Bag Sale Basics - An Estate Sale Secret Weapon

I didn't think I'd be shopping any sales the same weekend that I was hosting a garage sale, but when you're driving him and pass an estate sale a mile from your house, it's pretty tough not to stop in.

We walked in at 3:45 on a Sunday, the sale had 15 minutes left. When I first entered, I could smell my two worst enemies at an estate sale, cars and perfume. This woman was an Avon seller, and there were over 3,000 (that is not an exaggeration) bottles of Avon perfume bottles. The entire basement was just shelves if the stuff. Anyway, when we walked in, the people at the front door let us know that everything was 50% off (a standard Sunday estate sale practice), but this sale also had a "Bag Sale" going on.

This means they were giving out small paper bags (a little smaller than a grocery store bag) and anything you could fit inside the bag would be ten dollars. If never been to a sale like this, and the house still seemed pretty full. With a 15 minute shopping spree, this misbehave we bought. 

Yahtzee - $5 - marked down to $2.50. 

It didn't fit in the paper bag for the ba sale, but had a full set of Kismet (a game that's pretty much he same as Yahtzee) and 5 score pads. The old pads themselves still sell for $2-$3 each; I even bought one myself, along with the exact same dice cup, a month ago for $5. $2.50 was too good to pass up. Now on to the bag contents:

Four Avon Christmas Aprons- $3 each - My wife bought these so we can look ridiculous during the holidays. 

1962-63 Bowling Trophy - $3. 

Letter Opener - $5

Charlie Brown Thanksgivng (the "not as good" one) unopened VHS - $1

The Real Ghostbusters unopened VHS $1 (sells on eBay for $10-$20, us 30-year-olds love that Ghostbusters cartoon!)

Tons of Zippos and Measuring Tapes. $80. 

If I hadn't seen these, I probably wouldn't have even started a bag for the sale, and would have been happy with the Yahtzee find. When I saw all of these Zippos, the deal was too random to pass up. There were 67 Zippos and 13 Measuring Tapes in a shoebox.

They all have branding on them, so  sure they were used for giveaways a long time ago. Unused Zippos, even with awkward branding, should sell for at least the Estate Sale asking price of $1 apiece. I'll probably put them for sale in groups of ten to start and see what happens. I don't know about the measuring tapes, but as long as I sell a single batch of Zippos for $10 I made my money back for the day. 

I have no idea if this will pan out, but the Zippos were worth a shot. In total I got $107 worth of estate sale items for $12.50, none of the items are going to turn a super large profit, but for a quick stop on the way home, it was a nice surprise.  

The Buyer Becomes a Seller: Hosting a Garage Sale

This past weekend I became a Garage Sale host, the first time I've done that in my adult life. We took a chance with our neighborhood Garage Sale weekend.

We had a lot of your standard garage sale fare...

All kinds of furniture...

Some mid century chairs that my next door neighbor brought over when he saw us setting up...

Baby stuff...

Cheap books with a witty sign...

Old work shirts that an Apple super fan may find "collectable"(a steal at $1 apiece!)

Mostly a pretty normal sale, except for the...

CED Video records!

Super 8 Films and other old stuff!

It was interesting to sell random collects led at a standard garage sale. They definitely saved us when it came to profit.

Our biggest letdown of the community sale was our proximity to other sales. With over 100 sales in our neighborhood, we were in an odd no sale zone, with no other sales happening 2 blocks in either direction. Since we're two blocks west of the Mississippi River, people had no great incentive to hit up a lot more sales to walk two more blocks to only see us. We still had a steady flow of regular garage sale customers, but it was rare to have more than one shopper at a time. 

It's hard to know how much the signs we posted on busier streets helped, but I do know the Craigslist ad I posted was a good draw. 

I sold about 300 comics to the first customer, a guy who showed up 15 minutes before we opened. I'd posted on Craigslist about the various antiques and collectables, including the 25¢ comics. These were all from the last time I got in to buying new comics every week, from 2006-2009. All worthless, but this guy found a deal for $40, and I got rid of 3 short boxes worth of shelf storage. He also bought a couple of the CED video discs. 

The next bulk item to go were the CEDs. CEDs are a red headed stepchild of home media. They look like laserdiscs, but are actually video records, on vinyl, and are somewhat of a rarity, but a worthless one. (I'll write a more in depth post on them later)

Before setting them out, I quickly shuffled through them and pulled out some of my favorites that I didn't want to sell. 

