My wife and I were at Goodwill today looking for some Halloween costume ideas (she rejected Slutty Nurse – go figure). I came across this old Kodak camera from the 1900s for $20. I’m no shutterbug, but it looked really cool and I thought it would be an interesting piece for the living room (maybe try to look smart or something), so I bought it. When I got home I did a quick search on eBay, and I found that the same camera had recently sold for $64 – a potential 200% or $40 profit!
Of course then I had visions of buying and selling cameras from thrift stores for big bucks. But then I searched for some other Brownie cameras that sold for about 10 bucks both at Goodwill and on eBay, and realized (again) I knew nothing about cameras. I guess I’ll have to be content with my ‘Really Old Camera’
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I used to do a little of this the year i was unemployed. Nothing terribly organized and a good deal of it misguided (but I promise I had fun!). I never made any big money – or found truly valuable things – but percentage-wise I did have a few successes: and older style apple keyboard bought for $5, sold for $35; some peppleford dinnerware pieces (that I now wish I’d kept cuz they were really cool), and a set of “pen and ink” pens that we bought for $10, cleaned in the sonic cleaner, and sold “like new” for nearly $50.
There were more, but as you can see…small potatoes, but fun potatoes 😉
Cool camera!
My girlfriend’s dad is a huge wargame buff, think of the boards with octagons on them and little cardboard pieces (little squares, diamonds, circles, etcs). Well, her mom went to a garage sale and saw some random game that looked old (they all looked old) for sale for $1. When she brought it home, wrapped it, and gave it to him as a gift – he told her the game was worth close to $100 in some circles. We looked it up and it was selling for around $70 on Ebay (he kept it of course).
I bought a beautiful chenille bedspread at an estate sale a year ago for $2. It was too big for the bed in my spare bedroom, so I listed it on ebay. It sold for $86 plus shipping.
I recently bought a LeCreuset cookware set at a garage sale for $10. This set is worth over $200, but I’m not selling it. I love to cook with it. I also got a really nice Oster beehive blender (brand new) at a garage sale for $3. They retail for $70+.
One of the joys of living in Japan is finding a ton of stuff for reasonable prices that sell for a lot more on ebay. The best buy was a rare set of star wars cards that cost me about $20 as a set and sold for over $700 when I sold the cards individually. Sure wish I could find more gems like that!