In our career of scavenging, nothing is more exciting than finding a Cache. What’s a cache? It’s that huge box of items that you buy for one price at an auction or thrift store. Different caches we’ve found are grocery carts of old pens, boxes of pottery, piles of military clothing, rolls of fabric, buckets of old nails, treasure troves of trucker hats. Usually no one wants these items because it’s too much of one thing. Someone just wants to get rid of them and that’s good! This means it’s cheap! Martin over at Garbage Finds recently talked about boxes of perfume he’s found in the trash and is selling for big money.
The huge lot of items is always overwhelming and takes up too much space space, but if you are determined and methodical, then you’ll be making a ton of money over time. We call it “making a new pipeline”. These items usually sell slowly because we price them at what they’re worth. We can make several hundred dollars a month over several years. It’s the slow dime vs the fast nickel in action. So paying $20 for a box of military clothing might pay our electric bill for months and months.
In other news, we set up our payroll system to pay our first W-2 employee using Square. $30/month and the service takes care of withholding/ paying all taxes to State and Feds. It was scary and overwhelming at first, but setting up payroll has been easy and uncomplicated. There are plenty of other online services that do the same thing.
Couple of good conversations on the forum:
—Discussion about how to handle credit card charge backs and buyers claiming items didn’t arrive. The answer is always “look at the tracking”. If it says Delivered, you’re in the clear.
–Stuff My Mom Threw Away talked about the tension of being a minimalist and eBay seller. We also own very little stuff, but you wouldn’t know it if you walked into our house and saw piles of unlisted inventory. I think that tension is good because we never let these piles disappear into our house. That’s when you become a hoarder.
We had another solid week of sales on eBay. Hope you had a good week!
Join the conversation in the forum>>
Our Store Week January 15-21, 2017
Store #1
Total Items in Store: 5317
Items Sold: 42
Cost of Items Sold: $105
Total Sales: $1,839.84
Highest Price Sold: $200 (vintage guitar pedal)
Average Price Sold: $38.33
Returns: 2
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 90
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Bonanza/Trugether:
Sold 2 items for $75 (jacket, vtg markers)
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Store #2
Total Items in Store: 963
Items Sold: 7
Cost of Items Sold: $12
Total Sales: $279.47
Highest Price Sold: $70 (Vintage military backpack)
Average Price Sold: $39.92
Returns: 0
Number of items listed this week: 0
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Home › Forums › Scavenger Life Episode 294: Finding the Valuable Caches and Going All In