Buying at Thrift stores for Resale

Since the Swap meets have been very slow, we turned our focus more towards online sales using eBay.com. I have been selling on there since 2004, but mostly focused on rare parts for people to repair electronics.

We have been gathering items for the swap meet from friends and family, but most of these items are not good for online sales (too much competition, or value too low to ship item). We needed better inventory.

We decided to go to second hand stores as much as possible. I will be showing some of our finds, price paid and what we sold it for.

The thrift stores around here are filled with people rushing in to get the new items, high value things, and jewelry. I assume most of these people are reselling them at stores, swap meets, and eBay. Each of these people seem to specialize in certain items. My strategy is to try to find the items these people do not know about.

We were on a shopping spree as a large thrift store chain was having a 3 day sale!

Lets start out with something out of the ordinary.

These photos are of an Electrical enclosure I found with a WHITE price tag, so everyone looking for the sale color and were not looking at this item. I paid $2.99!!!
Sold for $125!

Here is another Item we purchased on the sale day, Its a TV card for older laptops. You can also hook up video games or VCR to the computer.

I purchased it for $3 because the price tag was RED!
Sold right away for $35.

Here is an item I paid full price on. Its for recording studios to record and put the music onto a computer. I paid $19.99 for it and it sold right away for $180. I sold it untested and as-is. (But I did power it on).

My grandmother received this Kindle as a gift. We set her up with a Amazon account and showed her how to download books, but she was not happy with the screen. I sold it for her on eBay and it did well. (We had this Kindle at all 3 of the Swap meets for only $30 and no one would pay!!!)

One of my friends donated some Sky-rise steel worker harness and tethers for me to sell at the swap meet. I decided to list a few on eBay and here is what happened.

This is a harness attachment to connect to large I beams.