Back to School Season Means More Yard Sales

After a very very slow summer, with very few chances to hit yard sales, I was more than happy for the back to school season. It means weekends after weekends of community sales, school fund rising sales and other charity events.

My eBay Haul

This weekend wasn't the best but I did manage to find a few good things to resell. And all very cheap. 5 Euros (about 6$) for the near mint pink leather timberland boots, 4$ for the purple The Art Company sandals. Both brands usually sell well for me. The are among my favorite brands to resell. See my favorite shoe brands to sell on eBay here (we all have our own favorites, these are mine and they have always sell well for me).

I also found more Pinypon dolls/figurines (the lot came with Polly Pocket cats that I will list separately). They sell like hotcakes so I buy them anytime I find some (if the price is good). A set of 4 Australia Birds porcelain mugs. One sold immediately after I listed it and paid for the lot and more. The other 3 are pure profit. They don't go for much and will take time to sell but that's ok.

I cannot believe my luck, at the second yard sale I manage to find that absolutely gorgeous French Moustier porcelain salt box for only 6$. It's a nice one too with pastel colored birds butterflies and flowers. Very shabby chic. This one will most likely go on Etsy, although I may put it on eBay first and see how it goes. I also found a 70's Italian porcelain espresso set with big blue and yellow flowers on it.The large flower shop planter and the old French lemonade bottle were bought last year but I don't remember having posted about them. I also treated myself to a beautiful blue porcelain soap dish from Prague ceramic.

Moustier salt box

 Happy thrifting everyone!

Favorite Brands of Shoes to Sell on eBay but don't call these BOLO Please

Personally I don't often buy shoes to flip BUT I never pass on these brands:

El Naturalista: an eco friendly shoes company from Spain, with made in Spain products
The Art Company: another Spain company with made in Spain shoes (from Italian leather)
Birkenstock : famous German brand, made in Germany
Arcus : high quality French brand with some made in France models
Timberland: quality sport/outdoor shoes and boots


These are high quality brands, showing great craftsmanship and made to last. They are not "fad" brands. They are pretty expensive to buy new and they'll fetch good prices pre-owned on eBay.

Shoes are not that easy to sell mainly because you have an extra component to the basic sale of a product: the size! These brands sell very well, but you need to be patient. Some I have sold within a few days a posting, some took up to 2/3 months. But all have sold.


Always make sure they are in good clean condition before buying them at yard sales. I always use buy now on them, and sometime I add best offer. The El Naturalista have always sold for my buy now (depending on the models, between 40$ and 75$. You need patience!), the Birkenstock, anywhere from 25$ to 50$.

I have no experience with other brands, these are the only one I currently buy to flip.

I know BOLO are popular, but I won't call them that. Different size and colors and models can't really be called BOLO. Unlike the rest of these so call "Be on the look out for" products, there is very little risk of saturating the market and have the price drop so low on them that it's not even worth bothering.

I know there are other good brands out there that sell well, but these are currently the one I have success with.

Here's a gallery of some shoes I sold over the last few years:

El Naturalista Ballet Flats

El Naturalista Rana Tharu

El Naturalista Duna

And some Birkenstock:

 

What is your favorite brand of shoes to flip online?

2 of my Latest Yard Sale Hauls

May 22 haul includes a cheap Playmobil mix lot, a nice Champagne ice bucket, an old French Hot Water Bottle Bras, some jewelry (mainly vintage, nothing real hot, but so cheap that whatever it sells for it's going to be profit). Also found a rock climbing metal sculpture made by HINZ & KUNST. The cute plate and wine rack were bought online for resell.

May 22 haul

Jewelry, need to be research a bit

May 28 finds: toys and more toys! Pet Shop, Playmobil, Pinypon, Brio trains, Frozen etc.... I have good success selling toys so whenever the price is right I buy.

toys to flip!

May 21st 2016 eBay Haul

Gorgeous day today, so I went early and hit 2 yard sales in Grenoble. Both were pretty big and one of them was located in a nice park.

I ended up buying a lot of Littlest Pet Shop and way way cheaper then what I usually pay. Also got a huge (and I mean huge) lot of LPS accessories for dirt cheap (7$ for all the Littlest Pet Shop accessories you see in the picture below).

May 2016 eBay Haul

Sales of Littlest Pet Shop on eBay are not as good as they used to be. They still sell but not as fast as before. I blame this on two things:

1- lots of sellers now look for them because they are money makers.
2- But mostly,  the China sellers on eBay have flood the site with cheap knockoffs/fakes and buyers either don't come back to ebay because they feel they were scammed (they receive a cheap knockoff instead of a real Pet Shop) or they see cheap price so they think they get a deal.... so instead of buying the real thing they buy a fake.

But still what I got will sell, for less money then a year ago for sure, and they will move more slowly, but I'll still make decent money. And the accessories sell well (and the Chinese sellers don't produce fake accessories so they are not killing the market for these).

I also bought some cute necklaces, from South America. One is made from Tagua and the 2 others are made from paxiuba beads. I might keep them if they don't sell, I love them!

South American Fair Trade Necklaces

Also found a lovely cookie tin depicting a Victorian (horses and noble people):

Vintage tin

More yard sales tomorrow if weather is good. I also need to list some of today's finds!

Brocante Finds and an eBay Cassini Search Rant

Here's some of my recent brocante finds that will eventually end up on either Etsy or eBay!
Yard sales haven't been good lately so I rely on brocante (both online and offline).

In this lot: a very large cast iron rooster in a wonderful green paint (a door stopper most likely), a cute, whimsical little chick (ceramic), an old wood bench, a zinc florist vase, a fleur de lis zinc frieze, an old jam jar filled with marbles (I'll need to research marbles a bit, I know they sell well, but I know nothing about them. Might just make a big lot with best offer option)

Brocante finds

Otherwise, yard sales have been slow lately (luckily I have a lot of inventory not listed yet). I'll post about what I found later this week, nothing much thrilling tho.

Sales on eBay right now are very uneven, it's either a flood or a dry spell, something I have never experienced before. Something is very strange and I do hope it's only a temporary situation, not a taste of things to come... When buyers tell you "I have been looking for this for months on eBay" and your item has been listed for months, you know something is wrong. We all know Cassini search is not very good, but I feel that goes beyond that. Traffic seems off, it's like my store is visible then invisible. Of course the flood of cheap Chinese crap on eBay doesn't help anyone: buyers get burn and don't return, buyers cannot find what they want because the Chinese sellers are known to manipulate search so they go elsewhere....

What do I do then? I keep listing but no longer exclusively on ebay!