Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to “The Doug Show.” It’s Doug Cunnington here, and today I’m gonna talk a little bit about a thing that I’ve recently got obsessed with again, and that’s pizza. If you listen to my other show, “Mile High Fi,” you may hear the, the theme going through several episodes where I just, I end up talking about pizza and stuff.
So I’ll talk a little bit about pizza, but as it relates to business and a little bit of an observation that I had because of YouTube I’ll also give you a little bit of an update on my Facebook Marketplace, uh, experiences.
Marketplace Camera Sale
Marketplace Camera Sale
So I literally just got back from, uh, selling one of my cameras. So you probably remember I was like, “Hey, I’m, I’m upgrading a, uh, camera here.”
So I have a Canon E- uh, what is that? A Canon R8, and then I sold my old camera, which was a Canon SL3, and I sold a little outfit. I, I’m, I have cash right here, like I sold… I only sell stuff for cash. Um, so I sold it for 400 bucks, which I think is something that maybe was a little bit lower than what I was thinking at first, but I’ll kinda talk about my approach to selling on Facebook and why I’m doing it, couple tips.
In fact, I was chatting with my dad, who is decluttering himself. Decluttering also, he’s not decluttering himself, he’s decluttering his home and getting rid of some stuff. But he was like, “Hey, like, do you think I should try to s- list some stuff on Facebook Marketplace?” He’s never done it before, so I gave him a couple tips, and I’m gonna have a lot more tips for him, but, you know, I was chatting with him about it.
And I’ve sold a handful of things now, and I kinda have a better handle, um, on a few things. And I’m testing, right? I think probably each local market is a little bit different, and there’s always, obviously, the supply and demand aspect that you have to consider. So, um, we’ll talk about that a little bit, and then I think those are the main two topics.
I’m sure I’ll go on some digression.
Georgie Health Update
Georgie Health Update
Quick update. Uh, a lot of the folks out there are, uh, longtime listeners and, um, Georgie is doing better. She’s actually sleeping behind me. You can potentially see her legs. Um, oh, that’s, uh, that’s actually her head there, but the camera is so nice that it’s blurred, but she’s sticking her head out underneath the table there.
So she’s doing much better. She, she was fairly sick, and I mean, she’s old. She’s 13 and a half, and she’s slowed down a lot. But she had, like, some pretty major, um, liver and pancreatic issues a few weeks ago. She’s been on medication, doing much better, and is, um, continually bossing us around as normal, maybe even more so.
And sh- I mean, she goes on normal long walks in the morning, like three miles or so, and she wants to go swimming and get in the water and all this stuff. So she’s acting pretty much normal, has a great diet. She eats better than me from a health standpoint. I mean, she eats kibble, but she basically gets like chicken and broccoli and rice in, at every meal.
Not all of her food, ’cause I think the kibble is important for her to have. But anyway, she’s doing pretty good. All right.
Pizza Obsession Returns
Pizza Obsession Returns
Let’s talk about pizza. Um, and I’ll try to keep it brief ’cause I think I could just talk about it all the time. But I, uh, am a big fan of pizza. I eat it pretty often, and I Went, uh, with my brother-in-law a few weeks ago.
I played the episode here, but we walked around ’cause there’s some great pizza places, like some different styles, and I like all kinds of pizza. Since then, I’ve had– I’ve made a bunch of pizza myself, but I also had Domino’s, which, you know, it’s not the best pizza in the world, but it’s consistent and, uh, it was pretty good.
Tasted like pizza, you know. I have no issues with a full range of pizza, even cheap, frozen Red Baron or whatever. It’s cool. Like I’ll, I’ll, I’ll– I welcome all pizzas. But I’m also, um, interested in dough and bread making, and I think probably a lot of you out there, you dabbled with, you know, sourdough and making bread during the pandemic.
So th-that actually comes into play. I was, um, interested in bread making and stuff probably in, uh, 2007 or 8 or so, around the time that I got into home brewing beer. And, and I mean, I actually made bread, um, as a, like in high school. Like I, I was like, “I, you know what? I wanna bake some stuff.” So I like baked bread and stuff and, um, yeah.
So I’ve, I’ve made bread in some capacity for a long time, and then I started doing sourdough and the five-minute bread recipe, which is a, a no-knead recipe that you put the flour and water, yeast, and salt, you mix it up roughly, and you throw it in the fridge for a day or two. And then you don’t have to, you know, have a, um, a mixer.
You don’t have to have a kneading machine or anything like that because it goes through like a slow, uh, fermentation in the fridge. So anyway, I’ve been into bread making and pizza making for a long time and got a pizza stone around the same time and like consistently made pizza and bread and stuff for several years until maybe like, I don’t know, I probably took a little break here and there, but, um, I would say around 2019 or so I wasn’t making it as often.
