Welcome to garage sales Unhinged.
Where the characters are as quirky as the vines.
I'm Julie. And I'm Jake.
Join us as we dive into the wild world of garage sales, yard
sales, estate sales and anywhere second hand sales are happening.
From bizarre bargains to hilarious haggles.
You won't believe the stories we've got lined up.
Let's get unhinged. OK, Jacob, you're a smarty
pants. You want to tell our listeners
what arbitrage means? Arbitrage.
Yeah. No, I don't.
Do you know what it means? I used it do.
You know what it means today? No.
OK cool, I will tell everyone what it is.
So you bought me time so I could look it up.
Arbitrage is the near simultaneous purchase and sell
of an asset in different markets to profit from a temporary price
difference. Oh, arbitrage.
Oh. OK, I wish everyone could see
the condescending look that Jake just did on his screen because
if we were in the same room, you would have heard a slap because
that would have. I would have slapped him.
So like in that you're saying feel like the, the process of
buying mortgage, Yeah, the process of applying real estate?
It could be that, but in our situation we're going to talk
about resellers because that's really what it is.
You go to an estate sale, you find something of going, hey,
that is actually valuable and I am going to purchase that and
resell it and make some money on it.
And it mainly curious as to like, well, how if I were just
starting off as a reseller, what, how much money could I
make if I did this full time? How much money could I make from
doing this? And so I did my research, called
Reddit and was reading on how some of people are, yes, they're
resellers, but they shared like what they actually make and how
often they go to thrift stores, they go to Goodwill's, they go
to garage sales to find stuff and then like they turn around
and flip it. Do you want to take a guess on
what people are saying they make on let's say average per month
for reselling items? I bet you it's higher than you
would think. I I bet you it's higher than
most people would guess like you're saying per month.
Yeah, OK. Or you can do per year.
Do you, do you have an idea of how much they're making per
year? Oh man, say 60.
Grand on average of the responses I saw, they're making
about $12,000. Oh, a year.
Yeah. Now I am going to say like that
it will depend on what they're selling, right?
And I will say too, and this is for people starting out.
So for a lot of people that are wanting to do resell, they
likely have a full time job and then they do reselling after
hours. I have friends that are
resellers and they've been doing this for a very long time and
they make 6 figures off of that. But they have a following, they
have a community, they have a process figured out and all that
stuff. Because what people don't
realize is that whenever you say hey, I'm going to get into a
resell business is that it's not just what you initially
purchased for that thing at a garage sale, a thrift shop,
whatever it may be. It's also the cost of, you know,
if you have a buyer, you got to ship it to them.
So it's the cost of that. It's also the cost of storage.
So for a lot of resellers, they have multiple things that
they're trying to sell at the same time, so they have to store
it somewhere. It's also the cost of where
you're posting it to be sold. So whether that's an eBay, a
Craigslist, a Whatnot, there's all sorts of platform Poshmark,
like there's a lot of stuff. So you need the storage space,
you have to post it somewhere. And then it's also the time.
So from the time that I buy it to the time that it sells for
most resellers, they have a good average of how long they're
going to keep it before they mark it down, before you know,
all that stuff. So it got me thinking of like,
cool. So again, if I were, if I wanted
to leave my corporate job and I just wanted to resell tiny
spoons, I don't know what people collect.
But let's say that I wanted to sell tiny spoons and I know that
they're like they sell them at estate sales.
I can find them at thrift market, stuff like that, like
wool. If I know I can sell it for say
$10, what would be my purchase price for this?
So do you know what resellers on average are looking at whenever
they go to purchase something and they have to be able to do a
a markup or profit on it to make money?
So like, what's their general markup?
Yeah, well, you don't want to go too high because it won't sell,
but don't want to go too low because we, we must feed the
children. I don't know 25%.
So what I saw is for whenever resellers are out shopping,
let's say something, let's say that they can sell it for $100,
right, They will try to buy it between 10 and 20% of value.
So the most that they are going to spend on it is $20.
And if someone is holding firm on 25, they will walk away from
it because they have to make money on it.
And they're also calculating in their head of I have to sit on
this, I have to store it. I know how much the shipping is.
Maybe you have to launder it. Like there's all those costs
that come in with the resale market.
And for resellers that have been doing this a long time, they
know those numbers in their head.
They know exactly how much something is worth.
And this is one of those things going to repeat.
People go out and like, again, I'm a big fan of if you like it
and it brings you joy and it fits whatever kind of decor or
fashion or whatever lifestyle you want to have and you want to
buy it, by all means, like yes, get the best deal you can get,
but like purchase it. But whenever people go out and
let's say they want to buy like milk glass, milk glass is a
collectible piece of, of older type of glass.
