Sourcing

There are several places to source: thrift stores, yard sales, estate sales, and auctions are the venues I mainly use. Sometimes Craigslist, but I get very annoyed at the logistics involved with Craigslist (the meet me here this time, oh never mind, this time, oh never mind I sold it to someone else/decided to keep it. I was selling it for my sister and blah blah blah… ).

Live auctions make me a little nervous, I like yard sales, I really like thrift stores, but estate sales are where it is at for me. I love going to estate sales because you can find amazing deals, there is many items in one place, the items are generally clean, and usually the items do not have difficult to remove price tags like the thrift stores here do. I really like this post on Apartment Therapy about estate sales:

 

All About Estate Sales: A Crash Course and Tips for Newbies.

Until a few weeks ago I hadn’t been to an estate sale in my adult life (I remember going with my Mom as a kid to at least one, I really wanted these pencils and they weren’t selling them. Isn’t it funny what we remember?) But they are already my favorite place to source items. This week I participated in an online estate sale, and this may be my NEW new favorite way to source inventory.
The sale was held online, auction style for three weeks. The sale closed this weekend and I picked up my loot today.

I got the following items:
Thomas and Brio wooden train lot
Lionel Train Set (works)
Children’s educational books, Brain-Quest lot
Caruso steam rollers
Laundry basket
Turtle shaped sand box
Jessica Simpson handbag
Lot of Nerf and laser guns
Lot of Hot wheels & Disney Cars
Melissa and Doug Wooden Big Rig (Fits wooden tracks)
Thomas Take-Along plastic roundhouse with trains and track
And a few more miscellaneous items

All for $45!!!

The wooden Thomas alone should pay for the haul, and the rest is profit. Admittedly I’m keeping quite a few items for my boys.

 

Money in the Bank

So if you haven’t considered online estate sales, do! This one was held through a local company via Proxibid.com

Hope you had a fantastic long weekend. eBay sales were slow this past week (I'm sure you've been reading about this like I have), but picked up over the past 24 hours I had 5 sales and a couple bids… hope the same is happening for you!