Reselling Garage Sale Items
A couple of people have asked me about how I went about reselling items I found at Garage sales.
I decided I'd try my best to explain it here in a post...
When we were starting out, we first had to decide on a city which had plenty of rich neighborhoods and we mapped out all the garage sales that would be in these neighborhoods on the particular day. If you go to garage sales from low income families, you are probably not going to find much (although it is possible!).
We printed out the addresses, organized them, put them in order by looking at a map to see how we could get to the most sales without wasting too much time.
We did a lot of research on Ebay, and by asking my mom who does a lot of reselling from garage sales, as to what types of things are popular or sell easily on Ebay.
Search through thrift stores and see what they're selling. This can give you an idea of what people might be looking for.
Also, search the "Want it now" ads on Ebay. You will see what people are looking for!
Go to ESTATE sales, because they usually have some of the best stuff. The only bad thing is that some of them are way too expensive to make it worth reselling. Sometimes you'll get lucky and you'll get some awesome deals at Estate Sales.
Some things that we found that were worth reselling (for us) were:
One way to REALLY help yourself if you're out garage saling, is to bring a laptop with you. If you're lucky enough to get a connection by your garage sale, you can go into your truck, and enter the item's name in the Ebay search bar and see if it's worth anything. If it is, then you can see what kind of bargain you can get on the item then buy and resell!
Also, just use your intuition. If something looks like it might be worth something, and it doesn't cost much- it doesn't hurt to buy it.
One time I bought this old looking cabinet...it had spices names written on the front and it looked vintage. I think I paid a dollar for it.
I went home, tried to find it on Ebay, and realized that it had sold for about 50 dollars!!!
When I put it on the auction, the bid ended up going to 80 dollars!!
A $79.00 return on a $1.00 item isn't bad, huh?
This happened frequently with many items I bought.
I went to one yard sale that had nothing but Abercrombie and fitch clothes. They were all in PERFECT condition, as though they had never been worn. They were selling them for a dollar each. I picked up all of them and asked if I could get a price on all of them, which would have equaled only 50 cents for each shirt or pants. They said Yes, and then I went and sold each item of clothing for AT LEAST 20 dollars, and a few of them sold for more than 40 dollars!
One good rule of thumb is always to BE THE EARLY BIRD! The early bird gets the worm!
Another thing you might want to try is selling BOOKS. If you go through Amazon.com, you don't even have to pay a listing fee! you don't have to upload any picture or ANYTHING. (you do have to pay a percentage of your sales, but that it out of your profit!) Just enter the ISPN number of the book you want to sell. Amazon.com will tell you exactly how much each book is going for, and it will automatically have a picture of the book included. You can then describe the book, saying whether it has any scratches, or tears, etc.
You can choose to sell it for whatever price you want. I usually sell mine 1 penny lower than the one lowest priced one. You would be amazed at how fast these books sell this way!
My mom is doing this with Amazon.com, and she has done such a successful job with it that she has had to hire someone to help her list the books. She sells about 40-60 books EVERY DAY.
She goes to Estate Sales and buys truckloads of books at a time. Sometimes the whole truck load will cost 100.00, and she'll go around and sell each book individually for 5.00- 10.00 a piece, average. And she has been lucky and found some books that sold for over 100.00!!
Not only this , but now she has found a tool- it's sort of like a scanner, which you place over the backs of books. It will automatically scan the book in, and if the book is worth something on Amazon.com, it will say "BOOYAH!". If the book isn't worth much, it will make a little fizzling sound. You can actually look at this scanner thing, and it will tell you EXACTLY what the book is worth on Amazon.com, and how many people are selling it. It's an amazing little tool!
Anyway, I hope this has been at least somewhat helpful. If you have any more questions you can ask me and I'll try to remember what we did.
If I wasn't so busy homeschooling (and trying my best to keep the house clean), I would probably still do this again!
Here are some tips on the web about buying from Garage sales to resell....I hope they will be helpful!
How to Find Garage Sale Gold
How to Find Cheap Stuff to Resell on Ebay
Have any of you had good experiences garage saling? If so, you can talk about your experience below, and share any pointers or tips you have learned along the way!
I decided I'd try my best to explain it here in a post...
When we were starting out, we first had to decide on a city which had plenty of rich neighborhoods and we mapped out all the garage sales that would be in these neighborhoods on the particular day. If you go to garage sales from low income families, you are probably not going to find much (although it is possible!).
We printed out the addresses, organized them, put them in order by looking at a map to see how we could get to the most sales without wasting too much time.
We did a lot of research on Ebay, and by asking my mom who does a lot of reselling from garage sales, as to what types of things are popular or sell easily on Ebay.
Search through thrift stores and see what they're selling. This can give you an idea of what people might be looking for.
Also, search the "Want it now" ads on Ebay. You will see what people are looking for!
