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

[TaylorB]

Nice work! I do a similar thing while I drink my coffee most day's and think about a fast lane business idea. Today I picked up 2 brand new gas fired boilers for 200 each, quick web research says they retail 5-6K. So now the hard part... Selling them! First I'll give Ebay a shot!

 

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[biophase]

Allen, I'd love to have two of those chairs if you could pick any more up for me!

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.

 

[AllenCrawley]

Allen, I'd love to have two of those chairs if you could pick any more up for me!

I went back today and unfortunately they were sold out. I spoke with the GM and she said they only had 8 to start with and sold all by end of day yesterday. I knew I should have acted when I was first there. When an opportunity presents itself be sure to act decisively.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Wow I missed the update on this one. The office chairs strike again!

 

[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.

 

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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.

 

[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.

 

[Deleted25642]

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.

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

 

[GuestUser140]

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!

What kept you from buying more used ambulances?

 

[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.

 

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[Deleted25642]

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.

Thank you Adam. Much appreciated.

 

[Leo Hendrix]

One Man's trash is another man's treasure, thanks for sharing!
This has really got me my mind working on checking out stuff for sale here at auctions or thrift stores.
I actually planned to do something similar as certain electronic goods like 2ndhand smartphones are quite cheap here(Taiwan) compared to my home country or some Western countries I presume, so I will have to see about flipping them online. I did not buy and resell to my home country as the distance is quite far and shipping costs eat up almost all the profit.

 

[LightHouse]

I just PAID 5k to have a boatload of office furniture hauled out front one of my properties. Someone asked why not sell it and store it, well i don't have time to mess with all that, i need it out, and out fast. Storage is the most expensive part of this business.

 

[sambreaker20]

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.

more YouTube guys that knows their stuff and provide great contents

Global voodoo
Dallas Moore


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Deleted25642]

more YouTube guys that knows their stuff and provide great contents

Global voodoo
Dallas Moore


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Great! Thank you. I'll add them the list.

I checked out some of the earlier mentioned resources by @adamhenry this morning, and YouTube is like a university for these things.

What a time we live in ;-)

 

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[kaqm]

Well, this thread certainly gave me the kick up the a$$ I needed...time to get out of the comfort zone!

 

[the5thpgriff]

What kept you from buying more used ambulances?

At the time I was making really good money as manager for a big retailer... working 60 hrs/week overnight. It justsaw this opp as an immediate gain and that was it. I thought I was going to just climb the retail ladder and was fine with that. I made excuses basically... no time to find the deals, I have twin 1 year olds, ect. This was before I read TMFL by the way

 

[jilla82]

dont pay too much attention to those Youtube channels.
Honestly...a lot of those guys are delinquents....and the info they give out isnt that great.
You can learn the basics from them...but thats about it.

The whole thriftstore/retail flipping is a huge hustle for information people now.
I try to avoid where the heard is going.

 

[GuestUser140]

At the time I was making really good money as manager for a big retailer... working 60 hrs/week overnight. It justsaw this opp as an immediate gain and that was it. I thought I was going to just climb the retail ladder and was fine with that. I made excuses basically... no time to find the deals, I have twin 1 year olds, ect. This was before I read TMFL by the way

So maybe the real question is.. what keeps you from placing an add for a used ambulance right now?

 

[the5thpgriff]

So maybe the real question is.. what keeps you from placing an add for a used ambulance right now?

Valid question... I have been working on another project and trying to stay focused on this one. I realized in the past I tried to do too many things at once. I have many ideas and sometimes I try to start on a bunch at one time. But it won't hurt me to place the ad. I'm going to post ads tomorrow for the surrounding areas. Thanks for the kick... it was needed! I'll post some results here later.

 

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[the5thpgriff]

Update: Why wait... I posted tonight on Craglist

 

[nem112]

Wow! This thread really inspired me!

 

[iceyblitz]

I love the way you are telling the principle.

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).

 

[Raoul Duke]

BUMP

@MJ DeMarco @AllenCrawley @Vigilante @Fox

Mark this thread: GOLD?

 

[MHP368]

The whole thriftstore/retail flipping is a huge hustle for information people now.
I try to avoid where the heard is going.

Never underestimate how lazy your competition is , storage auctions might be saturated but normal estate sales and public stuff? Everyone's bidding up junk online but no one shows up for a real auction, putting on pants is a huge barrier to entry for lots of folks

 

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[Vigilante]

BUMP

@MJ DeMarco @AllenCrawley @Vigilante @Fox

Mark this thread: GOLD?

The only reason I wouldn't mark this thread gold is because it is necro and because it was a baby step on his way to real gold, which he wouldn't discover for a few years after this.

 

[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.

Thanks @Raoul Duke for looking this past and reminding me. I made a deal with a used fortune company that they get first offer for all the furniture I have come available. They have to take it either way.

Some times they have to spend money to get rid of junk, some times they get a lot of free inventory to sell and make a large margin on. It works for them, and also solves a huge problem for me. Win\win!

 

[IronyIsTacky]

Necro-posting, I know, but reminded me of how I got banned from eBay an hour after signing up, a few years ago. Stories like these make me wonder about whether I should try to find a way to appeal it, find an alternative platform, I don't know.

 

[marfmarkus]

Love how simple and fun it is to just flip regular boring stuff into wealth