint on top of a damaged part.
So yeah, we keep them in.
We have never sold broken parts, but I know they sell.
Because I have friends of mine that sell them all the time.
We're just keeping them there and we're focusing on the stuff that really sells now.
But whatever we want, we can start doing little lots of broken parts and they sell.
I got one last question for you.
And it's going to be the toughest question of the whole podcast.
Oh my God.
Here we go.
Who is your favorite Ninja Turtle?
Oh my God.
I don't have a favorite...
Ninja Turtle is not my thing.
So I don't know if I have a favorite, but I love Hot Shot, which is a dog that...
Like a fireman dog.
And I like that figure because I like dogs as well.
So kind of like I like that figure.
It's a crazy figure.
It's different from the regular turtle-like looking figurines.
And he's expensive.
It's at least like $300, $400.
So I like him.
And then there's other cool figures like Scratch the Cat, which is $2,000 and stuff like that.
There's a couple of interesting figures.
You know, Ninja Turtles is one of those toy lines that's...
To me, it's fun.
And it's one of those toy lines that I would keep.
If you ask me the question where you say like, okay, if you had to drop every single toy line
that you sell and you only have to keep five, probably I would keep Ninja Turtle as one of
the lines that I would sell.
Just because it has a lot of parts that sell for little money.
So they sell constantly in orders and the people come by them and they make $60, $70
orders with this little inexpensive parts.
And then they have the most amount of crazy high dollar parts that you can never find
or that if you find them, they're just expensive and they're really hard to find.
And in G.I. Joe, where I know these toy line and I know all of that, it's very hard to find a part,
a single part that's $400.
You can't find that.
And in Ninja Turtles, you do, you find it.
So it's a good toy line to kind of like expand and kind of get to know.
And it's full of interesting figures that are really valuable.
Yeah, they're not turtles.
So it's pretty funny how that works out.
Johnny, what's your favorite Ninja Turtles?
Dinosaurs, dinosaurs, dogs, cats that are not the turtles, but are in the total toy line.
And yeah, Johnny, Splinter, Splinter.
I mean, Splinter.
Yeah, he's a rat.
I have to classify better and say one of the four actual turtles.
Oh, Raphael.
Raphael.
So my final question that I'm going to copy Mike and make it a way better question.
What is your favorite toy that brings you the most joy and happiness?
Doesn't matter its worth, that makes you personally happy.
I guess GI Joe and GI Joe, that would be a toy line.
And it was because it was my favorite toy line to play as a kid.
And the play sets, man.
I mean, that's what like, I mean, again, I don't play anymore.
Like I don't sit on the floor and play with the look.
I don't do that anymore.
But that's what brings me the most joy.
GI Joe and then the play sets with all the figures.
And like I like putting them up and just looking at them.
And they're like, they look pretty cool.
Like that's set over there, man.
All right.
We're going to wrap it up here.
Eduardo, we'll have his eBay link.
It'll be down in the pinned comment on the YouTube channel.
If you're interested in speaking to Eduardo, he exists over in Tech's group,
Reselling Greatness.
He's on the toy call.
He's on a bunch of other calls as well.
Eduardo, we appreciate you hanging out today and we will talk to everybody in next week's episode.
Thank you guys for having me.
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