But for, you know, probably over 10 years I was making bread and pizza dough fairly often. Well, for whatever reason, I, I’ve been, um, more interested in making pizza dough, and I think partially it’s what I’m paying attention to. So there are plenty of YouTube channels and videos that are about, you know, food and, and restaurants, and then you hear about, um…
It’s like Triple D: “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” Guy Fieri, and you know, I love those shows. I could watch them endlessly and literally, I think there are so many episodes and so many different videos out there, like you literally can just watch it indefinitely, uh, until the end of time. There’s just so many of them out there So I’ve been watching those, and then YouTube served up more, um, just like recipe kind of videos.
So I was like, “Oh, you know what? I’m interested in making, you know, New York-style pizza a little bit better. Like what’s it all about? What are the different styles?” So started watching more videos around that, and then I, I made a couple purchases.
Gear and Grill Experiments
Gear and Grill Experiments
And number one, I did buy a baking steel. So the baking stones were quite popular, and they’re fairly inexpensive.
But as I watched a few videos, I was convinced that I need a baking steel, which is denser. It’s very heavy. So the one I have is like, I think it’s a three-eighths inch, three-quarter inch. I don’t remember. S- sort of the thicker one. It’s 16 by 16. It’s very dense, and you get a better heat transfer. I think it weighs like 40 pounds, 38 pounds, something like that.
So it’s a big one. And when you put the pizza on there, there’s more thermal mass, uh, and you’re able to just transfer that heat to the pizza crust, which is obviously super important. So it gets a little, a little crisp, a little leoparded on the bottom. Is that a word? Um, you, you have leoparding on the bottom, which is like the, the little black spots, right?
With the stone, it does a, a fine job, and it’s probably better than other things that people were using in the past. But the stone doesn’t have as much mass, so there’s not as much heat stored in there, so you don’t get as good of a crust on there. And I, I d- I actually didn’t weigh the pizza stone, but it probably weighs like two or three pounds.
So you can imagine just like how much more dense the steel is. So I got one of those. And then, um, f- funny enough, obviously, summer came along, and it’s hot outside. It’s great to be downstairs today because it’s gonna be like 95 degrees. But one thing that you should do when you’re making pizza is like turn the oven on for like an hour to let the whole oven preheat and for the steel or the stone to get very hot.
Well, you can imagine when it’s 95 degrees outside, it’s not the most pleasant thing to turn on the oven for an hour and, and let it preheat and then cook for an hour, um, like, you know, a bunch of pizzas or something like that. So I have been, uh, dabbling back out on the grill, and I do use a pizza stone out there.
Number one, I think you can get the charcoal way hotter. So, um, if you can get the grill and everything that hot, then you don’t actually need the steel as much. However, it’s super handy inside with an oven that you can only get up to, like, 500 degrees. That’s what our oven tops off at.
Pizza Boom Meets Business
Pizza Boom Meets Business
And anyway, so I’m watching all these YouTube videos, and then I started seeing, I guess it’s a podcast, but they also have, like, pretty high production value from a video standpoint.
The channel is called Slice, and they just cover pizza So this is my observation. I, I was seeing, um, you know, just pizza shops popping up, and then there’s like a, a fervor about this, you know, the pizza, and it’s shared via social media. And I’ve only watched maybe five of them or so. I love them. Uh, it does get a little repetitive, and it’s longer.
It’s usually like, whatever, 12 to 25 minutes or something like that, versus like the Triple D, they edit it down for like one restaurant, it’s like 10 minutes or something like that, sometimes shorter. So anyway, they’re, they’re going in-depth, and 80% of the people that I’ve watched that have a pizza shop on Slice, they’re like, “Yeah, you know what?
I got into pizza during the pandemic and it was awesome. I… You know, we were stuck at home and I started making pizza. My friends loved it, and I was like, ‘Uh, you know what? I’m gonna open up a pizza shop.'” Super similar story over and over again. Again, I’ve only watched a handful, and it completely reminded me of the craft beer industry from 20 years ago, maybe a little bit more, 20, 25 years ago.
And I got into craft beer in around 2007. My friend got a home brewing, um, kit from his family. I think he had it for a couple years before he actually like brewed the beer, and then we brewed it at my house, and we had a blast. I think we did, we did maybe two batches on the first day. I think like a couple of my friends came over, and actually Sam, Sam had brewed beer.