I sold a couple of them singly to random people. One woman saw "Cat Billou" in the pile and bought it to hang because it was her favorite movie. Someone else bought "Jaws" (one that I missed!), but mostly they drew some odd looks and good small talk. 

Around noon, someone beelined right for them, and started quizzing me to see if I knew about them. I was already selling them for 50¢ apiece, and he made an offer for all of them. In the end I sold roughly 200 movies for $50, and didn't have to carry them any more! A CED weighs 2.5 pounds for one movie, and it took almost as long to carry those up from the basement than it did the rest of the garage sale stuff!

I received the whole collection and player from a friend for free, so it was actually a relief to get rid of titles that I'd never watch.

About ten minutes after we unloaded the CEDs, the guy who came on the morning that bought all the comics was back. One of the CEDs that he bought was a part 2 of 2, and he came back looking for part one. I had to give him the bad news that they all left, and he was bummed, but understood. The good that came out of this is decided to buy more stuff, a Star Wars Super 8 digest (a smaller part of the full film) and the three Batman and Robin 1949 serial parts that I had left. I let him have those 4 films for $35, even though I marked them at $15 apiece. I'd bought 11 of the Batman Reels for $35, the eBay poster had misspelled the listing. Thankfully I have a saved search in eBay for "Super 8 Flim," so there's a good chance I'm the only person that saw that listing. I'd sold all the other separately on eBay for $20-$30 each, so letting the final ones go for $35 was still profit. 

All in all we had a great time. If not for some of the odder collectible stuff, we'd probably consider the sale a bust. We sold $198 worth of stuff, and $150 of it was from my random stuff. Our family members that brought items got rid of some big furniture which was good for them, and we all had a great time hanging out all day.

For future sales, I learned about local Facebook groups for my area, and people post ther sales there in the morning. I learned about these pages too late, so I had to wait to be added by the admin of the pages before I was able to post. If you're going to do your own sale, try to seek these pages out before the morning of the sale!

Antique Stores in Duluth, MN

We took a short weekend trip to Duluth on a whim. Like really short, as in we were back home 26 hours after we started driving. While hanging out ny the lakeshore shops, we did stop in a couple of Antique Stores. Recently I still like going in to Antique Stores, but I find myself buying less and less, mainly because of the markup. Since I'm amateurishly in the same business, there's not always a great chance of turning a profit from something you find in an antique store. That being said, there's always a chance to find something different.

The first find was great, a Bell and Howell Autoload 8mm film projector. 

I'm a huge fan of Super 8 and 8mm films, so it was nice to get a working 8mm projector. (There are lots of differences between 8mm and Super 8mm film, we'll tackle this on a later post. For now, 8mm is the older format, Super 8 became popular in that 60s and 70s) 

The bulbs alone can resell for $15-20, so I'll always ask to plug them in before purchasing.

This one plugged in, powered on, and the mechanics worked. With a $15 price tag, I bought it instantly. The resale value on projectors isn't great, it seems there are more projectors for sale than films. Given the annoying shipping costs, 

The next store I stopped in was brand new, only their second day of business. The store was half set up, but no customers. I quickly found some overpriced NES Nintendo and SEGA Genesis games, but tucked away with them were a couple Atari 2600 games. I've never sold any of my old video game systems, starting with an Atari 7800. Come to think of it, my Atari 2600 was a garage sale find when I was 9 ($15 with 20 games!)

I don't actively buy and sell video games, but it's hard not to grab a couple Atari games when they're $1 apiece! Looking at eBay, Donkey Kong is worth about fifty cents, Joust has sold between $3-$6, and Star Trek, which is never heard of, is a little but rarer, selling for about $15-$20. Still haven't decided if I'll sell any of them. 

That's always the tough choice when finding stuff you like: Keep it for a collection or get the most money outbid it. Since I'm still at the "hobby" stage of reselling items, there are still some things I like to keep, space permitting. The Projector will be a great addition, since I've only been able to view 8mm reels in an editing machine. It'll be a lot nicer to watch them projected to grade them for resale. As for the Atari games, a $3 investment to add 2 classic and one random game to the collection isn't too bad of an a wallet bite.