Scavenge of the week June 16-22, 2024

[craig rex]

I got a little more selective with my buying last week, and it was one of those weeks where almost everything that I won was in the $1 to $5 range for my consignment port or my curated card lots. The biggest individual item purchased which will go into my eBay store was this authenticated Earl Lloyd autograph for $28. Lloyd was the first African-American player to play in the NBA and is in the Hall of Fame. This should be an easy and fairly quick sale around $100.

I’m still working on spring/summer cleaning and I unearthed something I sold three or four times last year, a Brett Favre etched crystal. Link is to a sale of the week post from last February. My listing title, which also took a little digging, was <span class=”onboarding-tourtip onboarding-tourtip-2-3-resultTable search-results-tourtip-wrapper”><span class=”onboarding-tourtip onboarding-tourtip-3-2-activeTab”><span data-item-id=”145074180085″>Brett Favre etched 3D crystal 3×4 Crystal Art Ventures Green Bay Packers</span></span></span>. It feels like just yesterday I was photographing these heavy dumb things along with some magazines and CDs and DVDs. My photography process has changed since then. So has my inventory. Time flies! I found this one kind of wedged behind other stuff on a shelf that was too cluttered. Now all the stuff from that shelf is in bins in a row against the wall in a queue to be organized, photographed and listed.

I don’t have as many cluttered shelves as I did a few months ago, so this is really really my last one. My COGS on these were less than $5 each and they all sold in the $20 to $25 range, so whatever this one sells for is all profit. Probably not the type of item I would buy again in terms of size to profit ratio, but it’s already in the apartment and I have evidence these sell, so it’s in a bin nearer the top of queue which I will tackle end of this week or beginning of next.

What did you find this week?

[ChristineR]

Scavenge of the week was the flea market QVC shopper score.  I bought about 14 Vera Bradley and Lug bags, plus a few other brands.  Listed some of them over the weekend.  Sold the first one today https://www.ebay.com/itm/335455349654  Paid about $1 for saleable each item in this haul.  I may lot up the art supplies, since there are many sets.

At the college rummage sale, I bought some things for us – practical stuff mainly – a few posters in sleeves for the live market booth, a lot of beauty items which I listed on Ebay and Mercari this weekend, the shams, a Pottery Barn sham, and a couple of mugs.  Nothing too spectacular.  I’m thinking next year of maybe going to the boutique area first and seeing if I can score some perfume.

[ChristineR]

https://www.instagram.com/p/C8r23HYpQnU/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==  My art score from this week – oops hit wrong thread

[Retro Treasures WV]

Yard sales were a bust this week due to the heat. I was done with my whole loop in less than 90 minutes. Nothing really worth mentioning.

At Goodwill I found this amazing 1981 RCA Selectavision VHS player…but I passed. It’s just sooooo big and heavy and I’ll let it sit for a long time before I list it. They wanted $17 for it too. It just wasn’t worth enought to justify the size and trouble. Now if it was another one of those rack mount Sony players I found a couple years ago I would have been all over it!

Then in the next aisle I found a Bose media center with the interconnect cable for $4. The cable alone is worth $50! The media player is MUCH smaller and worth $50-60, so an easy $100 pickup.

[Sharyn]

One thing about the hot summer months is that the prices are better. However, I am still way behind in listing my death piles, so should I back off from spending or add to unlisted inventory? Apparently, the answer is spend anyways because that is what I did last week. I spent $95 on an auction that did not have lots of bidders, and I had to pickup on Saturday afternoon during the heat of the 95F day. Thankfully, the house had decent air conditioning, and I waited until the evening before I unpacked the car.

As an example, this lot has a tea set in a rare pattern Royal Doulton Honesty that I should get $70 or more for plus I haven’t priced out the other English china that it came with. With premium, the whole lot came to $11.80.

https://maxsold.com/auction/91355/bidgallery/item/6212956

Then this book lot has lots of uncommon books, and I’ve only priced one out at $13-ish. Not huge, but it would pay for the full cost of the lot at $3.54. There are about 50 books, and it will take some time for me to figure out the value.

https://maxsold.com/auction/91355/bidgallery/item/6213039

I don’t have lots of room, so I’m having to list these right away. Have I learned my lesson? Well, I’ve got two tabs open for other auctions ending this Thurs with pickups on Sunday. So, no. My reasoning is that I won’t find good value September through the beginning of next year.

[Retro Treasures WV]

I am of the mindset that you should never stop scavenging – just increase your standards for items. Avoid the slow selling low ASP stuff and focus on the unicorns. You may walk away empty handed more but:

1. The mileage still counts!
2. You can’t get the once in a lifetime finds if you aren’t there to start with.

I’ve mentioned it before but I’ll mention it again – I WASN”T going to go to the premium hoarder yard sale! I wasn’t going to go scavenging at all that day because I wanted to focus on death piles. Anytime I say that, my wife always encourages me to go anyways since you never know what you’ll find. (She’s an enabler – LOL!)

[Antique Frog]

Scavenge the week for me was a chisel, a four-foot-long wooden staff and a roll of soft wire.

I shut my car trunk door and left the keys inside. Fortunately I was parked outside a flea market, so I was able to borrow the “tools” to break a rear quarter window and fish the keys out.

Air-con wasn’t working anyway, so the extra ventilation comes in handy (it’s going to hit 28 degrees today) 🙂

[Antique Frog]

Picked up a pair of Bose QC25 noise-cancelling headphones at the flea market Saturday.  I’ve just spent half-an-hour trying to open the battery cover without damaging the plastic. Eventually I prised it open- found it had been held shut by a factory-installed wood screw and there was no battery compartment.

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