What have been your biggest ebay surprises?

[hypoman]

I bought a 49ers sweater that had an old time miner panning for gold in the foreground and the city of San Francisco with the bridge in the background for $1.......sold for $40..........my wife told me "No one wants something like that." Haha

 

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[Nightowl 280]

I bought a 1970s schwinn touring bike at a garage sale for $20 sold it for $500. I bought a box full of vintage bar stuff for $7.50 sold for $150. My best was a box of vintage jewelry at an auction for $5, got $50 worth of silver, $50 for a collectable christmas bell ornament, and $300 for a vintage marked costume jewelry necklace.

I sold a old school touring bike at a garage sale for 20 bucks that i got for free . I wonder ......

 

[centfladigger]

I have access to a creek where I dig up agatized coral andwould bring it home and a freind who flintknaps said I should sell it on EBay, so I listed a box and it sold for $75 , for 30lbs of coral. after about 6 months of this I stopped ebay and had plenty of customers by then and dont have to pay those dang fees any more.
I have sold 400+ FRB`s in the past few years. Just sold 3 last week for a total of $190. My 10 year old son wanted some quick $$ for something he wanted to buy, so I took him to an old section of the phosphate mines down here and we filled a few 5 gallon buckets phosphate ( they are loaded with sharks teeth) and we filled 4 FRB`s that day and I went on a forum I am on and the all sold for $35 in about 30 minutes, they paid paypal and I let him use the card for his toy he wanted.
There is money in most things out there and it is fun making it
I wont even tell about some of the things I see whileI work, I do foreclosure home inspections and find vacant homes with all kinds of stuff left behind( sad actually)

 

[Diamond Spike]

I bought an old clutch aligator skin hand bag at a church rummage sale for .25 cents and auctioned it on ebay for $75 Woohoo

 

[olepossum]

my best to date was i found a box of old car manuals by the trash can of a neighbor that was moving out of town and was selling them for 25bucks a piece almost all were old ford stuff i had i olds manual for a rocket 88 from 1958 some guy from brazil wanted it i told him i was just selling in the us he said i dont cre i want it i have one i just rebuilt it went for 85 dollars and 35 bucks postage so i made $295.00 off of a free box of car manuals found in the trash .

 

[SCdigger]

I've only recently begin actively selling again...but back in the '90s...I was very active selling NASCAR and racing memoribilia...not ready-made stuff like die cast, but autographs, uniforms, vintage postcards...etc. ANYWAY...I can remember going on to Ebay's NASCAR section and there being oh, maybe 800 things for sell at any given time...I just checked, and there are currently over 41,000 things for sell there today. But anyway, you could get some deals AND make some money.

Best buy/sell deal I made in the day, was bidding on an auction that simply stated, "Three autographed racing posters." No other description. No pictures. I figured if they were just individual driver's I could sell them for $15 each. I dropped the $14 bid on it, and won it as no other bidders bid.

Posters arrived. One Morgan Shepherd poster (yuck), one Ken Schrader poster (yuck), and one early 90's poster from one of The Winston All-Star races signed by EVERY driver on it (not yuck)...it included Davey Allison, Alan Kulwicki, Earnhardt et. al. Some 20 or so drivers. Sold it for $650.

That was my single best score.

GT

 

[allen]

bought 100 old records at an auction for $1.00( the only bid)
and ended up selling them for $2.00 each at a yard sale.
I know it said EBAY suprise, but This was before I knew about EBAY !

 

[Plumbata]

Great stories people, reading your accounts has been very enjoyable!

A few years back I was picking through garbage the night before garbage day, and found a bunch of 1950s toys and papers/ephemera from a former school teacher. Also found 6 bucks in '60s 1 dollar bills sometime later as the estate cleanout continued. Sold plenty of toy cars, etc for good money, but the best item was this, a 1st generation "Pluto Platter" from the late 50s. Toys were probably confiscated from troublemaking students by the teacher, hehe. Didn't know what it was when I listed it, but several excited bidders educated me regarding the fortuitous find:


It sold for 556.00. Not bad for free, heh. Took the girlfriend out for a 90 dollar crab-leg feast at Red Lobster to celebrate the good fortune. I am far more experienced with truly old items, not "vintage" stuff, so the ending price blew me away.