That’s my brother-in-law, who was on an episode recently. Sam had brewed a batch or two before, so we brought him along, or I invited him over as an expert. It’s funny, we live like across the country now, but at the time, um, they lived, Sam and, and my sister, they lived 10 minutes away, something like that. So super close and, um, anyway, we, we made the beer and we liked it so much.
I think we, we made three batches before we tried the first batch. And I’ve, I’ve heard other people say that, so like they, they made the beer and enjoyed doing it so much, they didn’t even try the first batch. And lucky for them, because the first batch often doesn’t turn out that great. If it’s a good kit, it has a forgiving recipe.
Um, I think our first one was a stout, which that fits the bill Stout has an intense, you know, dark malt flavor, so if there’s some issues, you’re not gonna notice it as much ’cause the flavor is so intense versus like a very light beer or something like that. So anyway, craft beer like blew up for, I mean, about a decade, a little bit more, probably a little bit more before things started contracting.
And, you know, before that, I basically drank like Coors Light. I was a Coors Light person and didn’t really care about beer. I drink more liquor, basically. I would drink like harder alcohol, vodka, whiskey, um, stuff like that. A lot of vodka, I guess. Um, but in, in a lot of, you know, Coors Light or other light beers generally.
So the brewing industry like expanded and, and grew, and the home brewing industry grew also. I mean, you know, I think back especially like with the, the fact that I found this, you know, channel called Slice and it’s all about pizza and the pizza industry, and it’s kinda like behind the scenes and it’s a channel and podcast for the pizza industry Which is super interesting, and that’s what I ended up listening to back in the day.
The first podcast that I listened to was all about brewing, home brewing and the brewing industry. So they would have, you know, potentially like the, the founders and the owners and the brewers of these microbreweries all over the country. They would interview them and talk like industry stuff, and it was really cool, really fun, and you got, got a peek behind the scenes.
And immediately after we started brewing, we, we all loved it, the three, four friends of mine, we all loved it. We got our, our systems, we bought equipment, and the home brewing industry like blew up also. So like home brews shops and, uh, mail order, you know, big, you know, sort of warehouse. Um, the overall industry just blew up and there was a whole ecosystem around it, including like software.
So there would be like recipe software and like brewing software to help people brew more consistently, and they’re still out there. I mean, I remember buying, um, whatever premium app back in, yeah, 2008 or something like that. I think I probably bought a couple of them, but, you know, I had put all my recipes in there and all my batches were in there and I, I don’t think it’s supported anymore.
I think the one I got was called Beer Alchemy, which is again, that was kind of on the early side. I think there’s more sophisticated software out there these days, which I never ended up using. Like by the time I, I slowed down brewing maybe in 2012 or so. Um, I used to be a competition brewer, so I would brew like a lot.
I would brew all the time, like every week or 10 days or something like that, and I would enter competitions and win medals and, and try to, you know, brew the best kind of whatever beer it was as possible and like tweak the recipes and all that kind of thing. So anyway, the brewing industry expanded. Me and my friends started going to GABF, so I went to the Great American Beer Festival here in Denver, um, starting in 2007, and then I believe I went every single year until 2014.
And that’s when my wife and I started doing like slow travel and we ended up coming out west and moving out here. So by then I was like, okay, kind of relaxing on the, the, you know, GABF front and it ends up being, you know, bigger and bigger each year. So something like starting in 2007, I haven’t looked at the stats, but I think it got bigger and bigger until maybe like 2019, and it was huge and they kept expanding.
In the early years, the tickets would sell out Which is amazing. And I think in the last few years, it’s actually been getting smaller. People are drinking less. Of, of course, like COVID in 2020 when they canceled the, the whole, um, festival, you know, it, it never quite recovered. And then again, people are drinking less.
There’s more– There’s other alcohols that people are drinking, and weed is legal in a ton of different places and different states now. So there are other recreational, um, drugs for people to use aside from alcohol. Um, all that to say, the brewing industry expanded and I, you know, I think it went from several hundred breweries across the country to like over 2,000.
I, I don’t, I don’t have the stats or anything like that, but that was the scope where it was like people were home brewing. People were like, “Oh, Doug, you, you make great beer. You should open a brewery.” Uh, you know, it’s a lot of work. I never even had the idea. I’m like, “I want this to be fun,” and that sounds really hard.
That’s difficult. I’m doing other stuff instead. But all that to say, the brewing industry grew. There were breweries all over the place. It ended up being like a great pastime. Even though I slowed down on brewing, I didn’t stop, um, drinking. So it was a great way, like traveling across the country, even very small towns would have like a small microbrew, um, or, you know, even smaller where they’re, you know, brewing on batches or brewing on systems that only do like a barrel or two, and you could pop in there and people were passionate about the beer, and they’re doing the best they can.
