Scavenger Life Episode 410: Frugal 4 Life

It looks like Poshmark does have some sort of negotiated deal with USPS https://www.endicia.com/en/why-us/success-stories/poshmark . I really wish that Ebay would negotiate something similar.

As for the scene at college moveouts, I’m sure it’s huge by NYU! Martin from Garbage Finds does dumpster diving around McGill during college moveouts, and he has talked about the competition before. I look around the neighborhoods and apartments by my local university (pretty small engineering school) and find great stuff tossed mostly by rich foreign students. I assume they can’t or don’t want to bring it home. I’ve never seen anyone else looking, but I assume that bigger universities might attract more people looking to see what’s left. I cannot even imagine what must be left behind at places like NYU.

We live in God’s waiting room here in coastal FL, and estate sales are everywhere every weekend. I only go to some. The no price thing is annoying. You get a feel for certain estate sale companies though. Some I just avoid when I see their signs, some I go on the last day, some I know will make a deal even on the first day…also, the ones run by the family with no company involved are the best.

Estate sales are easy for us. First we have gotten to know a few owners so when we first walk up I say, Hi Jim, Fred, Robbie whoever it is and say same terms as last time and most of the time they say yes. If a new estate sale person, we do and I say the following:

First we walk around and see if things are all priced [mostly], get a feel if they are way high or reasonable according to our experience and if there are a few things we are interested in. Then I go up to the desk and ask for the owner or person in charge. then I do a few seconds of the business elevator speech .. “Hi glad to know you. First time seeing you guys. I see things all priced, you did a good job or nice stuff. You been doing this long? [get the answer]. Then I hand them our business card and say, “We are buyers and resellers, so you know the drill, there has to be meat left on the bone. If we make a pile and write a list as we go, are you negotiable?” “If so then this could be a win-win situation for both of us and you have made yourself a repeat buyer and we will frequent your future sales.”

And that’s it and wait for the answer. All in all less than 60 seconds. They know it’s a business deal from the get go. They have to give or we won’t do “the dance”. If they do, we will be buying “a pile” because I said so, and also if they invest in us by discounting, then they will continue to get our business. We let them know right away we are dealers and bring more fire power to their sale than the average, non-corporate entity, casual fair day buyer. Auction houses also know us by the same business like manner in which we deal.

Some say sure, we will negotiate and a few says something like well we only offer 50% off on the last day. I look then square in the eye and state well that won’t do, and guess no use checking you guys out in the future. Put my hand out, shake hands and wish them good luck with their business model. Then Susan and I walk away.

Susan knows my spiel by heart. That is all it takes. We have about a dozen estate sale owners who know us by sight or our blue bags we bring to carry our stuff out with. Most allow us to pack our bags as we bring things out and then work from my list I give them.

I total it up on the bottom of the list at sticker price, then put the 50% off price below that and then put the 75% off price under that and circle it then hand it to the person in charge. 90% of the time they say sure thing and I hand them cash. If not they usually say, this client was tough or she passed away and the kids have other plans if we don’t sell it, then they come back with a number between the 50% off and my 75% off. Usually 60%.

But in any case you start the deal / process as soon as you walk up, either same as last time Jim, or do the quick elevator speech and you will know where you stand in 60 seconds or if just need to leave.

We have honed this process through the years. We have been buying from some of the same people for over 5 years and 75% off on last day is what we get. And the closer to the last few hours is even better. I have made deals of 80% off during the last few ours.

All of our established estate sellers know I drive for 75% off of their sticker price.

Our card says we are a corporation by the use of “Inc”. and we have a tax ID number, so no tax on our purchases and by paying cash or business check the vendors save the 3%+ charge from the C/C companies, which I throw out at a new vendor as part of my spiel.

