posted on March 22, 2002 05:39:43 PM new
I always love to read what you are finding! It is inspiring!
I had a great day today at a rummage sale. Found several old fisher price toy sets with the little people and furniture. Picked them up cheap and expect to do well with them.
Tomorrow is Saturday and we're having nice weather here-- I am heading out looking for yard sales in the morning. It's been a long winter-- so happy to see spring! :0)
Brag a little! I like hearing about it!
posted on March 22, 2002 06:03:13 PM new
I have another month to wait before the sales start. We just got another 3 feet of snow on Sunday. Ugh..will it never end??
posted on March 22, 2002 06:52:45 PM new
If you don't get trampled to death by eBay wannabees or carriage trade antique sellers, you might still find something other than junk.
I don't say this to discourage anyone, but I would say the best find would be a halfway decent sale without a stampede or someone trying to get record eBay prices from the locals.
posted on March 22, 2002 07:03:50 PM new
I'm a going saleing on the morrow, it oughtta be a nice day.
I recently bought a storage locker though that had all kinds of toys in it, I paid $45.00 for it. One box was filled with Beanie Babies, still in their original packages. I have never dealt in Beanies so I did some Ebay searches and I found that some of these little, soft, cuddly and cutezy stuffed aminals that in reality are just a little more than simple trash, jmho, are worth a small fortune. Other than that there wasn't really anything else spectacular. There was an air hockey table that I sold with an ad in the paper for $80.00, 4 wood chairs that sold for $60.00, and a tv, a Compac Pressario computer and some computer furniture that I will sell in another ad that I will run next week, least wise I hope they will sell.
Yard sales are fun to go to but I think there are bigger profits to be had from buying delinquent rent storage lockers.
posted on March 22, 2002 08:40:24 PM new
I like to read this kind of thread also. I went to a yard sale, 1st in almost a year. I gave them up when I just couldn't get out of bed early to beat the early birds (ebayers) so I just stay home. I have heard about storage sales but where I am they are printed in the paper either two or three weeks before they happen and yes of course you guessed it I forget. Today I purchased 3 videos, Chenille bathrobe and a couple pieces of jewelry. 1 video was a 2 pack of Alfred Hitchcock remakes of old films, Silkwood and Car 54 where are you. Should be fun watching. It is cold here 25 above and very windy. Not saleing weather. Couple of estate sales but doesn't sound like anything spectacular. Can't get up early anymore for them either. I sometimes go late and I still find some treasures. Well until next time-----------
posted on March 22, 2002 09:49:16 PM new
We stopped at an estate sale last Saturday. The deceased had never (and I mean never) thrown out anything in her entire life. I'm sure she was a lovely person, don't get me wrong, but there was stuff like dinner plates with 20 or more chips, unopened waterstained Kleenex boxes from the 60's (that was weird) and old but unfortunately worthless Christmas decorations. (It's a hobby of mine, so I know good Xmas when I see it.) Even old unused rolls of toilet paper. Boxes upon boxes upon boxes of partially-used perfumes, mostly Avon and dimestore brands. Some of those might have brought some cash, but the stench was overpowering.
I know the thrill of the hunt is a powerful lure, so I don't want to discourage anyone from looking, but I think I'll keep selling off the stuff around the house that I've accumulated over the last five years of garage sales. Then, when the house is empty, I can start all over again.
posted on March 23, 2002 12:50:10 AM new
Our storage sales are found in the personal column of the local newspaper. I haven't personally been to any but I know some that have bought some really neat things. The only trouble is you can't view what is inside of a closed box. All they let you do is look through the door.
posted on March 23, 2002 08:12:49 AM new
I love storage auctions too. In fact I am going to one in about an hour. I did good on the last one I won, so I am hoping for a repeat of that. How to find them-- watch the legal notices section (and sometimes they are listed in the auction section) of the paper. What I do is I rip them out when I come across them and they go on the fridge (since many times you'll see the ad a few weeks beofre the sale). Also I've noticed that around here what should be in the larger towns paper (using common sense) sometimes is only printed in the smaller paper, so I read both. I would think they would want to advertise well to get people there-- the more people, the better chance the storage company has of getting some money back on the rental, but many times around here they are only listed in the small town paper (to clarify I live in a small town that is close to a bigger city-- they each have a paper). Also once you go to one you can ask them to put you on their list and see if they will call you or send you a postcard when they are having another one.
