Is a Garage Sale Your Best Option?

Garage sales are a great way to make a few bucks while you clean out the clutter from your house.  They might not however, be the best method for every item you are looking to clear out.  There are some items that most people never consider as collectible that do very well on eBay.

The fact is, the collectibles category on eBay is filled with an eclectic mix of merchandise that often was recently for sale at garage sales or estate sales.  Experienced eBay sellers frequent these venues just looking for the little known treasures that people having sales seldom recognize as having any resale value.  Spending an hour or so analyzing the completed collectibles auctions can be an eye opening experience to say the least.  Completed auctions are simply the listings which have completed their run on the site.  They show not only whether the item sold or not, but also what the final selling price was.  Sorting these listings to show the highest prices first often brings back some surprising results.

Second hand items like vintage postcards, discarded clothing and almost anything “used” that you can imagine can catch the interest of eBay buyers and start a bidding war.  Often these battles result in prices that are far more than one could ever expect to get by selling the same merchandise at a yard sale.

Before you decide to have a garage sale and drag your “clutter” out, take some time to check out what collectibles are selling well.  If you were a concert fan back in the 1980s, you might find that the old t shirts you bought are worth far more than the dollar each they usually command at garage sales.  In fact, as an example, vintage Iron Maiden t shirts can often bring hundreds of dollars from eager bidders!  That is just the beginning of course.  You will need to put some time into your research, but you can often make much more selling a few items on eBay than you could from everything else that gets set out for the neighborhood garage sale.