Go to ESTATE sales, because they usually have some of the best stuff. The only bad thing is that some of them are way too expensive to make it worth reselling. Sometimes you'll get lucky and you'll get some awesome deals at Estate Sales.
Some things that we found that were worth reselling (for us) were:
- Pfaltzgraff dishes (these can sell for really high if you get the right ones)
- Name Brand Clothes (especially Abercrombie Fitch! And people sell that stuff SO cheap at yard sales!)
- Dooney and Burke purses (make sure they have the authentic tag on the inside but even if they don't, they'll still sell, but be SURE to let the ebay customer know that it's not authentic!).
- Strawberry Shortcake (must be original)
- Vintage Barbie
- Designer shoes (Anne Klein is a good one)
- Lenox China!
- Old Nintendo systems with games
- Baby Clothes
- Baby bumper sets
- Cabbage Patch dolls
- Vintage Comic Books
- Hello Kitty
- Vintage Cameras
- Polly Pocket
- Presto Salad Shooters
- Puma shoes (these do GREAT!)
- Scrapbooking Supplies
- Teddy Ruxpin
- Train Sets (especially Thomas the Train)
One way to REALLY help yourself if you're out garage saling, is to bring a laptop with you. If you're lucky enough to get a connection by your garage sale, you can go into your truck, and enter the item's name in the Ebay search bar and see if it's worth anything. If it is, then you can see what kind of bargain you can get on the item then buy and resell!
Also, just use your intuition. If something looks like it might be worth something, and it doesn't cost much- it doesn't hurt to buy it.
One time I bought this old looking cabinet...it had spices names written on the front and it looked vintage. I think I paid a dollar for it.
I went home, tried to find it on Ebay, and realized that it had sold for about 50 dollars!!!
When I put it on the auction, the bid ended up going to 80 dollars!!
A $79.00 return on a $1.00 item isn't bad, huh?
This happened frequently with many items I bought. I went to one yard sale that had nothing but Abercrombie and fitch clothes. They were all in PERFECT condition, as though they had never been worn. They were selling them for a dollar each. I picked up all of them and asked if I could get a price on all of them, which would have equaled only 50 cents for each shirt or pants. They said Yes, and then I went and sold each item of clothing for AT LEAST 20 dollars, and a few of them sold for more than 40 dollars!
One good rule of thumb is always to BE THE EARLY BIRD! The early bird gets the worm!
Another thing you might want to try is selling BOOKS. If you go through Amazon.com, you don't even have to pay a listing fee! you don't have to upload any picture or ANYTHING. (you do have to pay a percentage of your sales, but that it out of your profit!) Just enter the ISPN number of the book you want to sell. Amazon.com will tell you exactly how much each book is going for, and it will automatically have a picture of the book included. You can then describe the book, saying whether it has any scratches, or tears, etc.
You can choose to sell it for whatever price you want. I usually sell mine 1 penny lower than the one lowest priced one. You would be amazed at how fast these books sell this way!
My mom is doing this with Amazon.com, and she has done such a successful job with it that she has had to hire someone to help her list the books. She sells about 40-60 books EVERY DAY.
She goes to Estate Sales and buys truckloads of books at a time. Sometimes the whole truck load will cost 100.00, and she'll go around and sell each book individually for 5.00- 10.00 a piece, average. And she has been lucky and found some books that sold for over 100.00!!
Not only this , but now she has found a tool- it's sort of like a scanner, which you place over the backs of books. It will automatically scan the book in, and if the book is worth something on Amazon.com, it will say "BOOYAH!". If the book isn't worth much, it will make a little fizzling sound. You can actually look at this scanner thing, and it will tell you EXACTLY what the book is worth on Amazon.com, and how many people are selling it. It's an amazing little tool!
Anyway, I hope this has been at least somewhat helpful. If you have any more questions you can ask me and I'll try to remember what we did.
If I wasn't so busy homeschooling (and trying my best to keep the house clean), I would probably still do this again!
Here are some tips on the web about buying from Garage sales to resell....I hope they will be helpful!
How to Find Garage Sale Gold
How to Find Cheap Stuff to Resell on Ebay
Have any of you had good experiences garage saling? If so, you can talk about your experience below, and share any pointers or tips you have learned along the way!
I Just Love Garage Sales. I also had the ebay bug a while back. I found a "Boots the Monkey" from Dora the Explorer, paid a quarter for him and sold him for about $10. It's exciting.
Reply to this
I've always wanted to try the garage sale thing but Living in NE Ohio you only have a few months of good weather. I have bought items from a discount store called Marc's and sold them on Ebay. I did pretty well with it. It seemed stationary sold well. I also was able to buy Spanish leap pad games for 2.99 and sold those for about 10 each. I'm going to look more into the amazon thing. I've been thinking about looking into it for a long time now. ***Off to go see***
Reply to this
Awesome tips, Bethany! I will have to look into reselling garage sale items! I knew I should have kept my Teddy Ruxpin!
