A Good Week!

Finally a decent sales week! Maybe, just maybe, things are picking up again!

 

I recently started selling on Etsy again. I had a shop a few years ago for my knitted projects and handmade candles. It didn't do very well and once I had kids I lost the passion for it so my shop went bye bye. I have a few vintage listings up there now and have made 3 sales so far. The listings are cheaper, longer and final fees are cheaper so I figure its win win for my vintage-y things!

 

For instance the sweet vintage Playskool puzzle I scored for $2 sold this week for $20 plus shipping on Etsy!

 

I love vintage - its all so cute and sweet. I found this old stationary set at Value Village this week and its already on its way to Brazil! It didn't sell for much at $5 but with the cheap listing fees and final value fees I still made a decent profit!

 

eBay sales did ok this week too :)

 

 

I scored a whole baggie full of Polly Pocket boys a few weeks back for $2. I left all the bags of girls behind as they just don't make the same kind of profit. These guys sold yesterday for $28.50 and are on their way to Australia for an extra $6. No FVF on shipping since I offered free shipping too, whoop.

Remember my last post I said it was time to start listing for Halloween. Now that the back to school rush is kind of over, parents are shopping for Halloween now! I bought this Gymboree costume last year 3 days after Halloween at my local kids consignment store for $1. It sold the day after I listed it for $14.99 with free shipping. Since its a small costume it folded up easily and shipped for only $1.81!

I also sold a Build a Bear Elephant for $9.99 with free shipping via an auction. Ugh. I was really hoping for a couple bucks more on it but since I bought it for $1.00 with clothes and I sold the clothes already for $15 I figure anything I could get for it was good. It was a heavier plush though so it ended up costing $6 to ship. I still am in the profit zone so I cant complain too much.

I am heading out for our last week of summer vacation today. My daughter starts preschool on the 10th so we are spending all next week over in Leavenworth hanging with family, playing at the river, and even going camping next weekend. It's been an awesome summer this year, lots of wonderful memories made! 

Super Why?!

Most of you already know that Super Why toys are BOLO's (Be on the Lookout) but I thought I'd share my recent find so you know what they look like!

Super Why is a show on PBS Kids in the mornings that is very cute and teaches kids basic reading skills and word recognition. For a while my daughter was obsessed with this show and it was actually teaching her words so I was happy with her watching it!

I found these four little guys at the bottom of a 25 cent box at a garage sale a couple of weeks back and I got excited because I knew what they were right away! Super Why Flyers do really well on eBay and they really are little guys, about 3 inches long each and they roll around on a little wheel. Nothing special about these toys unless your kid is obsessed with the show in which case they are gold.

So for my $1 investment I turned around and sold them for $47.99 with free shipping this week! That's my kind of flip and I was super grateful for the sale because other than these I have pretty much had zero sales for a while now, I guess everyone is focused on getting back to school this week and not so much on buying random toys & vintage things on eBay. I have several big items that I keep waiting to hear my cha ching sound on but sadly I'm not counting on it being this week.

So for now I am going to focus on prepping for the first of 2 consignment sales I'm participating in this fall. I've been collecting clothes and toys at garage sales all summer & currently have no dining room space as there are bins &hangers everywhere! I also am going to try and get all my Halloween costumes listed on eBay by the weekend, now is the time for those!

We are Home!!

10 days, 9 nights, 8 roadside relics, 7 cheeseburgers (ugh), 6 States, 5(00) in gas, 4 days on a houseboat, 3 National Monuments, 2 National Parks, 1 Extraterrestrial Hwy, 0 speeding tickets - We are finally home!

Well we are home from our 10 day road trip to and from Lake Powell in northern Arizona. It was an amazing trip, we saw a lot, relaxed a lot and played a lot but I am so happy to be home and back on our daily routine. It's always hard to travel with little ones but the baby was a little extra difficult this trip because he wouldn't sleep in his playpen so he slept with us for 9 nights straight and now we are trying to get him back to sleeping all night in his crib all over again.

