I’m starting the process of closing my books for 2011 and I thought it would be fun to take a look and share some of more interesting finds that I’ve had over the year. And to hopefully give a better idea of what it is that I do on most days when I’m not “working” (read: in a show)
As many of you know, I’ve had a an eBay business that I’ve had for several years now. In previous years I spent time scouring Craigslist and searching for video game collections to buy and resell, but over the last year or so I’ve sort of abandoned that game in favor of searching Thrift Stores. I’ve blogged about it a few times in “The Office” category.
In general I find that I spend most of my time in the Toy sections, as there isn’t much competition in those sections (compared to some of the other sections of the Thrift Store that the regulars hit every day), and often times items are dirt cheap. In general I find that if it’s an action figure (for example) that I can recognize I can generally sell if for more than $1-$2 that I bought it for. It’s not uncommon for find collectible figures that sell for $10, $20, $30. To the people sorting the donated goods, it’s just cheap toy or action figure. But to me it’s $
I’m happy to say that year was my biggest and most successful year of selling online yet. And when you take into consideration the fact that I was still sick for a good portion of 2011, it makes me excited to see what might be possible for 2012.
Some fun things about my year:
The single biggest profit that I took on a single item was from these:
These caught my eye at a Value Village hanging on a peg in a little bag. I didn’t know what they were but looked kind of old and had words “Brittain Ltd” stamped on the bottom. I Googled it, saw that they had some value and put it my shopping basket. I bought this little bag of figures for $3.99 …. I sold them for $350.00. They are known as Swoppets. It turns out that are toys from 50′s and 60′s and still very collectable in England. Had I wanted to take the time to learn more about them (further research each of the little bits and parts) I probably could have made even more by figuring out what parts went with which little figure and sold them all individually.
Here are a few of the other random/fun things that I found this year (some of the better “finds”):
Full Throttle PC game (from 1994)
Bought : $0.99
Sold: $104.56
Star Wars Epic Duels Board Game (I’ve found this game more than once!)
Bought : $1.99
Sold: $134.99
DragonBall Z Action Figure
Bought : $2.99
Sold : $54.89
I’ll find a good item like those above maybe once a week or so, but the majority of the items that I buy are things that I pick up for $2-$4 and then I turn around and sell them for $10-$15 but if you do that enough times throughout the year, you’ve got something going.
For example: Video Game Controllers.
Original Xbox Controllers
I bought 60 of them throughout the year for an average price of about: $3.99
I sold them for an average of : $12 a piece
But again, 60 of them
Guitar Hero Guitar Controllers (Wii and Xbox 360)
I bought 26 of them throughout the year at an average of $5
I sold them for an average of : $28 a piece
Nintendo 64 Controllers
Bought 37 of them this year, each for about $3.75
Sold them for around $11 each.
NERF Guns (various kinds)
Bought 27 of them this year for $4
Sold each of them for about $17
That’s just a sampling of some of the things I pick up on a regular basis. But then there is the other stuff. Random stuff, anything that I can find that I think may have value, AND that I can figure out what it is =) Again, I mostly stick to the Toys and Electronics. It’s things I recognize. It’s stuff I know.
And I guess I’m starting to know it pretty well, because this year I shipped out about 1500 packages.
There is also another part of my business which has also grown this year. I have a website where I sell cards from Trading Card Games that we used to play. The most popular cards on my site are from the Lord of the Rings card game that a bunch of us used to play in college. Since starting that website in March of 2010 I’ve shipped out over 17,000 cards. I’ve had almost 800 orders sent to just under 400 different customers. I’ll ship out my 1000th card order from my website this year and have started to expand my product lines into other trading card games as well.
All in all, it was a successful year. And like I said, since I was sick for a good portion of it, I have high hopes even more success in 2012
I tell people that I don’t have a job and that I don’t “work.” I still consider this true in the sense that I don’t have a “day job.” But the truth is, I do work. I work a lot. I work hard at this, but I enjoy it. I enjoy it, and I enjoy the freedom that it gives me… but still, if I’m not working in a show, doing 8 performances a week, I still feel like I’m unemployed.
