A Real stimulus plan

OK so it might not be a business per se, although at one time it was considered one. The IRS considers it a hobby since I showed a loss for three years in a row. I have sold stuff on Ebay for over 6 years and have a feedback rating of over 13 thousand ...and sold exclusively on Ebay until last July when we decided to try Amazon. Now we sell over 90 percent of our items on Amazon.

Those that do this have different ways of finding items to resell and I've used many ways to locate what can ultimately turn a profit. For me it has been primarily Garage Sales, but I've found "stuff" at thrift stores, estate sales, libraries (the Tulsa one has a room in which they sell discarded books), surplus stores, dollar stores, and even regular retail outlets if you can get outragious deals.
Well it's been slow going for a couple of months due to the season (winter is lousy for garage sales) and the lack of time or energy. But we've had three great finds the last week or so and it has boosted our inventory and re-energized us a little bit. Our goal is to use the money we make to pay down what debt we have and now it's made me more focused on that.

First.......last week-end we found a garage sale that was selling books for a quarter and 50 cents. Eighty dollars later, I'm going home with a car load of books. It took a few hours to get them all listed, but it added about 150 items to our inventory and we have already made back our initial investment plus some.

Last Wednesday, while wasting some time waiting to pick up Ty at church, I found some clearance items at Borders and went in line to pay for the two items 75% off and was expecting the bill to be about 6 bucks. The cashier told me it would be 2.17 incl. tax...........(ringer went off in my head)........as I know that Borders will mark their items to one dollar as a final clearance price. I went back and bought over 50 more items.......increasing my inventory again........these items priced over 1000 dollars retail........... It says I saved 1,016 dollars on my receipt. One book retailed for 75.00 although when I later tried to list it on amazon, I found it only sold for a penny.....go figure......

So that's what makes it fun. I once found a first edition Think and Grow Rich signed by Napolian Hill. I paid .50 for it and it sat in a box in my garage for months until I listed it on Ebay and it ended up selling for 212.00.........another time I found a CD of Dizzy Gillespie Live on French Riviera for a dollar at a garage sale and it was bid up to 133.00.......and the people who won it were thrilled. They said that they played the LP on their honeymoon continuously so the music had extra special memories.

All I remember about my honeymoon is The Love Boat being on the TV on our wedding night. I don't have any idea what the story line was. We went to Knotts Berry Farm and traveled back to Oklahoma. Since then it's been "All Good" :)