Reply to this
I'm SO glad someone else asked this question!!!! I've been meaning to ask you how exactly you did this, I LOVE yard sales!!!
Thank you for telling us how you did it! I think I might check into doing this!!!
In Christ,
Autumn
Reply to this
thanks so much!! =)
Reply to this
I enjoyed selling stuff on eBay when my youngest was a baby, but it's sooooo hard for me to get out of the house now that shipping stuff just seems like an impossibility. I'll probably do it again eventually.
Oh BTW, eBay has a policy against selling any sort of black market designer items, whether it's purses, shoes, whatever. You can't even say it's "in the style of Chanel" even if you clarify that it's not genuine Chanel (or whatever brand); if it has a logo on it and it's not authentic, they have eBay software to sort thru listings & find fakes & pull the listings. You will be given a notice not to list fakes again or risk your account being closed. Just a heads-up. It happened to me a few years ago when I was listing designer knock-off handbags for a friend. (I fully disclosed everything in the listings.)
Reply to this
So what is the name of the scanner thing your mom has?
Reply to this
Rachel, I asked my mom, and the name of the tool is asellertool. Their website is http://www.asellertool.com. They have a demo on their website where you can watch and see how it works.
Reply to this
Excellent news that one can resell garage sale items on ebay to make great money. I suggest to Get">http://www.auctionsellingrevealed.com">Get Rich on Ebay one must work hard for achieving targets in the business.
Reply to this
Thanks for the great tips
Reply to this
Thanks for the tips
Reply to this
Thanks so much for the helpful hints. I have been reselling items for 5 months now and I love it! I was wondering if you or your Mom could help me with something. I have recently read your article and thought I would give the book selling a shot. Today I picked up a Rupert's Adventure Book Authentic Edition 1940 in mint condition for $1.00. I was researching it online and found many listed prices for the book but I am not sure what to sell it for. I read that your Mom has that special scanner and I was wondering if she could give me a price for it?? I would love your help and in return I can try to help you out on my end if I find something that would be of interest to you both. Thanks!
Reply to this
I think this info might be provided in different ways. One of similar articles, in which this info is given from the other point of view, I have found at http://www.pdfqueen.com one of periodical search engine. When you deal with different opinions, you start understanding everything better.
Reply to this
I believe the information covered in the discussion is top notch. I've been doing a research on the subject and your blog just cleared up a lot of questions.
Reply to this
I always read your all blogs , i am very happy for this blog.
Reply to this
Usually I don’t learn article on blogs, but I would like to say that this write-up very compelled me to try and do it! Your writing style has been amazed me. Thank you, very nice article.
Reply to this
Searching good blog is not an easy task because number of blogs with exaggeration is available but the information on this blog is completely based on research. It will help you in getting information and gaining knowledge.
Reply to this
This blog is highly informatics, crisp and clear. Here everything has been described in systematic manner so that reader could get maximum information and learn many things. This is one of the best blogs I have read.
Reply to this
After reading your post I really feel glad because generally on the internet you will find posts with filler content but in your post there was no filler content. I really like your post and I am looking forward for the posts written by you in the future.
Reply to this
Im impressed, I must say. Very rarely do I come across a site thats both informative and entertaining, and let me tell you, youve hit the nail on the head. Your site is important; the issue is something that not enough people are talking intelligently about. Im really happy that I stumbled across this in my search for something relating to this issue
Reply to this
Thanks for writing this,This is the good step u have taken. I found your site on delicious today and really liked it.
Reply to this
If you want to read good and informatics blog, then read this one because its information is sound and effective. A large number of visitors come on this blog for getting bona fide information. for more information - http://www.mcscontrolsystems.co.uk
Reply to this
This is highly informatics, well-written and smartly described blog. Through this blog blogger has fulfilled his objective to provide maximum information on desired topics in a simple and effective manner. I have really enjoyed reading this blog. for more information - http://www.onlinedigitalbrochures.co.uk
Reply to this
Congratulations for posting such a useful blog. Your blog isn’t only informative but also extremely artistic too. There usually are extremely couple of individuals who can write not so easy articles that creatively. Keep up the good writing !!
Reply to this
After reading this post I can say that the writer has done a lot of research and has put all the facts and figures together in his content. It is one of the most credible posts, I have come across. Great job!
Reply to this
Wow that was odd. I just wrote an really long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn't show up. Grrrr... well I'm not writing all that over again. Anyway, just wanted to say excellent blog!
Reply to this
This post is written very well as the writer has provided valuable and useful information and facts about the topic. I will look forward to the posts written by you in future!