And if they don't know what they're looking for, they could
be spending a lot of money on a modern duplicate.
Replica, Yeah. Yeah, Replica.
So that was like, I thought it was interesting of thinking
about how resellers go about actually running their business,
how many resellers they do it as a side gig or a hobby or
something. A lot of people said, hey, I
just, I enjoy doing it. And like some people only make
$100 a month, maybe $200. Some of course, make more if
they're going to average out to about $12,000 a year.
And the resellers that have been doing it a long time, they're
yes, they are making closer to 3066 figures, but they may be
selling vintage clothing. They should, they may be selling
furniture. And again, furniture is
something that is mainly going to be local pick up.
You're not going to necessarily ship a, an armoire across the
country. So they have a following.
They have people that trust them and how they source things.
But yeah, I thought it was an interesting thing of like, and
again, whenever we started doing this podcast was like, man,
resellers can make so much money.
And now seeing the business side of it of going, it's a lot of
work. And I'm not saying like, hey,
you know, don't, don't do the work, but also it takes time to
build up that kind of business. And and also if you're going to
a lot of the second hand sales thinking like, oh, I'm going to
get a bargain and then I'm going to be able to flip these things
and make a lot of money. Yeah, and then it's Money City.
Yeah, I'm going to buy the silverware and I'll never have
to work again. Well, it's also in the things
that if you like, let's say that I bought.
OK, let's say that I bought Pokémon cards at a garage sale.
We've talked about this before. I don't collect cards.
I know nothing about this, but I bought a box worth of Pokémon
cards for say 20 bucks and then I go to Facebook marketplace and
I'm going to try to sell them individually.
I have no clue how to write the description.
I don't know what's unique and interesting about them.
I don't know which ones are actually valuable versus ones
that I could have gotten for $0.10.
Like, so as someone who, hey, that's not what I would be good
at selling, Selling something to other people.
I think a lot of people go into the resale effort thinking like,
oh, there's a market for it, not realizing the knowledgeable
market. It's not going to pay you what
you think you should get paid for it.
And I think that's where some resellers tend to lose interest
or get into a hoarding situation or end up donating a $20 box of
Pokémon cards to Goodwill or another thrift store or
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So anyway, I thought it was a really interesting concept of
really knowing about the resale market before getting into it.
It's seems like it's a adventure that is much heavier into math
than I'm comfortable with. I was like, this is cool stuff.
This is weird stuff. Wow, what's this weird thing?
And like, that's really more the draw for me.
Never really saw myself getting into the whole game.
And now that you're pointing out how often you have to think
about percentages, No thanks. Well, so for people that resell
books, there's definitely a market for second hand books and
some people will post them on Amazon.
So you can still post. I mean, Amazon started off as a
book supplier and the second hand market for books.
And you can still do that. It people, I don't think people
realize it and it's not really widely promoted that you can
still sell books secondhand through Amazon.
But for the people that do that, there's apps out there.
You can scan the ISBN number of books.
It'll tell you what the value of it is currently in the
marketplace. And so let's say that someone
finds a book and again, I can resell it for $10.
It means the most I'm going to pay for it maybe $1.00 or $2.00.
If I can get it less than that, cool, then I've increased my
margins on that singular book. But then also you, you would
want to look at it like, well, what is the shipping cost?
So if I'm spending $6, let's do my easy math.
Let's say I'm spending $5 to ship a $10 book.
Well then the profit that I'm going to make on it, if I bought
it for a dollar is just what is that 4 bucks?
So like, well, is it really worth all the hassle of me
shipping a book and figuring all that stuff out, posting it to
the Amazon, getting all like, is it really worth the $4.00?
But then you also have people that are like, cool, I found a
$50 book cost me $5 to ship. I bought it for $0.50 because
this person didn't know what they had.
And then you go about that route.
But again, I also think like. But that seems like that's a
rare find. It could be a rare find.
The other thing is too is for the other people that know it's
a rare find and they want to purchase the book, I feel like
you would have to have that kind of network and community so that
you could like turn it around fast.
Because I can't imagine there's a lot of people out there going,
oh, you know, that really rare book I want to get.
Yeah, you're like looking for the Animorphs, where Rudy
Giuliani transforms into like a smooshed turd.
I saw that one. Yeah, I think we all saw that
one on TV that one time. Yeah, it was in front of the
landscaping, Four Seasons Landscaping.
Yeah. So I, I just thought it was a
really interesting, like thinking about from those that
want to get into a resell business of I would highly
encourage people, if that's something you really want to do,
find someone that is already doing it.
