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I bought an oil painting for about $2.50. I sold it for $350.00 which was a grave mistake. I found out it is worth considerably more. I have some neat chairs that I collect. Some are Civil War era, Mission Style, and two are from a Janet Rosenbaum collection from the 50's. I pay around $6.00 a piece for these kind of chairs. I have a set of lamps that I also bought for $5.00 they are selling on ebay in the $125.00 a piece price range.
Its the same with clothes I have a men's suit coat that I paid $12.00 for. It had never been worn when I got home the price tag was still sewn on the inside of the sleeve. This was a $1200.00 Club Coat. I have rare books also. I don't do albums anymore, I think too many people are buying and selling them. So more than likely any thrift shop you go into some one has cleaned out all the good stuff. Normally I am not a reseller the painting was just a fluke and I have other art work that know is also valuable that I paid very little for.
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I would find them and flip them once upon a time. The purse market is tricky. They have become to expensive and I am not seeing any worth buying for flips in forever.
I am not trying to pick on people, but they need to, and I am certain some do, as the poster above does that retail is almost meaningless in the secondary market.
Sterling serving spoon (large) from an 1830's era American silversmith, 10 cents at a thrift store. Found several pieces of sterling there, up to $1 each. I kept them. I like silver.
Most valuable item I ever sold was a limited first edition (privately printed) that I got for free after a library book sale. Funny thing was, book sale was held in conjunction with an annual antique sale next door, so potentially many antique dealers could have seen it. I sold it to a private collector for $2K +.
Also did really well at a "side of the road" flea market type sale, where I bought a collection of handmade lace pieces for $5. Sold them individually on ebay for over $500.
I've never found something worth hundreds/thousands yet while thrifting, mostly just nickel-and-dime type of finds (e.g something that cost $5 worth maybe $10-25, but nothing in the hundreds or thousands). Living in an affluent region also means more estate sellers use eBay or pricing guides to price them accordingly. I have found some decent if not spectacular finds at a sidewalk sale of a bookstore that specializes in rare books. For $15 total recently, I got a copy of Paul Morand's 1930 New York guide, Princeton's Medieval Cites: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade (1925), Florida's Golden Sands by A.J. Hanna and Kathryn Abbey Hanna (1950), a folio of several issues of the Indian periodical Sarvodaya from the 1950s, My Diaries 1888-1914 by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (the 1932 single volume edition), and In Brightest Africa by Carl E. Akerley (1923).
The OP was a VHS junkie which I also am, and unfortunately, few thrift stores stock blank VHS tapes, with the Goodwills tending to not accept them at all, and of the content I do find, it's mostly from the late '90s and 2000s decade, with the pre-Internet era recordings becoming harder to find. Most of my luck has come on Craigslist, where I've managed to snatch a FREE shipment of about 20 Redskins games from the early '90s, including original commercials from the DC area, halftime reports, and many pre-postgame shows, and those tapes also included many episodes of Jeopardy! as well. I also purchased a Criagslist lot of over 100 Betamax tapes from a seller in Pennsylvania earlier this year for about $2 a piece, and that included some rarely recorded shows like Dance Fever, Solid Gold, Hee Haw, The Benny Hill Show, Dreamgirl USA, many beauty pageants (including a few Mrs. Americas), original airings of some Love Boat/Fantasy Island episodes, tapes from both the 1984 winter and summer Olympics, a bunch of Circus of Stars specials from the '80s, and over 40 tapes of Star Search, literally nearly half of the series run with Ed McMahon from its beginning to 1991. So much more exciting than the movies with a few HBO promos or worse yet, movies with the commercials cut our or copied from another tape. eBay finds for these good tapes keep getting more and more expensive, though I did snag a tape recorded in November 1979 with many kids' commercials on them from a Saturday afternoon movie, some of them not posted on YouTube and part of a lot of 10 tapes for $20.
You just have to be careful to on Craigslist as I've heard horror stories involving scammers, with the biggest red flag being these elaborate "stories" on why they need to find a better home for something. Still, I'm not too much of a furniture junkie due to their heavyness unless if I have a practical use for them, and tend to focus on old print/analog media (including comics), coins, and some old toys as well. I'd look out for painting/sculpture/jewelry of course, but it seems like they get harder to snatch with each passing year.
Last edited by Borntoolate85; 10-28-2019 at 09:38 AM..
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Books come in by the boatloads. That is a tricky market. VHS is even tougher.
I have scored on comics, but only once. And I had to pay $$$ for the lot. It was worth it.
I have sold many times on CL but only ever bought one time years ago.
And don't let the internet forum jockey's tell you what you should pay for something. Do your homework. Those clowns can often times have you overpaying for something. Or disparaging something you may want without the kind of context that should be given. You can find a knowledgeable poster, but you have to wade though a sea of boobs to find those smart folks..........
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Read the post above my previous post. That poster is indicating that he may have been born in 1985.
What's nonsense to many boomers, and early gen x'rs the millennials eat up.
Who do you think drives the fantasy market; the comic book movie market? Anybody can, but the millennials are the predominant driver of this stuff.
Horror VHS is one that's big. And Disney can be big.
I buy records to flip them, and very rarely keep them, but I got into them AGAIN because they were dirt cheap. I learned a lot about music. Many of the VHS collectors may be doing the same with movies. Most thrifts I am in want $2 for a CD, or DVD which is nonsense. Rarely do I ever see a CD that I could get more than that. But VHS are usually 50 Cents, and reissuing much of the desirable material just isn't feasible. I could add more, but see where I am going?
This is why they make chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla........choices+collectibles+internet = market
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