Garage Sales Are Becoming Popular Again!
Over the past two decades, online shopping on sites such as Amazon and eBay have developed to such an extent that those are the first two sites people usually go to when they want to buy something other than groceries (for the time being). eBay especially, has been the number one platform for people to sell their used goods, essentially being an online garage sale mixed with an auction.
Online sales have many advantages over physical garage sales in that you have a much bigger pool of potential customers to choose from, meaning that 1) you are more likely to sell your products, and 2) you are more likely to get a higher price for them. However, over the past few years, we have been seeing physical garage sales becoming popular again, bar the first year of the Covid pandemic.
One man to who the sudden interest and resurgence in popularity of garage sales can be attributed is the entrepreneur, Gary Vaynerchuk (Gary Vee). Despite being the CEO of a media company worth over $100 million, he states he finds more happiness in flipping an item he finds at a garage sale on eBay, than he does sealing multi-million dollar deals. Owing to his huge social media following, there has been a surge in people attending garage sales, especially around his home state of New Jersey, keen to take on his challenge of earning an extra $100-1000 a week with this “side-hustle”. Anything from stuffed toys, comics, cheap games consoles or souvenirs, as long as there is a potential to make a healthy profit reselling them on eBay, he’ll take them.
Watching one of Gary Vee’s “trash Talk” Youtube or Instagram videos will make you realise how profitable buying and selling used goods can be if you have the right attitude. For me, growing up, garage sales, also known as car boot sales in the UK, were places where middle-aged and older people went every Sunday to find used clothes and junk that would eventually clutter their home, but not anymore.
The proliferation of the internet means that we can search the monetary value of almost any item at the drop of a hat. A quick scan of the barcode or even uploading an image of an item onto eBay or Amazon will show you the current price for it and the past selling prices. This has turned garage sales from slow-moving affairs to something more fast-paced and reliant on technology.
The next time you find yourself at a garage sale with the intention of reselling products you find there, take your time and really have a good look at the products available to really find your diamond in the rough. Doing your research beforehand on some of the items that are currently popular on auction sites such as eBay will also give you an upper hand when it comes to deciding what has sufficient value.