When I moved to LA in 1985 one of the first things I did is find the hobby stores. There was one in Pacific Palisades that had been there so long there were in the 1965 Aurora guide to hobby shops that sell slot cars.
Anyway, boy did they have cool stuff! Slot car stuff that had been on the shelves since the 60s! And listed at the original prices! Most of the stuff I bought and kept, and still have, but there was an original, never sold complete racing set that I bought for the original; price ($11) and kept intact. When ebay came on the scene I put it up for action. Got over $500.
And I turned around and bought an expensive flowing water Hamms sign. The way I see it, I paid $11 for the sign.
As many have mentioned, it is getting more difficult to find bargains to re-sell.
I went to an estate sale a couple of weeks ago looking for vinyl records. They were priced at $8 - $40, except for some polka and Christmas records.
I went to another that showed a photo of a vintage stereo receiver that I knew I could re-sell for $300, even if it didn’t work. I was the first one in the house on day one, went into the basement where I knew I would be, and it was already gone. Turns out this estate sale company allows “members” to enter and shop a half hour before the sale starts. I later learned that membership is $150 per year.
My gf just made some money on a plant. She has several monsteras in our sunroom. Two years ago someone gave her a variegated monstera that was not thriving. She worked with it and it is doing well, but she thinks it looks “artificial” and was going to give it away. A woman at the garden center she goes to heard she had a variegated monstera and offered her $150, which my gf was happy to accept.
I have not yet bought-and-sold for a profit but expect to soon. For many years we collected vintage movie posters. About 30 years ago we saw a newspaper ad for someone selling posters from the 1970s for $3 each. We went to his home to see what he had, not expecting much. I immediately saw one poster that I knew was auctioning for at least $100. (Now it’s close to $300.) And there were many others that were worth well in excess of $3. Me being an honest, ethical guy, I felt he should know this. He said he didn’t care, he just wanted to get rid of them, and that anything he didn’t sell he was going to take to the back yard and burn. (He mentioned that years ago he had posters from the 1950s and 60s that he’d put the match to.) At that point any reservations I had left me. I only had $100 cash on me, so I bought what I could and said goodbye to the rest.
Now that I’m retired, I’m trying to rid myself of collectables and plan to sell those posters in the near future for a very tidy profit.
My wife bought a big-ass box load of new, old-stock posters from the 70’s. Paid $50 for the whole box. I thought she was nuts.
She put them up one at a time on ebay. The first one, Paul Michael Glasser (Starsky) sold for like $80! She had 100’s of these posters! Farrah Fawcett, Lee Majors, Cheryl Tiegs, Hardy Boys, KISS! They all individually exceeded the price of the original purchase.
She made BANK!!
Interestingly, The Conehead posters did not sell. Go figure.
This isn’t my profit, but my Dad’s. And my step-Dad’s. I know Dad was born in 1930 and step-Dad was a little older. When the silver was removed from quarters and dimes (US), both of them stashed away every silver quarter or dime that came their way.
It was a small pile, but silver had gone up significantly by the time I sold them in 2012. Their original outlay was the cost of not spending those coins.
I bought a pop-up tent trailer from a friend for $900. We used it for family camping trips around Tahoe, the Sierra, Yosemite, and once for the classic American family vacation to Yellowstone. Had it about 7 years until the we (the kids) outgrew it. It needed some stitching which I took care of along the way, but was otherwise perfect for us - it fit in my garage and I could push it around. When my wife wanted to get rid of the minivan that pulled it (we had no other car that could), it was time for the trailer to go. Sold it on craigslist for $1,900. That’s right! We got paid $1,000 to use the trailer for our family camping period!
Just our last house (a townhouse). We bought it for 180K, the market plummeted, and we’d have been lucky to re-sell for 150K, so we stayed. Then in 2002, the housing market went insane… and we sold it for a 100K profit.
I can imagine we might have made money reselling our new car, back in 2021; we bought it in late 2020, right before the shortage became an issue. We kept getting emails from the dealership offering to buy it from us (presumably so a) they could resell for a profit, and b) so we’d buy another new car from them).
Err…no, there’s still a shortage, so just what are we supposed to drive?
I’ve made money on any number of things over the years, but the most unexpected was when Monopoly came out with an Iditarod version. I spotted it in a local Anchorage grocery store on sale for $19.99 and I bought five of them, thinking I would give one to each of my kids and keep one for me.
One thing led to another and I didn’t ship them, so I thought I’d put one on eBay and see if I could get my money back and listed a starting price of $5. A price war erupted overnight and it closed out at about $100. I was shocked. So I listed another one and the price went to $135. Unbeknownst to me, elementary schools outside of Alaska were teaching an Iditarod module and I hit it at exactly the right time. Teachers were begging for these games, which had cool tokens and race-appropriate properties. I did well until someone else in Alaska saw what I was doing and cleaned out all the shelves in town.
