First Crack, Mostly a Bust

So, in th beginning of my journey, I'm thinking I need to start small. $250 isn't much to play around with, so how can I increase that a few hundred, or even grow it to a couple thousand?

Naturally, I look to my past experiences and "what I know", and something I've always enjoyed doing is shopping for great deals at local auctions, looking for tools/furniture etc. In fact, a couple weeks ago we were at an auction with TONS of good items, not a big crowd, and I just sat there shaking my head at the grossly low prices things were going for. Low enough I could buy and re-sell items, even at a great deal to whomever bought them from me.

As a guy trying to turn $250 into a couple thousand to get things moving, I figure I'd go buy some of those things and flip them closer to their real value for some quick and easy dollars. Plus, we had some friends from Indiana in town and one set of parents already wanting to go, so it would be fun as well as profitable.

It was a bit ominous pulling up, the crowd was noticeably bigger, clearly with dealers similarly shopping for re-sellables. The stock of tools, one of the things I'm a little more familiar with, was pretty limited on power tools and other medium-dollar items, and had hundreds of wrenches and other hand tools. The furniture was pretty limited and not especially re-finishable. Long-story-short, it wasn't nearly the low hanging fruit I saw a couple weeks ago, and while there might have been some buys good enough to have a margin, it wasn't on things I was very familiar with.

My haul was a paltry lot of two tools, a power stapler and a small sander. Total investment was low at $7.50, and it looks like it might be about $25-35 total value on ebay. Nothing devastating, but I was hoping for larger margins and about 20-40 similar items. Oh well, the family had a great time and bought a few things for the house, so the time was well spent. I'll list the things on ebay and craigslist and hopefully move them.

I still think these auctions can be a good source of some easy dollars (at least at small volume/$$ amounts), so I'll keep looking for another home run sale. What I did notice, though, is that even though it was mostly a bust for the project, we had fun and spent some good family time... pretty solid day!