re: My (short) list of great finds at garage sales on Saturday

If you were buying interesting things that you like and plan to use, that's great.

If you are just showing us your new business, no thanks.

Perhaps you could take out an ad with Chicken.

Counting your time to go through people stuff, pack it up, ship it. Plus the miles on your vehicle to go to these garage sales.... Is it honestly worth it? Maybe when you find something you can sell for several hundred but making 50-75 bucks for 2-3 hours of dealing with people isn't for me.

We need a top 10 list of white trash he deals with every weekend.

Why do people spend 10’s of 1000’s of dollars on hunting and fishing just to get a few hundred pounds of meat or fish, when they could just buy it?

It’s a hobby.

I spend maybe 2-3 hours a week at garage sales and estate sales, plus maybe another hour mailing stuff.

Plus, my daughters love garage sales as well. It’s our time together. One of them has learned to buy designers clothes for pennies, and sell to her friends for a profit.
She once found 20 of those Southern Marsh (or something) t-shirts for $1 each. She sold them for $10 each. She does the same with shoes, especially Addidis and Vans. Vintage clothes and shoes from the 80’s is the hottest thing going.

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Did you ever sell that Hawk painting?

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Not yet. I did get a $1000 offer on it, but I turned it down. The wife (who told me not to buy it), now likes it and doesn’t want me to sell it.

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No no no. You’re missing the point History Channel.

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No, you are missing the point. eBay is basically the leader in setting the value of something (if you know how to use it).
With smart phones today, I can know the value of an item before I buy it just by looking it up. I value stuff by what it sells for, not “book value”.
Even on this thread, people are surprised that Thomas the Train is gaining value. Go look at eBay, under “Sold” items, you can see it’s quite valuable.
The Ghostbusters Firehouse, I sold in an hour after getting home because I knew the value of it. I didn’t get to that garage sale until an hour and a half after it opened. There was probably 100 people that passed on the Ghostbusters and Thomas Train, because they didn’t know the value.
I didn’t know the value of the trains, but I knew they were valuable.

So here’s another one to look out for. Tornado Rex, the board game. I was telling my coworker about it and decided to look it up on eBay just for fun and it turns out it’s worth about $200 now.

A few hundred pounds of meat or fish? Have you seen the cost of meat and fish? They are saving more by hunting than you making hawking others junk.

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You don't have the thomas table ?

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Funny you should mention this. We stopped a one more garage sale on the way home, about a 1/2 mile from where I got this stuff. We didn’t buy anything, but they had the table (for $150).
I don’t buy stuff I can’t ship.

Friend,

Boston butt was 77 cents a pound at Winn Dixie last week. Pork tenderloin is $1.50 a pound. As far as I know you cannot hunt cows. Fishing and hunting are almost never a sound financial decision, because most people spend far more participating in the activity than they would if they just purchased the meat in a store. But again, it's the hunt, the adventure, which is why we do it. Or in the words of Homer, "The journey, that's the thing." He did not actually write those words in Greek, but some American about fifty years ago, wanting a pithy summary of Homer's thoughts on journey, invented that quote. Homer would agree, though.



Antiquetiger, do you do auctions? I am watching Neal Auction Company's Fall Estates Auction today. I have my eyes on a few items. Please do not justify your hobby in financial terms. The journey is what makes the post interesting, not the profit.

Yours,
TulaneLSU