I still have my copy of the game, but it’s been out of production for years now. Copies can still be found on eBay, though.
I once bought some coins at an open-air market in Africa. Turned out they were scarce. Bought them for about $.25 each and sold them for about $100 each.
Bought my last house for $350K in 2009, and sold it for $720K in 2022.
Silver was pretty cheap and the price jumped a couple of dollars in two weeks. I bought in for a hundred ounces at seven dollars an ounce. It looked like it could maybe double in a few weeks and I could sell for a quick profit. I had no idea what was going on. This was in January 1979. The price just kept going up. It turned out that the Hunt Brothers tried to corner the market. I lost my nerve at thirty five dollars and ounce and sold. It later topped out at over thirty eight dollars and in March of 1980 it started dropping as fast as it had risen. In the end the price stabilized at around ten dollars and ounce.
I bought in for $700.00 and sold out for $3500.00, net profit $2800.00
Some of my poker buddies put some cash together in 1980 and bought Chrysler stock at $2.00 a share. They got a government bail out and the stock price hit $48.00 a few years later. I missed that one. They made a fortune
My stepson bought a Mustang that ran like a pony but couldn’t pass emissions (car not horse). Since it couldn’t be registered I took a chance and bought it for the $900 he paid. I then flipped it for $1500 the next day to a guy that was going to fix it or use it as parts for his Mustang collection. In terms of dollars per time/effort it was a score.
Later my stepson asked in all honesty when I was going to give him the $600. “Fuck off with that shit.” seemed the only appropriate reply.
Note: This is what happens to text sandwiched between two string symbols
I sold some of my older brother’s comic books from the mid-60s, with a few gems like Spider-Man 50 and the Fantastic Fours with the first appearance of Galactus and Black Panther. Sadly they were all in pretty poor shape, but still made $2k or so for the lot. Not bad for comics that sold for 12 cents, though we did have to store them for 50+ years.
About a year ago I heard that Devo was going to be in town, so I bought a ticket. A few months later I found out I couldn’t go, so I decided to try to sell my ticket. In the meantime the show had sold out. I sold my ticket for quadruple what I paid for it.
My best reselling-made bundle came via a bass guitar and amp set that I bought for 1 000, and quickly and effortlessly re-sold for 2 000.
Essential for the feeling of success here was the fact that I didn’t even leave my house to double my money. I just made a phone call and struck a deal, opened the door to make the transaction, posted a for sale ad, answered the phone, and opened the door a second time for the lucrative part.
At a rummage sale, I bought an unusual hymn book.
It was vintage 1942, printed with a funk/funky Art Deco type-font I’ve never seen, before or since.
Illustrated with scenes of soldiers praying, in an Art Deco style (odd for a religious piece).
It was made for Louisiana National Guard troops, called up for World War Two duty.
Bought for 50 cents.
Sold to the Yale University Library of Popular Culture for $300.
A friend who owned a tattoo studio died years ago. A woman had moved in with him just a few weeks before his death. Nobody liked the woman. We all figured he’d come to his senses, but alas he died.
A group of his friends met at his house (a rental that the woman was now living in). There was a big Polar Water jug half filled with coins. The woman complained to me about how she was going to have to deal with all those coins. I suggested she just sell the jug for whatever amount someone would pay.
Turns out I’d given him the jug and knew what he was doing with it. He got a cut of each artist’s fees. He claimed this money as his income and paid taxes on it. But he did tattoos on a cash only basis. That cash was going into the jug. There were lots of twenties, fifties, and hundreds mixed in with all the coins.
I told this to a friend and suggested he offer her a couple hundred dollars for the jug. He did, and she happily accepted. Friend made out like a bandit.
I can’t think of when I’ve ever done it with typical household items, but though the OP excludes real estate I have a rather unusual example in this area that may qualify.
I once put in an offer on a house that was accepted and finalized, along with my deposit. I’d bought and sold houses quite a number of times in my life, but this one was unusual because I began to have serious second thoughts about it – a terrible situation when you’re dealing with a major purchase like that. It’s pertinent to the story here that the house was vacant, the previous owners having already moved elsewhere.
The real estate agent was someone we already knew from a previous transaction and was both very competent and very ethical. He sensed my discomfort and asked me if I wanted him to get me out of the deal. I said yes.
A few days later he called and said he wanted to come over with some good news. My wife was always keen on hosting someone with good news and suggested we take him out to dinner. Long story short, at dinner he presented us with a cheque with our full deposit back plus an extra $20,000. He had flipped the offer to another buyer for a much higher price, who had closed on it immediately, and he was sharing some of the largess with us. Yes, we bought him dinner!
P.S.- It was a very hot housing market at the time in the area!
When we were younger and had more energy and dreams than money, we used to talk about buying boats cheap, fixing them up, then selling them. But the lack of $$$ killed that plan before it was put in place. Now that we have available funds, we’re beyond the days of climbing into cramped engine rooms or scraping and painting hulls.
