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My Best Buying Day EVER! Will You Share Yours?
 

I got a call yesterday from someone who is the executor for an estate in my neck of the woods. His Aunt passed away and he is tying up her affairs and distributing whatever money is there to the people in her will. He wanted me to come out and look at her book collection, but he wanted it to be done today - he is in a hurry to get everything out of the house because they have a buyer who wants the house ASAP and is paying extra for a fast closing.

Anyway, there were almost 3,000 books in the collection. It would take me a few days to evaluate such a large collection and give him my offer. He didn't care. He told me to give him $100 and take them all, he just wants them gone by tomorrow.

Since he was referred to me by his lawyer, with whom I have worked in the past, I know he is legitimate.

So, for the price of a cheap laser printer, I picked up 3,000 books and I already spotted a few gems among them. How much I will eventually make from this sale I couldn't even guess at this point, but it will be in the thousands, if not the tens of thousands, easy.

My point in sharing is that you have to be out there looking for deals and be willing to spend time and effort to go and check them out. But if you do the work, you WILL be rewarded! Not every deal pans out and not every seller is like the guy I met today, but there are a lot of deals out there to be had by people with a little motivation!

This is why I cringe every time someone posts "I can't find anything to sell on eBay or Amazon". What they mean is, I checked the first page or two of Google and couldn't find anything I could buy cheap enough to compete with the sellers on eBay. Since I don't want to put more than a couple of hours of web searching into creating something for myself that is profitable, I am going to give up.

DON'T GIVE UP!

But you have to be willing to WORK for your profits. Nobody is going to hand them to you. You have to be out there finding deals, because those mythological sources of $100 iPads and $30 laptops do not exist in real life.

Would anyone care to share their stories? Between the members here, there have to be some awesome ones!

Re: My Best Buying Day EVER! Will You Share Yours?
 

Very nice Jeff congrats! I don't have anything to share since I'm just starting, but definitely a good inspirational story to keep on the lookout for deals. The money is always made on the buy or so goes the saying and it's totally true!

Re: My Best Buying Day EVER! Will You Share Yours?
 

That is position access at its finest!
I would have finders fees or referral fees as well for more leads.

Re: My Best Buying Day EVER! Will You Share Yours?
 

When you compile a list jeffweico, may I buy some quality books off of you? :)

Re: My Best Buying Day EVER! Will You Share Yours?
 

Good story and great buy, Jeffweico! I always tell people opportunities don't find you in your living room; you need to be out hustling for them. Speaking of that, I've got two stories.

Back in the days before EB, I would place separate ads in local papers announcing I was paying cash for Playboy magazines and Star Wars toys. I'd buy whole collections of both and sell them by the piece on listservs and then when ebay started, that way. I'd get the mags for less than a buck a piece and sell them for $10 each back then. Obviously as EB grew the supply did also, so margins went down. Anyway, I bought one large collection after glancing at the general age and condition for $300 for about 500 mags. When I got back home and went through the stacks I found the first 5 issues were there also, and sold issue #1 for over $1,000. Funny part was the mags were all in stacks, not boxes, so I had to load them into my trunk, back seat, and front seat in tall piles. I remember when I was driving back with this car jammed packed with adult material, to the point that I was holding up a stack on the passenger seat from falling over onto me while driving, that if I got in a wreck, there'd be porn all over the freeway and I would definitely make the news. I drove carefully to avoid embarrassing my mom.

Now I buy container loads of merchandise and have a lot of warehouse space, but that's always been my favorite deal tale.

Re: My Best Buying Day EVER! Will You Share Yours?
 

Love the first edition scores :)

Back in late 90s-early 2000s when 1 USD was worth 1.40-1.45 CDN, I used to score all kinds of merchandise, both used from local garage sales and clearance houses as well as sometimes go clean out early shipments from Toys R Us and Walmart...yes I would pay retail but the hot items made so much profit from both popularity and exchange rate...baller

Re: My Best Buying Day EVER! Will You Share Yours?
 

Yes... the 90s glory days when there was a feeding frenzy for the new star wars and star trek figures. You could buy them at retail and sell them for a multiple. Plus add in your exchange rate arbitrage and you had a winning combination. Nicely done.

Re: My Best Buying Day EVER! Will You Share Yours?
 

The Pokemon fad was a goldmine

Re: My Best Buying Day EVER! Will You Share Yours?
 

Ah yes, the past was always a goldmine.

Sad we have to live in the present.

:FF:

Re: My Best Buying Day EVER! Will You Share Yours?
 

Thats the truth.
I used to save up my cash and purchase boxes of them when I was little.

Holding onto the 1999 pokemon cards and getting 10 1st edition charizards over the years and holding onto them (Mind you...I never played the game in my life but it was a hot item)
Calling sellers/retailers just to clean out their stock

Sold them all for around $450 each since they were never played. Had I put them in the plastic cases that would have bumped it up another $125 or so.

Even the more common cards are like $4 + if they are 1st edition.

Re: My Best Buying Day EVER! Will You Share Yours?
 

I hear you BigCJ - but I think the value is quite low these days...no? Am I wrong? I have a lot of old 1st edition and stuff in storage.

I remember that Christmas - 1st Christmas of Pokemon phenomenon...Pokedexes, movie-related stuff...was sales bonanza