If you regularly shop at garage or yard sales for antiques and collectibles to sell on eBay you know there are plenty of days when you go home empty-handed. However, if you are willing to take a little more time at each sale, you may be surprised what you can find that will make a “day-without-antiques” profitable.

Here are ten things that regularly show up at garage sales that will pay for your gas and make you a nice profit when sold on eBay.

1. Adult Halloween or Holiday costumes. That big pirate, Easter Bunny, or Minnie Mouse costume that no one else is paying any attention to can easily bring $50 or more when listed on eBay.

2. Current college textbooks. It’s amazing how many of today’s college students will pay $125 for a text book and then put it in a garage sale at the end of the school year for two or three dollars. If you live near a college or university campus watch for these. Most any textbook with a copyright date of either the current or the previous year will bring $30 or more on eBay. Just hold onto them and list them in August before the school year starts.
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Popularity: 41% [?]

Monday evening saw the end of the auctions for the items purchased during the third week of The 2008 Garage Sale Challenge.

This week saw eighteen items sell for a total of $589.03 with a rather disappointing sell-through rate of only 56%. However, eight of the thirty-two items listed last week were re-lists and if I subtract those the sell-through rate for the new items was 71% which is more in line with where I hope to be consistently. In addition, nine books sold on Amazon for a total of $298.12.

The most disappointing item this week was the Fisher Price Toy Wagon pull-toy which brought only $27.99. I’d felt that, as a minimum, this would have ended somewhere between $50 and $75.

Over the course of the week, I received several emails from interested buyers concerning the postage for this item along with one of the other listings that make me wonder if buyers are suddenly paying a lot more attention to what actual shipping costs are for things they are considering bidding on. I’ll be writing a post about this, and how it may affect sellers, tomorrow.

Here’s how things look after then end of the fourth week of the Challenge:

Popularity: 24% [?]

The auctions for the items purchased during the second week of The 2008 Garage Sale Challenge ended Sunday evening with much better results than the previous week.

Of the thirty items listed, 26 sold for $923.70 with a sell-through rate of 87%. In addition there were sales of $247.40 through Amazon for books purchased as part of the Challenge. The total qualifying sales came to $$1171.10.

Buy far the best sellers for the week were the three pieces of UND School Of Mines pottery and thirteen VHS tapes about the Iditarod sled dog race held each year in Alaska. The results from these VHS tapes were surprising to me. I’d originally bought them thinking they would all go into one lot. Then when I got home a did a little checking I decided it would likely be more profitable to list them individually, but my expectations were nowhere near what they ended up bringing.

After the second week of the Challenge, here’s how things stand.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Intentionally or not, eBay is providing a window into how your feedback percentage may change once their new Feedback 2.0 is rolled out in the US.

Feedback 2.0 has recently been launched in Australia. You can see how what changes may be in store for your feedback percentage by using eBay Australia. Here’s how to check.

Go to eBay Australia. Using the “Advanced Search” link in the upper right hand corner, do a search for “Items By Seller” inputing your eBay ID. Click your feedback rating at the top of the resulting page, and you will be able to see what your feedback percentage would be today under the new Feedback 2.0.

Under the system currently used in the US, my percentage is 99.9%. Under Feedback 2.0 it drops to 99.7%. Not a huge difference, but there are reports of some seller’s percentages dropping by as much as 2-3%.

As might be expected, as this becomes wider known, most of what you hear about this is going to be negative. However, it’s important to realize that for every seller who sees a decrease in their feedback percentage there will likely be another seller who sees an increase in theirs.

Kudos to Randy Smythe of My Blog Utopia for the heads up on this.

Photograph by absolutwade.

Popularity: 33% [?]

The auctions for the items purchased during the first week of The 2008 Garage Sale Challenge ended Sunday evening with less than stellar results.

Of the 20 items listed on eBay, only 8 sold for a dismal sell-through rate of 40%. This represents the first time in many months that my weekly sell-through rate on eBay has been below 60%. There are still 4 of the 20 items still live because I made an error listing them on Tuesday for 7 days instead of just 5. One of these has an opening bid, but even when these close, the rate won’t increase by much.

One of my Challenge book purchases (The Second World War by Winston Churchill ) sold on Amazon for $59.99. Total sales from eBay amounted to $183.47.

After the first weeks sales, here’s what things look like. The final figures may change a little because it’s likely I will receive a few more PayPal payments before everything is paid for.

Popularity: 26% [?]

William W. Johnstone is the author of well over 150 mass market paperback book for men. As is often the case with mass market paperbacks, most of Mr. Johnstone’s individual titles don’t have stellar sales records on eBay. However, he does have a growing number of faithful readers and there’s a way you can take advantage of this.