In case you do not know, many estate sellers make deals with their clients to try to leave the house as empty and clean as they can. So some of our friend estate sellers have buyers who come in 30 minutes to 60 minutes after the closing time and buy everything that’s left, lot, stock and barrel and clean the house out. Everything from paper trash to old brooms and mops and chemicals. They take it all for a one price. So i like to shop them several hours before those guys roll in.

Some estate dealers also have a dumpster brought end at the days end and split the cost with the whole house end buyers. The dealers take what they want and throw the rest away. The dumpster gets picked up the next morning. “Pulled” as it is called.

So, there you have it. You own a business, so run your business like a business. Estate Sellers are your vendors. I worked every vendor I ever bought from in the business world and always drove hard for discounts based on repeat buying, exclusively carrying their brand, volume buying and in a few cases even got vendors to stock their products in our plant and they came in and did the inventory for us and only invoiced us for what we used. In return we would drop ship for them to others if they needed some of the products they had stored at our plant.

So I just use the same tactics on the local estate sale vendors. Here I am, I am a buyer, I have been in business for 16 years and I will continue to do business with you if you cut me the deals. Plain and simple. No deals no business today and in the future.

Some of the vendors I actually call them, because that is what they are, I have manilla file folders several inches thick where I have bought thousand of dollars of merchandise from them. And we only buy what fits our niche and quality level. We will buy a hundred dollar item but only for $25. Period.

I have even had vendors say as we come in, glad to see you, we were hoping you and Susan would be coming in today because we have a couple of things that fit your niche and they take us straight to them as soon as we arrive. At times a floor walker will bring something up to us and say, “I think you guys like this kind of stuff” and usually we say “Yep” and take it to our bags. One lady who does this with us we have spent over $15,000 with them over a 5 year period. That averages about $3,000 a season.

You have to make your discounts in this business and we all know the profit is in the buying. These days everyone knows what something is selling for or sold for on Ebay, even yard sellers.

There is another lady who will remain anonymous, will not bend on the 50% off rule. Says her rpices are rsearched and fair and 50% is enough meat on the bone. Well after we got no where with her after several tries, we haven’t bought anything from her in over 4 years.

So you can make your own vendor pipeline if you work at it and are persistant. There are no “Merchandise Marts” in the used item world, but you can create your vendor pipeline. You get to know them, build the trust and build the system. Those that are willing to “do the dance” will, and those that are not or are staffed by “clerks” with no executive decision making power won’t and we are out of there in 60 seconds and never return. There are way too many good ones out there than to waste time on those who don’t know how to dance with you or won’t do the dance with you.

The good ord says, “You have not because you ask not!”… So ask up front. You will save yourself a lot of time making piles and wasting time looking and then only after the fact discovering, “Sorry, today is only 50% off day”.

Bye,bye, to those people until they learn how to do the “business dance”.

Use your brain and negotiating skills first rather than your back.

Just one guys opinion and another wall of text.

The management team from MDC Concepts, Inc.
Susan, Lisa, Christie and Michael
MDC Galleries and Fine Art
“SmartParts” Small Equipment Parts divs.

Finishing up at work, glad to see another Sunday night podcast, going to try hard to listen before nights out.

5/5 – 5/11/19 (no cross listing is done between platforms)

eBay store: totommyto

Total store items: 627
Number of items sold: 17
Total eBay sales (not counting s/h): $412.19
Cost of items sold: $24.50
Consignment payouts $5
Highest price sold: $70 vintage Commando action figure, cost $2.50
Average price sold: $24.37
Returns: $20 key fob, too heavy for jewelry project, no worries
Money spent on new inventory: $135
Number of new items listed this week: 25
Sell through rate for the week: 2.7
Number International sales: 2

Etsy store oldfleatoymarket

Total store items: 637
Number of items sold: 8
Total Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $166
Cost of items sold: $15.50
Consignment payouts: $5
Highest price sold: $30 – rusty tool box tray
Average price sold: $20.75
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $23
Number of new items listed this week: 8
Sell through rate for the week: 1.3
# International sales: 1