Here are a few places we saw:

Shoshone Falls - The Niagra of the West - Twin Falls, ID

The Grand Canyon - Simply Amazing, Left me Speechless!

Rainbow Bridge - HOT outside, 100+ and a 1/2 mile hike in with no water, but beautiful!

My cousin's houseboat on Lake Powell for 4 days, so relaxing and FUN!

Zion National Park - Beautiful!

Vegas! Naomi loved sleeping in a "Castle" and pretending to be a princess!

Crazy roadside stops like this place in the middle of nowhere, the closest town to Area 51!

It was the funnest road trip I've ever taken. Lots of time in the car but both kids did great and we made an effort to stop at all the kitschy roadside relics we could find. I highly recommend downloading the Roadside America app on your smartphone if you are taking a road trip anytime soon. It pinpointed for us interesting places to stop along our route, many places like the Littl A'Le'Inn we would have never even known about! (Not Sponsored!)

We didn't thrift or Antique at all along the way because we had a pretty tight schedule but I did make a few sales while we were gone. Nothing really worth blogging about though, just a couple of little toys and some books, not a big profit.

I'm starting to get all my listings that I've been saving up, I have a lot of toys and mugs stockpiled so I better get to it now that we are home. (I am itching to get to a thrift store though so maybe we'll have to make a lunchtime run to Value Village to satisfy my craving!)

My Favorite Find!

Morning All!

You all know my love of FREE and today I have a "Favorite Finds" post over at Jamie's blog, Owl Really talking about a table that my husband and I picked up off the side of the road and transformed into a beautiful dining room table.

Its a fun story, go check it out!

Weekend Finds

Well it's been a few days since Saturday's yard sale adventures but I've been busy with photo shoots involving a couple of cute newborns and the most adorable little 1 year old girl earlier today! I also have another newborn shoot this week and we are heading out for our big road trip vacation to Lake Powell in UT on Friday!

I'm not doing any active listings this week because I don't want to sell much if anything while I'm gone so I don't risk losing my "Top Rated" status, so at least I have a lot of cute baby photos to edit and I also plan on taking as many listing photos as I can. The nice thing about Auctiva is that I can get a few listings all ready and then postpone the start date of them to a couple of days before we get home and then they can go live.

I didn't find a whole lot this past weekend but I am excited about a couple of things, here are a couple of pics of what I picked up between 3 yard sales.

I got a cute Cars backpack for $1, a Chuggington Die Cast train for $1, the Super Why Flyers for $1 and 22 Magic Tree House books for $5. I also picked up a whole box full of Thomas the Train tracks and accessories for $5, sorry there's no pic of that stuff.

I'm pretty excited about the Why Flyers - check out the completeds for these little guys HERE. For $.25 each I will take $25-$45 any day!

The Magic Tree House books may sell for a good profit if I hurry and get them listed for as soon as I get home from vacation although I think that it may be more "Back to School" time than "Summer Reading" time right now though.

Some friends of our family was having a yard sale on Friday and Saturday, I didn't make it to the sale on Friday but they said they were really busy and that what was left was really picked over by the time I got there on Saturday. They ended up giving me all of the stuff in the above pic for free because they were going to send it to the S.A. anyway. I love the cute vintage Christmas cookie container and there are 15 Hallmark Keepsake ornaments from 1990-1994 there. Theres a couple worth $3-$6 but most of them haven't sold in a while. I'm going to save these until November and list them as a lot at auction and see how they do. You never know with those Hallmark ornaments, some can go for a lot of money so since I got them for free I figure anything is good!

That's about it for me, I had some good sales last week but nothing to really write home about.

Snoopy and Woodstock sold for $18.99 + $14.00 shipping to Japan, I paid $.25 for it at a yard sale.

I LOVE selling mugs!!

Hope you all have a great week! Happy Selling!

Goodbye July!

I cannot believe that today is the last day of July! Summer seems to be going by so quick this year and I'm sad we only have a month to go. It's been so nice actually having decent weather this year too. Last year summer only lasted about 2 weeks in total weather-wise but this year so far has been wonderful!