There was a lot of crappy beer out there, by the way. You know, some places would not have any good beer. It’s rare, but every now and then it was just like they actually couldn’t brew good beer, but they were like all their friends said they were brewing good beer. Most of them are pretty good. Now, fast-forward, so now it’s, uh, obviously 20 years later.
The industry grew a ton, perhaps overexpanded, which, you know, there, there was huge demand for, you know, beer and local beer and a place where people could, you know, walk down the street get beer in their local neighborhood and have it, you know, brewed right there. That’s cool. I think that’s still cool, and there are, you know, still breweries that can open up and do it.
It just depends on the specific market, the supply and demand, the quality. You know, the, the places that are making just fucking awesome beer, they’re prob- probably not gonna go out of business. They’re still gonna be fine. Maybe they’ll be growing. It’ll be, you know, the beer that’s not as good or, you know, like I said, there’s local markets or supply and demand, so if you are in a place where, you know, people are just not into beer as much, they’re more into wine or cocktails or something like that, I mean, that is gonna make a difference So in the last few years, GABF has gotten smaller, which is like a secondary thing, but like breweries are closing.
There’s consolidation happening. Even around here, there’s a great, um, brewery called, um, Left Hand, which is actually just, I mean, it’s a little over a mile away. It’s so close. It’s like right on the Greenway from here, so I could bike to it. And they’ve, I guess, maybe bought the, the rights of, you know, s- some breweries that went out of business around here.
So one of them called Bootstrap, which is, um, you know, really was a nice one right down the street. We would actually have their… Well, I would buy their cases of beer pretty often. And, um, Left Hand also is brewing some from Dry Dock, which I think they were, they’re from a little farther away. But, um, over- overall, the point is that there’s consolidation happening.
The brewing industry is contracting. So my observation was, wow, this Slice, uh, podcast and channel, they’re covering the exploding pizza industry because a bunch of people got into pizza, uh, making dough and bread and sourdough over the pandemic. And then there’s pizza places opening up all over the place, which I, I didn’t even realize, but I guess when I look in my, my local area here, yeah, there, there are a couple, a few new pizza places that literally opened up in my town.
And luckily, people love pizza, so hopefully they’ll stay in business, but it will be a situation where maybe there’s like overexpansion. Maybe people are trying to grow too fast. Like if they have a successful pizzeria, maybe they’re gonna, uh, accidentally grow too fast and, um, there’s always growing pains.
And I mean, opening a restaurant is really fucking hard. Um, and just because you could make a really good product, it doesn’t mean you have the, the business side. So I think it’ll be interesting, and this is my overall business observation. Love pizza though, so I’ve been trying to go and try the new stuff, you know, whenever I, uh, see a place pop up and make sure if I like a place to go there often.
Um, I’ll skip a lot of the pizza experimentation that I have been doing, but I ha- I can plan ahead and I’ve been doing long cold ferments in the refrigerator. So I’ll make dough, you know, four days ahead of time and just let it sit in the fridge and it’ll be ready to go. I just have to like get it out a couple hours ahead of time, and I’ve been playing with the, the temperature and my grill setup and all that kind of stuff to make sure it’s done how I want it to be, which I still need to dial in.
Um, I don’t have a proper like pizza oven, like the Ooni setup or anything like that, so I’m, I’m using a charcoal grill. And I did– I got a pizza setup, so it has like an open mouth, um, to accept the pizzas there, and it just, you know, I don’t have the right heat convection going on. The top of the pizzas aren’t getting done well enough, even though I can get the stone, you know, super hot.
So I’m, I’m playing with that, and yesterday my test was to just put the stone on the regular grill, um, with the lid on it, so it actually like traps the heat. ‘Cause I think there’s just too much air moving through the pizza setup for it to actually work properly. I have cooked a naan, the, uh, Indian bread, on there, and that was great ’cause, you know, it’s just super hot.
I could flip the naan and then it, it, you know, it’s charred. It, it’s done perfectly. But for a pizza, you obviously need the top done, and what I’ve been doing is just taking the pizza off and then broiling it inside briefly. So- It’s a good, good thing to work on.
Marketplace Pricing Tactics
Marketplace Pricing Tactics
All right, little update on the old Facebook front.
This is, uh, selling on Marketplace, so I listed my cameras. So I had a Canon SL3 and a Canon T7i. I put two lenses with each one of them, has a battery for, you know, 80% of this stuff. I actually have the original boxes, which I was like, “Why the fuck did I keep these boxes?” You know, if I sell it, then it’ll be even better, and it turned out it is nice to have the boxes.
