St. John Yard Sale Weekend

It was a great yard sale weekend last weekend. As I mentioned in the last post, we hit a lot of duds the week before and I was feeling a little discouraged, but last week was much better! The very first yard sale we hit was very close to our home. I almost didn't go because it was so close to home and I wanted to hit the road and head into town. My mom convinced me to check it out, and I am super glad I did! I found seven St. John skirt suits! This is a brand I know about from watching States Place videos on YouTube. I paid $10 each for them, and I have them each listed on Ebay for $100 - $300 each depending on the quality. A couple of them were flawed, but I think I can still make a decent return on each of them.

The next yard sale we went to was a church yard sale. I love church yard sales because I always find really great stuff for awesome prices and this was no exception. One of the first things I found was a scanner! I've wanted one of these for a couple of years now, since I started Amazon FBA, but didn't want to pay a ton of money for one. I've already tested it, and it works great!

Some other finds from this yard sale included some clothing, a pair of shoes, a vintage Sesame Street Scrabble game, a Nintendo game, and some other odds and ends. Mom also picked up some things for her sewing projects. The best part is that we paid $14 for everything!! Church yard sales are the best!

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Small reselling complaint: Mercari's shipping options haven't been working on Google Chrome this week, so cross posting has been a bit of a challenge. I know that Mercari's desktop version is new and that they are constantly updating and working on it, but I hope this glitch gets fixed soon!

In other news, I sold two bundles of three items each on Poshmark yesterday! I love these bundle sales because they are often filled with slow moving items that may not be worth the shipping by themselves unless the buyer really wants them. My sales were slow during the last week because I went without internet and didn't have any activity for a couple of days, but sales picked back up yesterday after having some activity in my store. It's amazing how inactivity can effect your sales. It doesn't seem to matter how many listings I have up. If I don't share or post new things every day, I don't get sales. Odd.

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"Nice is different than good." -Into the Woods

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Over and out.

Vintage Clothing Yard Sale Haul

I was able to go to yard sales on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday the week before last. The weather was really nice and there were plenty of yard sales in my area. I wasn't expecting to find one on Thursday, but there was one open on my way home from class. I was able to pick up a couple of pieces of clothing and a steam cleaner for myself. We just purchased a steam cleaner for $100 at Lowe's because we really needed it, so of course I found this one for $5 right at the beginning of yard sale season. We always joke that whenever we purchase something for full price, we find a good coupon deal for it the next week, of course!

On Friday it seemed I was hitting many duds. Mom was working Friday, so I was only yard saling in our area. When she is off from work we usually venture out a little farther and find better stuff. I picked up a few pieces of clothing, including some jeans that I managed to get home, steam, photograph, and list, and it sold the next day! I've been trying to get my inventory photographed and listed the week (if not the day) I purchase it as not to build up a "death pile."

On Saturday, Mom and I went out to yard sales farther from home. We didn't have much better luck than I had the day before, but I was able to pick up a few things. We came upon a retirement home rummage sale and found several things. As we were browsing, two women came up to us and told us that all of the clothes were a quarter each and that when we got to the front we could make an offer and they would make a deal. They were very nice! We managed to find a few things and went up to the lady checking people out. As she was counting our items up, she was adding $2-$4 per item as she was counting. When we told her that the ladies on the floor told us the clothes were a quarter a piece, she was very skeptical and didn't believe us. After a little while of her miscalculating our purchases, I counted them out and paid. We ended up paying a little more for the items that we were comfortable with, but we were eager to get out of there. It's too bad one of the nice ladies on the floor wasn't checking people out!

The best yard sale we hit on Saturday had vintage clothing for $1 a piece. I picked up several coats, jackets, and some odd pieces I picked up to research later. I paid $10 for 8 items at this yard sale, one of the nicer coats was $2. I didn't research any of the brands while I was there, I decided that $1 wasn't too much of a risk, and if I sell one piece I will make my money back on the whole haul. I enjoy these unique pieces, and $1 was a great price. This is why I greatly prefer yard sales to thrift stores because I can often find interesting pieces for dirt cheap. These pieces would have been $10+ at a thrift store.

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"Nice socks." - Neal Shusterman (Unwind)

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Over and out.