The majority of William W. Johnstone’s titles are part of one of seven or eight different series he has written. These series range in size from three or four books up to more than thirty books. It’s these series that can provide you with nice profits when sold on eBay.

The secret to profitably selling William Johnstone books on eBay is to buy and sell them in lots within each series. For the purpose of this article, we will look at his six most popular series and one fiction genre his works is also popular in.

The First Mountain Man series consists of 14 different titles. A lot including all fourteen titles will usually bring somewhere between $50 and $100 on eBay. Smaller lots made up of between 6 to 10 titles usually also sell, but only in the $15 to $20 range.
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Popularity: 46% [?]

If you are thinking about selling books on eBay or Amazon, I’ve just uploaded nine short videos from You Tube that provide some basic book selling tips for the beginner. I uploaded them as I found them, so they are in no particular order but each should stand on it’s own.

If you are reading this offline you will have to go the the blog to view them.

Photograph by Bing Ramos.

Popularity: 24% [?]

The first weekend of the Garage Sale Challenge is over. I visited a total of 45 garage sales and one Friends Of The Library book sale between Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Maybe it was just my imagination, but an awful lot of the sales seemed to be almost entirely infant and baby clothing.

While I bought a few things, none of them were spectacular finds. Mostly pretty humdrum stuff.

Here’s what my expenses look like for this first week.

The following items will go live on eBay starting Sunday evening and run for seven days:

• 31 Elizabeth Hiddleson crochet pattern booklets - I paid $.10 each for these
• A boxed set of 6 Transformers Find Your Fate Juniors books - I paid $1.00 for this
• A boxed set of Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty Novels - I paid $3.00 for these at the FOL sale. They are paperbacks which should have been $.50 each, but when I checked out the lady behind the table, who had to be at least 65, said, “I’m going to have to charge you $3.00 for these. They’re kind of nasty you know.” I asked if she had read them and she just got a big grin on her face.
• Faery Wicca books I & II - I paid $1.00 and probably should have walked away and left them on the table
• Boxed sets of the first and second season of The Sopranos TV series - I paid $6.00 thinking they had to be worth buying due to the popularity of the show. Was I ever mistaken. Being VHS doesn’t help either. I’ll be happy to get the opening bid for them
• Designing Tessellations quilting book - I paid $1.00 for this
• Uncommon Heroes & Behind The Scenes - two books about the 1997 flood here in Grand Forks. I paid $.50 each for them. Although I listed them in auction format, I’ll probably have to put them in my store and wait for someone to come along who is interested in them
• 4 Pyrex Nesting Cinderella bowls - I paid $1.00 for them. Definitely not the most popular colors or pattern, but I hadn’t bought much that day, so I succumbed
• The History Of Grand Forks County - I paid $.25 for this
• The first season of Brothers And Sisters TV series on DVD - I paid $5.00 for this
• 2 large talking Teletubbies - I paid $1.00 each for them
• 8 Haviland Pompadour floral dinner plates - I paid $3.00 for all 8 of them

In addition, the following books were purchased and put on Amazon:

• Introduction To Maternity & Pediatric Nursing textbook - paid $1.00
• The Second World War by Winston Churchill - a boxed set of soft covers - I paid $5.00
• Secrets Of A Jewish Baker cookbook - I paid $.50
• John Hopkins White Papers, 2006 Vol. I - I paid $1.00
• Effective Appellate Advocacy - I paid $.50
• The Ancient & Shining Ones - I paid $.50
• Gilbert Law Summaries - I paid $.50.

Popularity: 14% [?]

The 2008 Garage Sale Challenge began yesterday, May 1, with 17 new garage sales in Grand Forks, and there were another 21 additional sales today. Since it sounds as though all the snow for the weekend is going to stay well south of us, there should be another 15 to 20 new sales tomorrow to finish off the first weekend.

There are currently fifteen adventuresome readers who have completed the registration process to participate. If you’ve thought about taking part, I encourage you to join us. Current participants’ experience ranges from at least beginner to full-time sellers and their goals range from $1000 up to $15,000.

If you haven’t yet registered, and would like to join us, you have until May 10 to complete the registration process. If you need any help doing so, just let me know and I’ll be glad to help you through the process.

My efforts for the first two days haven’t exactly been earth shattering. I’m guessing my best purchase so far is a group of vintage crochet pattern booklets. Other than that, most of what I’ve bought has been books - a few for eBay, but mostly for Amazon.

Starting next Tuesday, I’ll begin posting a weekly update here as to how I’m doing both here and, along with the other participants, on The 2008 Garage Sale Challenge blog.

Popularity: 12% [?]