Sales this last week of July weren't too shabby, they were consisant and only had 2 or 3 days without a sale. I also had a couple of small sales on Facebook, everything helps!

Finally one of my Stitch plush sold! Too bad it wasn't the backpack. I did get a low offer on the backpack but I'm holding out for more, after 30 days we'll see if we lower it. This guy cost me $2 at a yard sale and he sold for $11 (eh...) plus $18 shipping to Australia!

 I accepted a lower offer of $29.99 on this Toyko Starbucks mug and the buyer was from Austria so he paid for the extra shipping too. Hope it makes it there safely, I always get nervous shipping breakables overseas.

I've had this Tommy Bahama shirt for a while but never got around to listing it. Glad I finally did as it sold for $24! Note about Tommy Bahama, watch for fakes, TB is faked a lot. The quality in the sewing on these shirts is wonderful (hence the high retail prices) and you'll notice with genuine TB shirts that the design matches up with the button line. Other knockoffs will have mismatched seams on the front so if you see a Tommy Bahama at the Goodwill, hold it up, if the flower or leaves in the design are not matched up on the button line, put it back!

I bought little miss Hello Kitty on an impulse for $2 because she was "Tan" - if she'd have been the Build a Bear version she'd have fetched me $40, but $14.99 isn't too shabby for a small plush!

And finally, back to school shopping is in full swing right now! If you have any backpacks or new with tag kids fall clothes, get them listed this week! Make sure you add "Back to School" in your description too, it will help! I bought this Jansport on Thursday for $6 and sold it on Sunday for $23!

Unless I make any more sales tonight (not likely since I never sell more than one thing a day it seems!) that's it for July. Not a bad month profit-wise but I'm hoping for a stellar fall this year!

I want so badly to get some more things listed but we are leaving on a vacation/road trip next week for 12 days so I'm going to resist, with the exception of maybe the Little Einsteins backpack I found yesterday since its a backpack! August is a busy month for us and we are going to soak up every bit of summer we can get!

The Perfect Storm...

You know when you get that feeling in the pit of your stomach that something is going to be really really good and then it proceeds to keep you from sleeping all night because you keep thinking about it? Well that was me last night and I was up super early this morning too.

Remember the free mugs that I picked up from my neighbors a couple of days ago? Well, I realized on Wednesday that she & a few other nice ladies were gearing up for another sale this weekend and had started setting up tables and putting things out. I actually thought it started yesterday and stopped by to shop but they told me they weren't open til Friday but that I could go through the free pile if I wanted. They had added more so I picked up a couple of things and then made a mental note to be up bright and early the next morning to check out the stuff they were selling. I mean if the free pile was this good, what were they wanting money for?!

We drove by on our way home from dinner last night and I saw a bunch of vintage items & Christmas items, etc. I got excited. I actually spent a long while researching what sells well in vintage Christmas items on eBay last night so I wouldn't pass up anything by mistake! I woke up before everyone else this morning, calmly had my 1st cup of coffee and was jumping out of my skin by 8 to get down the street! I left my husband with the sleeping kids and practically ran out the door as soon as he was up!

It was everything I'd hoped for and MORE!

Lets start with what I spent money on:

I saw that the cute little elves do well in large groups on eBay. I'm collecting the Dr. Seuss beginner books for a large lot and the little box is 5 pewter figures from the Americana Collection. These items cost me $1.50.

I paid $10 for this vintage "Queen Bess" pattern Silver Plate set by Oneida Community. The lady told me her mother actually collected stamps to pay for this back when she bought it. I don't know how old it is but its in really good condition and there is a lot of pieces. I'm hoping for $100, maybe more, I'll keep you posted if it sells.

This is Mr. Mike from the original Toy Story movie. He was stuck in a box of games and had $5 written on the box. The lady told me it was from another yard sale left over so she'd take $4 for it. The seal on the box was broken, so I think that he was taken out of the box but never actually used. The only other 2 of these that I could find on eBay completed listings that had the box or were new in box, sold for $221 and $300. CHA-CHING! Seriously if I can get $200 for this guy I will be so happy! That will be my best score ever, if it sells for that much! Too bad theres a big $5 written on the box!