Jay, Mercadolibre where I sell has what sounds like a similar shipping deal to poshmark. If I list something over $549 pesos, about $27 bucks, I can offer free shipping that will go with either Fedex or DHL, mercadolibre gives me a huge discount of the shipping, WAY cheaper than I can go in to the offices and purchase it for. They must have some sort of partnership with those two companies to offer me such drastically reduced rates. To give an example, I can ship say something the size of a shoebox and about the weight of a pair of shoes anywhere in Mexico for less than 4 bucks with either fedex or DHL.
Down here NO ONE uses the postal system, it is too slow and many things get “lost” en route. By mercadolibre making some loose partnership with those two companies they have taken what was once the big detractor, dubious shipping times, out of the equation of online sales and their business has boomed over the past several years because of that.

The cheap vs frugal conversation was great! An example I would give would be to say buying an inexpensive pair of Chinese made leather boots at Walmart is being cheap, they will fall apart in a short time. Being frugal would be finding a nice open box of Doc Martens for a highly discounted price, even if they end up costing more than the Walmart boots, but they will last for many years.

2019-05-05 – 2019-05-11

Total Items In Store: 2972
Items Sold: 13 (12 ebay, 1 Bonanza)
Cost of Items Sold: $40
Total Sales: $458.36
Highest Price Sold: $100.00 (CD Changer)
Average Price Sold: $35.26
# Items Listed: 36
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 182

Gut Sales Report for the week: Yes, sales were really slow. 1 sale a day or so for a lot of the days.

Challenge of the week: The story of the week\month is buying awesome inventory on the cheap. Also, I am getting into items I have not dealt with before and am having success. One example of this is some Lacrosse sticks that I bought this week – that is a first for me.

Strategy of the week\month: I am trying to beef up my $75 and up items right now. I have 208 of them right now, which is 7% of my inventory. I really want to make an effort to get this near 20%. One of the ways I am doing this is by buying a lot of stereo\TV equipment. I am getting these for dirt cheap and some fetch some hefty profits. I am getting really good at testing this stuff out and having fun doing it which is always good. For example, I bought 8 items this week that fit this criteria. The average selling price of the 8 items is $108.74 (may not realize all that). I paid $43.74 for all 8 of them, or and average of $5.47 each. I went to about 9 sales this week, 3 of which
were rummage sales. The key to this is to go to a lot of sales and get creative while there.

Personal Scavenge of the week\month: My daughter has been asking for an acoustic guitar. I found a nice Fender electric guitar with an amp for $50 at a rummage sale. The combo worked great, so I gave it to her. I told her she can keep it or sell it on ebay (probably can get at least $150 for the combo) so she can buy an acoustic guitar. For now, she is going to keep the electric guitar. This is also a new area for me. I had bought a Fender Amp before, but never an electric guitar. So now I will add that to my list of bolo items.

Mark S

Speaking of frugal, I know you guys are fans of Ting. However I found that Mint Mobile would be even cheaper and you don’t have to be a data miser. 3GB for $15/month. That’s a pretty amazing deal compared to the $40 for the same amount of data on my current plan, Straight Talk. Mint uses the T-Mobile network. I recently lost my phone so I’m doing a lot of phone and plan comparisons. Just wondered if you had already looked into it.

Week May 5 – 11, 2019

Items in store: 3708 Listings for 5781 Items
Items Sold: 102 Transactions for 115 Items
Gross Sales: $5855
Highest Price Sold: $396, LVC Leather Jacket
Lowest Price Sold: $3.49(shoelaces)
Average Price Sold: $50.91
Cost of Goods Sold $492, Plus consignment
Number of items listed this week: 134 items
$$ spent on new inventory this week $00
Repeat Customers: 5

Amazon
Items Sold 0
Gross Sales $0
Cost of Good Sold $0

My yearly spring explosion of frugalness, I got the garden mostly ready for planting this week. We grown and preserve our own organic veggies. Found broken frost spigot I will have to deal with before I can get the irrigation running. I hate crawling under the house, it’s a tight dirt and rock crawlspace….I may take he easy road and pay a plumber. The savings we get on all out home-grown produce will more than cover the plumber.

