Garage Sales – a great place to find inventory CHEAP! 

Most people having a garage sale are not trying to support their families with the income. They just want it out of their house and gone! It’s clutter to them. It’s an eye sore. It’s filling up space that they want to use for something else. And it’s a gold mine for people like us trying to make a living selling goods online or at flea markets.

This morning I went to 1 garage sale. I bought 36 items and spent $18. Can you say FUN!!??? 🙂 I expect to make approximately $175 and that’s going to be on the low side. I always try to under estimate so I don’t count on a higher amount and not get it. I’d much rather say $175 and end up with $195 instead of saying $220 and end up with $195! Be safe, not sorry. This is what will pay your bills and you need to be very conservative on the front side of estimating values on new inventory. Do your research online to place values for the starting sale prices. You are dealing with the online market value which is different from your local area. You want to appeal to the majority of buyers so you don’t want to go too high but you don’t necessarily want to be the lowest either. There are lots of buyers online now that are buying and reselling strictly from online sources because there are so many sellers selling so low. I have often thought about adopting this technique but honestly I want to get out of the house every once in a while, talk to people and have a little FUN! The garage sales, flea markets (as a buyer) and resale shops are my shopping therapy! 😉

Resale Shop Therapy

I went to the local resale shop in town yesterday and spent a total of $37. One 6 foot long shelf (desk hutch that would’ve cost me over $100 new!) for $20 will be perfect to help organize my shipping materials and $17 on the other 27 items!!! 🙂  the shelf will fit on a desk that I already have… very happy to get that! I have estimated $160-$190 in future sales will come from this load. Not bad for a $17 investment!

Resale shops are very different from the garage sales. You generally pay more for an item at a resale shop but you can find a better quality selection on any given day. They usually have a good selection of media, records, vcr tapes, dvds, books, and lots of dishes both old and new, clothes, shoes, blankets and I can almost always find at least one outrageous not normal item that I think will do really good online! It’s like being on a treasure hunt.

The challenge at a resale shop is the fact those items are priced by someone that may be sentimental about it, maybe they’ve tried to sell it at a garage sale but had it too high priced there too because they are trying to get their money back out of it and are not done trying so they took it to their local resale shop hoping they will do better. Regardless of the reason there is little negotiating at a resale shop that is selling items for other people on consignment so the price on it stands unless you make the offer and allow the shop owner to contact the seller to approve the offer or counter or just say no. Most of the time the item will not be worth enough money to spend that amount of time on it.

Resale shops also have SALES! This can be a very good time for us to pickup seasonal inventory for the next year. When the seasons are changing and the holidays are behind us it’s time to visit the resale shop and see if they have started marking down the seasonal items!!! Now is when you can begin to stock up for next year. This is a very important habit we all need to adopt. It can be difficult spending money that will not necessarily have a return on it until next year but you will be happy you did it when next year gets here!

I have a big day ahead of me doing clean up and preparing my new inventory for listings, taking all the pictures and building the descriptions/specifications into the Listing programs I use for uploads so I better get busy!

It’s a cloudy, quiet day today so it will be even more challenging to stay focused so remember to take your 5-10 minute breaks and get back on track!

I hope you have a Great Day! 🙂

Judy