Now to the psychology of the storage auction sale... my husband thinks I am a little bit nuts, but I think that the more you downplay what you can see from the doorway of the unit (I might stand there and say "Oh what junk-- look at the dirty mattress in the corner, the box that looks like garbage.. whatever I can see that doesn't look nice), the better chance you have of discouraging the other bidders from going crazy bidding. My husband and daughter have learned to stay quiet as they are known to yell things like "Wow, look that that stained glass-- they will bring in good money", etc.) I have only been to a few storage auctions, but these are some of the things I have learned so far. Oh and bring a lock! You'll need it if you win a unit.
I'll pop back in later and let you know what happens this morning. I need merchandise so I am hoping to win a good unit.
The last one I won for $35 was filled with baby stuff. Boxes of really nice clothes, a crib, highchair (donated the highchair to goodwill), toys, a color TV and a cable box. By the time I had it all sold I figure I got about $170-180 and we kept the TV. So that was kind of fun. Shipping the crib was a headache I wouldn't repeat though. Next time the big stuff gets sold in the paper.
posted on March 23, 2002 08:37:17 AM new
In my state it's a state law that when a self storage facility is selling a tenants unit that one thing that must be done is to advertise for 2 consecutive weeks in the legal section of the biggest newspaper in the area. The ad must say the persons name, their unit number and a brief list of the contents. Also it must say that said tenants entire contents of unit will be sold or disposed of to satisfy a lien. The law also states that whomever purchases the entire contents does so free and clear of any liens or encumbrances. This is an important inclusion because it protects you in the case of receiving stolen property. That is if the tenant was engaged in that sort of criminal activity. Or if there is something that is illegal to own, it gives you the time to do whats right with it. An example, I once bought a unit that had a bunch of eagle feathers in it. I immediately called the state game and fish department. They sent 3 agents 2 from game and fish and 1 from the secret service. They looked over the eagle feathers and the contents of the unit and they confiscated the feathers. I made them sign a receipt so it couldn't come back on me. They then went to talk to the manager about whose unit it was. It turned out that it had belonged to an American indian.
You have to be very shrewd when bidding on units because in most cases you have to assume that the manager, their spouse and his brother has allready dug through the unit and taken what they wanted. What I do is I will look to see how much of the dirt and dust has been disturbed on the boxes or whatever is in there. I will never buy a unit sight uinseen. This is just the manager trying to screw a unit buyer out of his money.
Boy the stories I could tell about what I've found in lockers. I have been buying lockers now for about 8 years.
posted on March 23, 2002 10:24:45 AM new
in my area, the managers are not allowed (by law) to open the storage shed until the day of the sale. if the bill is unpaid they add a lock to the one put there by the owner.
at my favorite auctioneers sales,
the day of the sale, the manager removes their padlock and the storage owners lock is cut off. the door is opened and you can look from the door for 3 minutes. then the auctioneer sells it.
one shed was full to the cieling and looked as though the things had been there for years, the dust was 2 inches thick and the boxes were literally falling apart. 2 dealers were in a bidding war that ended at $450.00 for the shed. one dresser in it sold for $1200.00 at an antique auction the next weekend. i would have loved to see in the boxes.
what you have to watch for is the auctioneer. we have one auctioneer in our area who has his people dig through everything before he starts the sale. they are allowed to remove anything they want from the shed before it is put up for bid. this is definitely illegal but no one has done anything about him.
anyway, at any of these i have gone to, you have 3 days after the sale to completely clean the shed. you cannot leave anything behind including the trash. after 3 days you are charged rent on the unit. there is usually a $50.00 deposit required the day of the sale which is returned if you have cleaned up adequately.
posted on March 23, 2002 02:28:58 PM new
They all went too high for my blood. They were selling 3 units and the fourth unit they had about 40 items that they auctioned individually. I got an ice tea maker for $1-- that was my big purchase of the day, sadly enough. :0) The units sold for $80 (looked like real junk), $350 and $375. The last two were huge units and they were stuffed full. I would have loved to get the last unit, but unless I want to gamble with my rent money, I just couldn't afford it. It looked like interesting stuff though.
