Garage Sale 2 Ebay

First things first, the mapping software I prefer to use is Google maps, it is free and they allow you to add locations to the map as long as you have a Google account. (There are many other options you can choose to use, however I will be using Google for this writeup) If you do not have a Google account I recommend you sign up at https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount? You will also be given a @Gmail email account which is an added bonus as I believe they have the best free online email.

You may move on to the following steps once you have your Google account setup, and have the classifieds section of your local paper next to you. (Or any other local garage sale/estate sale location list) I also like to highlight only the garage sales that interest me. (skipping the ones that are mainly clothes or baby/toddler items)

*Sidenote a lot of people believe the best sales are in the affluent neighborhoods, and the worst sales are in the low income neighborhoods. In my experience this has proved untrue, the best sales for me have generally been middle class neighborhoods, with both low and high income neighborhoods performing about the same. If your town/location has any neighborhood that is mostly elderly and retired families this is often a great place to find vintage items.

1.) Go to http://maps.google.com/

2.) In the upper left corner of the screen, right below the “Google maps” icon you should see the 2 taps “Search Results, and My Maps” Click the my maps tab, and then click the “Create New Map” button afterwards.

3.) If you are not logged in already it will bring you to the Gmail login page, where you should enter your username and password and log in. If you are already logged in skip to step 5.

4.) Pick a title for your map (I usually just pick the date of the sales) and then click save

5.) At the top in the “Search the map” Enter the location you would like to map out and zoom/center the area of interest (The plus and minus along the left side zooms in and out, and to center the map simply left click anywhere and drag your mouse to move the map) I have centered my town of Grand Forks, ND.

6.) You may now begin adding your points to the highlighted sales on the map. Start with your first highlighted sale address. For example I have a sale at “2100 11th Ave N,” I would then enter that, followed by your town into the search the map function at the top. My search would be the following “2100 11th Ave N, Grand Forks, ND” It will then center the map at that location and bring up a bubble with a few options.

7.) Click the “Save to My maps” button. Choose which map you would like to save it to, click save, and then click OK.

8.) Continue adding all of the points of interest onto the map until you are done. Once you are done you will want to re-zoom and center your map.

9.) You may then print your map, You can use the print button in the upper right portion of the map, however the map will be a bit small. I usually only use this method if I am in a hurry. Otherwise I will click the print screen button on your keyboard. Then load up any image editing software (I use Adobe Photoshop) and then crop the map down to only the info you need and then re-size to a full page and print.

10.) You are now done, you have have a map looking similar to this, which you can then draw your planned route on.

I hope this helped make everything flow more smoothly and help you use your time and gas more efficiently, it sure helps me.

** Tip I like to make the map and have my route drawn the night before, so that come 7:30 AM I can just walk out the door.

The first questions you need to ask yourself if you want to be an eBay seller are: “Where do you find things to sell?” and “What should I sell?” There are countless answers to these questions and many of them can be lucrative. With my business models I choose to buy my items at the following places: Garage Sales and Estate sales mainly, but also flea markets or clearance sections of retail stores. The main categories of items I look are are the following: Records, Toys, Books, games, Cd’s, Videos, Video Games, Sports Cards, and neat looking vintage items. With garage sales and estate sales it is not uncommon to find an item that can turn 100%-1000% Return on Investment (ROI) nearly every day.

A great way to test the eBay waters, or gain some experience is selling items around your home. You can then move on to garage sale/estate sale shopping. The great thing about buying your items at garage sales is that you get to handpick the items for your eBay inventory, knowing what they are worth while the seller usually has no idea. Garage sales are an amazing place to find items for $.10 $.50 $1.00 or even $5.00 that can be consistently resold for $10.00, $50.00, and $100.00. So far my best find was a $.10 baseball card box which held many prizes including a 1955 Topps Hank Arron card which fetched just over $200.00 (Good thing the old woman’s husband wasn’t around to slap her for selling his valuable cards for so little.)

It is important to pick at least a couple area(s)/niches that you are interested in, and then become used to the eBay values of the items in your area(s). It may also help to create a cheat sheet when you are just starting by looking at the closed listings on eBay for common final sale prices. Always bring this cheat sheet and a notebook to sales when you first start. When you come across an item that you are on the fence about buying, just write down some info on the items, then write down the phone number or address of the sale. You can then look the item up online later, and if you end up kicking your self for passing it up, call up the seller or stop by the next day and maybe it will still be there. More often than not the items I write down info on would have not been a good buy, so I opt this method over just buying and hoping. It is also good to keep a mental note, or include on your cheat sheet the prices of very common garage sale item’s values. I tend to run across lots of Gameboys, New Cd’s, Popular Rock albums, Video games and systems, and stereos. One thing to keep in mind when starting is YOU WILL MAKE MISTAKES, but because items generally cost under a few dollars you can make an awful lot of mistakes and still come out ahead.

I have put together a few rules that I follow when garage sale hunting.

1.) Always start early, the earlier you arrive, the more likely you will find the good deals before someone else does. Popular items that sell well on eBay tend to be some of the first items picked over at sales, now get up early and make sure they are sold to you, and not another savvy shopper. If a sale is open multiple days make sure you go on the first day, usually visiting sales on the follow days turns up few or no items worth reselling.

2.) Always go to as many sales as possible in your time frame. I will be writing my step by step method of creating an eBay map with a location of every sale in your area in a few days, which I then draw a path so I can hit as many sales with as little driving (so I waste as little gas and time) as possible.

3.) Rarely (I was going to say never, but there are exceptions) pass a sale on the way to another one. Often times I have found my best items at sales that never showed up in the classifieds, maybe this is because no one else managed to find this sale either? My exceptions to this rule are sales that are all clothes, extremely small sales, and sales that are mostly baby and toddler items.

4.) When you find a good sale which has multiple items you plan on purchasing, start a pile or fill a box. When you are done searching the sale for the items, make a mental tally of total eBay value of the items, and a total listed prices of the items. If you have only a few items i tend to offer %60-75 of the listed price for the lot, whereas if I have quite a few items I tend to offer %50 of the listed prices for the whole lot. These offers are rarely rejected, and when they are usually they will counter only asking for a dollar or two more. Buying in bulk is great because you can easily change your ROI from %100-200 to %200-400 which adds up a lot after a while!

5.) Be prepared, Always bring your notebook (and cheat sheets if you have some made). Bring lots of cash (I tend to bring (20) 1’s (6) 5’s (3) 10’s and a couple 20’s.) I have have garage sales unable to make change when I came unprepared with mostly 20’s. And like I mentioned earlier, have your plan of attack set ahead of time. I personally recommend making a map from the classifieds listing the sales that interest you.

6.) Have fun! how many of your friends have a “job” that is actually enjoyable? Don’t take this for granted because few people get to do work they enjoy to earn their living.