Reselling Updates ~ Poshmark & Best Offer

A few days ago, I received an offer from Ebay for one hundred free auction-style listings. I always take advantage of these free listing offers from Ebay because I always use up my fifty listings every month. However, I receive this hundred free auctions offer every month and I have decided that I am not going to be using these anymore. The reason for this is that when my Ebay store is full of auctions,  I find that my daily sales drop significantly. Also, most auctions (at least in my experience) don't get any attention and rarely get bids. If they do get bids, it is usually just the one and it usually happens the first day of the auction so the buyer and seller have to wait until the end of the auction for the item to be purchased. I believe that most people shopping online do not want to wait for an auction to end to purchase their item. They also do not want to hit Buy It Now on auctions because the auction price is cheaper and they will feel like they overpaid. With this being said, I am only running auctions on particular items and not using these free auction offers.

Speaking of Ebay, I have also decided to take Best Offer off of my "bread and butter" items. As I've previously mentioned, I follow States Place on YouTube and Instagram and take most of her advise on how to run a successful Ebay store. Recently, she mentioned that she had taken Best Offer off of her listings and that it was one of the best things she had ever done for her store. I have been frustrated by the Best Offer feature on Ebay for a while now, so I have decided to give this a try as well. It has only been a couple of days, but I am pleased with the results so far. I will continue to update on this topic as I go.

States Place also has weekly webinars with a new topic each month. I purchased this month's batch of webinars because the topic is BOLO (Be on the look out!) brands, and I feel that more knowledge in this area is beneficial to me. So far, I have watched the dress and blouse webinars and I love watching them, however, I fear that the brands she is mentioning are not brands that I can find in my area. This makes sense though as she lives on the other side of the country. This information is still beneficial and if I ever do happen upon these brands, I will know that they are worth a grab!

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Another YouTuber/Instagramer I have been following is Solange Mina. She focuses on Poshmark rather than Ebay and I have been able to gain some valuable information from watching her videos. From her I have learned the value of self-sharing on Poshmark rather than spending time sharing other people's closets. She tells her followers the importance of sharing your own closet constantly to gain sales. I have taken this advice to heart this week and have been using The Simple Posher to share my own closet multiple times a day especially at peak times (during parties). This has been working really well for me! I've had almost daily sales on Poshmark since I started aggressively sharing my own closet, and this is definitely something that I will continue and implement into my daily routine.

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"If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle." - Lemony Snicket (The Bad Beginning)

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Over and out.

Rainy Yard Sale Day

It was a very rainy weekend here. My class was canceled Friday, so I decided to go yard sale. Since I had a long essay to write for my Literature class, I wanted to hit all of the yard sales on Friday so I could focus on school work over the weekend. Several of the yard sales were canceled because of the rain, but I was still able to hit a few. (Of course I forgot my rain coat!)

The first yard sale I hit was a $5 fill a bag sale. The person holding the yard sale said that his grandmother had recently passed away and she was a collector/hoarder. There were a lot of vintage Disney items, and it was a really fun dig. I only picked up a few items because a lot of her stuff was really dirty and hadn't been stored properly. I did manage to pick up an Aladdin Micky Mouse lunch box, a Micky Mouse Etch-a-Sketch, a Sesame Street pillow case, a Raggedy Ann plate from the 60's, and a set of Star Wars cup lids. I paid $7 at this yard sale, $5 for a bag and $2 for the bag of Star Wars items. This wasn't anything super exciting, but it was a fun dig and I enjoy finding unique items like these.

At another yard sale, there was a large box of what I thought were sheets. As I was digging through them, the lady running the yard sale informed me that they were clown pants that her husband's father and grandfather used to go "clowning" in. I loved that she was using the word "clown" as a verb! They were all handmade with nice vintage fabric. There was a ton of fabric to each suit, and she only wanted a $1 a piece. I picked up three, that were not worn out, to recycle the fabric for Mom's sewing projects. This was a total win!

Part of the fun of yard sales is that I usually come out of each week with an interesting story. Even though I don't always find something awesome, going to yard sales is always an adventure.

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"Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive not after he is dead" -F. Scot Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

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Over and out.

Tuesday Thrift Finds

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I don't have any classes on Tuesdays, so when Mom came home from work yesterday, we decided to go thrifting. At the first thrift store we went to, I found a coat for me that was half off at $2.50. I'm very picky about coats and jackets, so this was an exciting find for me. I also managed to pick up a couple of pairs of shoes. One pair was was $5 and the other was $3. I'm hoping to resell them for at least $30 each. We also found a couple of nice dish towels for Mom's sewing projects.

