How I turned $20 into $8,500+ in 2 months

[AllenCrawley]

I had the great fortune to meet Jill from this forum at B&P 2013 who is a savvy and profitable eBay seller. We were sharing stories and this is one I shared with her. She encouraged me to post a thread here giving some of those details.

This was about 10 years ago when we were doing a lot of sales on eBay.

Each week my wife and I visited 2 auctions houses looking for items to buy and resell on eBay. One week we came across a bank liquidation auction. One of the large banks here were selling all their office furnishings. We came in a bit late and most of the stuff had already been sold except for a bunch of Steelcase Criterion office chairs. 5 chairs in excellent shape sold for about $50-75 each. There were 91 chairs left, most of which were not in the best condition. Cracks in the arm pads, dirty/stained/ripped fabric, broken components, etc. However about 20 of them were still in fair condition. The auctioneer became frustrated as he continued to try to sell the remaining chairs at $50 each but no one was biting. He then decided to sell them as one lot with a starting bid at $300... no bidders... $250... no bidders... $200... then $150... still nothing. It was obvious his frustration was compounding. He then blurted out "Somebody start the bid!". I quickly yelled out "$20!". He emphatically shooted "Sold!" Effectively not giving anyone else an opportunity to bid.

I just bought 91 office chairs for $0.22 each. I then quickly thought "How am I going to get all these home?". I knew nothing about these chairs. I had no idea at that time what the retail price of these chairs were or how much they may be able to be sold for or anything. I just saw an opportunity and responded.

I made arrangements to pick them up the next day. I went home and did some research on these chairs and was pleasantly surprised to see this model of chair sold for $600-$800 new and a few good condition used and refurbished ones were selling on eBay for $300-$500 each!

I got the chairs home and figured out how to reupholster the seat and back and how to disassemble for easier shipping. I then typed out re-assembly instructions for the buyers. My wife and I went to JoAnn Fabrics to pick out some nice higher end fabrics. I bought a few cans of spray adhesive, went home and got started.

Of the 91 chairs 20 of them were in pretty good condition so we just cleaned and reupholstered those and sold them for an average of $350 each. Another 12 had some minor cracks in the arm pads but we still reupholstered them and sold them for $125 each. I placed an ad in the local newspaper and sold a lot of 10 as-is for $100 and another lot of 10 for $50.

The remaining chairs were not good enough to sell so I just used those for parts as I made repairs to the others.

After adding the cost of new fabric, spray adhesive and some minor repair parts to the cost of the chairs, our cost per chair ending up being $0.90 or almost $82. A net profit of $8,568 (minus eBay fees).

I hope you found this valuable or at least an interesting read. There is a whole world of opportunity out there. NO EXCUSES!

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Great story Allen and thanks for sharing.

Just goes to prove that a particular product offered up to 100 or so individuals may have no value ... however, when that same product is offered to the WORLD, it can have tremendous value.

There is also opportunity like this in books -- go to a thift store and you'll find some books sitting on the shelf for $0.99 -- they could be bought and resold in the global marketplace for 4,5, sometimes 10X more ... you are simply changing the point-of-sale from a limited market (a neighborhood store) to unlimited. (global/ebay).

 

[AllenCrawley]

Yesterday I went to a local thrift store to look for a couple items that will help me in the production of my product. Would you believe I see two Steelcase Leap Chairs for sale there? For $10 each! These sell on ebay used for $250 - $600.

As I'm looking at the chairs, one of the employees strikes a conversation. She says a business upgraded their office chairs and brought in all the old chairs. I ask, How many? She answers, "A lot". "Sold all but these two?", I ask. She says, "No, these are the first two we've brought out. We can't bring anymore out until these two sell."

At this point I don't know the resell value of these chairs but know that profit is there to be made. I look over the two chairs thoroughly and bought one of them as the other has some damage.

I get home. Clean up the chair. Looks near new. Look up resell values on ebay's completed auctions for the Leap Chair. Determine that if I reupholsters the seat and back (minor stains) I could sell for about $450 easily.

Also, I notice that the chair pistons alone are selling for up to $50 on ebay. So I could buy the damaged chair for $10 and resell the piston for $40-$45. Going back this morning to pick up that chair if still available and then ask management if I could look thru the others in the back. See if a deal could be made.