Not so much of a surprise, as i am an antique bottle digger/collector, but I dug this rare Iron Pontiled pickle jar from 1849-1854 in a 1910s dump discovered while at university and sold it for 1,250.00. Also, not bad for free:


I've had literally hundreds of other great scores and subsequent sales, but these are the best in terms of profit percentage that I can recall.

 

[terryo]

My wife bought a vomit smelling little Ginnie doll, and a bag of equally vomit smelling clothes for her for 2 bucks,
and I gave her a hard time about it.....
Till I got 600 bucks for a vomit smelling doll, that I listed as "having an offensive odor"...What could I say then?
( And the buyer said she loved it!)

 

[TreasureWriter]

I'll second that LM. It's not as good today. In 2000 anything would sell on Ebay. I was teaching an E-Commerce class in Pittsburgh and as a challenge I went outside to a gas station that had closed with a couple students and grabbed some old oil cans out of the dumpster. We ended up getting $35 for what was really junk. They were 10-15 years old but not collectable. Today you really need to know what is collectable. The real advantage to Ebay is that you can buy locally and sell to a worldwide market. I once sold a microscope for over $200...another dumpster find....to an insurance adjuster in the Philippeans who had to replace that same old model after a storm there. I actually do more buying than selling now a days. It's a good place to find great prices on new items especially things like printer ink or metal detectors!

 

[diggummup]

I buy all my printer ink off of Ebay, it's definitely cheaper than Office Depot. Alot of the glass and pottery items I deal with that would have sold for $100-$200, 8-10 years ago, you'd be lucky to get $50 for nowadays, unless it's a specifically rare piece. Then there are other items where the complete opposite is true. You have to be able to keep up with the times so to speak. I'm just hoping some of the stuff that has lost it's value is only temporary and will eventually cycle back around and become popular again. I can hope anyway.

 

[bazinga]

I'm just hoping some of the stuff that has lost it's value is only temporary and will eventually cycle back around and become popular again. I can hope anyway.

Sadly, I don't see that happening. The vast majority of my generation views it all as junk and thinks it all is ugly. And while there are small groups of my generation that really gets into Art Deco, Mid-Century Modern, etc, they are the exception to the rule. It's sad, but that's how it is. They can't appreciate quality items. All they see is an ugly piece of Roseville pottery with some pinecones on the side. And what's even worse, very few are able to understand the concept of these items actually being valuable. I wonder how many rarities are being tossed in the trash each day across the country by heirs that think it's just old worthless junk.

 

[greatwhitetailhorns]

I have many I bought a duck call last weekend for. 50 cents its up to 107.50 and has 42 watchers and 2 days left. I bought s boat for 75 dollars 2 years ago everyone said why did I buy it I said heck the aluminium is worth more than that. But I put on ebay to see if I could get any bites it sold for 3100 dollars
. I could go on and on but if it is unusual buy it if its cheap usually pays off. I bought a walker today for 5 dollars see what it gets me.

 

[greatwhitetailhorns]

 

[diggummup]

Sadly, I don't see that happening. The vast majority of my generation views it all as junk and thinks it all is ugly. And while there are small groups of my generation that really gets into Art Deco, Mid-Century Modern, etc, they are the exception to the rule. It's sad, but that's how it is. They can't appreciate quality items. All they see is an ugly piece of Roseville pottery with some pinecones on the side. And what's even worse, very few are able to understand the concept of these items actually being valuable. I wonder how many rarities are being tossed in the trash each day across the country by heirs that think it's just old worthless junk.

