Patrick over at Cash Money Life was kind enough to point me toward this MoneyCentral article:
Garage sales thrive in online world
This is an excellent article. If you haven't read it, go ahead. I'll wait. 😉
Discussed within the article are:
- fantastic garage sale finds
- methods of advertising your sale
- methods of finding other sales
- how online selling and pricing information has affected the nature of garage sales
- superb tips on deciding which method to use when selling — online or offline
The first tip of the bunch is very true:
“When you have an item that requires national prospects rather than local. It may be a specialized collectible that needs a wide audience to sell.”
I have some old computers that got absolutely no interest at one flea market I tried to sell at. The odds of finding a vintage computer enthusiast at one of these things is slim to none, and Slim just left town. On eBay, though, there's a whole category dedicated to vintage computers where the enthusiasts come to fight, in a friendly bid-like manner, over the goods.
Listy, listy! 😉
I sell a lot of books online, mostly through Amazon. If you price them too high, they can languish there a long time. I try a different tack. I check the book and see their lowest used price, no matter what the condition of my book. Believe it or not, some books on Amazon are listed for $.01, a penny! I think people make money on the shipping? Then for me it's not worth it, better to donate the book. If the lowest price is realistic, I set mine just below it. I might not net what the book is "worth", but I do generally sell them pretty fast using this method.
You can use Ebay or Amazon as a de facto appraiser in this way, quickly figuring out if your item has value, or is more or less worthless unless that special someone wants/needs it.
My wife and I have been doing this for a while now as another stream of income. We find things at thrift stores and garage sales that we know (or hope) will sell on ebay. We're fairly up on the trends on clothes and shoes particularly so we've done quite well selling those on ebay. If you decide to do this there isn't any insurance you'll sell. It's just like any business venture. You put it out there. You hope they bite.