 

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[Robbypz]

I fell into a few deals like this several years ago. I had a movie theater maintenance company at the time and did a call on a small chain of theaters here locally, I got the account and went out to their warehouse to pick up a bunch of projectors that needed serviced, while I was in the room I noticed an old popcorn popper that I thought would be cool in my home theater, asked the guy if he wanted to sell it and he said you can just have it, matter of fact, I would like to clear this whole place out, take it all. Right away I was on the phone with Uhaul, got a large truck and loaded it all up. Before I got home he was calling me telling me that he had another large storage facility in Oklahoma that he wanted cleared. I jumped in my car and went down there, it was like walking in a gold mine. The place was packed floor to ceiling with vintage speakers and tube amps, couldn't believe that they wanted to throw it all away. After parting out all of the speaker cabinets and racks full of amplifiers I made over $55k just on that Oklahoma trip.
I ended up going to 5 different locations they had and picking up stuff that year, well worth the effort.


Oh, I got their service contract for all of their theaters as well.

 

[randomnumber314]

You have some mysterious sense that leads you to office chairs.

 

[LightHouse]

Let me tell you the open opportunity here. Plenty of property management companies deal with the issue of furniture, most of the time they have to pay to have furniture removed if a tenant leaves it. There is a huge opportunity to just talk to the companies and tell them you will haul it away for free. Most of the time they have companies come look at it and say that they can't sell it right away so they charge to pick it up. But that doesnt account for anyone that wants to refurb the furniture and then sell it.

Office furniture is a huge boring market, there are a few people making a killing on it.

 

[Ivan]

Nice! It's not sexy, but it makes money. Everybody wants to be the guy who flips new iPhones, exotic cars, or web sites. But a lot of times, you can dominate a "boring" market and make a killing.

 

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[TK1]

 

[AllenCrawley]

Yupp I'm bumping my own thread a year after the last post, lol. Someone looking for ways to generate bootstrapping money messaged me looking for it so here it is.

 

[vinylawesome]

About 10 years ago. At an auction that sold surplus goods. I had just started buying and selling things on ebay. There was a full pallet of kids jeans stacked 6 feet high. There were Levi Strauss, Lee, Wrangler, etc.

The auctioneer started the bidding at $200 ... $150 ...... $100 ... $50....

"$20 is the lowest will go or will pulling the lot."

I bid the $20 and won.

Had no idea what these were worth but figured it was worth a lot more than $20. After I got them home I realized that many had small scuffs in the knees. These were surplus kids jeans after all.

However, I figured what Mom wouldn't want "play clothes" for their kids. So I set out and sorted the jeans by quality, brand, and size.

About, 10 percent were in great condition. Sold these in smaller batches for about $4 dollars a pair.

80 percent were great for play clothes. Sold in lots of 10-25. Averaged about $1 per pair.

10 percent were rough. Sold them as rags / Rough play clothes. Some were thrown away. Averaged 50 cents a pair.

All in sold a little over 1,500 pair of jeans and made a little over $1500 net, after ebay fees, shipping, etc.

I was in high school and that was my biggest deal at the time.

Showed me that this entrepreneurship thing...

Was real..

 

[Vigilante]

What Allen did was not luck, had he not been thinking with a business focus, that wouldn't have happened. 99% of people would have walked right by those chairs and continued with their day. That is not luck, that's opportunity, decisive thinking, and execution.

"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." - Michael Jordan

 

[RHL]

You have some mysterious sense that leads you to office chairs.

People need to realize this is just a product of seeing the "nail" once you've become a hammer. Once you know an area, you're on the lookout for it. A normal person would never see an office chair at a thrift store and smell money, but Allen knows better. I bet @RichKid had a "sense" about video games that could be gotten on the cheap too. The "sense" is even more powerful when the item isn't commonly associated with turning a profit. Thrift store sifters are always after Armani jackets and vintage baseball cards. I bet not one in 500 is looking at furniture (due to size, lack of glamour, etc.), so if you're the one, you're going to have big opportunities.

Ex. With about 2 hours of work (mostly driving and typing) last week, I made $580 reselling a very isoteric part for a car. It was for sale on craiglist with a poor add with bad pictures, and was a niche product that very few of the people browsing his keywords would want, I bought it and moved it to a sales area with lots of buyers interested in it and took DSLR photos with a comprehensive description. Sold in one afternoon, seller hadn't even deposited my check before my payout was back in my bank account. I see opportunities like this all the time, it's only the aggravation of driving that stops me from capitalizing on them constantly.

Oh, and obligatory:

 

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[andviv]

Office furniture is a huge boring market, there are a few people making a killing on it.

Read my signature.

 

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[socaldude]

There is also opportunity like this in books -- go to a thift store and you'll find some books sitting on the shelf for $0.99 -- they could be bought and resold in the global marketplace for 4,5, sometimes 10X more ... you are simply changing the point-of-sale from a limited market (a neighborhood store) to unlimited. (global/ebay).

You took the exact words out of my mouth.

