The 2008 Garage Sale Challenge came to an end with the auctions that ended the evening of Sunday, October 5th.

With a net profit of $10,847.95 for the five months, I obviously fell well short of my goal of $15,000 net profit. Readers who wish to see the details for the last two weeks of The Challenge can do so by clicking here.

Even though my final figure is well short of my $15,000 goal, I hope that the last five months have demonstrated garage sales, thrift shops, and book sales can be a profitable source of inventory for someone wanting to sell on eBay.

I’d like to thank those readers who took part this year. I hope in one fashion or another, you were able to learn something that will make your endeavors on eBay more profitable in the future.

Photograph by photographia.

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Two weeks ago, when eBay killed eBay Marketplace Research, I took advantage of Terapeak’s special discount and subscribed to Terapeak Marketplace Research for one year.

After using it for only two weeks, I’m convinced I should have switched to Terapeak a long time ago.

A lot of the research I do starts with very generic keywords, or categories, and then digging deeper into more targeted items. In many cases this was hard to do with eBay’s research tool because it wasn’t able to handle searches that included a large number of items.

If I started with the keyword “magazine” for example, as long as I only searched the previous two weeks eBay Research worked fine. However, if I extended the search to one month, two months, or three months, eBay wasn’t able to process the number of returns available.
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It appears that once again I’m playing catch-up, having to report the results from two weeks to be caught up with this years Challenge. This report will cover both week 20 and week 21.

The number of garage sales in Grand Forks the last few weeks has declined significantly resulting in a decreased number of listings. This smaller number of items found has also led to smaller dollar amounts in sales.

Because of this, last Saturday I chose to get up early and drive to Barnesville, Minnesota for their annual City Wide Garage Sale Extravaganza. It will likely turn out to be a good decision. I went to 54 garage sales in Barnesville. Those sales resulted in 40 new items that are currently listed on eBay.

If I had stayed in Grand Forks I would have gone to 14 fresh sales on Saturday. While it’s impossible to know what I might have bought, no regulars that I’ve talked to reported buying anything of any significance, so it’s unlikely I would have either.

All that said, if you would like to see the details of how the Challenge is doing along with what I bought this last week you can do so at Gary’s 2008 Garage Sale Challenge - Week 20 & 21. You will notice that my mileage expense for last week was up significantly. That is due to the 220 mile round trip I made to Barnesville.

The short version is that at the end of week 21, with two weeks remaining I have made a net profit of $9747.77. Considerably short of the $15.000 goal I had set at the beginning of the Challenge.

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Once again a variety of things happened over the last two weeks and the results for week 18 of the 2008 Garage Sale Challenge never got posted. This leads to another catch-up post including both week 18 and week 19 which just ended.

The seventeenth week of the Challenge saw an upswing in the number of garage sales in Grand Forks (probably due to summer winding down) which resulted in a dramatic increase in purchases and the number of listings for week 18. I had 42 qualifying items listed and they resulted in sales of $914.03. In addition, Amazon also did quite well bringing in $273.19 in book sales.

There were very few garages sales during week 18 because of the long Labor Day weekend and people wanting to get out of town. I did have a fair amount of luck at the thrift stores however, and between the thrift stores and a few garage sales I picked up 20 qualifying items that ended Sunday evening. Seventeen of the twenty items sold bringing in $451.78. Amazon sales for the week were a dismal $55.46. This was a result of my having to be gone most of the week and having to put Amazon on vacation for the majority of the week.

Due to the problems I had a few weeks ago with the Challenge update posts breaking the blog I am no longer going to include the table of updated figures and the list of what I currently have on eBay here any longer. Readers who want to view these can do so at Gary’s 2008 Garage Sale Challenge - Week 18 & 19.

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Going to garage sales last week was a lot like going to a FOL or AAUW book sale. It seemed like everywhere I looked there were books.

Thursday there were 16 garage sales in Grand Forks and the only thing I bought were books. Friday wasn’t much different. There were 29 fresh garage sale and I spent $59.50 for books and only $8.00 for anything else. The 26 fresh sales on Saturday did produce quite a few non-book items, but there were still books to be looked at and purchased.