You mentioned the experience of walking into an expensive thrift store and leaving if it doesn’t look promising. I no longer shop at thrift stores unless I’m just killing time, BUT before, I found expensive ones are sometimes more profitable if you look for big ticket items. A thrift that prices everything for a dollar, when it gets something really special – prices it for a dollar and it’s gone within the day. A thrift that prices everything at $20 prices the special thing for $20 too, even if it’s worth $200. And it’s *still there* when you show up, because it wasn’t bought by the first picker whose eye it caught. It’s a different kind of filter, and it works for you as long as you can swallow paying $20 for an item.

I had a decent week.

Sales: CAD$1124, 9 items, COGS: $115 –> Item profit: $823
Expenditures: $378 –> Cashflow: $560
Listed: $2130, 25 items
Hours: 10, $57/hr
Notable sales: electrical cabinet $0–>$200 from a long ago auction, dust filters $20–>$220.
Scavenging: got some good buys this week. Big box of fancy security cameras for $50, hoping it’s all worth around $1000. An auction haul included a big box of various hydraulic filters for $140, some are cheap but a couple are worth $200-500 range. Fluorescent lightbulbs for cheap too, should be $500 or so for all of them.

Looks like I’m doing an out of town auction pickup this coming week too…

May 5 – 11
Total Items in Store: 2249
Items Sold: 22
Total Sales : $1,083
* ABOVE yearly average of $890
Highest Price: $200 (Bose Wave CD Player)
Average Price: $55
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $67
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $10
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 28

I’m glad you two had a nice impromptu vacation in NYC! One of these days I would love to visit the big apple. I’ve heard that there’s so much to explore there.

I had a pretty decent week thanks to a handful of really nice sales. I didn’t get quite as much listing done as I would have liked, but I did manage to work on a lot of stuff around the house, including restoring some mid century furniture for resale.

Regarding estate sales, recently a company has been putting them on in our area and we’ve enjoyed going to them. A lot of times it’s just like your caller described… nothing is priced. We’ve learned that the trick in our case is to make a pile and ask the right person working there. Because two people will give you completely different prices. We’ve found out through experience which worker will give us better prices.

Jay and Ryanne: Your ears were totally burning! I was EXACTLY thinking that! Just drop your numbers into a spreadsheet each week and then you can take the data, slice and dice it and make Julienne fries!

I’m ready when you guys are do start doing some video stuff. I will try and get some more test with other software so that maybe we can do a live event rather than just with the two of you. Maybe my internet connection too. Dunno, but that OBS software was crap when I did test live streams. The screen looked fine in the OBS, but when it broadcasted to YouTube, couldn’t read the screen. Skype worked out better.

And we can do a few of these. One on how I collect and do my data (with graphs of course), how I use that data to forecast our numbers, how we use SixBit (especially how it helps us do Poshmark crossposting in 2 minutes). Open book…

Gonna start posting our numbers more on like a Tuesday or Wednesday. Teaching Veronica how to do this step in prep for the Colorado Trail this summer, and all our downloads show up Monday night/Tuesday Morning.

Putting nothing in, getting nothing back. Sold one item on Ebay this week for best offer $30. I’m focused on my other job and renovating my dad’s new place, so Ebay is still on the back burner. I didn’t even manage to send any offers from the app but will this week. That’s a great feature.

Enjoyed the discussion of value and that is relevant to me now as I choose products for my dad’s place. And even as I choose what to update and what is not going to increase the value of the unit. I have expensive taste but I try to get bargains. My dad is the cheap swede and is out of touch with what things cost. “How much is a dishwasher? $200? Vanity $200.” Anything buried in the wall or labor intensive such as plumbing I’ll pay up for. I found out our Costco has Hansgrohe fixtures and they also had $50 off ceiling fans. Yeah for Costco! I have some time before he moves in so I will be hawking local sites and Habitat for some deals. Picked out nice stock tile this week.

