From garage sale picking, to retail picking.

[famous turtle treasures]

I have been working broadening my skill at seeing value in items. I have probably made a few thousand dollars at retail stores just taking a little extra time looking around to see if there is anything that I could resell.

A couple days ago I found a whole cart full of Woolite dry cleaning sheets @ 1.99 ea. I decided to test the waters and buy 8 of them to see if I could resell them.

2 days later, all 8 had sold @ $4.99 ea plus shipping so I decided to go buy the entire cart of 60 that were still at the store.

Not going to make huge profits on this kind of stuff, but when it is new, easy to ship, a fast seller and fairly easy to find when you know what your looking for, I might as well build up a new type of inventory.

Anyone else do this?

 

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[clovis97]

It is kind of amazing what you might find at retail stores, isn't it?

I walked into a Lowe's home improvement store once, and the employees were dragging good quality brooms out to the clearance aisle. They were marking them $1.25 each, and I struck a deal with the manager to buy them all for .75 each. I also bought all the mops for $1 each.

Lowe's had been selling them for $8 each, and I sold everyone of them for $4-$5 each at the flea market, and they sold within a week. The mops sold at $5 each.

I flipped those 300 brooms and 85 mops FAST. I wish I had a deal like that every week!

 

[pat-tekker-cat]

Oh Dog!, I love a clearance aisle!

Usually, it's being at the right place, at the right time, and recognizing the deal. Like you say,
if it's small, sells well, ships easy, money's money!

 

[clovis97]

FTT, you might also check the other area stores for the same product if it is a chain store, and if they have more stores in your area. Often, these products get discontinued market wide.

BTW, I passed up an overstock of dryer sheets that had been clearanced a few years ago. I could have bought them for 75 cents a box, and they had 20 cases of them. Retail was about $5 a box. What was I thinking??

 

[famous turtle treasures]

FTT, you might also check the other area stores for the same product if it is a chain store, and if they have more stores in your area. Often, these products get discontinued market wide.

BTW, I passed up an overstock of dryer sheets that had been clearanced a few years ago. I could have bought them for 75 cents a box, and they had 20 cases of them. Retail was about $5 a box. What was I thinking??

.75 each? Bet you won't make that mistake again

Yeah, that thought had crossed my mind, only issue is, I now live in a fairly rural area so the next one isn't very close, but next time I see another Hy-Vee, I'll be scoping it out.

I also came across a whole bunch of cases of cat litter liners. 12 per case @$1.99 ea & have been selling them for $39.99 ea, the first 2 paid for all 16 cases, now its all profit.

 

[famous turtle treasures]

Gotta love that! Its nice hearing other's success at retail stores, it makes me want to go out and find more.

 

[Baltimore]

Just out of curiosity, I know Clovis said that the flea market was a good outlet to sell stuff like this, where are you selling your stuff famous turtle treasures?

 

[famous turtle treasures]

Just out of curiosity, I know Clovis said that the flea market was a good outlet to sell stuff like this, where are you selling your stuff famous turtle treasures?

The dryer sheets went on Amazon before they even left the store .

 

[Baltimore]

Amazon, Perfect. I'm going to have to try it!

 

[clovis97]

I probably would try ebay for the Woolite before taking it to the flea market. (I don't have an Amazon account.)

The dryer sheets that I passed up @ .75 each would most likely have gone to the flea market, but I would have looked them up on ebay beforehand, just to see the completed listings.

 

[isabella1]

3 separate times. Very nice pay off. The first was dog flea and tick repellant. They changed the box design. I bought 200 at $1.00 each. Sold them 2 boxes at $20 each. The other one was new Boston Red Sox shirts. Bought 50 for .50 each. They sold for $8-10 each online! The best one though was at a medical store going out of business. Spent $15 and got 350 new wrist braces and 50 knee braces. The wrist ones sold 2 for $15 and the knee braces sold for $ 45 each!

 

[vpnavy]

Outstanding famous turtle treasures.

 

[FloridaHunter]

FTT, yes, bought several 75% off discontinued razor blade refills at CVS and sold most of them for a nice little profit.

 

[diggummup]

I haven't actually purchased anything from a store to resell but I have purchased new items at sales and resold them. Latest was a bottle of John Freida hair color glaze. Paid $1, sold overnight for $24.99.

 

[famous turtle treasures]

3 separate times. Very nice pay off. The first was dog flea and tick repellant. They changed the box design. I bought 200 at $1.00 each. Sold them 2 boxes at $20 each. The other one was new Boston Red Sox shirts. Bought 50 for .50 each. They sold for $8-10 each online! The best one though was at a medical store going out of business. Spent $15 and got 350 new wrist braces and 50 knee braces. The wrist ones sold 2 for $15 and the knee braces sold for $ 45 each!

Those are the kind of numbers I am looking for .

 

[famous turtle treasures]

I haven't actually purchased anything from a store to resell but I have purchased new items at sales and resold them. Latest was a bottle of John Freida hair color glaze. Paid $1, sold overnight for $24.99.

Yeah, I love finding new stuff at sales but sometime they can be few and far between, that's why I started looking at retail stores.

 

[famous turtle treasures]

FTT, yes, bought several 75% off discontinued razor blade refills at CVS and sold most of them for a nice little profit.

Ooooh, never thought about drug stores, might have to go take a trip to walgreens.

I purchased 30 hair removal pads for $1.00 ea. I just sold 4 of them for $30.00 lol.

 

[clovis97]

It is cool to read what others have found at retail stores and flipped for a healthy profit.

Here is another one of mine:

I walked into a big box home improvement store late in the summer, and found two cart fulls of collapsible swimming pools for $9 each. These were the 'you'll-be-lucky-if-this-lasts-a-whole-summer' type of quality. I bought every last one of them, plus all of the inflatable floating chairs for $2 each. I took them all to the flea market, and flipped the pools for $24 each, and they literally flew off the shelves. I sold the inflatables for $8 each.

At the time, I was pretty nervous about buying the pools at $9 a pop. Since there were about 50 of them, it was a sizable investment for that week, especially considering that I found them by sheer accident, after walking in to the store to pick up a box of nails for a project I was working on.

 

[pat-tekker-cat]

Hey FTT,
on Amazon, do you pay for the monthly subscription or the per piece listing price? Would you say it's best for someone starting Amazon to do the monthly fee or per piece fee?
Perhaps would it depend on how much stuff you have to list?
Thanks.
Way to go, Isabella!

Years ago, I bought a trashbag full of scrapbook stickers for $12.00, I'm still selling them things. A lot of them sold out, I have just a few left now. I pieced them out at every garage sale, ebay, and etsy sale I have. They have been fun selling! LOL!

 

[clovis97]

Speaking of Walgreens:

A couple of years ago, they had a brand of make-up that was being discontinued. When I first happened on the deal, I called the wife, and she told me to pick up some for her using the coupons that we had. It was a "buy two, get one free" sale and clearance pricing was in effect. I bought about 20 or 25, and we sold what the wife didn't want at the flea market for $2-$3 each. I think I had .80 to $1.10 in each one.

I went back a few days later, and found another local ebayer buying absolutely everything they had, which was a monster amount in her cart. We chatted for a few minutes, and I mentioned "ebay is flooded with that brand."

"It won't be in a few months" she replied. "When these gals run out, and realize it isn't being offered any more, they'll pay crazy amounts for it." she added.

I thought she was crazy.

I checked her completed listings a few months later, and that make up was selling fast at $11 to $27 each, plus shipping.

Lesson learned. I was the crazy one....