So I dragged my kids and husband back to the rummage sale just in time for the "fill a bag for $1 sale. I let my 7 yr old fill the bag and she had a great time. It is all junk, but fun to her. And now I better get to work!
Thanks for the fun stories.
Edited to add Yellowstone... tell us. What have you found?
[ edited by ashlandtrader on Mar 23, 2002 02:30 PM ]
posted on March 23, 2002 06:07:23 PM new
Allrighty then, I bought a locker one time that it seemed as though there might have been something good in it because it had a dresser and a couple of old US army wooden footlockers along with several boxes. I paid $40.00 for it and when I went through it I didn't find a thing usefull or worth reselling for any great amount. I knew I could get $10.00 or $15.00 each for the footlockers and probably $20.00 for the dresser but other than that there was just a bunch of junk. I decided to go through the junk in the footlockers with a fine tooth comb, so to speak, thinking that I may have missed something and sure enough I found a small cloth bag. The bag was one of those types that tobacco or cherry-its candy came in. It was filled with gold teeth. I sold the teeth as scrap gold for $350.00
Another time I had bought a locker and while I was going through it I found a photo album. I started looking at the photographs and I suddenly realized that I knew these people as acquaintances. There were photos of this guy who was a bad-ass biker and his girlfriend and pictures of her kids and other pics of their friends. I saw pictures of other people that I knew as well. When I got to the back page there was a large photograph of her baby. The baby picture had a bulge in it like there was something behind it so I took it out and sure enough there was another picture. This hidden picture was of the bad-ass biker standing in front of a full length mirror with his back to the mirror and he was wearing a french maids tutu uniform and he was looking over his shoulder at his own butt. I laughed so hard I that I started to cry. Imagine having your picture taken in that sort of dress-up. Thats bad enough but whats worse is losing track of the picture.
posted on March 24, 2002 03:04:38 AM new
Now for the bad Storage Unit sales.
A friend of mine purchased one for $550.00 in the front was an antique desk with a drawer open enough to see some jewelry inside. Behind that a neat row of boxes to the ceiling. The unit was 20' long. The desk was in horrible condition once you could see it good and that was the only drawer with anything in it. The jewelery was worthless and the row of boxes were garbage.
Behind that were junk tires packed tight. It cost him $1.00 each to take the tires to the dump.
I purchased one 10'x 10' that was all boxes for $50.00 and it was all reciepts from a business from 10 years ago. It took me 2 loads to the dump to dispose of them.
posted on March 24, 2002 09:03:52 AM new
My very BEST deal:
Went to local thrift looking for books. While browsing, these two girls come up with this GREAT BIG cart (like a laundry cart) and start hucking all these books in it! I said "Are you throwing all those books away?!?!" She says..."no we are recycling them." Which I took to mean they were rotating the stock. NOT!!! They were RECYCLING them! I went to floor manager and asked if I could buy them. He says, "Well you cant just pick through them, you have to take them ALL." I say okay,(DUH) how much? He says how about 10.00? OMG!!! I couldnt get my 10.00 out of my wallet fast enough! 450 some odd books...about 100 HC the rest PB. I have already quad zillioned (exagerrated a little) my total 10.00 spent. Another best buy was some old Life MAgs at a yardsale. The lady wanted 50 cents each. I offered to buy them all, she says " I had them appraised and they told me these arent worth anything, so you can have them for 10.00 (3 boxfulls of 43 44 an 45 mags!!) I sold the Audie Murphy one that was mint for 135.00. (There was also Roy Rogers and Trigger, and lots of WWII ones) I kept the one with the USS Independence on the front because that is the ship my dad was on, so I got a memento in the process! Most of them went for around 20-25 all in all, I made over 900.00 on that deal. LOVE IT!
posted on March 24, 2002 10:39:06 AM new
Good stories! Love the mental picture of the biker-- gross but made me laugh too.