Reply to this
The post is written in very a good manner and it entails many useful information for me. I am happy to find your distinguished way of writing the post.
Reply to this
If you would like to collect some useful stuff at affordable cost then you can buy them from garage sale. These are useful some time, you have to check them and purchase carefully.
Reply to this
I just cant stop reading this. Its so cool, so full of information that I just didnt know. Im glad to see that people are actually writing about this issue in such a smart way, showing us all different sides to it. Youre a great blogger. Please keep it up. I cant wait to read whats next.
Reply to this
I was wondering if you ever considered changing the structure of your site? Its very well written; I love what youve got to say. But maybe you could a little more in the way of content so people could connect with it better. Youve got an awful lot of text for only having 1 or 2 images. Maybe you could space it out better?
Reply to this
COGNIF IP, formerly Innova Patent Services, provides patent-related services to patent attorneys, licensing managers, deal-makers, R&D managers, and strategy officers in law firms, corporations, universities, research institutions, and patent market players throughout the world.
Reply to this
Thanks for sum your pushs that you experience put in this. mere interesting info . “Either you flow the time or the time flows you.” by Happy Singh.
Reply to this
What an amazing blog. I have found this blog very interesting because I have gotten the most read information. This blog help me out otherwise I don’t know how much time I have to spend for getting right information. For more info visit – http://wwwnflsnapbackscom
Reply to this
Superb post. Its nice to acutally find some useful information in my spare time. By the way, great writing style. I look forward to your next posts. Thanks for sharing.
Reply to this
This may be the 1st period this, brilliant exploring site. We determined quite a few interesting items in your web site mainly it truly is debate. Keep up the good give good results.
Reply to this
It is appropriate time to make some plans for the long run and it's time to be happy. I have read this post and if I may I wish to suggest you few interesting issues or tips. Perhaps you can write subsequent articles referring to this article. I desire to learn more things about it.
Reply to this
Nice information, many thanks to the author. It is incomprehensible to me now, but in general, the usefulness and significance is overwhelming. Thanks again and good luck
Reply to this
What a blog I have read. Here you have great opportunity to learn in fabulous manner. Blogger has described everything in very effective manner so that you could get information what you want.
http://wwwdigitaluk.co.uk
Reply to this
This blog has given me opportunity to learn many things regarding products and services
Reply to this
This blog has given me opportunity to learn many things regarding products and services
Reply to this
Driving Lessons in Birmingham, Solihull & Shirley! Learn driving from Dr L Test School of Motoring and become safe driver for life. Pass plus courses, motorway one can find in Birmingham.
For More Information's - http://wwwdrltest.co.uk/
Reply to this
Thanks for writing such a nice post. After reading your post I can say that you have done lot of research on this topic and I really liked the way of your writing. For more information visit- http://wwwwildplanettourscom/travel/tour/destination/southern-india/south-india-travel-overview/india
Reply to this
After reading this post I can say that the writer has done a lot of research and has put all the facts and figures together in his content. It is one of the most credible posts. For more information visit- http://wwwwildplanettourscom/travel/tour/destination/plains/major-cities/agra/agra/india
Reply to this
Information and attractive sentences on this blog will surely entice sense as Blogger this blog published information after making lots of research so that people can get only reliable and useful information.For more information - http://wwwbuydheasupplementcom/
Reply to this
Good brief and this blog helped me a lot in my college assignment. Gratefulness you seeking your information.
Reply to this
"Let me take this moment to say that I really love this blog. It's been a good source of information for me in my research.
Reply to this
yeah.. thanks for sharing this great tutorial. I really appreciate it
Reply to this
Thanks for sharing the Idea's I really like it , keep up the good work
Reply to this
Your kitchen extraction slowly becomes sticky and dirty. You need to keep it clean and glazed to maintain hygiene at your home or restaurant. Hire cateringhygiene.co.uk for extraction cleaning in your home or catering business.
Reply to this
The essay writing service can provide students with the story close to original essay and it is perfect that you display students your stuff just about this good topic.
Reply to this
Men's underwear store can be found everywhere, literally. You can find them by the dozen. You even have exclusive stores dealing only with men's underwear.
For More Info - http://wwwtoowhitcom
Reply to this
I would like to thank you for the efforts you have made in writing this article. I am hoping the same best work from you in the future as well. In fact your creative writing abilities has inspired me.
Reply to this
nice blog
Reply to this
"Painting is by nature a luminous language." - Robert Delaunay / http://airbrushactioncom/airbrush-getaway-workshops/vegas-february-20-24-2012
Reply to this
nice blog
Reply to this
please tell me that you're going to write more. I notice you haven't written another blog for a while (I'm just catching up myself). Your blog is just too important to be missed.
tony seruga
Reply to this
Life is like a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can.- unknown/http://wwwlawnumbrellacom/
Reply to this