Thanks for the podcast!

Here are my numbers for the week:

Total Items in Store: 2999
Items Sold: 52
Total Sales: $1496
Cost of Items Sold: $136
Average Price Sold: $28.76
Average Cost of Item: $2.63
Highest Price Item Sold: $279.95 Sony A5000 Alpha 20.1MP Digital Camera (paid $10 at an estate sale)
Number of items listed this week: 89
YTD Sales: $17363
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +6%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 377
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 202
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 68
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.73%
Hats sold this week: 36 (69% of sales) worth $641.37 (42% of sales $)

We had a great week with the most number of sales and the highest total sales $ that we’ve had this year. The sales $ figure was buoyed by a fewer higher-value items that I’d picked up at estate sales and garage sales.

At estate sales I tend to focus on stuff that other people aren’t interested in. I generally pick up several items and make sure at least one or two of them look like junk so that people don’t think I’m picking up valuable items. When I take my pile up to the register to pay I always hold my breath while I find out what I have to pay. I rarely walk away completely though I did do it the other day when I was quoted $15 for a few small books which was triple what I was expecting to pay.

On the topic of frugal vs cheap, I don’t think the average person makes a distinction. I sometimes call myself frugal to my wife but she thinks I’m just using a different word to avoid calling myself cheap.

On the topic of paying for quality, the problem I have with that is that you often don’t know if the cheap thing you’re buying will last or not. It’s only with hindsight that you find the answer to that. I think people use the “quality” argument to spend more than they need to sometimes. If I buy an expensive “quality” car, will it last longer than cheap car? Maybe. Maybe not. If I buy an expensive pair of shoes, will they always last longer than cheap shoes? Sometimes. Sometimes not.

Week of 05/05-05/11
Total Items in Store: 3,269 (Up 55% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 155
Number of Items Sold: 99 (Up 27% YOY)
(Includes 1 Etsy, 9 Poshmark, 0 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether)
Weekly STR: 13% (Down 3% YOY)

Total Product Sales: $2,437 (Up 18% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Up $555
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Down $179
Cost of Items Sold: $498
Cost of Labor: $222
Highest Item Sold: $69 – Hickey Freeman Sport Coat
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Troy wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 11-9.

Clothing
# Listed: 1,960
# Sold: 65
STR: 14%
ASP: $23.23

Shoes
# Listed: 708
# Sold: 20
STR: 12%
ASP: $29.21

Hard Goods
# Listed: 601
# Sold: 14
STR: 10%
ASP: $24.54

EBay
# Listed: 3,269
# Sold: 89
STR: 12%
ASP: $23.32

Etsy
# Listed: 237
# Sold: 1
STR: 2%
ASP: $24.83

Poshmark
# Listed: 788
# Sold: 9
STR: 5%
ASP: $34.44

So…change in plans. I’m going to get this out of the way, since Veronica won’t be keeping this part up when I’m gone. She will maintain the cash and credit card recons, but not this part.

Good week, more short sleeve and shorts starting to sell, bringing down the ASP. Weird that the past three weeks in a row, we have sold exactly 65 items.

Other than that, still just heads down and keep working. Only one day for the contract gig this week (like last week), so easier to hit our 150 listings/week goal.

Week of May 5 – 11
* Total Items in Store: 1391, eBay, 3 Etsy
* Items Sold: 17 eBay
* Cost of Items Sold: $6.15 + $0 Commission
* Total Sales: $255.37
* Highest Price Sold: $45 Bavaria serving platter
* Average Price Sold: $15
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 20

I find estate sales a waste of time. Yes, I might find a thing or two at the right price, but auctions are so much more efficient. Garage sales and flea markets are a hit or miss, although rummage sales are usually fruitful. Usually. On Saturday, I went to a rummage sale that I’ve attended the past few years, but I didn’t find anything. Partly this is because I’ve become more picky, but they really didn’t have much.

