Earn Extra Money By Selling Estate Sale Items Online
There is a very basic business principle that says, buy low and sell high. If you are looking for creative ways to earn extra money, a home based business buying and selling items obtained at estate and garage sales might be an easy way to start. Since most things at these types of sales are inexpensive, it won’t take a lot of money at the onset to get you started. Some high dollar items can be found and had for pennies on the dollar and your bargain could bring you a great return.
The idea is basically to operate like a second-hand business operates, but without the storefront. Estate sales and garage sales can be held for different reasons. Sometimes the individuals are fighting off a bankruptcy, or have already lost everything and need to liquidate. Sometimes families just need to raise a little extra money while getting rid of items that they no longer have use for. If you are asking yourself, why wouldn’t these people just sell the good stuff online themselves? Two reasons, for one thing they may not have the time. If they have a bank breathing down their necks to get out of a property, then they have to sell everything as fast as they can and get out. The other reason is that they may not have a computer, or just not know how to set up items for sale on services like eBay. It may seem like a tremendous hassle to some people to have to deal with taking a picture, and shipping items sold online. For these individuals, garage sales are just a way to set things out in their yard, and people can come by and purchase what they want.
My wife and I started hitting estate sales and we have a lot of fun spending the time together. Recently we were at a sale in a house that had about 10 bedrooms with lots of stuff. We got their on the last day so everything was at 50% off of the original sticker price that was on the items. This was already a good sign. The highlight of the day was finding a set of plates from a store called Z Gallery. There were three plates marked for $10 each, so at 50% off $5.00USD. My wife only picked up one of the plates, a serving platter, and left the other two plates. The hostess of the sale saw this and asked why my wife didn’t want the other plates. My wife just said she thought that the plates were too expensive. So the hostess said, “I’ll just give the other plates to you. I’m tired of seeing them.” So, she bought all three plates for $5.00USD. The original store price tags were still on these plates. Original retail for all three was $80.00USD! We were able to put the plates on eBay and made a handsome profit.
This is just one example, but I have countless other stories of how to make extra money selling items from estate sales.