So $15.50 spent on a few items. Now lets look at what else I picked up from the huge FREE pile! They added a bunch more and said they got tired of going through things and just threw stuff over there and to have fun going through it that there were probably some good items in there...

I grabbed a few cool toys from the 90's. Remember that show "Dinosaurs"? Not the Mama! That's Robbie, the brother dino! The back of Snoopy's head is a rotating comic and the other items are just random and fun.

This is a shoe box full of vintage Christmas items and other kitschy things. It's going to take me a while to go through it all and see what I have. Most of it will probably get listed as craft supplies on my Etsy shop. There's also some super cool retro fabric, a couple of mugs, a cute frame and a lot of new in package craft items!

Sitting in the free pile was also this very cool wood crate full of jars. There's a few large canning jars and a ton of smaller vintage jam jars. Since I'm making jam this weekend it was perfect and really I picked up the crate because I've been looking for one.

So there you have it, I'm in yard sale heaven right now and can't wait to start getting these things listed! Especially Mr. Mike, I just need some "C" batteries to make sure he works! Sorry for another super long post, hope you all have a great weekend!

Free is Always Fun!

**Upadate** Wow! I just noticed that this was my 600th post! Awesome-sauce!

I love finding items for free off the side of the road! I love it even more when I can turn that free item into a few bucks!

We were out of town last weekend but one of the residents on our street had a garage sale I guess and when we got back there was a box marked FREE out at the end of her driveway. I wonder if she saw me digging through the box and thought I was nuts. I mean, kind of strange to be going through your neighbor's free pile when you've never even said more than "Hi" to each other in 8 years, right? I have no shame. :)

Here is what I picked out of the box!

(Please excuse the phone pic & the fact that my Dear Daughter is in the background, she was being defiant. Isn't 4 a great age?! HA!)

I picked up 3 mugs, 2 red plastic vintage-y cups & 2 kids cups that aren't pictured. There is a Sandra Boynton mug on the right, its in ok condition but I'm going to clean it up and see if it sells. Doesn't look like this one will make me more than a couple bucks if I'm lucky. I just learned about Boynton mugs a few weeks ago. We love her kids books in our house!

The mug on the far left is a Fitz & Floyd "Coq du Village" cup. It's a litte scratched on the inside but the design on the front is wonderful so I will probably list it for about $15-$17. Not bad for FREE though!

The mug in the middle is a bit of a mystery I'm hoping someone out there might know about. It's a pottery mug with glaze so it could have just been someone's home project, but the flower is really beautiful so I am not sure it could be good but I can't seem to find anything about it. The signature on the bottom is hard to make out, I think it says, "Cullan" or "Collan" or something like that! Any one who has seen this before, please comment!!

Its going to be another warm day so we'll probably hit up Value Village when the baby wakes up from his nap for some A/C! I have a 30% off my whole purchase coupon so watch out, things could get crazy!

Ups & Downs

Well I feel like after I posted last week about not having any sales for 10 days I got 6 sales in 5 days, which was great! Now all of a sudden, nothing again. My thoughts are that A: eBay's doing a lot of updates to their search engines and things are NOT working (Please fix these problems soon eBay!) and B: it's summer and people are at the beach, not their computers so I just need to stop complaining and gear up for a busy (hopefully) fall selling season.

I'm trying to find "Back to School" items and get them listed this week because now is the time, August is the back to school prep month so get that stuff up there so it can be visible and I usually leave space in my titles for "Back to School".

I have found a lot of good plush and toys lately. Last week I got the Stitch backpack and then in another thrift trip I found a Blues Clues play house, a Little Einsteins character plush and a very large Talking Mushu Dragon from Mulan which is apparently super rare and there's a completed for recently that went for $75. I gotta get that one listed soon too. We were out of town last weekend so I have to get back into listing tomorrow so I can make some money and get that inventory moving out my door!