Um, I sold the SL3 today, and the, the lady was super happy that everything was like, you know, in kind, kind of pristine shape, and you have the box, and I, I, you know, I’m showing her how to use it and all that. She was really grateful, really happy that I did have the boxes. So, um, the pricing is interesting, and it, it comes down to timing.
Like I only need one person to see the product and think, “I think I need that. That’s a pretty good deal.” And the timing has to be right. So that’s the thing. Like this lady was trying to get a camera f- in the next like several days or something. Like she– I think she may have needed to, you know, take some photos like tomorrow or the next day.
Um, but she definitely has like some things lined up. Like she wants to get into photography, so she’s taking some photos for, um, some family members and friends, something like that. There’s some eve-event, right? So the timing was kind of perfect, and she was kind of, you know, running into a deadline, so she needed to make a decision.
Um- The pricing thing is interesting because I can, you know, see what listings are out there. I can look at vendors that sell used gear. So there’s a few of them in the photography world, but probably, you know, eBay is like the universal, but a lot of times there’s specific places where you could buy and sell used stuff.
And then there’s retail companies like, you know, B&H Photo, huge, but they sell used stuff. I mean, Amazon has used stuff as well. So there’s places you could see what the going rate is for a specific product and bundle and all that, and it gives you an idea, but that doesn’t actually tell you the real market price.
And again, that market price is probably gonna be dependent on your local economics and just on a r- really a micro level. So when I’m looking on Facebook Marketplace at these kind of cameras, I could see, oh, there’s several, uh, T7is listed, there’s several SL3s or whatever, or there’s not that many. And then I could see the prices that are listed.
I could see when people have lowered the price and all that. So I listed the Canon SL3 with a 10 to 18 millimeter zoom lens and a 24 millimeter prime lens, 2.8, kind of the small, um, relatively inexpensive one. You can get them used for whatever, 80 bucks, something like that. So I think I bundled all of that together for 650.
I think that’s what it was, 600 or 650. I can’t remember exactly. Call it 650. So I listed it I don’t think I got any real interest in it. So I was like, “Maybe I listed too high.” That was competitive, by the way. You know, if you add up the individual pieces, um, I had the original box for, um, all, all of the equipment, right?
So I had the original box for the lens and the camera. I had, uh, the cables, the original battery, an extra battery, blah, blah, blah. So it’s very complete, and basically I deleted that and I lowered the price. So I listed it for 480 the second time around, so fairly considerable drop. But the thing is, I don’t wanna fuck around with it.
I just wanna sell it. So if I’m getting, you know, $50 more or, you know, $100 more, is that really gonna make a huge difference? I’d rather not have to talk to a bunch of different people going back and forth on Messenger. So there’s, there’s a hassle factor in how much value I wanna get from the camera or whatever the good is, of course.
So I lowered the price. I also took a video. So the first time around, I just had still images. You can put 10 of them on there, I believe, and one video of one minute or less. So I just did a quick video, which I believe gets more views on there. Maybe it’s more visually appealing. Maybe algorithmically, um, Facebook shows that to more people.
I’m not sure, but I was like, “I’ll just do a little video of me panning around and videoing the, you know, s-setup.” So I did that, and there were a couple people that, um, pinged me. You never know, right? So number one, someone lowballed me and they were like… I think when it was listed for 600 Someone lowballed me and like, “I’ll give you 300.”
And I’m like, “Ah, that, that’s pretty low.” But you never know, like maybe they’re just… Maybe that’s just how they negotiate. Some people don’t negotiate at all, by the way. But other people, they’ll come in and they try to take your fucking head off. So they tried to take my head off, and I was like, “I could come down to 500.”
‘Cause I’m like, all right, they’re taking a big swing. I’ll budge a little bit, but I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna go too crazy here ’cause I, I looked at the reviews and it looked like maybe they’re not that great to deal with. So they had a couple five-star reviews, and they had like, whatever, one-third of them are like one or two-star reviews.
So I’m like, “Eh, it seems like maybe they’re not cool.” So I wasn’t too disappointed. So anyway, time goes by, handful of people say, “Hey, is this available?” Which could be a scam, but that is like the default text that pops up when Facebook shows you you wanna message someone about a product. So I, I don’t take it personally.
I, I don’t say like, “Don’t ask if it’s available.” Some people get like so fucking offended. It’s like, yeah, that’s the default text. You’re gonna get 90% of the things, 90% of the messages are gonna be like, “Is this available?” So, you know, you know, you just have to deal with that. People are gonna be like, “Is this available?”