The second sale I stopped at on Friday turned into a book buyer’s bonanza. The ad said nothing about books but when I stopped to look at a box of teacher’s aids, the lady running the sale asked if I was interested in books. When I told her ‘yes”, she told me the back patio was filled with books.
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Several things came up here last week and one results was the update for week 15 of the Challenge didn’t get posted. I had most of it done last Tuesday, but finishing it kept getting delayed from one day to another, and it never got done. Now the update for week 16 is due too and I find myself no closer to having week 15 done than I was a week ago.

So, to get up-to-date, this is going to be an abridged version of both weeks 15 and 16. About all you will get is the table showing the results for the two weeks along with my expenses so far for week 17.

I do have 65 qualifying items running on eBay this week, but I’m not going to list them all here. They consist of 20 unsold items that I re-listed along with 45 fresh purchases made last week. Anyone interested in what they are can see them by using the link to my auctions in the “Information” section of the right sidebar.

Here’s how things look at the end of week 16.

Things are getting back to a semblance of normal here so next week’s update should be on time and in the regular format.

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The auctions for items purchased during the thirteenth week of the 2008 Garage Sale Challenge ended Sunday evening with 12 of the original 24 items listed selling for a total of $278.74 and a sell-through rate of only 50% for the second week in a row.

As if my sell-through rate wasn’t bad enough, this week my sales on Amazon were higher than my sales on eBay. I don’t remember that ever happening previously.

Twelve books sold on Amazon during the last week for $338.05. The highlight of eBay sales was the early Hohner accordion catalog selling for $54.00 (280251371290).

Here’s how things look after Sunday:

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The auctions for items purchased during the twelfth week of the 2008 Garage Sale Challenge ended Sunday evening with 16 of the original 32 items listed selling for a total of $384.93 and a sell-through rate of only 50%. Two of the 32 items didn’t surive the week.

I ended the auction for the LeBlanc Noblet Paris wood clarinet when, in response to a question from an interested buyer, I found it did have a small crack in the wood. The description has been changed to reflect that crack and it has been re-listed this week. eBay ended the auction for the SPSS 13.0 Windows Student Version software, saying I was in violation of it’s VeRO policy.

Three additional items were sold Sunday evening. The other two Zippo Vargas lighters were sold via second change offers for $38.88 and $36.00. In addition, after the auctions closed, I received an offer of $35.00 for the Pen Sketches Of Nebraskans book that I accepted. These sales bring the eBay total for the week up to $495.80.

This weeks auctions were led by the 1998 limited edition Remington Wildlife pocket knife that sold for $101.11. Amazon sales accounted for an additional $469.26 in revenue this week from the sale of fifteen books. Amazon sales were led by three algebra textbooks that sold for $60+ each.

Here’s how things look to date:

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With the auctions that ended last Sunday the 2008 Garage Sale Challenge has reached it’s halfway point and I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how this year’s Challenge compares to last year’s at this time. It’s also time to check on how this year’s Challenge is progressing toward my goals.

This year’s net profit of $5132.44 at the halfway point is higher than the $3785.21 at the same time last year. However, that increase is likely almost all attributable to the fact that I’m including my Amazon sales this year. Last year I didn’t include them. Amazon has accounted for $1783.59 in gross sales this year.

My actual sales from eBay seem to be very similar to last year. In fact, they are probably slightly less than last year.
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The auctions for items purchased during the eleventh week of the 2008 Garage Sale Challenge ended Sunday evening with 19 of the 27 items listed selling for a total of $366.07 and a sell-through rate of 70%. Amazon sales accounted for an additional $321.05 in revenue this week from the sale of twelve books.

Once again, there were no really exciting items sold this week. The highest priced item was the Pepsi-Cola advertising thermometer that sold for $46.95. During the same week I had two books that each sold for more than that on Amazon. When that happens, eBay didn’t exactly rip it up for the week.

For the third or fourth week in a row the garage sales in Grand Forks failed to produce anything really exciting. Probably the item for sale this week with the most potential is the Noblet clarinet I have listed. Two sales this past week did have nice selections of antiques but, in both cases, the prices the sellers wanted made it impossible to buy anything and expect to make a profit on it.

After 10 weeks of sales here’s how things look.

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