Sad about the tire unit. I haven't had anything like that happen yet, but know that it is always possible.
And now I am inspired to look through my in laws Life magazines they next time we visit them. I thought they were only worth maybe $10-20 each at the most and they were hoping to get more for them. They are worth a second look, so I thank you.
posted on March 24, 2002 10:46:43 AM new
a GREAT DEAL...
We go to lots of rummage sales in the summer and at this particular one there was an enitire box full of reel-to-reel tapes by various artists still in mint condition. We at first filed thru them and bought around 10 at $.25 each. Came home and found out reel to reels..at least this bunch, was worth big bucks so my hubby went back there and purchased the rest of the box for a few dollars.
As it turns out..we sold each tape for $50 or more...these were in mint condition in original cases and apparently very rare.
I also visit a local thrift store twice a week. I bought a pair of childs raggedy ann slippers for 25 cents. They sold for over $20!
I try to buy with my keen instincts..without knowing a lot of the time if the item is of value..I know it sounds strange..but it works for me. I live in an area where there is an abundance of items to be had for pennies...rummage sales, thrift stores...etc.
We have (twice a year) what we call sidewalk put out days...where people set out all their junk for city wide pickup...Anyone can pick up what is put out..I've found some wonderful things this way too. We live near a college town..and oh boy..talk about things being tossed out at the end of the year!
Enough people now know I sell on ebay..that when they are going to toss out stuff they call me and tell me to come get their junk...most times I come home with things..and they toss out the rest.
As long as the US continues to be such a wasteful nation..there will always be junk to be had for resale..people just don't care to deal with it so they toss it.
posted on March 24, 2002 02:39:32 PM new
The only storage locker sales I can attend are about 50 miles away and are run as a regular "live" auction. Lots of junk and lots of competition. However, I think that ebayers get a nose for stuff that the average person doesn't. We can sell things on this venue that others would never dream of keeping. I actually do fairly well at local estate actions since we are rural and there usually aren't any big city buyers to compete with. I've also found a few things at consignment stores. I guess like me, the seller didn't really know what they had... till I sold it. I don't seem to do well at yard sales, but I have friends that ALWAYS seem to find treasures, from jewelry to antiques... they obviously know more than I.
My personal favorite finds have been Watchtower/Jehovah's Witnesses books from 1930s 40s and 50s at a thrift store. I bought a good box full for about $10 (it's been over a year now) and most went for around $10 each, some over $30. Scout patches at a consignment store for $20, I sold for around $180. Three little tykes dollhouse sized toys cost $3 at a thrift store, I sold for over $70. And my best, a booklet that was a marketing item for a 1920's metal artist. Found that among some other books I had purchased for 50c each. Kept it a year, finally decided to see if I could garner any interest with a $5 listing, sold the silly thing for $255.
These may be small potatoes to some, but they are tasty to me. I enjoy reading others' tales of treasure hunting. I love the hunt, and it reminds me of the fun stuff.
Signed... the verbose one.
ahwahneeliz `·.¸><(((ºcJ
posted on March 24, 2002 06:54:45 PM new
At the very end of a garage sale day- came across some old games- a table top pinball game - in original box- about 18" x 2'-mabye 4" deep if that... it had stars and constellations as the theme-
it was in mint condition- 1960's or 70's ...
i paid .10 cents !!! and sold for $180 .
posted on March 27, 2002 12:19:10 AM new
I do Olympic Pins, and Since I returned from SLC, I've put up a few hundred auctions. Most of these pins I traded older olympic pins for. I paid about $.05 each for the older pins (since I bought 780,000 they were discounted). The average pin sold for about $15, with several dozen going for $50+. Looks like I am going to have to declair a profit for the year.
posted on March 28, 2002 11:31:00 AM new
There were 4 yard sales in our area this morning. I hit all 4 and found nothing, but 1 block from home I saw a sign for a moving sale. I bought a Featherweight sewing machine for $7.00
posted on March 28, 2002 02:13:22 PM new
Well, I went to the auction this morning. They advertised the contents of 6 unclaimed storage sheds plus other items.
