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Why hide what you do. For those of you keeping it a secret when scouring you may be missing a lot of opportunity. I’ll give an example. A few months ago my wife and I hit a garage sale and the person selling the stuff had a lot of brand new in box electronics, like chargers, battery packs, land line phones, etc. We made a pile and started talking about why they have so much new in box items. The man said he works for a company that develops products for Duracell, Uni-den and a bunch of other popular brands. We told him what we do we sell on Ebay, Amazon and Wal-Mart and he said well if you think this is a lot you should see my basement. I was like lets take a look. He brought me into this room that had roughly 25 large plastic totes of all sorts of electronics accessories. He said these are all samples and would like to sell them all and if I would be interested. I was like hell yea. I offered him $400 for the whole lot and he accepted. AFter selling all of these we profited almost 8K bucks and I had a tone of leftover items that I sold as bulk for $400. We have several occasion we would have lost on if we stayed in the Ebay closet. We Frequent a lot of Estate Sales and established relationships with them and give us better pricing because of what we do. Bottom line is don’t be shy and don’t miss out on opportunity.
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Hi Erol – I’m in New Joisy as well.
Most of my purchases are in auctions, either online or live. I have no reason to hide the fact that I am a reseller. The bid price isn’t going to go up or down based on whether I’m buying for myself or not, especially the online auctions. I did have an owner give me more stuff because she forgot to put it in the auction, and she asked whether I had a “store”.
For rummage, estate sales, etc., I don’t say anything unless I think it might help me. In general, the estate sales near me (central NJ) are pretty pricy, and I tend to skip them unless they are in my town. I guess it could help me at the end of the sale to get bulk pricing. For church or school rummage sales, I think they are trying to raise money for their cause and wouldn’t give a discount for a reseller.
Probably the time it would help the most is when dealing with a home owner at a garage sale. I haven’t really tried to use that to my advantage yet, but maybe for a sale where I want to buy in bulk. I’ll keep it in mind for this spring/summer.
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I agree – I like to be open about what I’m doing with people’s items.
In being an openly out there eBay seller, I probably source half my items from co-workers, friends, and family that want to get rid of something that I can make some money on.
Last summer I had a similar story – an older guy in my neighborhood had some old McDonalds uniforms for sale (70’s and 80’s). He only wanted a few dollars for them all. I told him I was going to buy them and re-sell them on eBay to collectors – he was excited that someone who would appreciate them would be getting them eventually. He then went inside, and gave me a large box of vintage McDonald’s stuff – buttons, hats, toys, coupons, Monopoly stuff from the 80s/90s, and other items he picked up during his career working for McDonald’s corporate. I only had a $20 bill on me so I gave it to him and he was happy with it. I made about $1000 on the stuff, but run into the guy often and he likes to hear where his stuff ended up across the world and that people who wanted it have it.
A few weeks ago, I ran into him again, told me to pop by his place, and he had another oddball item that I listed:
Just my recent example of how being open to a stranger can open up some sourcing opportunities, and free quality items.
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