Howdy y'all!
I recently learned of the new @secondhand-finds community through my fellow @thealliance member @grindan, and got pretty excited! I saw that they were sponsoring a kickoff contest, and got even happier. So this is my entry for the contest, as well as my entrée into the community!
You see, I used to do the thrifting thing a LOT. Made 100% of my living off of it for several years, in fact, selling things on eBay & Amazon (mostly books, but occasionally other things). That sort of arbitrage was my jam for a long time, but a bit later in my years I also tried my hand at the upcycling thing - finding nifty items at thrift stores and garage sales, and turning them into even niftier things.
Allow me to illustrate...
A ceramic vase that I found plain, black, and chipped, and covered with this pretty crackled and alcohol-inked design.
A couple pair of earrings where I used the same technique - these let you see the detail of the alcohol ink and textured surfaces a little better.
Those are just a few of the many things I upcycled during that phase of my craftiness. 😄
I also have many other things from my bargain hunting days. You don't make your living doing this for multiple years and not find some fantastic keepers! Pretty things like this lovely, iridescent cobalt glass container that I use as a pen (and various other thing...) holder for my desk:
Photo by me, as is true for all the photos in this post.
My photography skills really don't do that one justice, but I was in a bit of a hurry. You see, I may or may not have committed to doing one Hive post per month, and today is the last day of February, so...
Anyhoo, nowadays, I mostly spend my time on the donation end of the thrifting food chain. Though when I'm there to drop off, I still sometimes have to stop myself from buying things to flip online. Not only do I no longer have the time; I also have to remind myself why I stopped doing it in the first place - I really didn't like spending hours writing descriptions & editing photos, making daily trips to the post office, packaging up oddly-shaped items, dealing with lost packages, and all the other hassles that came with online sales of physical items.
Someone with loads of time and energy can make quite a bit with it, though! Or at least, they could a couple decades ago. It's one of the reasons I had a smartphone back when they were still based on PalmOS. That way, I could always look up whether something was worth what I thought it was. Now, with everyone having a smartphone, I imagine the competition has gotten more fierce.
My Biggest Bargains
Of the two best things I remember ever finding, one is long gone, because of course my jam back then was selling things. But I'll tell you about it anyway! It was a copy of the Alcoholics Anonymous "Big Book."
Now. Folks who have never looked into bookselling might not know this, but the AA Big Book has been through many, many, MANY printings. And there are people out there who, for whatever reason, are absolutely obsessed with collecting one of each.
One day, while perusing a book sale about an hour away, I stumbled across one of these treasures. I'll be honest...it looked like crap. IIRC, the publication date was 1949 or so. It was missing its dust cover, and had quite a bit of wear and tear. So to be honest, I didn't expect it to bring very much money on eBay. Still, I'd had it drilled into me that these things were worth grabbing at thrift prices no matter the age and condition, so that's what I did. I think I paid a dollar or two for it? Definitely no more than five or six.
I got home and looked it up, and nicer specimens were selling for - get this - OVER $600. I started getting excited, but I didn't really know what mine could bring until I put it out into the world and let folks start bidding. So I took a metric shitton of photos, looked it over carefully and documented every flaw I saw, as well as the date, printing number, etc. Then I uploaded all the info and pics to eBay and crossed my fingers.
Wanna guess what it brought?
I don't remember the exact amount, but it was somewhere in the range of $460. That's a profit of over $450, just for knowing what I was looking at one day in a room full of moldy old books! Needless to say, that was a good day. 😁 Interestingly, it looks like prices have only gone up since then.
My other best find, I still have and use to this day. It's right here:
Please pardon all the dust and cat hair. It's had a bit of a rough life! 😅
The funny thing is, this is the second one of these I've owned, though the two weren't exactly the same model. The first one I bought for full price at a Circuit City, wayyy back in 1995 or so. And even back then, full price was in the neighborhood of $250. That one got sold off in my own garage sale, when I was selling my house in preparation to move onto a sailboat. Remind me to tell you that story some other time. 😇
This one though. This one came to me through pure serendipity.
I was out hitting the garage sales early one morning, looking for my usual haul of books and whatever else I could flip for a profit. I saw this sitting on a table, still wet with morning dew; either the guy running the yard sale had gotten up amazingly early, or he'd left his stuff sitting out overnight. Either way, I knew the damp wasn't good for it, but I figured if the price was low enough, I'd take a chance on it anyway.
So I asked him, "does it work?"
"Sure!" he replied.
"How much do you want for it?"
"$10."
My eyes bugged out and I snagged that puppy so quick it'd make your head spin. Sure, it was maybe 5-10 years old at that point, but $10 for a Sony amp? My momma didn't raise no dummies.
And it still works as well today as the day I brought it home! Those RCA plugs going in the front run from a computer across the room so I can blast whatever tunes I want, whenever I want, through my DCM KX-12 speakers (another secondhand buy, also picked up for a fraction of their cost new, though those came to me via eBay). Shew, those puppies rock!
So there you have it! I'm not sure which you would consider my best find, but both brought me amounts of happiness that were/are way out of line with the amount of money they cost me. 😁 I can't wait to see what other fabulous finds folks share to the Secondhand Finds community!
Have a great day, y'all!
All photos are mine unless otherwise stated.
Proud Member of Hive's Best Family!
