We sold on all four platforms today.

That’s the milestone phrase around here — eBay, Mercari, Etsy, and Poshmark all moving on the same day. Today it was capped by a Collier’s encyclopedia set on Poshmark for $220 that forced us to go to storage, which is also how we ended up at Goodwill with a truckload of donations and a story about another place that lost the whole load over an iron bed frame.

This post walks the day’s sales across the four platforms, covers the headline finds, and then tells the donation story — because the title isn’t a metaphor. We’re naming our reasons.

The eBay highlights

Most of the volume goes through eBay, the workhorse. A walk through the standouts:

• ICM Lauffer Italy Boca soup spoon — $47. Vintage, mod-looking flatware. We listed the set individually instead of as a lot because each piece is rare and pricey, and we wanted any imperfections called out per piece. If we’d lotted them we’d have netted under half. That’s a strategy bet that paid off — slow movement, high price per piece, total comes out higher.
• Halo 3 SPNKr controller box — $62.99. Box only. We paid $1.
• Bocomal FR Cat 4 quilted jacket — $64.99. Heavy duck-quilt lined coat going to Texas.
• Urban Decay eyeliners — four of them on one order. Alkaline $14.99, Sabbath $12.99, Smog $9.99, Stash $9.99. Dollar a whack going in. Vice and a Maybelline shipped on a separate order. Candice and I had a moment where we agreed we need to find a pallet of these.
• Shoulder pads, plastic-wrapped — $24.99. Sold faster because they looked smaller in the photos. Lonnie called the wrap “like a little turtle in its shell.” Candice said armadillo. Either way it shipped.
• Hasegawa Battle of Britain Hurricane model — $14.99. Plastic kit, niche category, predictable.
• Brand-new sealed outdoor security camera — $89.99. Paid $20 for it Thursday. Sold the same week — fast flip.
• Vintage Bombay Company wood desk organizer — $69.99. A “letter box” / desk briefcase, depending on who you ask.
• Isabella Fiore vintage purse — $80. We listed at $100. The buyer offered $80, and at $5 in we let it go — “really difficult to turn down $80 when we have $5 into it” was the call. Net over $50. Could’ve waited for the $100. Sometimes the offer is the bird in the hand.
• Game Boy carry backpack — $11.99. Paid $2 the morning we filmed it for a short.
• Coca-Cola miniature lot — push cart, crate, wash tub with bottles — $39.99. Lonnie’s been keeping an eye on miniatures since this batch comped well.
• Kenworth hat — $24.99. Black with red stitching. (Lonnie complains about hats. The hat box is almost empty. Both things can be true.)
• 35mm film theater trailers — $74.99 for a lot of 25. This is the start of a bigger run; we picked up about a dozen cans from a private buy and we’re sorting them into roughly ten lots of 25-30 reels each. There’ll be more of these.
• Four GI Joes on one order — $73.96 + shipping. Cobra Trooper with parachute, Crimson Guard, Renegades-line Cobra Trooper, and a paratrooper Viper that turned out not to be the Viper. The Joe drawer is decommissioning a box every week or two — a satisfying sign that we’re working through inventory faster than we’re adding to it.
• Shed Flips refrigerator magnets — $7.99 and $24.99. We 3D-print these in the shed and glue them. We’re down to one in the queue, so Lonnie’s spinning up the printer again.
• 2X army sweatpants and shirt — $19.99 each. Bigger sizes move steadily, and Father’s Day is coming up. There’s a 40-piece backstock in storage that we keep forgetting we have.

The Mercari and Poshmark sales

Mercari is the casual-buyer platform — fast sales, lower fees, smaller items.