The first box we looked in was full of personal mail. It was all addressed to my husband's uncle who passed away 15 years ago!!
His cousin, who is the only child, had defaulted on over $700.00 worth of storage charges.
The auctioneer let us pull out as much of the personal items that we could before the auction started then announced that we would appreciate any personal mail that buyers did not want. We purchased as much as possible, until the car was full to the brim. Several people gave us personal mail, until a man announced that he had found $90.00 in one of the envelopes!!
Needless to say, no one else gave us any of the mail. We did however get his uncles funeral book, his world war II medals and several boxes full of personal mail. We even found his uncle's wallet with his drivers license, social security card and other personal info in it. What a day.
posted on March 28, 2002 03:48:36 PM new
Good for you rarriffle, It's good that you got some of your family's personal property back.
Most of the time when I buy a storage unit I will save personal papers and photographs and give it to the storage manager to give to the original owners. That is after I have gone through it lookin for cash and valuable documents such as bearer bonds, etc.
posted on March 28, 2002 05:02:10 PM new
yellowstone-----
Not that you had to by any means, but did you ever try to return any of the photos to members
of the family? Unless they are antique pictures, I doubt they would be worth much
on the open market.
posted on March 28, 2002 05:28:33 PM new
rarriffle-did you know that one of the storage lockers contained informaiton about your husbands family? They must not have sold the unit as a whole but auctioned off the contents instead. In our legal notices today there are going to be 4 storage units up for auction. Now, what I want to know is that the storage place has only been their about a year does that mean anything? What I mean is can you tell by how long it has been stored to what might be in the locker?
posted on March 28, 2002 05:40:48 PM new
professorhiggins-----
I never want to meet the members of the family of the person whom's storage locker I may have bought. The reason is that I don't want to have to hear them cry about losing that old lamp or that old trunk or that old something. Also there's the chance that they might hold it against me that I now own what used to be in their family's possession and then you never know what they might do.
This reminds me of when I used to sell at the flea market. Once when I was set up with all my stuff. Some in display cases, some on tables and some on the ground. A young lady came over to my space and all of a sudden while she was looking at my stuff she raised her hand to her mouth, she gasped and then she said OH MY GOD this is my stuff, where did you get this? I asked her if she had a storage space at such and such self storage. She gasped again, cursed and she said again OH MY GOD I forgot to pay my storage space rental. She then demanded that I return her possessions immediately. She started grabbing at her/my stuff and I was slapping her hands away. She left in a huff and returned in a short while with a county sheriffs deputy. Luckily I had my receipt in my wallet proving that I purchased her property legally. I showed it to the deputy but again she started grabbing at her/my stuff so I asked the sheriffs deputy to please make her stop, he did and he dragged her away by the arm kicking and screaming.
[ edited by yellowstone on Mar 28, 2002 05:50 PM ]
posted on March 28, 2002 06:01:43 PM new
Libra63---
It shoudn't make a difference how long the storage facility had been open as to what might be in the unit up for sale. Anything that you can think of that someone might have in their home could possibly be in that unit. Fine china, sterling silver tea service, Germantown indian blankets, gold doulbloons, pocket watch collection, yippee. Or boxes of broken dishes, toys with missing and broken parts, tupperware, not so old magazines, dirty blankets and linens. You just never do know, ho-hum.
posted on March 28, 2002 07:18:40 PM new
no we did not know his items were going to be in the auction today, a real shocker. I spent all the money I had with me on their stuff so couldn't even bid on what I went to bid on. oh well, another day another sale.
yes, they sold the items seperately, all stored in those huge heavy rubbermaid containers.
My husbands uncle collected salt and pepper shakers, had about 1200 sets. There was only one tub of those there, but I was able to purchase them (only 73 pair and about 40 singles).
A storage shed is usually not sold until 6-8 months after the owner stops paying. I really do not feel sorry for anyone who loses their stuff that way. I just wish I had seen the notice in the paper.
