Step Right Up!

I have to admit that while my heart is still with the Fisher Price Little People that I remember from my childhood in the 1970s and 1980s, I'm warming up to some of the newer FP figures, like this little carnival barker. Fisher Price stuff from all eras is fun to buy although its selling potential on eBay (and elsewhere) varies widely. We bought a few newer (post-2000) playsets at yard sales last summer and found that the only stuff that bought us a really solid return was a big lot of Christmas-themed toys.

We sometimes sell individual pieces (like the little guy above) as "replacement parts" for other sets. People do sometimes want to buy a certain figure or part from an otherwise complete set. These aren't big ticket items, of course, but they are fun to buy and sell, and it feels like we're helping people to recycle and keep using their playsets rather than buying brand new stuff.

Just Call Me Your Personal Thrift Shopper

I'm not fashion-conscious enough to ever be a personal shopper, but sometimes I feel like I'm a personal thrift shopper for the people who buy items from me on eBay. I enjoyed thrifting for many years before I ever started selling anything on eBay, but of course my purchases were limited by the scope of what I personally could use or stuff that I knew my family and friends might enjoy. With selling stuff on eBay, I can always find something at the thrift store that I know will just be perfect for somebody out there, even though I don't really know who that somebody is...

Well, sometimes I buy things that the right somebody doesn't happen to see for quite a long time, but such is life. This week I was glad to sell this retro-style t-shirt. I have a weakness for tees with lettering that reminds me of the old-school iron-on lettering from the t-shirts of my youth. And I figured someone would get a kick out of the reference to MySpace.

The shirt was listed for months and months; I listed it sometime last summer, and it just sold now in February. But the cool thing was that the guy who bought it said he was glad to find it as he was going to be able to use it in a photo shoot. It just seemed cool to me that months later, this tee I found at the thrift shop was going to be in a photo shoot.

I think it's fair to say that I'm one of those people who love the simple pleasures in life. Thrift shopping and eBay sometimes have a way of brightening my day.

Love Those Crazy Shirts

With the holidays and then a new quarter starting (my day job is teaching), I haven't had much time to post to this blog, even though it is close to my heart! Well, I decided I had better post this week because I wanted to mention a great brand of t-shirts to sell on eBay: Crazy Shirts.

You can recognize the brand by the logo, which is generally on the sleeve and always on the tag inside the collar. It's a brand of tee sold in Hawaii. I think people love it because it reminds them of relaxing on vacation... Also, a lot of the tees have funny designs. If you ever find any of the Crazy Shirts with cats drawn by an artist named Kliban, you definitely want to buy them as they are especially popular.

Another cool thing this brand does is make specialty-dyed tees. I have seen Crazy Shirts dyed with Kona coffee and others dyed with lavender. Generally I find Crazy Shirts in the men's department, but the lavender dyed tees are sold in women's sizes.

You will find all sorts of fun designs from this label, including beer-themed tees which are a popular seller in general. I actually stumbled onto the brand through a beer-themed tee I happened to find at the Goodwill one day. Of course I enjoy a good beer-themed tee, and I really love a tee with a cat on it, but so far, the tee below is my favorite of the Crazy Shirts I've found.

I would say that these tees sell for an average of around $20, and you can often find them for just a dollar or two. The Kliban cat ones can go for more. If you have any Crazy Shirts tips to share, we'd love to hear from you in the comments!

Go Beyond Your Personal Taste

Much of my thrifting and online selling is centered around stuff I like. It's easier to have an interest in searching through racks and shelves of things I enjoy, and I don't even mind getting organized around storing things when it's stuff I get a kick out of looking at, like unique books and clever t-shirts. A lot of times I just buy stuff that I like and have a feeling that other people will like.

But of course you have to learn to expand your scope a bit as a seller. I mean, I'm no arbiter of taste, right? People like all sorts of stuff that I wouldn't necessarily want to buy. It's always a bit of a pleasure for me when I buy something a bit outside of my personal tastes which ends up selling right away--then I tell myself, hey, my instincts are pretty good about what sells!

I listed this Ronald Reagan tee this past Saturday, and it sold on Sunday. I knew when I saw it at Goodwill that just because I might not wear a Reagan tee doesn't mean that someone else wouldn't love it!

I guess you could say the Gipper won one for me.

How Many Items Should I List on eBay?

Well, school has started back up (my day job is working as a college English teacher), so I haven't had as much time to focus on eBay. I'd built up my number of listings to 130 total, as I'd taken advantage of a couple of promotions from eBay which allowed free listings. Many of those listings have expired--and some have sold!--and my number of listings is below 50 again.