I did the same thing a while ago allen did but with books. A local bookstore in my city was going out of business and the owner sold me a shit load of books and bookshelves as a "liquidation lot" for $300. I bought 4 big a$$ high quality bookshelves for $200 and around 100 books for $100.

For example a book that was included in this lot was this book: The Art of Monsters Inc Autographed Disney Hardcover Book 0811833887 | eBay . I essentially bought it at an average cost of $1 and I put it on ebay and sold it for $200 at auction! It looks like they are going for around $100 now.

Included in that lot where a lot of old a$$ dictionaries. Who the hell knew that there was a collectors market for this? I sold a set of 5 on ebay for $50! And I sold a 1955 leatherbound medical dictionary for $40! Then I sold 3 bookshelves on craigslist for $100 each, I kept the other. I kept a few of the other books and sold the others here and there for a few dollars (ebay, amazon, personal friends etc).

Total profit(not revenue)? Around $600. Not bad for a 3-4 hour investment. Thats a 200% return on investment! or $150 an hour!
Not bad if you are a broke college student .

It's incredible how many types of markets there are. And if you just "expand" your knowledge of these markets and how you can deliver value or repackage it then you can make a lot of extra income or even a legit Fastlane business.

 

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[AllenCrawley]

Let me tell you the open opportunity here. Plenty of property management companies deal with the issue of furniture, most of the time they have to pay to have furniture removed if a tenant leaves it. There is a huge opportunity to just talk to the companies and tell them you will haul it away for free. Most of the time they have companies come look at it and say that they can't sell it right away so they charge to pick it up. But that doesnt account for anyone that wants to refurb the furniture and then sell it.

Office furniture is a huge boring market, there are a few people making a killing on it.

In the late 1990's I was managing a mortgage company. I believe it was in 1999 that we were looking for 4 office desks as we were hiring more loan officers. We went to an on-site auction that was selling a huge warehouse full of office furniture. It was the kind of auction where the auctioneer walks thru the building selling items as he goes with the bidders following him. I remember that there were so many people there that we were tripping over each other.

We arrived during the pre-auction inspection time. We walked the part of the warehouse that held all of the desks. There were literally hundreds of desks. Somewhere around 400 (my best guess). Now, we picked out about a dozen or so desks that we would bid on hoping we could snag 4 of them.

Just so happens that the desks were the last items up for bid. We were there for about 5 hours before they got to these blasted desks, lol.

Imagine our disgust when they announced they were selling them in lots of 50, not individually! - "Are you frackin' kidding me?"

Let me shorten this story a bit. We ended up buying 2 lots! Yes, 100 desks. Now, these were not the run of the mill, cheap desks. These were large executive desks made out of walnut or cherry with leather inlay desk tops.

I'll save the story of moving all these beasts for another time. So, we got our 4 desks and over the next couple years we sold the remaining desks for anywhere from $100 - $500 (depending on condition). Oh, by the way, we only paid $400 for all of them (plus the cost of a huge UHaul truck).

 

[million$$$smile]

Wow! Great story! Even if you would have paid 5 times the amount of $100, you would have done nice. Just goes to show you what one can do by taking it upon themselves to create value out of something everyone else passed over. If you would have stopped, explained the opportunity to those in attendance, there perhaps would have been several that would have caught the vision....
then again, maybe not.

speed +
Randall

 

[Mike39]

It's 1 time deal and not a business because you cannot repeat it again, again and again. OK, I was lucky to pick up a lot of 14 old postcards per 5 bucks a month ago. I've sold 2 of them for 940 bucks. The other 12 ones are junk. I call it the good luck.

What Allen did was not luck, had he not been thinking with a business focus, that wouldn't have happened. 99% of people would have walked right by those chairs and continued with their day. That is not luck, that's opportunity, decisive thinking, and execution.

 

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[andviv]

I met a guy whose business was to go buying all the kitchen equipment from restaurants that went out of business. He then would take amazing pictures of them and store them, while posting the classified ads on craigslist.

I had no clue how expensive the exhaust hoods were!

He told me that more than once he had bought the equipment from the liquidation and sale and then resell it to the people opening a new restaurant in the exact same spot.

 

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[Hassassin]

Wow. This stuff is addictive to read.

I say there should be a thread called "The hustlers chronicles" where everyone should post any recent or noteworthy hustles/bootstrapping operations so everyone can be inspired and educated!


What ya'll think !?

 

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[the5thpgriff]

I've always sold "stuff". A couple years ago one of my friends told me they knew a guy who was trying to sell an ambulance. At first I was thinking how the hell did he get an ambulance and is it stolen... turns out his father had a medical transport business and he passed away. The son just wanted to sell everything and he had one of the vans left.

