Acquiring the knowledge/experience to consistently buy eBay inventory at garage sales takes some time and research. The good news is that the two best research tools are readily available at no cost. These two tools will also work just as well for researching antique/collectible items or non-antique/collectible items found at garage sales.

The first tool is the garage sales themselves.

When most people talk about buying eBay inventory at garage/yard sales they envision finding a rare piece of Roseville pottery, Tiffany glass, or some other high value antique they can buy for a few dollars and sell for several hundred or several thousand dollars on eBay. You hear stories about this happening and it does – but only on very rare occasions. That’s entirely the wrong way to go about it.

Rather than rushing in, taking a quick look around and then leaving for the next sale, if you slow down a little, a morning of garage sales can be a learning experience. Take some time at each sale to look around and see general kinds of items are being sold. Handle some of the items. If a sale has a lot of what look like quality used clothing, look at tags to check out the manufacturer. If there are a number of pieces of glass or pottery, turn them over and look at the back stamps to see who produced them. When you go back to your car, make some notes of the manufacturers so you’ll have them when you get home.

The second tool is eBay’s closed items listings. As mentioned above this can provide a wealth of information if you are willing to spend some time and dig a little.

When you get home take the list of manufacturers you have, plug them into eBay, and using the closed items archives see what they sell for. What you are looking for are items that either fit around the edges of the antique/collectibles. What you will end up with is a lot of items that don’t sell, but you’ll find a few good sellers if you are willing to do this for a week or two.

As a specific example, in my area of the country anyway, if you look at kitchen glassware you’ll find that there are a lot of Fire King and Pyrex items at garage sales for little or nothing. Plug either of these names into eBay and you will find that some items by both those companies sell for considerable amounts of money while other’s don’t.

Under Pyrex you will find that one thing that sells pretty well is their nesting mixing bowls with different designs and colors. You will also find that some designs are more sought after and some colors are more sought after. It will also become apparent that, in most cases, complete sets of four bowls do better than single bowls.

Watching these bowls on completed items for a week or two and you will learn that in general:

• Pink is by far the most popular color (buy pink Pyrex)
• What designs sell for the most money
• Complete sets of four nesting bowls usually do better than single items in the same design and color.
• It’s worthwhile buying singles of some designs and colors and either selling them individually or holding onto them until you can make up a complete set.
• To maximize your return on Pyrex items it’s imperative that you be willing to ship internationally.

You now have a knowledge base that will allow you to make sound buying decisions when you come across Pyrex bowls.

If you do the same thing with Fire King one of the things you will find is that there are a lot of Fire King white milk-glass colored coffee mugs that have advertising on them offered on eBay. Again, a few weeks research here will show you:

• What ones consistently sell for $100 or more.
• In general, those advertising nationally known brands usually sell best.
• There are different varieties from some brands and some of these sell quite well while others don’t sell at all (McDonald’s is a good example of this).
• Generally, the better and more colorful the graphics – the better they sell.
• You may want to buy any Fire King advertising mug you find that you can get for $.25 to $.50. Some will sell in the $10 to $50 range and those that don’t you can keep until you have a group of one to two dozen and sell them as a lot.

Keep using these two tools this way and over time you will have the knowledge make sound buy/don’t buy decisions at garage sales for a wide variety of different types of items.

Here are a few other ideas that should make your garage sale purchases more profitable.

• Accept the fact that you are going to make mistakes. We all do it. A short time ago I bought about 15 reprint catalogs of old watch and clock manufacturers in an antique mall for between $2 and $5 each. All had been reprinted in the 1970s and 80s so many of them had ISBN numbers. I used ScoutPal to check them on Amazon and most had only one or two available priced from $75 to well over $100 each. It wasn’t until I got home that I noticed most had been reprinted by the same organization so I checked their web site and found that nearly all of them are available there new for between $2 and $5. They weren’t the gold mine I’d thought they would be.
• When at a sale always look under tables for boxes that haven’t been unpacked because they ran out of room.
• Look at what’s hanging on the walls and in the garage rafters. If there’s something you are interested in ask if it’s for sale.
• Don’t be afraid to take a risk now and then if the knowledge you have indicates something might/might not be a good item. Just be sure you’re not risking more money than you can afford to loose.
• Based upon your knowledge and experience, consider taking a shot gun approach to buying some things. For example, I’ll buy any Fire King advertising mug I see if it’s priced at $.50 or more. Experience has shown me that some of them will be profitable individually and the ones that don’t can still be sold in lots of a dozen or more and still bring some profit.
• Choose a higher priced type antique and do enough research on it that you can make an intelligent buying decision. Then, ask if they have any of that item at every garage sale you go to. As an example, if you choose Weller pottery, ask at every sale if they have any pottery that they didn’t put out but might be interested in selling. Over time you will be surprised at what they will drag out of the house or basement for you to look at. When you are comfortable that you have a sound knowledge of one item, start on another.
• In the past, many areas of the country had local potteries that were active. Some of these have become highly collectible but others are just now becoming so. Find out if there was one in your area or state and learn all you can about it. If it’s just becoming collectible you may well be able to pick up lots of pieces cheap at garage sales.
• Don’t limit yourself to antiques/collectibles. Doing similar research for other things will provide you with a list of things you can buy cheap at garage sales that sell well on eBay – small appliances, clothing, electronic equipment, photographic equipment, etc.

Keep repeating all the above and in time you will be able to go to garage sales find the bargains that others before you left behind.

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