by Lynn Dralle
The Queen of Auctions
Updated 7/9/05

Where can you find merchandise to sell to make a lot of money $$$ at online auction? This article focuses on buying from garage, yard, estate and charity sales and how well you can do! These days, garage sale season in the United States is almost a year round event. I spotted about 10 garage sales on my way home from taking my kids to school this past Friday and boy did I want to stop! In my video series, Trash to Cash, I show how $72 spent at garage sales on a Saturday morning turned into over $600 in cyberspace. You can be successful at this also, especially if you follow our proven techniques.

Get the Newspaper and Map your Route the Night Before: The most important thing you can do to ensure your success at garage sales is to be organized. Pick up your city's newspaper the night or day before you intend to hit the sales (most garage sales are in the paper at least a day before). Or print your city's newspaper's online listings of sales. Sit down with this information and look first for the sales which promise to have the most merchandise (and the most potential treasures): key words like "estate," "moving," "accumulation," "group," "neighborhood," "Kiwanis," "church sale" and "rummage" indicate larger sales. Also, look for sales that mention items that pique your interest or that you may be specializing in--for example, toys, sports memorabilia, clothing, glassware etc. Organize the sales by starting time. Pick which 7 AM, 8 AM, 9 AM and 10 AM sales you think are the best. Plan and map a route around your starting times. By doing this the night before, you will save critical time on sale day and get to the best sales ahead of the other garage salers!

Believe it or not, sometimes I don't take my own advice. If I have had a busy week, the last thing I want to do on a Friday night is map out my route. Those Saturdays when I don't have the route mapped are a big time waster and my mom gets so mad at me for making her drive all over the city, back and forth. With gas at an all-time high, doing a route and getting proper directions ahead of time, is the smartest thing you can do!

Get There Right on Time: Once you have mapped your route, getting to the most important sales on time will be a breeze. Garage sale etiquette requires that you do not start banging on doors early. As someone who has held a lot of garage sales in her day--jumping the gun is very RUDE. Most sales will not let you in early anyway, so trying is generally a waste of time. Arriving to key sales right when they open is very important. You may even want to carry a mesh shopping bag or box with you to scoop up bargains ahead of the next guy. This strategy really paid off for me about six years ago when I got to a Kiwanis Club Sale right when they opened. No one else had even been there yet. I was able to get many great deals. I got a large metal tray for $1 and a covered Mexican pottery hen for $2. The metal tray turned out to be from WW2 and I sold it on eBay for $51.00! The covered hen sold for $27.99. These were just a few of my finds that day! See #1 in my book, The 100 Best Things for more information on these two items. Click here..

What to Look For: In general, look for:

1. Things in good condition
2. Items that are still in the original box (MIB-mint in box)
3. Anything with a brand name or signature
4. New or like new clothing-mint with tags is great (MWT)
5. Unique or unusual things
6. Items that were very expensive originally
7. Shabby Chic, Vintage and Antique items
8. Things that are not priced too high—(I have a $5 Rule—I never buy anything for more than $5 unless I know something about it)
9. Items made in the U.S, Europe and Japan—I stay away from Taiwan and Hong Kong
10. Anything that reminds you of your childhood. If you look at something and say, "Wow, remember these from when we were little" buy it!

How to Bargain for the Best Deals: Once you have your pile of treasures chosen, always try to get a slightly better deal. You don't want to offend anyone but it certainly can't hurt to ask very politely. I usually add up my items with the owner of the sale. Let's say that I picked out 10 items and they added up to $17.55. I would ask, "Would you consider $15 for everything?" Usually, they say "Yes"! When my video series was finally finished and I was watching the garage sale portion with my father he said to me, "You are just like you know who?---your Grandmother".  That was the highest compliment he could have paid me! She was such a savvy businesswoman and a shrewd negotiator.

Take Some Risks: I often tell people in my classes to take some risks at these sales. If things are only 50 cents or even $5-what have you got to lose? Not a whole lot. More about my $5 rule. I will buy dish sets if there are a lot of pieces and they are priced at 50 cents to $1 per piece. The $5 rule applies to a per item calculation. I will go up to $20 per item without consulting a reference book or computer. Remember it is a numbers game. The more you can buy and try on eBay, the more money you will make and the more you will learn. I have learned my best lessons by making mistakes. Just last week, I made a painful mistake. Painful because it hit me right in my pocket book. I paid $67 each for three Department 56 Dickens Villages. I thought I was being so smart! They were over 10 years old and mint in box. Now, I have seen some of these go for over $1,000. Since they were over $20 each, I should have called a friend with computer access and had them do some research. Or, I should finally buy that cell phone with internet access. It is on my list. (if anyone knows of a great cell phone with internet access, please let me know the make and model—I am in the market—Lynn@TheQueenofauctions.com). Anyway, I thought I was so smart and spent $200 on these villages. They sold the last week of May for $40 total. I just lost $160 and believe me, I will not buy anything again without doing my research.

Check Back at the End of Sales: The beginning and the ending of sales are the best times to buy. Go back to the best sales close to their closing times. Many sellers are really willing to deal at about 3 pm on a Saturday or Sunday. I have gotten many items for next to nothing, and even a few things for free. Now is the time to do your best negotiating. At one estate sale, I got a darling round table and chair set for $25. She had been asking $125 during the previous two days, but at the end of the sale, she probably would have paid me to haul it away. It was a horrible 1970's wood color and I just painted it white and recovered the upholstered chair seats with darling waverly fabric. I ended up selling it for $250 in my antiques store. It probably would have sold for close to that at online auction with a heading like-"Country Chic Round Table-3 Chairs-Waverly-DARLING!!".

FINALLY....Do your Research. Once you have purchased your garage sale items (I can usually get a whole car full in about 2 hours on a Saturday morning), it is time to do your research. This is the fun part! Go to eBay and click on "Advanced Search" the blue button in the upper left hand corner. On the next page type in your keywords and make sure you check the completed items only button.  You will want to be looking in the area where they have all the actual sales history for the past 15 days. This information is invaluable. Type in as few key words as you can. For example, for the metal tray from the Kiwanis Club I typed in what it said on the front "1943" (in Roman numerals) and "Armed Forces". Look at as many of the listings that are close to what you have. You can learn a lot by reading the descriptions. I found that my tray was probably from WW2 and that it was very rare and unusual. There weren't any others like it that had even been listed in the last 15 days. If you have decided to list your items, now is the time to take down notes. My auction tracking sheets—i sell—are perfect for this. You can find my record keeping books Here . Write down the best category and number, write down any interesting facts and anything that will make your listing better.

There is a new great research engine by the founders of GoAntiques. It is called www.Priceminer.com and for $9.95 a month you get tons of stored eBay data, online antique sales data and more. It is a great service and I am starting to rely on this.

Happy Selling! I hope these are some helpful tips for you. Let us know anything we may have missed---we always appreciate feedback. Lynn@TheQueenofAuctions.com