How I source

“Sent to AZ” – what does AZ mean? Arizona?

8 miles away is local for me too!

Curious to know if any clothing sellers have had any luck with buying from liquidator sites. I’m looking to move towards mainly selling clothing. Currently I have only 2 goodwills in my area and their prices continue to climb. Three out of the 4 small mom and pop thrifts have closed. I’m willing to travel in good weather however with winter coming and with that possible bad road conditions. I’m just wondering what do you really get from these type of sites.

Thanks for sharing thrifty2.

Out of curiosity, what types of ephemera do you generally sell? How is your average selling price on that sort of stuff? Decent, or do you make it up on volume?

Local for me is about 13 miles!

I thrift at a variety of shops in towns around me, the farthest being about 45 minutes away, but they do $0.49 and $0.99 Saturdays for specific colors.

I primarily source at auctions, most of them being online with a local company so I can typically preview the items and pick them up. I have to head out and pick up my latest finds, but it is 40 minute drive in the opposite direction from home so I’m wondering why I bothered.

I did some yard sales with mixed results, but I have been able to find enough for good prices with the auctions and thrift. I have done the FB sourcing, but I find that many people are asking higher prices so I look but rarely buy. I have been looking into the liquidation online auction sites, but I don’t have the time to list that volume right now so it is on the back burner. We have a salvage company in one of the surrounding towns and I’ve picked a few things, but they are also a little higher priced than what makes sense for me right now.

I always keep an eye or ear out for opportunities to pick up stuff.

I like to have a mixture of ways to source.

First and foremost is yard sales. This is good for bread and butter items but sometimes you find something worth a lot. Clothes I usually only buy stuff I know is going for a lot (designer jeans). I never buy purses… to many fakes, if I get them in a lot thats great but I don’t go looking for Prada and Couch cause even tho I live near a outlet I find most are just fake. You can sometimes find cool vintage stuff at yard sales but for the most part its clothes, household and tools (depends on your area, mine is newer so less old cool stuff to find and more Wal-mart junk).

Thrift stores are great but I feel like a lot of them are suddenly realizing their items worth. I still find cool stuff for cheap sometimes but I feel like over the past 5 years thrift stores are looking to sites like eBay to price unique items now. Goodwill can still be viable since the people who price their items often don’t care or know what they are pricing (not knocking those people, my mom is a manager at Goodwill and half he people in the back don’t care about their job). Goodwill Clearance Centers can be great since its by the pound. Tons of shoes (gotta dig for the good stuff), and clothes! I do not like the mad rush to get stuff at these places so I usually pick over the stuff that has been out. That being said I can usually go over the whole place in a hour and a half and get a few hundred dollars worth of stuff for $20-$60.

Auctions are probably the best for sourcing and the most fun I think. Depending on the auction tho. I have three in my area that I attend but I am about to drop one of them. First one is a place in town near me, he does estate sales (we have lot of retired people in my area so we have a few estates a week). These are all over the place, from kitchen junk to collectibles. I get a lot of box lots from this one for $2.50 but it is a lot of work going though all of it but its worth it to find the gold nuggets. The other auction a little farther away I’m about to drop be cause its so boring… They go one item at a time and it takes forever and there are a ton of people there who jack the prices up. The last one is about a hour drive but they have a lot of cool little vintage trinkets that I can usually get for $5 per lot. This one has a lot of flea market people but they focus on tools and furniture so I can usually get the lots of pipes and perfume bottles for nothing.

The community yard sales, usually sponsored by real estate firms, are generally where I get my best finds.

The church sponsored rummage sales are a great place for $1 items, but it’s tougher to find high end stuff there.

On Sundays we have the box lot auctions. Those can be profitable, but I end up filling the car up and then sifting through boxes for about a week or so trying to determine what is valuable. Honestly, my operation is not efficient enough to handle this volume more than once a month or so.

Finally there are the ever present Estate sales. These are hot or miss for me and involve more driving than the other options. I try to go on the last day to get the cheaper prices.

Buying is easy. Listing is the battle.