I say, “Yes, it’s available.” And then I’ll ask a follow-up question typically, ’cause I just wanna make sure they’re like a real person. I’ll often look at their profile so you can navigate, kinda get a idea if they’re a real person or not. And I went back and forth with the lowball person, and eventually, like when I lowered the price, they were like, “Hey, I’m still interested.
Let me know.” And I was like, “What’s the max that you would pay?” They said 400, which is actually what I ended up selling it for, but I sold it to a different person. Now the crazy thing is the person that I sold it to had the worst profile that I’ve seen. So no image, no friends, no other information. But they seemed like a real person when I chatted with them, so they were like, “Is this available?”
I was like, “Yep, still available.” I’m like, “Are you in Longmont?” They said, “No, not, not in Longmont, but I can get there.” They said, “I’ll give you 380, and I can pick it up today.” That’s great. You know, if you’re buying something, you’re like, “Hey, I could do this. I’m gonna pay cash. I’ll come to you,” whatever.
That’s how I’ve gotten good deals. I’m like, I can… I’ll show up and I’m gonna pay cash. Like that is a huge thing. So they were like, “Can you do 380?” Now, now I had it listed for 480 at this point. I just wanna move the thing, right? So I, I was like, “Can you do 400?” They said yes. We set up a time and it all worked out.
Now, the interesting thing you may, may be thinking like, “Hey, did, um, did you make a mistake? Like someone offered you 400 before.” I feel very good about this just because the way it turned out. So Um, it’s, it’s weird, like I said, this person had no information on their profile. It looked like a fake profile, um, because there was nothing on there.
I believe it said the, the Facebook profile was, um, s- originated in 2017, which is not that long. I’ve had mine for 20 years or whatever. But the thing is, I, when I was talking to my wife, she and I have been doing some Facebook Marketplace stuff, and I’m like, “You know what? It could just be a generational thing.
It could be a younger person.” And I think that’s correct. The, the lady, she probably was, like, 20. She was somewhere in her 20s. I’m not sure. She could’ve been 22 or 28, somewhere in there. But fuck, I don’t know. But clearly younger than me and, you know, a young person, and maybe some people, some generations are not into Facebook as much, and they don’t have a profile open, right?
So worked out fine. She fucking showed up on time and was super nice. She was extremely grateful that I had, like, the box, and I was like, “Do you have questions? Let me show you how to use it, like, test it out.” Um, and you know, I got some small talk in as far as like, “Hey, what are you using this for?” So I could potentially give tips or whatever.
So anyway, it worked out great, and it was somewhat shocking because the profile did not lend any credibility at all. And I always meet up in a public place and, and that sort of thing. Although I sold one amp, and I was like, “Hey, you know, come test it out. Bring your guitar. You play in the garage.” So the person was just in the garage, and that was, that was cool.
That person was grateful too. So one of the big takeaways here is I found it fulfilling and somewhat intentionally, like, I want the stuff that I’m selling to go to someone who’s gonna use it, and they want it. So like that amp, the Blues Junior, that used to sit behind me, I think it was, like, a college student.
Yeah, he even said he was in college. And he’s like, “Yeah, yeah. I’ve been trying to get one of these, and I ordered one from Reverb, and it was supposed to be shipped, but it never showed up.” Um, so he was, like, thrilled to have it, and I was like, “Hey, let me show you some settings.” And he was– I was like, “You can turn it up loud here, like, it’s totally fine.”
So I gave him some ear protection, and he was able to jam for a few minutes, and he was stoked when he left. Same thing with a girl today. She was super pumped, like, really happy to have the, the new gear, and she was looking and, and trying to decide. But total shock because, like I said, it was the, the least filled out profile that I’ve ever seen, and I was just like I have, it, the person may not show up.
I have no fucking idea. Um, the good thing is, like, where I have folks meet, it’s like a municipal building, so there’s, like, cameras all over the place. So if there was any kinda, any kinda issue, like if someone just, like, grabbed the camera and left, I’d just be like, “Good. Fuck, fucking take the camera,” or whatever.
But there’s definitely a, a trail, a paper trail that folks could find. Um, or not a paper trail, but there’s video camera all over. So, um, all that to say, I am testing with, like, lowering the prices. So I have not yet sold the T7i. I did pull that down, um, but I did the same thing. I shot a little video. I might try to get some better photos, but I think they’re probably good enough, and I moved the price down to, I think, 475 or something like that, which if you look at all the stuff that I’m selling You, you know, it’s in a bundle and has a couple of little extra things.
Like, basically, it’s a really good deal, and I think there’s some, you know, threshold for, uh, probably regardless of the product, there’s a threshold where someone will buy it because it’s underpriced and they think or know that they could resell it later for more. So I don’t have an issue hitting that point.