I called him and found out he only wanted $9,000 for it. Told my friend to go out to the house and get some pictures to send to me. I put it up on Craigslist the same day for $17,000. I knew people buy these vans for food/ice cream trucks.

Within an hour I had tons of emails. The highest offer was $15,000. I told my friend to meet the buyer and seller to view the van the next day. By that evening I had a check in my hand for $6,000! Of course I split it with my friend for telling me about the opportunity.

$6K in 2 days for posting a Craigslist ad and answering a few emails... Not bad!

I never tried but... you probably could do this in your own community. I'm from Maryland's Eastern Shore. People are always selling a car or boat on their front lawn. 9 times out of 10 they are older folks and don't have it listed online. Stop by and find out all the necessary info you would need to sell that car/boat, do some research and see if there is room for you to make some money by finding a buyer. Hit Craigslist, Facebook, Twitter and email to get it sold quick and for the price the seller needs. The rest is yours.

It's pretty much what I used to do wholesaling real estate in Baltimore back in 2005.

 

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[adamhenry]

There's a couple amazon seller groups and other Craigslist flippers I follow on Facebook and YouTube. The interesting part is that what is often profitable, is not what you'd expect. For example, some people pick up packages of adult diapers at thrift stores and resell online, likewise old out of date office equipment like printers and toner cartridges etc.

Essentially, what it means is that the items that are profitable are often the items thrift stores often have in abundance - the things everyone are looking for in a thrift store are already picked over.

 

[adamhenry]

Think you could post a couple of those links to your fave flippers, so I could check them out and learn more?

Www.recraigslist.com

Also search YouTube for:

Resale Renegade
Bonafide Hustler
Raiken Profit
The College Picker

Should get you started. Some of the guys are irritating, but they know their stuff.

 

[andviv]

Allen, I confess, I am still upset with you for not presenting at B&P... you have soooo much valuable content to add, it is well worth your time for presentations next time to be one hour.

Speed ++

 

[GPM]

This is great! It really drives home the point that there is always a way to make something work. Take off those blinders and keep your eyes peeled for opportunity!

 

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[Ãœbertreffen]

SPEED+.

While the deal is unique and rarely repeated, it's the process of capitalizing on an opportunity regardless of being a one time deal or not. Some have opportunities right in front of them and they still do nothing.

This reminds me a few years back of a business right next door that went under. They took their empty dumpster out back and filled it to the top of product. At that point I don't think they cared.

Sticking out of the top were three professional floor buffers. A few doors down was a flooring company we knew very well. Instead of selling, we told him he could have them. They all worked and were worth thousands each.

I don't recommend people start dumpster diving, but it goes to show that opportunity is literally everywhere.

 

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[AllenCrawley]

It's 1 time deal and not a business because you cannot repeat it again, again and again. OK, I was lucky to pick up a lot of 14 old postcards per 5 bucks a month ago. I've sold 2 of them for 940 bucks. The other 12 ones are junk. I call it the good luck.

Luck favors the prepared.

 

[sambreaker20]

Like MJ said there are huge opportunities with books, especially textbooks and behavioral and health care book. For example:

Went to a thrift store, bought a native American type textbook for $5 and sold for $150 with 3 months on amazon fba, funny part was the person that bought it lived about 1 miles from my apartment.

The company I work for sometimes gives away old books or books that they dont want to publish, I have made over $600 by sending those books to amazon fba. Since they're newer mental and healthcare books they sell quick too. Free money!

Another item thats sell quick and you can pick up for cheap are ps2, broken ps2 sell for more and sell best in a lot of 3 or more. what I did was put up 2 to 3 ads on craiglist under electronics/toys/free. Will Buy Old/Broken PS2 for $10, will pick up, System doesnt have to have cords, and has to be in one piece. Best sale was 5 PS2 on ebay for $220, after fee's profit is around $130, If you do this make sure you get flat rate boxes and the nice thing is the buyers will usually message saying you dont have to package it so snug. Make sure you put Sold broken as is for parts and the system code in the title and description.

 

[biggeemac]

Not exactly fastlane, but my wife scored us three years worth of toilet paper doing this. Hey, thats money that we get to keep in our pocket that would have been spent wiping our asses.

 

[AllenCrawley]

Dude - I love reading stories like this! Did you have any idea at the time how well this would play out?

Haha, not a clue! I can't tell you how much I hoped to find more of these chairs at auctions.

 

[AroundTheWorld]

Wait till you meet me and you will see I speak just like that... something to do with the accent, you know?

Say my name..... undress

Missed seeing you at B&P.... will go next year....

 

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