My Week of Buying & Selling

I've mentioned before that this blog is a way for me to chronicle what I'm doing, what I did, and if it seemed to work. Of course if people find this blog down the road and it helps them also earn more money than that is awesome! I would love that actually, but for now, no one reads this lol. So it's a record of my journey at this point. In that vein of thought, I decided that I needed to start keeping track of what I've bought, and what I've sold, and I'd like to do this weekly. I'm not sure I'll need to do this weekly, but my goal is to try and buy weekly for items to resell. I'm not going to list stuff I found around my house, unless it's a really surprising sale and feel it's worth sharing. So here goes, my first Week of Buying and Selling :)

BUYING

I bought through three different venues this week: garage sales, retail store, and ebay. Yes, you can find things on ebay cheap enough that you can resell them higher.

Yard Sales

These where not on my agenda for this week, or really for the next couple. I planned on focusing solely on what I had around the house and then move on to garage sales, Goodwill's, thrift stores, etc. However, it was rainy last weekend, and while I was out I saw a yard sale sign. Intrigued that someone was actually doing it in this weather I drove past, and much to my surprise it was 3 different houses all having a garage sale! Now that I could not pass up, so I stopped with a whopping $10 budget and here's what I got.

* Talking Teddy Ruxpin - He's in his box, but I'm pretty sure he's been out of it. If you are not familiar with him, he was one of the coolest toys of the late 80's. You bought books, that came with cassettes, that he would play, that told the story in the book. His eyes and mouth moved, and he was pretty darn cool. Mostly I bought him because 1. He has nostalgia, and 2. He's intact. His whole outfit is there, he has a book and matching cassette, his box and even his headband and shoes. Unfortunately, he needs batteries to see if he works.
Cost - $5

*Micky Mouse Pop'N Play Game - I paid .25 for this. I'm pretty sure it's not complete, however it's old, it's mickey mouse, and there is a market for replacement parts for these older games. More than likely I will wind up "parting it out". As in selling the individual pieces.
Cost - .25

*Can of TinkerToys - Again, this is an older set. It's wood, the can is completely in tact, and it also has that nostalgia factor that people impulse buy for.
Cost - $4

*Sylvester and Tweety 3D Mug - I've heard that coffee mugs can sell well, and I've seen some sell for $10, $15 even $50 before, so I thought, for .25, why not. Tweety is popular, the mug was in good shape, and I thought it was cool with his tail being the handle and all.
Cost .25

Total Cost - $9.50
I do however regret two things I didn't buy, 2 Dancing to The Oldies workout DVDs in very good condition. They were only $1 each, and when I got home to research them were selling for around $10 each :( Ah well, I didn't want to go over budget. I'm hoping to make around $52 on all these items. Now that would be a tidy little profit!

Ebay & Retail Store (Dollar General)

Don't think that you can't find items to sell from either one of these places, because you absolutely can. There are a lot of people on ebay that don't know the value of what they are selling, or they don't care because they just want it gone. Those are great opportunities to swoop in and get something to resell, all from the comfort of you home. There are also those that will buy items in bulk listings, like say someone selling 6 pairs of kids shoes, and then break up the lot and sell individually. I haven't tried this yet, as I feel you need to know your "niche" and what sells well in it to start doing that. You need to know the names and brands that people are looking for. As far as retail goes, look for good clearance, there are a lot of people that make a decent side income selling stuff they find in stores on deep clearance for close to retail. Not just on ebay either, that goes for Amazon's FBA as well.

On Ebay I got:

* Koi Scrub top and Koi scrub pants size Medium - So, I may not be the most trendy or up to date person on fashion, but I've been a CNA for 16 years, so I know what's hot for nursing scrubs. Koi is a hugely popular brand, and expensive. The style of pants is also, probably, the most popular style of pants period. No matter the brand. It's called the Lindsey style, and darn near every nurse or aide I know has at least one pair. Many wear nothing but that style. I purposely misspelled Koi by spelling Kio and found this listing. Yay me lol.

Cost - $12.49 + 6.95 S&H = $19.94

Which is a lot, but I'm certain I can sell the pants for at $16, and the top for another $15, for a total of $31, which leaves a profit of $11.06. Not huge, but I didn't have to do a lot of work for this one, so I'm okay with that.

From Dollar General:

2 7 piece Stainless Steel Cuisine Select Cooking Sets - This cute little set comes with 3 pans, with lids and a nice 9 inch skillet. These were on what Dollar General calls "Last Chance" for $3 (retail $25) and they happened to be running a special 50% off all last chance items. So...........

Cost - $1.50 each x 2 = $3 total

I'm not 100% on how much shipping is going to cost, but I'm going to estimate around $10. So I plan on charging $19.99 with $5 S&H. Which will make my profit around $15 each, or $30 total after shipping. As far as finding these deals, it's hard. Especially at DG, because they don't mark 90% of their last chance items. I belong to a few couponing at Dollar General, and couponing in general groups on facebook, and we share good clearance finds in stores along with coupon deals. Which is how I heard of this.

Next what I've sold for the week:
Total sales - $53.73 which includes my charges for shipping.
Shipping Costs - $10
Profit - $43.73

Not to bad, but at the end of the month my ebay dues will come due and that'll be another $15. I'll see if I have anymore sales before then, but I don't have any large money items listed, so more than likely it won't be much. I'll put in my monthly totals in my next post and include my ebay bill.