I hear you, that's really what I believe too, just wishful thinking I guess. The heyday for that niche of collecting is over. I have a couple pieces of Roseville that were appraised between $2k and $3k just 2 years ago, I doubt they would bring $500 a piece, looking at recent sales. I know how appraisal values are too though, usually way high. I'm seriously considering letting go of some of it. I just don't know if Ebay is the right venue for it, I was thinking a specialized auction. Or maybe i'm just having mixed emotions about letting it go, I don't know. I know there is no comparison to the exposure on Ebay so I'll probably throw it on this weekend, see if I get any bites. It's time to start unloading some of my "better" stuff before it's worth even less. Go figure.

greatwhitetailhorns- Don't get me wrong, i've found some great things that sold for good money over the last few years, but the stuff i'm referring to was purchased years ago as an investment for the future, mainly depression glass and American art pottery. I guess I should have sold it back then while the getting was good. Luckily it was all purchased at great prices or i'd be up the creek without a paddle. It still has value, just not what it did 10-15 years ago.
I'm always looking for the rare, unique or unusual type of finds, they just don't come around everyday, that's what makes them more valuable, in a nutshell. Some of my best finds cost less than $5, even the stuff that has lost some of its value.


BTW- Welcome to the Garage sale section of Tnet! This boards been a little dead lately, thanks for contributing.

 

[greatwhitetailhorns]

Just got home from garage sales bought a fender stratocaster for 30.00 hope its worth something spent around 100 today hope to pay for all my items I keep with some stuff I buy
Its kinda like getting free items every week I got a good eye been doing it for 15 years now

 

[bazinga]

I hear you, that's really what I believe too, just wishful thinking I guess. The heyday for that niche of collecting is over. I have a couple pieces of Roseville that were appraised between $2k and $3k just 2 years ago, I doubt they would bring $500 a piece, looking at recent sales. I know how appraisal values are too though, usually way high. I'm seriously considering letting go of some of it. I just don't know if Ebay is the right venue for it, I was thinking a specialized auction. Or maybe i'm just having mixed emotions about letting it go, I don't know. I know there is no comparison to the exposure on Ebay so I'll probably throw it on this weekend, see if I get any bites. It's time to start unloading some of my "better" stuff before it's worth even less. Go figure.

Yeah, Roseville just keeps on getting cheaper. Last summer I picked up a good sized planter/bowl in their pinecone pattern. I had always wanted a few pieces in this pattern and was so used to see the cheapest pieces going for $300-800 and at $150, I couldn't pass up on it at that price. While I'm not a collector of Roseville, my collection keeps on getting larger. I just can't pass up pieces under $30. I don't know what I'm going to do with all of them, though.

The same goes for other items. I can't pass up Westmoreland/Imperial/Fenton at yard sales for 50 cents and a quarter. But I have no way to sell a lot of these common pieces, either. Just time to hoard I guess?

Depression glass is one of the few things I don't touch with a 10' pole unless it's a special piece like a pitcher or cookie jar or something too cheap to pass up.

 

[northwoods]

Oh man, we have all kinds of good stories! My wife found a beer sign for 10c that sold on eBay for over $250. I found a huge pile of heavy metal CDs for free, and sold them on AZ for almost $2000 in a couple of months several yrs ago. I bought 10,000 vinyl records on Craigslist for $700, and listed them on the internet for over $40,000. I make $200-500/wk on them. I parted out an old console record player for over $100. I sold several vintage speakers that I got for $2 at Goodwill for $60 last month. I financed my family's trip to Cape Cod with the scrap metal I found last summer. I wrote a book titled Almost Free Money about how to find free stuff to sell and it has a list of 520 items to sell and where on eBay they should be listed. Also my website has over 60 pages about finding stuff at garage sales, thrifts, and for free and how to resell on eBay and AZ

 

[Iron Patch]

Here's one, was a friend's find but I did the selling.

He was a mailman at the time so got around the city a lot, and one day he seen an old suitcase in the side of the road. He thought it would make a good detector bag, and debated it a while, but finally decided to go back and grab it - just beating the garbage truck. He then gets home to see how everything will fit and discovers it's a Louis Vuitton. The next week I sold it on ebay for him somewhere in the range of $250-$300. Without the internet it no doubt would have become a detector detector case.

 

[pghmole]

I got a 1861 half eagle in a bag of v nickels I paid 20 bucks for!!!!!