I went to bed Saturday night with at feedback score of 998, and woke up Sunday morning with 1001. Quite happy with that! Does anyone know when that little star will change color again?

• This reply was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by Sharyn.

Welcome to NYC! Isn’t the weather lovely?!?! Think it’s supposed to be crappy all week until Saturday and then be gorgeous, just in time for you guys to head home 🙁

To the caller about estate sale prices – in my experience, it’s different for each one. I went to 3 this weekend and all were different; one had prices through the roof still even on the last day and they took 10% off of my “pile”; but then another was practically giving things away and I listed something yesterday for $225 that I paid $2 for at that sale. What another person above said, if you go consistently enough, you’ll get a sense of how each company runs their sales. I have 3 different “go to” companies that I’ll always go to cause I know the prices are fair, the quality is usually high, and they are organized.

Week May 5-11, 2019

Total Items in Store: 999
Items Sold: 14 (1 Amazon)
Cost of Items Sold: $105 (20.6% of sales)
Total Sales: $509.19
Highest Price Sold: $99.99 (1986 Beastie Boys License to Ill first press LP)
Average Price Sold: $36.37
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0
Promoted listings test: 11 sales, $405.71 (79.7% of total sales), $18.86 fees (4.6% of sales)

On the slower side for me as well, about 30% below my weekly sales average. 7 of my 14 sales were under $20 and pulled down my average price sold pretty considerably.

Went to a few sales this weekend, but didn’t get to list anything because I was under the weather on Sunday. Plan on getting a few things listed and out the door before the week is out.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by Brian Treasures from Grandmas.

Ryanne: Just to clarify one point for new people. In this week’s podcast you mentioned the site for a reminder of when the eBay shipping supplies coupon is available as http://wheresthecoupon.com. However, the site actually is http://wheresthecoupon.wordpress.com. It used to be the site you mentioned, but the site owner changed it to the new url as it was cheaper.
I know you just rattled it off in passing. I only mention if in case someone wants to have the coupon reminder sent to their email address.
Have a good day.
Brian

Around here the difference between estates sales and garage sales is you can go inside the house to look at stuff. Everything is always tagged.
I like to grab everything of interest then pile it up in front of whomever collects the money, then ask for a deal on all of it, if it’s a little more than I want to pay I make a lower offer which they usually accept, otherwise they’ll have to put all the stuff back.

I went to an estate sale about a year ago. Some stuff was tagged. Some rooms or tables had a sign stating, “Anything for $5” or something similar. I took an item to the check out table and asked the lady of she’d accept $3 for some item I picked up for $5. She was pretty snarky and stated, “I CAN’T MAKE ANY DEALS!”. She said something about she wasn’t the house owner and she didn’t own the estate selling company, she was just the cashier.

Time is your most valuable asset, and when an estate sale company says “Make a pile” they want you to invest your time. Then once you are invested, you are unlikely to walk away from a high price.

I try to get an idea of the pricing before I make a pile, by asking the price on a few items.

We have all types here in the Northeast– some price high, some price low. Some tag every single item in the entire house. Some don’t tag anything.

Items in Store 1119
Items Sold 23
Total Sales $617.60
COGS $57.00
Total Profit $560.60
Average profit $24.37
Average sales price $26.85
New Listings 1

The make offer in app thing was very successful for me this week. I made 6 sales in my first wave of offers, and two yesterday in a smaller wave of offers. I only had one new listing, but I have completed 60 other listings except for photos. I intended to do all the photos this weekend but my wife got very sick and I instead took care of her and the kids. Poor thing had a 102-103 fever all weekend!

Hopefully things will get back to normal sometime this week.