• Viktor & Rolf Flowerbomb sampler lot of 12 — $21.24. Mercari occasionally puts something on sale for you without asking; that may have been the case here.
• Pop Mart Molly Carb Lover series — Tayaki Princess — $24.99. A little mermaid with a tayaki tail. Tayaki is Japanese — soft sweet bread filled with bean paste; the entire Carb Lover series is themed on baking and bread shapes. Pop Mart is a recurring inventory category for us; the figure inside doesn’t always match the box, so we double-check each one before shipping.
• Philosophy Renewed Hope in a Jar moisturizer — $19.99. In the bellow drawer (Spartacus drawer joke aside).

On Poshmark we moved a pair of pewter Brighton Skye platform wedges with hammered rivets — $30.

And on Etsy, the headline of the whole day: the 1961 Collier’s encyclopedia set — $220, free shipping, headed to Pennsylvania. That’s the sale that forced us to go to storage. Four separate boxes, each currently doubled-up 12×10×4s, that we’ll either ship as four packages or tape together into two depending on how the math runs through Pirate Ship. (We worked the actual numbers in the Pack It video for the same Monday’s orders — short version: kept them as four to keep the per-package weight down for the carrier.) Encyclopedias are the kind of inventory you forget you own and then remember in a really good way.

The other big-ticket eBay headline of the morning was the Italian soup spoon for $47 off the flatware set, mentioned above. Two genuinely valuable pieces, two different platforms, same Monday morning.

Why we still donate to Goodwill

So. The reason we ended up at Goodwill today.

Going to storage for the encyclopedias meant a truck full of stuff coming back, and a truck full of stuff to drop off on the way. We had vinyl I’d decided not to bother listing, some personal donations, and a lightweight iron twin bed frame we’d bought off Amazon for the office. I’d taken the bed apart carefully, wrapped it neatly, knew it wasn’t a super desirable thing on its own — but I figured a giant box of vinyl, which a thrift store can move all day, was the trade.

We had two places we could’ve gone with it. I won’t name names.

We pulled up to the first one. It was about to rain. Nobody was out at the donation door, which was fine — we don’t need help. But I rang the bell anyway because I didn’t want a stack of records they were about to inherit getting wet on their own dock.

Lady comes out. Sees the records. “Oh, the guys in the back are gonna love these.”

Then she points at the bed frame.

“Oh, we don’t take that.”

I put the bed back in the truck. Then I started loading the vinyl back in. “No, no — we’ll still take the vinyl.”

I told her, ma’am, this is all or nothing. If you won’t take that, I have to go somewhere else. And if I have to go somewhere else, you don’t get this either. That’s the cost. Helping is supposed to be a win-win.

She acted like I was trying to drop off a box of dirty diapers. It’s a clean, neatly-wrapped twin bed frame. The space they’re in is huge. I think she just didn’t want the hassle of putting it together.

She tried to walk it back. “Oh, no, no — we’ll take that.” I said no thanks. It’s your loss.

Took everything to Goodwill. Pulled up to the dock; two employees came out: “Oh, that’s awesome — thank y’all.” Easy unload, real gratitude, no triage of what they would and wouldn’t accept.

That’s the thing. When we donate, the win for us — and for everybody dropping stuff off — is not being hassled, picked apart, or cherrypicked. Goodwill takes the whole truckload and figures out what to do with it on their end. The other place wanted to cherry-pick the records and leave us holding a bed.

Cut off your nose to spite your face. (Candice put that one a little differently on camera, but the spirit was there.)

That’s why we still donate to Goodwill.

The lesson

The day’s sales tell one story — flatware listed individually wins over flatware lotted; a $1 game-console box becomes $62.99 when the controllers are missing; a $5 vintage purse turns $80 in offers; encyclopedias turn into a $220 ship-it-yourself logistics puzzle. Sold on all four platforms is what makes a Monday a banner Monday around here.

The Goodwill story tells the other one. We’re online sellers — we sort and price and pick every single day. When we’re the ones bringing the donation, the place that doesn’t pick is the one we keep coming back to.

Thanks for hanging out with us through the orders. We’ll see y’all in the next one.