At, at this stage, I’m just like, I don’t wanna have too much stuff laying around, and if I get… You know, for the T7i, don’t use this to negotiate against me if you happen to be in the area. But for the T7i, like, you know, I’ve used it for years, and if I get, you know, $75 more or $100 more, and I said it before, it’s not gonna make a huge difference.
It’s just like, it’ll be nice to get a little bit more money for it. But at the point where, you know, I asked the person for 20 more bucks, um, for the SL3, ’cause they offered 380, $100 less than what it– I was asking for, which is roughly, um, 20 per- yeah, 20 some odd percent, um, of a discount. And I was like, “Can you just give, like, 20 more bucks?”
I mean, if they were like, “No,” then I probably would’ve taken 380 ’cause the $20 is not gonna make, it’s not gonna make or break me. So it’s a slippery slope, like if you keep going down and down and down. So there’s probably, there’s obviously like some, there’s a, there’s a bottom that I won’t go below that floor.
But all that to say, if it’s a reasonable negotiation with good faith, then it’s gonna be okay if I don’t get the best deal. And like I said, the person, you know, with the amp, with the camera, like I gave them a good deal and they’re happy about it, and they’re like, “This is great. Like, this is really good.
Thank you so much.” And like that, that is a piece of the puzzle for me. The other piece, which is, uh, far more selfish, is a meeting where I could walk, basically. So I’m like, I’m not driving around. And when, when I purchase stuff, by the way, I go to the, the person’s, uh, place or wherever they wanna meet. So I just– I did buy a new guitar, like in the last two weeks.
Upgraded. You, you can’t see it that well, but I, I think I showed it in the last week here. And that dude, I think he, he and I probably live like 30 minutes away, but I was like, “Hey man, my wife and I share a car. Like, can we meet in a public place?” And he was like, “Yeah, no problem.” I have purchased like, um, a couple amps and stuff where I like go to the person’s house ’cause I actually wanna plug that in and test it.
With a guitar, they actually can meet you on the road and I can bring a battery-powered amp, and then I’m able to test it and make sure, you know, electronics work and all that kind of stuff. Um, but that’s one thing with the stuff that I’m selling currently, I am going to 99% of the time, and I haven’t budged on this, they’re gonna come and meet me where I’m asking them, which will be a public place, again, 99% of the time.
I haven’t had much luck with selling books, so I did set aside maybe about 30 books. I put them in bundles of about, whatever, seven to nine books or so, and there were four of those. Basically, I sold one set and then the rest did not have much interest. So I think I got pinged a couple times. I was trying to sell them for 25 to 30 bucks, and I could try to lower the price again, where someone’s like, “Oh, well, if I buy, you know, these books for $10, then I should be able to sell them for more.”
I don’t wanna waste my time on a, on $10 or 30 bucks or whatever if I sell all of them for 10 bucks. So those I’m just donating. My wife volunteers at the library in that, you know, uh, book donation initiative, I don’t know what you call it, and the, with the, like, book donations and book sorting. So she’ll just bring those in, and turns out there’s so many boo– like, people donate a ton of books.
In fact, uh, when I was chatting with my dad, he was like, “Yeah, I have a lot more books than I thought I did, and I’m actually, you know, donating a bunch of those.” So books don’t tend to go that well because there’s so many of them. The musical equipment, electronics, they seem to go pretty well. One thing that I’m gonna, I’m gonna sell coming up is a espresso maker, espresso machine.
So it’s a, you know, just a, a regular consumer grade. I think it’s the brand Krups. Is that how you say it? K-R-U-P-S. And we’ve had it for 15 years or something like that. It’s fine. It still works. It takes up space, and we don’t use it too often. And I was just like, “I’m gonna use up the pods, and then I’m gonna sell it.”
So I think I have one pod left, and I’m gonna make something, and then I’ll, I’ll list it probably for fairly inexpensive. Like I said, it’s fairly old. I have a couple of accessories, like a, a little, um, you know, the stainless steel milk steamer, um, little pitchers so that you can do some latte art, you know, if you’re into that thing.
So probably it’ll make someone happy. Like I said, I have a few, um, accessories or whatever, so I’ll be able to hopefully sell it to someone who wants to get into latte art or whatever. They like coffee a lot. So it’s been good from a decluttering standpoint. Definitely, um, better than just, like, straight-up donating it.
I was thinking back, like, you know, back in the day, if you were trying to sell a used camera, like, eBay was maybe the only, like, big choice, or, you know, Craigslist was, um, has been around for a very long time, and, you know, it’s, it’s a way to get rid of stuff, but it’s certainly… There’s some overhead.
