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I will be curious what deals you all are finding over the next few weeks. I imagine there are some great post Christmas scavenging opportunities out there if you know where to look.
I spent quite a bit less time buying this week than I normally do. The consignment sellers I buy from mostly took the week off from packing and shipping. There were a few deals but nothing out of the ordinary. Surprisingly the day after Christmas was my best scavenging day, both in terms of number of auctions to look through and some of my wins.
My favorite deal of the week was this pile of 1980s Dodgers cards and uncut sheets for about $15. Uncut sheets are one of the few areas related to sports cards and memorabilia where I don’t have a ton of knowledge, but this is the best way to learn and that’s much more valuable than a $50 flip. I rarely buy cards from the 80s and early 90s. When I do, it’s almost always oddball sets like these at a very low buy-in. Or weird error cards like the worst card ever.
I really don’t have much else, even if we were discussing my card business in all of its glory, I spent more than $5 on just 3 (!!!) cards last week. Kind of amazing considering that I buy and sell a few hundred cards on a slow week. Really almost everything I bought was between $1 and $2 COGS! Mostly for my team lots and some stuff to send into consignment. It would be impossible to build a business if every week was like this, margins would be too small. But this felt like a good way to ease into 2025 from a buying perspective.
What did you find on this last full week of 2024?
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I’ve been sorting out three boxes-full of albums and loose stamps I bought at auction.
Found a complete set, plus extras, of the stamps issued by Equatorial Guinea to celebrate the Winter Olympics of 1972. -
Just RA for me this week. I didn’t go as deeply into after Christmas sales as I usually do. The Williams Sonoma brand discounts were not deeply discounted enough for me. I think in February or early March they are more serious about clearance. I did have a haul at Anthropologie. Picked up a few clearance items for us at Marshalls.
No used shopping. Flea and some of the thrifts are closed. I did pick up a 50% off bag of Lenox flat ornaments after scanning the barcode. Will toss in the Xmas bins for next year probably.
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my last big purchase was from an estate sale. Bought a pile of posters, prints and a few other paper things for $25.00
What I thought was a big find was 5 copies of a Speak & Spell marketing poster from 1981 which was a collaboration with the E.T. movie. At first I saw them listed in the hundreds but then found a few under a hundred and then some fool screwing everyone by having one listed under $20!!
Here’s the item: https://www.ebay.com/itm/196907052271but it was fun to go through the pile. I’ve listed several things and just sold one item yesterday which almost paid for the entire purchase.
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We went to Columbus for new years and I checked out some Goodwills to make it a business trip. Being picky I didn’t come back with much though my wife did find plenty for her own personal wardrobe.
The two highlights for me was a fancy wetsuit that looks like a triathalon wet suit. It will sell for somewhere between $50 and $150 once I do more research. Once I knew the STR was amazing and the bottom dollar was $50 that was enough to throw it in the cart for me. Paid $10.
The other cool item was a vintage Vitamix mixer. This is the old all aluminum model with a dial control with reverse. It looks soooo cool and typically Vitamix is big bucks. Sadly these older ones don’t have big value. It is something I’ll list for $75 and probably sell for between $50-60. Paid $3.
Other than that I got a few pair of shoes and a few clothing items. The coolest pair of shoes was a pair of Wolverine 1000 mile boots. They have an excellent STR of about 70% and will sell for between $50-100. Why is 70% a good STR for shoes? Because of size/condition. 75 current listings and 52 sold in 90 days specifically for the chelsea style of this shoe. If you have a decent size and in good condition that basically means instant sale. If I have a size without competition I may even list for $150.
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