   

I found the next thrift store to be very picked over. We looked for a while, but only found a Mary Engelbreit bag that we wanted to add to our reusable shopping bag stash. I was going to check out with just the bag when I noticed a Louis Vuitton bag in the display shelf of the checkout counter. It had a $40 tag and was half off! So I paid $20 for my first Louis Vuitton find! Plus, the cashier looked at the Mary Engelbreit bag and said that an employee must have accidentally put it on the floor because they were using it to carry stuff around, and she gave it to us! This was a super thrift experience!

The last thrift store we went to was very crowded! I picked up another $5 pair of shoes similar to those in the first thrift store. I also picked up a Columbia purse, some fabric for Mom's sewing projects, and a Yankee Candle topper. Mom found this vintage Playskool Mail Box toy. As I've mentioned before, I am on a vintage toy kick right now and have been on the lookout for them. As she was shopping with the toy in her cart, she had TWO people try to get it from her. One was a man who followed her and was saying things like, "We shouldn't be buying all of this stuff. We should just put it all back." The other guy was trying to tell her that it was damaged and had parts missing. This thrift store was very crowded and the other shoppers were vulture-like!

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I read a hack on Instagram that you can clean up a piece of clothing that has deodorant stains by scrubbing it with an inside out sock. I tried it on this prom dress and was very pleased with the results.

Before

After

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RIP Big Kitty
2006 - 2018

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"I have a masters degree in American literature. There's nothing I can't handle." - Ezra Fitz (Pretty Little Liars)

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Over and out.

Cat Cots and Other Critters

Happy Easter! It's finally April, and now the yard sales are starting up again. I've been able to go two weekends in a row now. I've been on a vintage toy kick lately and have managed to find some 80's Care Bear toys and a Cinderella Ugly Step Sister Barbie doll. I enjoy watching States Place videos with a Mighty Mushroom because they talk a lot about researching different things and expanding your knowledge into different areas. I think vintage toys are a fun thing to look for and sell, and it's something that keeps my interest.

Some other finds include a sewing machine I picked up for mom at $60. It is a techy sewing machine that is almost $200 at Walmart, and it had all of the accessories in it and everything was still in the Styrofoam. The guy I bought it from said that his wife bought it to make clothes for their daughter but then she never used it. We've had it in the house for two days, and Mom has already used it a ton. 

I also picked up a nice fan for $2. We pick all of these up when we find them cheap because our air conditioner is elderly and doesn't cool like it used to. I also picked up this "cat cot" (as I'm calling it) for $1. My cat, Polka Dot, thoroughly sniffed it out before laying on it and now he and Miss Kitty love it. A dollar well spent!

Also, there was one yard sale that had some decent clothes and I was able to pick up a few pairs of jeans. When I got them home and was tagging them, I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. One pair of jeans had a huge centipede in it, and I am a huge bug-aphobe! I ran the pair of jeans out on the porch and tried to shake him out. The centipede won that battle and I ditched the jeans on the banister. I then brought out all the other pieces I'd gotten that day and shook them out as well and steamed them for good measure. Did I mention I'm not a fan of bugs? The next day, Mom had the pair of jeans and said she was able to shake the centipede out. I was just going to let him have them at that point, but I washed them and they are good as new now. 

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In other news, I signed up for this program called Scribd because I think Audible is crazy expensive. The reviews of Scribd online weren't very good, but the idea of unlimited audiobooks for $8.99 a month is too good to not give a chance. I'm still in the free 30-day trial period, but I really like it so far. I finished Unwind by Neal Shusterman, but they don't have the second in the series which is super disappointing. However, I looked up all of the books in my Goodreads "Want to Read" list and there were many available on Scribd, so I'm not giving up hope yet. 

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Poshmark has a new feature where you can send a private discount to people who have liked a certain item. I have mixed feelings about this, but I've been using it and it's had good results. I've been running these private discounts every Friday, and last Friday I had four sales because of it. When the feature first launched, I had many sales the first day. This feature has been helping me move things in my Poshmark store, however, in order to sell using this method the price has to be marked down significantly. It requires that you send the buyer a discount AND a shipping discount. This means that on lower priced items, this takes at least $4 off the asking price, which on a $12 item is pretty significant, not to mention Poshmark's fee. I've also noticed that buyers simply buying items for the asking price are becoming less and less common. Most, if not all, of my recent sales have been due to some type of discount, so I've started adding $5-$10 to the asking price of my items on Poshmark because after discount and fees I'm not making nearly as much on Poshmark sales as I would if I sold the same item on Mercari or Ebay. This way, I am able to make closer to my asking price and still enjoy selling on Poshmark. 

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"Do I dare disturb the universe?" 

- T.S. Elliot

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Over and out.