Listings Tips and Wrap Up
Listings Tips and Wrap Up
And I think the last tip that I’ll give is around having a good listing.
So I have been using AI to help out, and I’ve, I’ve guided it, so I’m like, “Oh, I wanna have this section.” Like, always have a section on, like, why you’re selling it. And I try to be, like, very transparent about any issues or, uh, wear and tear or whatever, so there’s no surprises. I’m not trying to trick anyone.
And I think it actually brings more um, trust like right up front. So like when I sold my truck, I was like, “Here are the issues. Like there’s scratches here. I’m having trouble with this thing,” or, or whatever, like the, uh, I– There weren’t any major things, but I’m like, “Hey, the middle console is, uh, kinda falling apart ’cause it’s 25 years old, so it’s, um, it’s one of those things.
The plastic doesn’t age well, so this is messed up.” And by putting all that, you know, transparency in there, then people tend to trust you, and I, I think it’s a better approach than not, you know, not disclosing something and then someone goes and they look at the guitar and they’re like, “Oh, there’s, there’s actually a lot of scratches on here,” or whatever.
So, um, the more authentic and just honest you can be in the listing, the better. I think maybe some of my listings are getting to be on the long side. However, I think if someone’s not familiar with the product, then it is helpful. It saves them time from going to look up at the specs on something like that.
So I’ve found it to be effective to have the information on there, and I’ve also, like, taken pictures and, like, uploaded to the AI, which I’m using Gemini typically, and I can upload the image, and then, I mean, it does a pretty good job. If it’s a, a normal product that’s sold out there, then even if it’s obscure, if there’s information on the internet anywhere about it, then it, you know, the AI tool should be able to come up with a pretty good listing overall, even if it’s a product from, whatever, 15, 20 years ago.
There’s probably still information out there. So, I think the super short listings that are like, “For sale, looks good, mostly good condition,” not that great. Like, you should at least put a little bit more effort into it, and I think it makes a big difference with me, you know, selling the camera, where I’m, like, carefully taking good images, try to, you know, show all the, um, all the, all of the different pieces and the, the product overall, any infor- imperfection.
So, you know, from a musical instrument standpoint, I have seen people, like, try to point out specific scratches. Like, “Hey, there is a scratch on the back of the headstock, and I tried to point it out here, but it’s not very noticeable,” or, “There’s, like, normal wear and tear. Here’s an image of some of those scratches or whatever.”
So, with that said, you know, you end up with a better listing and someone who’s like, “Oh, this is, like, a real product. It’s not a scam, and it doesn’t seem like they’re trying to trick me or anything like that.” So, I probably still have a handful of things to, you know, go through and sell. I think it’s been interesting from the supply and demand standpoint, where if you, if you do lower the price, someone will buy it, even if it’s not that great of a, you know, product.
And the thing is… Or not that– I shouldn’t have said it that way, but, like, even if the person doesn’t need it, if it’s not a great product for them, if the price is low enough, people will buy it. And I’ve been guilty of that, where I’m like, “I saw something that was a good deal. I think I’m gonna buy that even though I don’t need it.
I wasn’t looking for it.” I’m just like, “Actually, that’s a great value. I should probably get that,” which is a bad reason to buy things, and that’s how you end up with, like, a bunch of stuff you don’t need, by the way. So, it’s been a good, a good journey overall, and, um, I haven’t been listing on Craigslist, um, just ’cause, like, Marketplace seems to be working okay.
But, um, maybe I will for the T7i. Obviously, you end up with, um- like a different set of people, and you end up with messages coming in in two different directions, which isn’t the worst thing in the world. Um, that said, I think it’s completely different markets. Um, and of course, there’s overlap. I mean, I look in both places, but I think from an algorithmic standpoint, um, Facebook can hurt you a little bit more.
And on Craigslist, I think people are more likely to, uh, you know, search, and I think they’re probably more likely to, like, look at the, the recent listings. So, uh, you know what? I just convinced myself I will list the T7i ’cause I just, you know, have the listing right here. So I’m gonna put it over on Craigslist as well and see if maybe, you know, I’ll get better traction there.
So, thanks a lot. Next week, I have an interview and, uh, pr- pretty fun one. Uh, one of my friends, he has a podcast, uh, production agency, and they do editing and different stuff like that. So we talk about, you know, just running a business and, and starting it from scratch and all that kind of stuff. Pretty fun one, and hopefully we’ll get some more interviews lined up.
I have a couple messages out to, um, some guitarist YouTuber folks, which should be fun, and those are, you know, something I wanna geek out on anyway. The other one, of course, would be pizza and food YouTubers, so that’s something I am looking at in the future too