May 5 – 11
Total Items in Store: 1335
Items Sold: 7
Total Sales : $300
Highest Price: $150 (Asian Metal Tea Pot)
Average Price: $25 (not including the tea pot)
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $10
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $25
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 20

Hello all!

I hope everyone has been doing well.
I’ve been a little MIA lately. I have an anime convention the first weekend of June so I’ve been working on some things for that as well as eBay, haha.
It’s been a bit slow for me unfortunately. I put my store on sale mode to see if that will help drive sales.
I went on a yard sale trip with my mom over the past weekend and found some neat things. Dan Marino signed picture, not sure if it’s authentic but I’m keeping it. And a Phins vintage beanie!
A wooden sunburst wall clock, pair of Dr. Martens boots, Funko Pop figure, and a bundle of Sirius radio stuff I’m still tinkering around with. So that was fun!

I also was hoping to ask for some advice.
We recently put up a security system near our garage that has our bin that holds our packages. We noticed the other day that the mail carrier was very rough with our packages. Pitching them into her Jeep, throwing our plastic carrier back into the bin and slamming the bin shut.
Today she cussed at our packages and at us when she opened the bin and saw the less than 10 lb package. And did the same thing as before.
I’m not sure how to proceed with this because I don’t want her to retaliate and damage the packages off screen.

Thanks everyone!

items sold: 34
sales: $1,078 (i don’t include shipping revenue)
average selling price: $31.70
cost of goods: $129.20
returns: 0
purchases: $217.12
store listings: 1,001
inventory $ risk: $3833.40 (what i paid for all existing inventory)
listed this week: 61
ebay hours: 26.25
what’s on my mind: not focused on ebay this week, but happy for the sales!

We are lucky to have a multitude of estate sales here in the Portland Oregon area, which is a great thing but there are tons of dealers to compete with and lots of folks who go to estate sales as a hobby. Most are run by 25-30 local professional companies and with observation you can figure out which ones are good to go to. There’s a few that price their items at antique mall prices and we avoid those. At least half do reasonable prices, especially at half price on the second day. The professional companies do NOT dicker or come down on prices and they really don’t need to since they are so well attended.

IF they have 30-40 good pictures online and look like there’s lots of vintage treasures at the sale, then there can be over 100 people waiting to get in when they open first day. The hope is always that there’s at least 15 on a Friday or Saturday, as that helps spread all of us out across the city.

We especially like the family run sales, although they can be hit or miss when a member of the family decides that all of Grandma’s treasures should be priced high since they are “antiques”. We’ve done crazy good at estate sales in mobile home parks and went away with nothing at sales in rich neighborhoods.

Sales where nothing is priced don’t tend to do as well. People don’t want to ask.I do like y’all mentioned and ask about something right away to get a feel for it. You can tell immediately how attached they are to the items and how eager they are to unload, or reluctant.

We went to a family one last weekend where it was just a bunch of motorcycle and garden stuff in the garage and saw on craigslist yesterday that they were giving away everything in the house that didn’t sell. They were so disorganized they weren’t telling people everything in the house was for sale too! There’s also the dishonest people who call their garage sales “estate sales” because they know it will draw more traffic.

I love estate sales because I am a voyeur. You can get a sense of a person by walking through their home and see their possessions. I have seen some crazy collections. One estate featured a collection of over a thousand cat-related item. Dishtowels, couch pillows, cuckoo clocks, you name it. Another was a woman who was crazy about cows. My very all-time favorite house was a woman who loved the color turquoise and the house was a time capsule from the 1960s. Turquoise carpet, couches, kitchen, wallpaper. Oh, it was marvelous! I admire people who live their passion!

I went to one last weekend where there were built-in bookshelves in every room and thousands of books and lots of interesting artsy collections of things. As I walked through the rooms I thought to myself, what an interesting life she led….I would have liked to have been friends with her.

Yeah, same here. We don’t really have estate sales at all. Everything goes to auctions. If I find myself at an estate sale, it’s usually at least 2 hours away.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by The_SEAM_Store.