I have been thinking about how many items I need to get a consistent one item a month to sell. In this regard I found a little bit more change in my car, and went to look for more items in the under $2 range to build up to 30 items which should get me to around 1 item a month on average. I haven’t sold an item in one month at this point and will think about ways to get to the 30 items. If I keep the reinvestment amounts low and look for some free items or sell some items I have around the house I can get to the 30 items fairly easily. Looking back on my purchases I should have decided to invest to get the total of 30 items with the least amount of investment possible to ensure a sales moving forward. These three additional puzzles put me at 20 items. I will update again once another item sales or I acquire more items to sale. Consistency of a sale every month is going to be the best driving factor to grow the inventory to a level where the reinvestment into more and more inventory will allow the inventory to start throwing off as much as I started off with.
What the future amounts could look like
This is purely a thought experiment and I don’t expect the inventory to look like this in a year from now, but this is why I want to grow to 30 items to get one on average selling a month. With 30 items at an average of $3 per item of profit on each item sold. I am setting a conservative expecation to double on each item I buy right now at the minimum. The results wwill be different than the doubling amount as I go, as evidenced on the first sale I had on July 31st. In month ten this estimate takes into account the expectation of selling more than one item a month based on the number of items at a percentage of them. If this estimate is close the value will almost doubled by the end of 12 months. This might not seem like much, but this doubling could happen the next year easily too which would have turned $35 into $140. At $140 inventory there would be over 100 items at $1.18 per item and would average selling 3-4 items a month. At $3 an item this would be around $10 a month in profit from $35 to start with. With another year the inventory would be close to $300 and have around 250 items and likely sell around 7-8 items a month. This amount should be throwing off around $20-25 a month. This amount of money would start to be able to really grow the inventory in a different way than the build up for this time of consistency of sales a month. I’ll talk about that more later as the inventory continues to grow and what I will do. There are other thoughts which can go into this to allow the inventory to get to a level which is more significant. You could take a few dollars every month and invest it into inventory to help it grow too. If this was done by the end of one year you would have an inventory of around $100.
| Month | Number of Items | 3% of inventory sell per month | Potential Profit | Inventory value |
| 1 | 30 | 1 | $3 | $38.40 |
| 2 | 32 | 1 | $3 | $40.76 |
| 3 | 34 | 1 | $3 | $43.12 |
| 4 | 36 | 1 | $3 | $45.48 |
| 5 | 38 | 1 | $3 | $47.84 |
| 6 | 40 | 1 | $3 | $50.20 |
| 7 | 42 | 1 | $3 | $52.56 |
| 8 | 44 | 1 | $3 | $54.92 |
| 9 | 46 | 1 | $3 | $57.28 |
| 10 | 48 | 1.44 | $4.32 | $60.96 |
| 11 | 51 | 1.5 | $4.50 | $64.68 |
| 12 | 54 | 1.62 | $4.86 | $68.58 |
Current Inventory and Cash
| Item | Cost | Date Purchased | Sold | Profit |
| Autumn Puzzle | $1.18 | 6/13/22 | ||
| Bridge Puzzle | $1.18 | 6/13/22 | ||
| Ireland Puzzle | $3.45 | 6/27/22 | ||
| NFL Puzzle | $2.37 | 6/27/22 | ||
| Globe Puzzle | $.60 | 6/29/22 | ||
| Animal puzzle #1 | $1.18 | 6/29/22 | ||
| Animal puzzle #2 | $1.18 | 6/29/22 | ||
| Music Album puzzle | $1.18 | 6/29/22 | ||
| Iowa Puzzle | $1.18 | 6/29/22 | ||
| 3 Hole Punch | $1.18 | 6/29/22 | ||
| Biscuit | $7.03 | 6/29/22 | ||
| Silver Plated Vase | $4.64 | 7/20/22 | ||
| Serving Dish and Bowl | $9.29 | 7/20/22 | ||
| *Antique building Puzzle- | $4.64 | 7/25/22 | ||
| *Star Wars Puzzle | $2.37 | 7/25/22 | ||
| *2 Hot Wheels | $2.10 | 8/3/22 | ||
| Star Wars Puzzle | $1.18 | 8/31/22 | ||
| Animal Puzzle | $1.18 | 8/31/22 | ||
| Animal Puzzle | $1.18 | 8/31/22 | ||
| Cash | -$4.83 | Over invested | ||
| Total inventory amount | $48.29 |