Garage Sale Finds 7/20/13

Greetings!

Had a pretty busy weekend, unfortunately most of it was dedicated to non-eBay related chores.  We recently had some flooding in our basement so I spent most of Saturday tearing up carpet, taking off trim and bleaching all of the grungy areas of my basement.  We run our store out of our basement so, needless to say, it's been a rough couple of weeks.  We had to transport all of our inventory and shelving into the garage for the time being. NOT a fun process.  But we are putting in our new carpet on Thursday night this week, so once that is done we should be back up and running pretty fast.

I did hit up a few sales this weekend and came up with a few interesting finds.

I bought a couple of boxes of vintage and newer holiday decorations (Halloween, Christmas, Valentines Day).  Some of the paper decorations are marked as Hallmark from the 1970s, some of the stuff is newer.  Paid $2.  I love Halloween items so I'm never afraid to pick them up - even if they don't sell I don't mind having extra creepy stuff around. :)

I also picked up a Scream 3 cassette tape for 50 cents - because I'm a horror collector and I can't resist.

Found a nice sturdy shelving unit that I picked up for $2 (she was asking $5).  You can never have too many shelves when you are running an eBay store!

Picked up 2 pairs of vintage earrings for 50 cents each.

Bought a pair of hand carved/hand painted "priest" religious themed bookends ... made in Mexico - $2

Vintage wireless headphones with built in radio - $1

Terminator 2 (movie) wind breaker - movie memorabilia - $1

I found an old looking travel 'speaker' that I will have to do some more research on.  Basically it's a speaker in a case that opens up and you can hook up your instrument to the speaker.  It looks like the brand on the hinges is "excelsior" which I believe is an accordion brand.  I have to test the item, but it looks in nice enough shape - paid $1.

Vintage Swedish serving set - $2

And a small chord organ for $5.

Not a really great weekend of sales, but I got a late start Saturday morning (started around 11am).  In my experience it's best to get out to the sales right when they open up at 8am if you can - stuff gets picked over pretty fast.

Total spent on inventory this weekend - $15

If I get my way I will make somewhere around - $175-$250 from these items.

Good Hunting!

The eBay Freshman

Garage Sale Finds 7/19/13

Hit up 5 garage sales on my lunch break today.  I only bought items from 1 sale - the rest were bogus!

Items purchased

2 pairs of Dr. Martin boots in nice shape - $4
1 vintage Arvin portable radio - $1 (not tested - needs batteries)
1 vintage Realistic portable radio - $2 - works
1 vintage Taylor Instrument Company barometer - guy gave it to me for free since I bought the radios

Total cost - $7

My estimated resale value if I get full asking price - $200
(this is just a rough estimate of what I think the items might be worth compared to other eBay sales - will need wife to approve all sale prices first!)

This was a pretty successful lunch break!  Beats wasting $8 at Burger King!  I would recommend to anyone who is interested in doing this to always take advantage of your free time whenever you can.  I usually will hit up at least 2 or 3 garage sales on my lunch break every day that I can find one.  If there are no sales, I might go to a thrift store on my lunch break to test my luck there ... but garage sales are almost ALWAYS better than thrift stores when it comes to prices.

Good Hunting!

The eBay Freshman

The eBay Freshman - One Seller's Journey

Greetings Blogosphere!

This is a blog dedicated to discussing the goings-on in my personal eBay store.  My wife and I have just opened up our first eBay store together about 1 month ago.  I am here to discuss some hurdles and failures that we have had, learning experiences and of course our success stories as they are happening!

I would like to discuss some of my methods of how to pick up great items for cheap to resell on eBay and update you with how much these items might sell for as well as shipping methods that have worked (and not worked), feedback from customers, and other interesting and random tidbits.

Basically I wanted to create a blog that I could post the happenings in my store and life to share with other like minded individuals, sellers or potential sellers. One of my reasons for starting this blog was from listening to the eBay Scavengers podcast (check it out on iTunes) and blog - Ebay Scavengers - if you are just beginning selling or if you are interested in becoming an eBay seller - these guys are a GREAT resource!

Stay tuned for updates on our store happenings and life.

The eBay Freshman