Since my boys are off school for Thanksgiving week, I asked if they wanted to go to the Flea Market yesterday and one of my boys went with me.
Growing up selling at flea markets, I feel very comfortable walking amid the “junk” that is sold at flea markets.
(the junkier, the better!)
I love sorting through boxes of old stuff and finding things that I have either never seen before or things that I had forgotten existed!
And the real fun is in finding cool old items that I can make money with – taking home some prizes that I can research on eBay or Amazon and resell for high profits.
I may be a little odd, but that’s what I grew up doing and it’s like therapy to me!
There is something inherently exciting about being able to buy something today, pop it up on eBay and see your profit within 7 days – or sooner!
In the old days, when I used to buy things at the swap meet, I would have to wait til the next week to try to sell the items I bought. And, while buying things at a flea market to resell (by itself) is not going to make anyone rich, today with eBay, the profit comes a lot quicker!
Here are some of the items I bought yesterday – what I paid for them and what I expect to get for them based on my initial eBay research.
I bought these Tony Robbins “Get The Edge” and “Personal Power” sets of DVDs, CDs and Workbooks.
They are all still in their original shrinkwrap and in the original shipping box for only $8!
Based on my eBay research, I see that I can get about $150 for the two 
sets.
That’s what I call FUN! (and a 1,775% profit, too)
Another thing we bought was a stack of 36 Star Trek and Star Wars “Giant Poster Books”.
These were published in 1977 and are actually a giant poster that was folded into a booklet that had all kinds of fun facts and photos.
We picked up 36 of these sci-fi gems for $30.
They are selling on eBay for about $7 each.
So, these 36 (at $7 each) makes $252.
Again, we won’t get rich on this, but I just love turning $30 into $252!
That’s a 740% profit!
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I also like to use my cell phone bar code scanner to check pricing on things when I am at the flea market.
In this case, I bought 2 “font” CDs with 10,000 fonts and 2 CDs with a “VIP” Gameboy game (still shrinkwrapped) for $8.
I figured I would buy a few and go to the next aisle and bar-code scan them to see what they were worth. This would tell me whether I should go back and buy the rest.
When we tried scanning the two new packages with my cell phone barcode scanner, the scanner I was using showed no results, so I didn’t go back and buy any more.
When I got home, my research showed that the 10,000 Font CDs are selling for $19 and the VIP games are selling for $14.40. (on Amazon.com – and I promptly listed them there)
So on these 4 items, the total made will be $66.80 and the amount paid was only $8.
That’s a 735% profit on these little gems!
So, let’s add this up – it was a particularly fun and profitable day at the flea market…
Total spent on these items: $46
Total to be made on these items: $468.80
Total profit: 919%!
By the way, the most profitable item we bought was the Tony Robbins stuff and we would never have found it if we hadn’t gone back to some of the first aisles we walked through. We walked through these aisles for a second time and there it was!
You see, one of the earliest strategies I learned – back when I was a kid – was that a Flea Market is in a “blossoming” stage all morning long.
In other words, the things you see in an aisle at 7:30 am will be different than the things you see in that same aisle at 8:00 am and again at 8:30 and at 9:00 am.
This is because the sellers are putting their goodies out all morning. When we went back through those aisles a second time, I was impressed (all over again) with how many new things we saw and how different some of the stands were.
They were fuller, they had more items and some of them had canopies overhead.
It was on this second trip that I picked up the Tony Robbins box for $8. This made an already good day into an epic, fun and profitable day!
Like I said, I don’t expect that anyone could get rich buying at flea markets, this is more of a fun hobby I wanted to share.
The eBay strategies I teach in my eBay systems are far more sophisticated and far more profitable but for me, going to a flea market is just plain fun!
You can learn about my brand new eBay video training here.