Flip this junk?

[KotOD]

I'm in one of my regular watering holes this evening sitting next to a guy I don't know and I've never seen before, which is rare considering this is almost a regulars-only type of place. I'm talking to the bartender and he asks about work -- I tell him that we're doing more business than we can handle and it's insane. The guy next to me pipes up and in a thick Chicagoland accent asks me what I do. I figure that he's not offensive in odor or appearance and he's not tanked, so I can get away from him if the conversation goes awry. I explain to him what I do and he says, "Sound good. I couldn't take the office anymore, so I started garage sales." My first instinct was that he sold garage doors, or he sold additions for a contracting company. Man, I was way the hell off.

He launches into a story about how he quit his job as a loan officer and started into professional garage sales. He drives through older and poorer neighborhoods and suburbs in the Chicago area, scoping out garage sales or yard sales and buys up all kinds of stuff. He inventories everything with price paid and notes about the item and packs it in a moving truck that he bought. He then takes his truck to upscale neighborhoods and suburbs and finds people that have "For Sale" signs in the yard or that have already cleared out. He contacts them and offers them a percentage if they would allow him to hold a moving sale or garage sale on their lawn or driveway over a weekend.

Once he finds a site, he sets up his tables and tents and throws a 30% markup on everything that he's purchased and puts it up for sale for "rich people". He described in detail how the selling season is spring and the first half of summer and the buying season is fall. Second half of summer is no good because rich people go on vacation. He claimed that he made almost six figures the last two years doing this.

After he left, I couldn't figure out if the dude was a habitual liar, completely serious, completely delusional or something that I hadn't considered. There were so many times that I wanted to call BS on him, but I couldn't figure out if he was legit or not. If it was a lie, it was a Costanza lie -- he had everything covered. Has anyone ever heard of anything like this?

[JJSCOTT2]

Sounds reasonable, the only part is you have to find the right junk at the right price. If you can't move the crap that you've bought, you take a 100% loss on those items and then you've got to sell several items just to make up for that. So I think with a careful eye and on a large enough scale, there's no reason to think this is not possible. It's somewhat similar to being a professional e-bayer I would guess, just...not online.

[benfranklin]

[ QUOTE ]
Sounds reasonable, the only part is you have to find the right junk at the right price. If you can't move the crap that you've bought, you take a 100% loss on those items and then you've got to sell several items just to make up for that. So I think with a careful eye and on a large enough scale, there's no reason to think this is not possible. It's somewhat similar to being a professional e-bayer I would guess, just...not online.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's all in knowing the market and the merchandise. I know people who make a living buying at garage sales and selling on e-bay. Most sellers at garage sales just want to get rid of stuff, and figure any profit is gravy. If you know your merchandise, you can buy tons of stuff in bulk for next to nothing and make a profit if you sell 5% of it at a good price.

[pickless]

how do you think andy beal got started?

[KotOD]

[ QUOTE ]
Sounds reasonable, the only part is you have to find the right junk at the right price. If you can't move the crap that you've bought, you take a 100% loss on those items and then you've got to sell several items just to make up for that. So I think with a careful eye and on a large enough scale, there's no reason to think this is not possible. It's somewhat similar to being a professional e-bayer I would guess, just...not online.

[/ QUOTE ]

But with ebay you've got an international audience and shipping costs are covered.

I guess he makes his money on volume. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8nU-q5YPRQ

[BigPoppa]

My sister has a garage sale almost every Saturday during the Summer. She makes several hundred dollars each time, as most of the stuff she sells was given to her by clients (she cleans/organizes houses for the some pretty rich people).

She has a great eye for value, and will often pick things up at another sale and flip it. She would never, however, even bother with something she could only mark up only 30%. She is looking for 100-200%.

[daveT]

I don't get the 30% part either, not to get to 6 figures. Think about it. A garage sale item is $5, marked up 30% is $1.50. You have to be guaranteed to buy and sell 75,000 items, and that is without leaving anything behind.

Also consider that rich people don't trust anything that is low priced.

I believe he is marking it up at least 300%, but otherwise, I believe it.

[Blarg]

Or he's buying higher-priced items. If you're buying things like a couch for $150 and selling it for $200, you can get away with buying a lot less things.

He might well have been understating how much he marks up key items, too, to make it sound more "fair" and less like he's making a killing or ripping people off. People do that kind of white lie all the time. It's easier than arguing with people why you're not some kind of a predator or something.

[gusmahler]

We had a garage sale a few weeks ago. There were definitely some people who were "professional" garage sale attendees. E.g., I had a stack of PS2 games and DVDs. I honestly didn't care how much I sold them for, they were currently selling for <$4 each on Amazon, so I had them listed at $3 each. A couple comes in, buys the entire stack without even looking at each title or even knowing that some of the cases were PS2 games and some were DVDs.