This Reselling Hack Changed My Life

Reselling

Dec 27

Years ago when I first started thrifting and reselling, I bought anything that I thought had resell value.

Keyword: thought

I would look for well established brands sold at malls and department stores. Ones like: White House Black Market, J.Crew, Abercrombie, Gap, Banana Republic, and the like.

My rationing went something like this: “if this is sold for $100 new, then surely it is worth $50 secondhand”.

Surely I was wrong.

I learned quickly that just because a brand carried a hefty price tag for new items did not necessarily mean it would carry a hefty price tag for used items.

stop doing this if you want to make money reselling

Spending several hundreds of dollars at thrift stores (most with no return policies), I decided to change up my thinking.

The life saving hack that changed my life was researching comps BEFORE purchasing an item.

Novel I know. ;)

eBay is my preferred app to research sold values for brands and items of possible interest. Download the app to your phone and always filter for “SOLD”.

Now I research an item before buying, thus eliminating wasted time and money on items that will not meet my 1000% profit margin threshold.

Here are some examples of recent thrift finds:

Most of these examples are shown to drive home the 1000% profit margin. All of the items found had a resell value, but none met the threshold for a 1000% with the exception of a few items that were damaged.

The Haldon Group Striped Ribbon plate had a massive chip at the tip of the plate preventing me from buying it as damaged goods don’t sell very well. ;)
Vintage House of Hatten Stockings were complete with handwritten names on the black in permanent marker. SO sad but alas I left them.

I also want to note the striped ribbon pitcher; there are many replicas of the Haldon Group Striped Ribbon but without the hallmark stamp on the base, the item would not bring the same resell.

what makes an item valuable