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I get almost all my inventory from yard sales. They do tend to be the best price but I find there are a couple types yard sales and some are very good while others are worse than the thrift store.
There are the people who are just trying to get rid of things and those are the ones who sell everything for $1-$5 and you can make a killing. Then there are the people who NEED money so they have a yard sale, these can be hit or miss because they often look things up on eBay and won’t come down on price. These are also often the same people who complain that yard sales are a waste of time because they don’t sell anything! Lastly there are the people that I call “lifers.” These are people who scavenge like we do, often they are flea market dealers or guys who buy the contents storage units. Some of these guys can be negotiated with and I do on occasion get a deal but most are just trying to dump the junkiest of junk at their weekly garage sales.
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The church rummage sales are the best for this area (East TN). We were at one a couple days ago and they had kitchen sized trash bags – fill one for $8. We managed to get 10 pairs of shoes into one. On the other side they had empty boxes with $5 or $10 or $20 marked on the side. Choose your size and fill it for that price. We filled our car with awesome stuff for about $65. The best things we found were a vintage Coach purse, NAOT sandals, Vintage red plaid Woolrich jacket, Carhartt jeans with the tags. Those things would have probably been more at an ordinary yard sale but because the church was just trying to get rid of mountains of stuff they didn’t care.
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COGS is relative. You’ll miss out on great items if you limit yourself to only super cheap stuff. For instance, I just paid $15 at goodwill for a pair of boots yesterday. Sounds like a lot, but they are brand new Wellco Military boots that I’ll easily sell for $50-60. Would I have preferred they be $2-3? Sure! The profit is the be all end all.
Another good item is the football thrower I bought. I had to drive 1.5 hour trip to get it and paid $200, but I sold it for $1250.
Bottom line, don’t just look at COGS – weight the COGS, Sale price, size, packing complexity, estimated time to sell, etc. Come up with your own formula and put it to practice.
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I paid 40 dollars for two pairs of shoes out of the glass case at Goodwill and sold them for $120 each, in three days….
Now this rarely happens this smoothly but it makes a point. Like was stated, COGS is relative…if you have the cash flow and knowledge to take the bigger gambles, you can do well….there is real money in people buying items for 100 dollars, 1000 dollars, and selling that item for 50% profit..it all depends. Just keep your eyes open. Dont just play it safe…try new things and always learn and experiment. Keep what works for you to fund your experiments…
BTW my biggest gamble/experiment is a pair of binoculars for 500. I ended up selling them for 700. It took several months. Was that a success? Maybe not but was a good learning experience.
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Retro Treasures, I like your point that COGS is relative. I got really hung up on trying to make my store fit a specific profile: only sell items for at least X dollars, COGS can be no more than Y. It didn’t exactly work out. I made money, but I probably missed a lot of opportunities because I thought “Don’t pay more than $3 for shoes. Don’t sell anything below X dollars”. I gave up on that, bought the $10 cowboy boots at Goodwill, and sold them within the week for $60.
I get a lot of inventory at estate auctions and local thrifts. I’m in the country, and yard sales can be really far flung. I don’t want to spend all day driving and come away empty handed. I’d rather go to an auction, buy several box lots for $5 each, and work it that way.
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Lately I have been making myself only purchase items at Goodwill that are the color of the week. The bonus is it really cuts down on my time scavenging because I am not looking at everything. Just the sale items. Goodwill did open a boutique close to me a year or two ago but I still find many good treasures in their original thrift stores.
Garage sales run most of the year here because I am in Tucson. There aren’t many in July and August because it’s so unbearably hot and often, nobody want to go to them either. We do compete A LOT here with visitors from Mexico. The border is about 90 minutes from us. Entire families come in with trucks that have sides and do a sweep, often arriving before the sale begins. And they know how to wheel and deal! Because of what I like to sell, I intentionally seek out garage sales in communities with older folks. I love those .10 prices!
I usually want to pay $1 – $2 or less for items but occasionally will risk more if I have that “feeling”. I bought a Nightmare Before Christmas hoodie, nwt for $7.50 and recently sold it for $69.99.
My hubs is a FF but works part time with his brother. Since I have been selling on eBay he has been bringing home treasures he finds in or near dumpsters at various buildings where they work. I find it hilarious because I never thought I’d see the day!
Love the new look of the blog. Love the forums.
Jennifer
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For me, the prices at yard sales and estate sales depend on the person or company running it. It is hit or miss, but I do find certain towns have more hits and others have more misses. The places that I have found more consistently low prices are a live auction that happens once or twice a month and an online auction. With the online auction, I wait until they have a location within 1 hr or less driving time before I consider whether to bid or not.
I started selling on eBay earlier this year, so I initially didn’t want to spend much. I focused on getting stuff as cheap as possible. Now my goal is to up my average sale price, so I am more particular and perhaps spend more if I feel I will make more.
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People are generally amazed when I tell them I don’t generally spend more than $5 for an article of clothing.
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My Goodwills have 99 cent Sundays so more than 1/2 my clothing stock was bought for that (1.05 with tax) but I will pay full price if the piece is special. I spent $7 on a Ralph Lauren jacket a few months back that had a HUGE eagle on the back. Sold for $325.
But mainly I flip 99 cent items into $20 shipped items ……. bread and butter/boring but pretty simple
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We’ll certainly pay more for an item we think will sell for big money, but these items are few and far between.
