Free idea for Ebay...my friend made $200k his 1st year
 

Friend of mine went to a storage unit auction about a year ago and bought the contents for $200. Sold the stuff and keeps rolling it over.

Now he goes to auctions every day and is making bank.

The big stuff he sells to used furniture stores...clothes he donates to GoodWill for the tax write-off, the the goodies he has 2 full time employees taking pics and posting on ebay...another full timer ships stuff out.

Amazing the stuff he gets...some examples:
- 65 mustang with 800 miles on it buried under tons of boxes
- $10k worth of antique coins
- antique figurines and stuff that people pay wayyy too much for
- collectible baseball cards
- fur coats
- antique guns
etc., etc.

He's at it full time, but has a good cash flow, and has kept tons of goodies for himself

Yes that could be good money! I can just imagine!

jDoG

Yea pawn shops are good if you want to deal with the owner too

Ebay is great due to amount of traffic they get.

i still work the flea markets on sundays

People have been doing this for years. eBay just allows them to take it to a whole new level.

Great idea! :thumbsup

there is definalty money to be made.

Just having to deal with buyers and sellers is a bitch.

yea I knew some people that used to do that, was before e-bay

Nice idea, yea flea markets are also good... don't forget garage sales...

One of my friend does the same thing in the bay area

I use to do that after I moved and had to closed my retail store. :)

Yep, and it takes more time than you think

I know a couple guys that do this but they aren't very well organized. They try to sell me stuff on occasion but it usually isn't worth anything.

65 Mustang would have been sweet. I'd probably keep that for myself.

I wonder how people forget they own this shit.

Like the "Antiques Roadshow". :)

Everyone dreams of finding the Honus Wagner baseball card at the local flea market in a box labeled $1.00.

Gotta love it. I'll bet if you asked your friend he'd tell you it's as much for the excitement as anything else.

:thumbsup

My brother in law goes to auctions for shit since he was fired from his IT job. Its driving my sister crazy because its not really a stable income, and you know how women get :P

I bought some restaurant equipment like that. Most times though all you get is junk in these things and then you have to store it also.

ive got umbrellas and sunglasses on clearance this week, ive even booked three tables !!

sounds like a hassle

We are doing well buying and selling watches, dvd's, collectables etc. on Ebay! :thumbsup

We also have a market stall on the weekend.

Staff and family make it less of a hassle. :)

i believe it. i do ebay part time myself. in fact, gonna hit the public storage auctions in vegas this year.

as for finding a '65 mustang.. hubby would have loved getting that, fixing it up to showroom quality (he's a mustang nut), and turning it around and have me sell it on ebay for a phat profit.

in fact, we're selling our 67 ford mustang shelby replica in a few months on ebay :thumbsup

Yeah people have been doing this forever great way to make cash just a bitch to clean some of those units up.

In order to do so you need to know what you're buying... I collect game worn hockey memorabilia... If I see Gretzky jersey for 5 bucks I'll be "Fucking great"... but there could be a beanie baby for 50 cents that worth 800 dollars... You got to know all that crap... Not that easy...

200K thats amazing

How would we go about finding these storage auctions?

call the storage facilities and inquire about deadbeat motherfuckers?

I love flea markets but I haven't been able to find a decent one around here, yet :(

Oh good idea. I bet there's tons in the city just waiting to be given to me for almost nothing :glugglug

We're doing the auction thing and ebay. It's an amazing amount of work....ebayers are worse than surfers...

With a little organisation, there's a nice mainstream living....we've got my sister in law doing it....and it can make money.

You can say that again! The stuff I've seen on Ebay is amazing. You could just deal on Ebay and it would be a living.

I'm working on art prints. I was fucking astounded how much guys are making.

One dude, does book covers. He's printing out giclees limited editions of 300 for $375 a piece! That's damned near a million bucks and I'm way better than him. I should go back into the book publishing and art business!

I started a test run on my art club where I charge members $20 a month and I send them free giclees. The test run had over 500 people come through the first day! I can only take 1,000 members for any particular club but they're getting thousands of dollars worth of art for a few hundred bucks a year plus other goodies.

I gotta raise an additional $1,500 before I start the full service but my overhead is stupidly low. So I did some toons for people who barter on Ebay and the toons shot their sales up. ( toons that promote their businesses ).

Knowing collectibles as I do I can truly say Ebay is worth your time and effort as long as you know what you're doing.

Where do you sell Shemp ?

Estate sales are great too. The key is going to a genuine estate sale - many tend to be garage sales with a fancy label. Rather than get tons of junk to sort through, you can pick and chose among those items with the most mark-up potential. On the downside, there's more competition so you have to be on the ball.

I live near a couple upscale apartment megaplexes. When people move, you wouldn't believe the shit they throw out. I could easily find a few hundred bucks worth of eBay stuff every weekend. But, is it worth it to be a trash digger and take the time to do it?

Don't know where you're at but in Calif especially near LA you have swap meats and flea markets at the Drive Ins during the day.

Shit. I was going to make a smart ass comment about how much easier it is to shoot pics of naked girls and make a lot more money than what was mentioned. But then you had to post this. Now I can't say what I had to say.

:1orglaugh

Sure there is a biz there, but you have to know how to sell mainstream products

The biggest bitch of that is when you buy a unit with something you want in it, to find furniture at the back of it that you need to clean out within 24 hours. Makes it a real hassle unless you have a giant pickup truck.

My best score (only did it twice) was a Sonar unit for a boat, paid $50 for the unit because it had some nice french doors in there I could use and found the sonar unit which sold for $250 on ebay, and some other stuff I kept (ceramic tile, marble slabs, etc..) The bitch of it was a 200 pound pig roaster! Fucking garbage, 4"x4"'s and steel.

Overall it's fun though, cant wait to do it some more in New England (antique towns, esp.)

ebay is nice but also a shit load of work
porn is easier and faster money

Ebay is very labour intensive, too many fucking idiots asking useless questions:winkwink:

I used to sell on eBay, it was a lot of work and the deadbeats drove me nuts. I got so tired of half the people winning an auction never paid.

if I ever go back to the states I am getting in the stoarage unit biz..seriously.

65 mustang with 800 miles on it buried under tons of boxes

impossible with 800 original miles.

What the fuck is a giclees?

i go to garage sales and sell some of the stuff on ebay. what is this storage unit auction you're talking about?

its a good idea, but you have to research, the best thing is to have a handheld. I have a tmobile sidekick and could check ebay for how much things are going for at a flea market but have never got around to it. Someone try it and let me know. Its kinda like searching for treasure.

Good money.

Its alot of work but can pay off pretty nice. A lady I work with goes to auctions alot, buys then resells through ads in a couple of local papers. She just picked up a piano for $50 and sold it for $500.