Here's what sold last week: A couple were awesome sales and the rest were small, but small is good because it means things are out of my pile and onto their new homes!

Oneidacraft Lasting Rose Flatware Set - Paid $5 at a garage sale.

 I've sold a few loose pieces of flatware but this was my first "set" and I listed it at $89.99 OBO. I got an offer for $56 so I countered with $60 to cover shipping costs. Luckily the buyer was in CA so it was only about $8 to ship and I'm happy with my profit on this especially since it wasn't really a complete set.

My Little Pony strikes again. This time it was a vintage Pony Purse. I picked this up at a yard sale along with a purple pony & Dream Castle accessories for $2. I previously had sold the pony & accessories for $28 so when this sold at auction for $10.49 I was fine with it. There were about 20 watchers so I got my hopes up that it would go for at least $20 something but alas you can't win big all the time. It was all profit so I am good with what I got and off it went to the Netherlands today! (buyer paid $10 shipping also.)

 And KEEN strikes again as well! I got these at a fancy thrift store in the mall (a thrift store in the mall?! what?!) for $7.50. Originally I got them for myself but I like my Keen flip flops much better so I listed them and they sold for $44.99 with free shipping! They fit in a padded flat rate mailer.

Backyardigans Bobblin Big Top Circus Characters - Paid $.25 each at garage sale.

 I originally thought these might be on par with the Little Einsteins figure replacements but alas, nope. It took a couple months but these finally sold the other day for $6.99 and the buyer paid $3 extra for Priority shipping to get them to her in time for a birthday cake decoration. Luckily the postal service didn't fail me and they made it a day early and I got fantastic feedback from the buyer. She says the cake turned out super cute too!

Disney Store Mulan Lucky Cricket Beanie - Paid $.50 @ thrift store.

 My little lucky cricket must have been lucky because she sold pretty quickly for $7.99 with free shipping. Not a big profit but when I brought it home I thought it would become my daughter's because they just don't seem to be selling on eBay right now. Mine still had both tags attached though so that must have been why it sold & I'm happy with my tiny profit!

prAna is one of those REI brands to always be on the lookout for. I have consistantly sold prAna over the years for a decent profit but only if I can pick it up for cheap or new with tags. I paid $4 for these at a senior center thrift store a while back. They took a while to sell but finally did for $14.99 with free shipping. Again, not a huge profit but it's all about getting my inventory sold right now!

Wow this post ended up much longer than I thought it would, sorry! Hope everyone had a great weekend and has great sales this week, hopefully I'll get another rush of sales this week, fingers crossed!

Craigslist Rocks!

I just have to say I love this little reseller blogger community we are part of! I randomly came across THIS post from Late Night Coffee two days ago. I have a few Stitch plush right now that just don't seem to be selling so had I come across one of these at a garage sale or thrift I may have passed right over it.

Now I sell a lot on Craigslist but I also randomly surf CL in the area I live in or areas I will be traveling to when I have free time, usually during naptime, for Disney items & other BOLO things like Little Einsteins, Blues Clues, etc. I once picked up a set of brand new Wiggles dolls for $20 in an area I was traveling to and then flipped it the next week for $75 on eBay. Sometimes people are just trying to clean house and they don't know what they have so up on Craigslist it goes! This is also a great place to source cheap items when its not garage sale season.

Well the same day I saw that post I was also doing my random monthly(ish) searches on Craigslist. I typed in Lilo & Stitch, hit search and low and behold, what do I see??

A Stitch Backpack from Disneyland - this is one of the two that do really really well, like I am going to list him tomorrow for probably $75 or $85 and let it ride! How much did I pay? FIVE BUCKS! Yep, $5 and I had to drive a little out of my way to pick him up. But the nice thing was I was already 1/2 way there because I was selling some jeans to another buyer and I just had to call and arrange a meet up. I usually don't like going to people's houses off CL, creepy, but this was the middle of the day and we met outside. His kid was even playing baseball in the driveway so I felt ok about it!

As the title states: Craigslist Rocks! I'll let ya'll know if he sells!