And they can mentor you on the insurance and outs of what it
actually takes and how long it takes to build up that kind of
business. Because there are people out
there that are very successful at a lot of boutique stores as
thrift shops. That's essentially what they do.
They just have a brick and mortar store.
But yeah, get some mentoring, get some insider knowledge of
how this actually works. Read the Reddit threads about it
because IA lot of people in there are very honest of like
hey I'm not I'm not making bukusa money on this but I do it
because it's fun and they like the treasure hunting aspect of
it but they're love. Of the game, you know?
Yeah. But they're also doing a very
nice type thing. They're not.
They're not buying band T-shirts and they're not buying vinyls
and they're not buying Pokémon cards and they're not buying
kitchen appliances. They're buying one type of
thing, and that is the one type of thing that they're very
knowledgeable about. And they also had their they
know that there's a market for it.
You know you and IA while back went to the Canton trade days.
Yeah, first Monday trade days. Yep, Denton, TX has this
gigantic thrift market and a lot what you're describing is a lot
of what we saw there. A lot of people, they got their
thing. I know this category, I know
what to go after. I know how to price it.
I know how to, I know what I'm looking at.
And yeah, you'd go and like this person's booth is like nothing
but records, vinyl record. This person's thing is like
nothing but kitchenware. And you know, if, if it is
something, maybe it is if it's something that people are
looking to get into doing the second hand thing, maybe like
your natural interests are a good route to go in.
Yeah. If there's something they're
like, OK, yeah, I I know tools. Yes, I.
Have a lot of tools then like use that, lean into that.
You'll know what you're looking at and you've got less of a
learning curve. Yeah, yeah.
Like I would never be the person to like do video games.
That is not, that's not my jam. I don't think I'd be good at
reselling anything. I don't know if I'm
knowledgeable about one thing that's like, cool, I can sell
that item. I don't know.
Is there anything that you feel like you like you're walking
Wikipedia about? Like, oh.
Man, Wikipedia no. Also like for people that think
that they're going to collect books and resell them.
Just FYI. Encyclopedia Britannica not
worth anything. Probably want to turn that into
an versus anything else. Also, I did look up because
first Monday trade days, I didn't really started in 1850 in
Canton, but today it sits over 100 acres and has 6000 vendors.
It it can accommodate up to 6006 thousand vendors.
So for people that are like, yeah, we've heard of tradies.
No, it is a it's a huge flea market, 100 acres and you got to
think about like Jacob and I Watts, probably 60 acres.
That's it's at least the weather.
No, I don't think I don't know if I would be knowledgeable
about anything. That sounds horrible.
I would hope that they're, I, I hope that there is a second hand
market for remembering Simpsons quotes.
You know, I think I could do that.
If you like seasons, like one through 9, I think there's a
market for those and somebody could walk up and give me a line
of dialogue and I can give them what comes immediately before
and after. And it's only like a 30% markup,
you know, is what they got to pay what?
Are you going to do they're going to be 5 bucks.
Yes, yeah. I feel like there's a street
performance, Jake. I don't know if that's a resale
option. I always thought it'd be fun to
open a shop that is just an insult store that people walk
in, give you a dollar and you insult them and then they leave.
Again, I don't know if you need a brick and mortar store, I feel
like that could just be like the peanuts like wooden booth of
like the doctor is in. I think it was 5.
Cents. That's how you start.
But then like for your, you
know, for your kind of your suburban kind of clientele walk
in and it's got, you know, the fancy lighting and it's got the,
you know, the, the Moss growing on the wall and everything
trendy like that. And they, they wait until it's,
you know, like they're called back there and you, they go into
the office and you pick out something about them and you
make fun of it and great. And then they leave.
Jake, I think you just described A dominatrix dungeon.
I think, I think that's something that they offer.
And I don't think you want to go against the dominatrix of the
world. No, this is like fully clothed.
Nothing sexual about it, it's just a.
From your standpoint, From your standpoint, there's nothing,
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I really hope they make fun of my hairpiece, that that's what
I'm really going for. Is that person that's paying you
the $5 to insult them, they are enjoying it anyway.
I thought the whole garage sale arbitrage economy is kind of
interesting. And like, as much as I think our
society wants to make a quick buck, you kind of have to look
through the lens of the reality of actually making a quick buck
because it's there's math involved.
As Jake pointed out, there's time involved.
And also you really got to know, do you have a potential buyer
within the time frame that you want to hold on to this item?
All good tips. Well, thank you for discouraging
everyone, Julie. You're welcome.
Come back and listen to us again to where Jake will insult you
and I will tell you don't do it. That's right, yeah.
Inspiration. Bye.