I find that items that sell for $50 or less can be bought really cheap. I guess people don’t think its worth the effort to sell these for more.
But any item worth $100+ is usually seen as more valuable and is sold closer to its valued price.
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I think I do best at rummage sales. More specifically the community rummage sales in the retirement communities. They don’t happen too often but they will put everything at 1/2 price on the last day and that is when I’ll go. Garage sales in the retirement communities are also usually very good but they are not super common. I enjoy meeting these people, too. They are usually very friendly and often will tell you about the items you buy from them or tell you a great story. I bought a vintage cheerleader uniform from a gal last week and she told me all about it. I know the year it is from and the high school and city/State. Great information to add to the listing. That information only makes your items worth more, IMO.
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I do a lot of auctions. Seems like my area has auctions and not estate sales. They can be hit or miss on box lots and overall price. I’ve been more inclined to do the online auctions a local auctioneer does since they typically have a 2 hour preview the day the items start to close. The bidding can start 2 weeks in advance so I have plenty of time to research eBay sales history on items I am interested in. This method of auction takes less time and I know how high to go from the start.
I have also started to hit up the Goodwill on $0.49 cent clothing days just to load up on easy to list shirts. The other regional Thrift has had some really good items and I’m not afraid to pay more for things I know will be higher sale prices, but for the most part, they don’t price much over $10.
I also live near a State University and they have a surplus shop. There is also an event put on by the local United Way called Trash to Treasure where they take in donations from the 40,000+ undergraduates and sell it all by the bag or larger items for $3.
I don’t do too many yard sales, but I have had some good finds at the ones I do get to. Church sales are great.
All in all, I aim for a 10x return on what I spend for an item…..of course, if I can get more I’m happy!
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I source from garage sales, estate sales, auctions, goodwill (these are in order cheapest to most expensive.) I have a rules for myself so I dont overspend on items:
Spend 1-3 must sell for 20
Spend 5 must sell for 30
Spend 10 must sell for 40
Spend 15 must sell for 50
Spend 20 must sell for 60I know my cogs are way higher than a lot of people on the blog. I spend between 300-500 a week. I dont buy things I cant sell for at least $20. These rules have helped me avoid paying too much for items.
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I spend very little on inventory and I find great items because my area is considered to be the media capital of the world (Burbank). Some of the movie industry has moved away but for the most part it’s still booming. Disney, Warner Bros, Universal & Nickelodeon are still here, along with many smaller studios.
If I go to estate sales, I may not know before hand that it is an estate of a celebrity. Even if it’s not a celebrity, media items abound. So although I sell all kinds of things, and do a lot of shopping at local thrift stores and the Good Will Outlet, great items can still be found out in the wild for great prices.
At the Good Will Outlet the prices here are $1.79 per lb for textiles and clothing and .99 a pound for hard goods. Books are .50 each. Our outlet is much more expensive than most of them around the country, but I do find really good items and I go there at least once per week.
Jewelry Jars at my local thrift store are insanely priced. They range from $35 – $450.
My usual cost ranges from .00 – $20.00 I have spent a little more, but not much more.
Debbie
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I go to estate sales and garage sales on weekends. I have found it valuable to go to estate sales on the last day where everything is 50% off. The prices are always too high before that. Sometimes when I am late in the day, I can pick up almost anything for $1 to $5 if the seller is just trying to empty the house.
Still I am more like Tina F. above who looks for a ratio of cost to selling price and ease of shipping. It is too easy to pass on good opportunities if I walk into a place with a model of what the next item should be. In the last two weeks I paid $10 for some neoprene waders, and $25 for a Karastan carpet. If I was looking for the familiar or the cheap (or exclusively easy to ship), I may have passed on these, but past sales on eBay show these at ~$50 for the waders and $450 for the carpet. I try to stay in ‘beginner mind’ and try to look at everything without yet knowing if it has value or not, then go through a brief process of investigation if I do not know. The danger is in getting bogged down looking at a bunch of useless crap in a house that has the equivalent of a hoard of used tupperware with mismatched lids. At some point summary judgement also has to win. -
I live in an expensive area so I have to deal with that. I went to an estate sale today, and prices were ebay prices, in other words retail–there were a couple of things that I may consider going back for on Sunday, although their ad said that they made no promise of coming down in price on the last day! (WTH? that is a new one.)
I buy mostly at thrift stores and auctions but I have to pay more and that is that, I would have almost nothing in my stores if I put a limit of paying say under $5 on a given item. The thrift stores here usually price starting at $4.99 and up, still, If I can sell something for $40 that I paid $9 for in 2 days as I did recently, I can live with that. Fortunately box lots spread my cost per item.
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To those of you who have expensive Goodwill stores: do they have a senior discount day? I am a senior, and on Wed. seniors (50 plus) get 30% off PLUS a 10% discount if they are GW card members. Many times my adult son (also an eB seller) will come with me and he gets the discount if I pay (his credit card). Most times, he saves $100+ on a days shopping.
If your stores have the senior discount, do you have a retired relative who is bored and would like to go shopping? They can shop for themselves or look through the books. They can pay with your credit card/cash and get the discount. They might even catch the bug, and start selling themselves! And buying their lunch is also a nice incentive!
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Here in the UK I always aim for a minimum sale price of £25 – list buy it now for £30 and take £25. I aim to net AT LEAST 4 times the purchase price of an item. I love small car boot sales – more people selling than buying, and rain in the air, prices are only going one way – down !!
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