My goal this weekend is to finish some schoolwork and then get my number of listings built back up. I think getting to 75 is a reasonable goal. I do have a lot of expired items that I could relist, which is easy enough, but I also want to get some new listings posted as I have some new "inventory" that I want to try posting. Suzanne and I went to a great rummage sale last weekend, and I have some t-shirts to list from that as well as some really cute vintage Playmobil toys which include several little skateboarder figures and their tiny skateboards. I also have three silk neckties, a cap from a beer company, and (of course) my usual pile of thrifted tees that I haven't gotten around to listing yet.

As a side note, I've noticed that the few hats I've listed have been good sellers. I've sold a Guinness beer driving cap, a University of Washington Huskies baseball cap, and most recently a Tyrol hat. Trish found the Tyrol hat at a garage sale a few weeks ago, and we made sure to list it right away, to catch the Oktoberfest crowd. Here's a photo.

I think the only hat that hasn't sold so far is the Indiana Jones hat Trish and I found at the Goodwill Outlet this summer. We're still hoping that someone will want it for a costume and that it sells before Halloween!

How many items do you try to keep listed on eBay? I'd love to reach 100 listings again. I know other people have even higher goals in terms of items listed, sometimes into the thousands!

Starbucks Bearista Bears

The Starbucks coffee line of plush teddy bears includes some very cute bears dressed in nice outfits. I found a golf-themed one for a friend's birthday--the little bear was wearing a golf outfit complete with a cap, and was carrying a set of clubs. I also found a winter-themed bear wearing a puffy jacket layered over a sweater. The level of detail in the bears is very nice, and you can generally find them for just a dollar or two each at thrift stores.

As with anything else, the price varies a lot on the bears. As of the other day, I hadn't listed any on eBay yet although I'd bought a couple that I've been meaning to list. Then Trish visited a few thrift stores while I was running some errands, and she had found a bearista bear dressed in a puppy costume and carrying a Chinese lantern--it's a bear made in 2006 to celebrate the year of the dog. Turns out that there's a series of international bears themed for different years in the Chinese lunar calendar, and they are very collectible! So rather than "meaning to list" this new bear, we photographed it right away!

Here's the listing for our Chinese New Year Bearista Bear. I listed this with a pretty high fixed price because there are very few of these bears available. We'll see what happens!

Football Season and Collegiate Tees

When I find t-shirts with college logos for 99 cents or less, I definitely pick them up. This is one of the latest tees I've bought along this line, for the Ole Miss Rebels. Well, they have a lot of fans because this listing has racked up lots of views and a couple of watchers. It's an older tee, but it's a cool classic logo.

Hopefully it will sell soon. Here's a link to the listing itself.

I often find cool tees for universities in Washington state, and I think a lot of out of state alums pick these up. So even if there are a zillion local college/uni tees in your local thrift shop and you think nobody wants them, somebody out there probably does!

An Intro to the Goodwill Outlet

The first time I went into a Goodwill Outlet, I thought the people wearing gloves and pushing around industrial-laundry-style wheeled carts with canvas sides were people who worked at the outlet. Nope. Those were the experienced shoppers.

The outlet works differently than the standard Goodwill store. Instead of things being arranged on shelves, you're in a warehouse environment where things are piled into bins. The bins are fairly shallow so that things don't get buried too deeply, but they're long and somewhat wide. So you've got a lot of ground to cover just to look through the stuff in one bin.

The other big difference from the retail stores is that stuff at the outlet is sold by the pound. There are different by the pound prices for different types of items; for example, clothing is $1.49 a pound, and housewares are $.49 a pound. The workers at the outlet will also give you a price on a specific item if you ask them, like if there's something heavy you want to buy that you don't want a by the pound price. And a few items do have per-item prices, such as books.

Not every city has a Goodwill Outlet, but they are spread around throughout the US. Where we live in Seattle, we can drive to two: the Seattle Outlet and the Everett Outlet. We went to the Seattle one a couple times (it's located just south of downtown), and then last Friday we went to the Everett once for the first time. It was interesting to compare the two stores. On the surface level, both are similar in that they have the same huge bins that people are sorting through, looking for those rare treasures (or, looking for who knows what?). But something felt more relaxed at the Everett store. I think it's because they are in a roomier environment, and they had things divided up a little more (for example, they had linens and clothing in separate bins while Seattle has these categories combined).

It takes a lot of patience to shop at an outlet because basically you have to sort through piles of stuff, and every now and then you turn up something interesting. But you do find great stuff sometimes! Last Friday we found this 100% wool Indiana Jones hat.

These Indy hats look to be good sellers on eBay, and I'm hoping that with Halloween coming up, we'll get a good price. At a retail thrift shop, I'm sure a hat like this would have been at least $4.99 (and I bet it would have been snapped up pretty quickly), but when buying by the pound, it cost us a fraction of that.