There were no new additions to my eBay inventory today. Four garage sales started this morning, but I found nothing for eBay at any of them. I did spend $3 for an unopened package of 4 large oil painting canvases for Arlene though. She’s an avid painter so it put a smile on her face when I walked in the door with them.

Around here holiday weekends really put a halt to the garage sales so I don’t expect to find much for eBay at them this week, but hopefully the flea markets this weekend will be fruitful for eBay.

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Tuesday is “thrift store” day in Grand Forks because several of them put out new book every Thursday.

The pickings today were dismal. I visited all six stores and the only thing I found worth buying was one volume of the Time-Life Old West series that I needed to complete a partial set I’d bought a few weeks ago. Total cost $2.

Tomorrow will probably bring a few garage sales but there won’t be many this week because of the Holiday weekend.

Most of what goes on eBay next week will probably come from two flea markets I’ll go to on Saturday.

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The Hamm’s Beer ashtray I currently have listed on eBay is creating some excitement.

It had been listed on eBay for less than one hour last night when I received an email from a collector offering me $65 for it if I ended the auction and sold it to to him via eBay’s Buy-It-Now feature. I politely declined.

This morning when I checked my email I had an offer from someone else for $60 and an email from a third person giving me his phone number and saying it was “imperative” that I call him this evening about the Hamm’s ashtray I had listed on eBay.

My experience has been that as soon as people start throwing money at you and asking that you end an item early, it will nearly always sell for more than what is being offered.

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On the way home from the post office today I stopped at one of the local thrift shops and found a wonderful old corkscrew that I was able to buy for $3 that should do well on eBay. Made out of brass, it has fancy scroll work on both sides and the bust of Kaiser Wilhelm on one side with and the phrase “All Germans fear God, otherwise nothing else in the world” in German on the other.

I also picked up three books for $.25 each.

1. Rachel Calof’s Story - the story of a Jewish homesteader on the Northern Plains.

2. A book about Montana written by a Great Falls newspaperman in 1943.

3. More Than Petticoats - a book about thirteen women born before 1900 who had an impact on the development of Minnesota.

Also a box of a dozen vintage matchbooks with University Of North Dakota advertising on them for $1.

They will go on eBay either Wednesday evening or next Sunday.

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Last week I had 30 auctions running that ended last night. Everything that was listed had been purchased at either a garage sale or a thrift shop. Here’s how they came out.

1. Four volumes of the Charles Scribner’s Sons series of books by Theodore Roosevelt published in 1926. I paid $1 each for these at a local thrift shop and they all four sold for a total of $52.50. Not quite the $25 to $30 each I had been hoping for, but still a nice profit on a $4 investment.

2. How I Turned $1,000 Into Three Million In Real Estate sold for $52.60. I paid $.25 for it at a local thrift shop and it ended very close to the $50 I’d expected.

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On the way home from breakfast at Jeannies Restaurant this morning Arlene and I drove past a sign advertising an auction sale. We decided to stop and see if there was anything of interest being sold.

The only thing that interested me were two centennial history books for a small town nearby. There was a ton of stuff there, but since it looked as though the books would be sold in the first hour I decided to go back in the afternoon.

I went back at 1:00 and after waiting an hour the books were sold. Unfortunately someone else was willing to pay more for them than I was and they went home with someone else.

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Todays garage sale finds were the best of the week and may turn out to be the best of the summer. Here’s what I was able to buy:

A Hopalong Cassidy pocket knife in good condition. I paid $3 for it and hope to get between $15 to $20 for it.

Four different issues of Wilton’s Cake Decorating Annual. I paid $2 for the four of them and they should sell for at least $15.

A small booklet of fur trapping tips published by Sears Roebuck in 1943. I paid $.50 for it. It should bring somewhere between $15 and $25 on eBay.

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Garage saling today was a little more productive than yesterday but, with nearly fifty sales starting this morning, the results could have been a lot better too.

At the first sale I stopped at I purchased a Hamm’s Beer glass advertising ashtray for $.25. In the past, buying a glass Hamm’s ashtray meant an almost sure $80 to $150 profit. However, it’s been close to a year since I picked my last one up, and the market seems to have mellowed some. I’m guessing a final bid of $25 for this one will be doing well.

A few sales later I was able to buy fifteen Hazel Atlas pheasant cocktail glasses for $.10 apiece. They should sell for somewhere between $15 and $30, probably in the lower part of that range.

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With 21 garage sales beginning today, when I left home at 7 this morning I was looking forward to finding lots of good stuff. As it turned out, the pickings were pretty slim today.

I picked up a 4 DVD set of “The West Wing - The Complete First Season” for $3 which should bring at least $20 and hopefully nudge the $30 level.

At another sale I found two extended play 45 RPM records in picture sleeves and four promotional 45s. I bought all six of them for $.25 each. I’ll put starting bids of $9.99 on each of them and see what happens. If I get one bid on each I’ll be happy.

The find of the day was a book titled “The Amish In America” for $1. A good sized volume it details the rise and fall of individual Amish communities in the US that no longer exist along with the author’s thoughts of why they failed.

I’m undecided whether I should list it on eBay with a starting bid of $49.99 or place it on Amazon at $100 for a few weeks and see what might happen.

Overall a somewhat disappointing day with the number of new sales there were.

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Wednesday isn’t usually a big garage sale day in Grand Forks, but today there were three sales that opened and I was able to be at each of them as the door went up.

At the second one I was able to buy a 19 volume set of the Time Life American Country series for $12.00. The spines are a little sun-faded but I don’t think most of them have every even been opened.

They will be listed on eBay beginning next Monday and should bring in the upper range of $75 to $100.

At the last sale I picked up a set of six cassettes by Warren G. Harding about real estate investing from 1982 for $2. So far, fifteen minutes research on the net has turned up nothing about them. They’ll go on eBay also where they may sell or they may end up in Arlene’s next garage sale.

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