Thrift stores, consignment shops and pawn shops were a complete bust last week, but the 2nd week of tag sales was pretty good. My girlfriend and I were able to get out for about 6 hours and we found some good stuff. Still early in the season, so there's not as many sales as there are folks out there looking for deals, so it's pretty slim pickings later in the morning.
The first couple of sales we were to were a part of a really nice neighborhood that's not far from where we live. The ad made it sound like there were going to be 10-20 sales...but there were only 5-6. Oh well! The first sale ended up being pretty amazing. Here's what we got:
I had high hopes for those iPod touch's, but one of them won't charge and the other is locked by their Apple account. The best part of this deal is that the lady running the sale only wanted $40 for everything! I think with the iPods not functional, that we can get about $200 for everything. Walking away from the sale, I remember saying to my girlfriend that it would be nice if we could find a sale like that EVERY week. LOL
At one of the other sales in the neighborhood, the lady said she had some video games that she could bring out. It didn't end up being any games really, just a Nintendo Wii and WiiFit board. Stock photo for reference:
I put both of these into my storage unit for safe keeping until next winter. I'll probably put a bunch of Wii's up around Christmas again. Paid $20 for them and they probably have around $50 in value.
After heading out of the neighborhood, we hit a bunch of the local sales before heading out of town. One wasn't open yet, but I was able to convince the Little Old Lady to let me look. She had some fun stuff to look through. Here's what we got:
I know, I know. I can't stop buying these damn DVD/VHS players. My track record is still pretty good, with only the last few having been inoperable. The good news is that this one works! I paid $16 for everything and value it all at $115.
Our next stop was a sale that was near to the top of my list as they mentioned having video games. Of course they had sold them all at 7:30 (so had the un-advertised sale next door! Drat!), but that's what you get when you don't go to those sale first. They still had a few things to get though (Stock photos except for the iPod):
We paid $25 which was a bit high for this stuff, but still feel that we can get $70 for all of it.
We hit quite the dry spell for a while and it was a couple of hours before we found something else. I was super excited when I found this next lot though:
I let my imagination run wild when she said she had a TON of DS games. ALAS! They're mostly common's. Still some good stuff here, but my mind was full of Pokemon games. LOL. Paid $14 and value it all at $100.
We hit another dry spell but finally found one more purchase to cap off the day:
First Mario Kart of the season! After finding that, it really felt like we'd had a good day, so we decided to call it quits.
Totals for the day:
Spend: $130
Value: $650
Profit after fees: $390
Not bad for what I still consider to be "pre-season". I think we'll continue to have better luck as the season progresses and there are more sales each week to thin out the competition.
I'm still getting a lot of, "Oh, were you the one who emailed me?" when I ask if they have video games. I tried that a couple of years ago and had a bunch of success, but I felt like such an ASS for doing it, so stopped. My girlfriend and I agree that we still have plenty of success without using that tactic. What are you thoughts?