FAQ's

How did you get started?

We started following What the Hale$ on YouTube. During one of their online auctions, I bought a huge lot of jewelry for $120. This lot ended up having several rare finds, so I started an eBay store and sold off all of the pieces making about $3,000. After convincing Liz that we HAD to do this, we went on a hunt at the local Goodwill Retail Outlet. Liz scored some rare books that sold for big $$ and she was hooked ever since! We took the profits and went hunting for more treasure… the rest is history!

Frequently Asked Question

Everywhere!! We visit small town community thrift stores, online auctions, estate sales, storage unit sales and yard sales.

This is a hard one to answer. Liz once found a Christian Dior dress from the 1950 in the back of a closet at a farmers estate sale. We paid $0.75 for the dress and its worth more than $4,000.  Another time, Tricia bought a bag of old tangled jewelry at a yard sale in the city for $25 and ended up making about $3,000 in sales from the whole bag.

This is a super easy question to answer… Start small!! You could start with $20. Go out to some yards sales and find small items that you can turn a profit on. List them for sale and as soon as you make the $20 back, reinvest it buying more inventory. Generally our goal is to make a minimum of 5x our original investment amount. If we spend $50 – we want $250 minimum back….truthfully though our goal is set to 10x currently or better and more often than not we hit that goal or better.

For Liz, it was books. Old books can be fast movers and huge money makers. If you get lucky and find the right one you can score huge profits. We look for books dated before the 1950’s. For Tricia, it was hats. Her fascination for vintage hats started when she was little and luckily they can be quite valuable. We look for hats from the late 1800’s through the 1960’s.

Sometimes it’s luck and more often it comes with practice. Once you’ve tried selling a new item you become familiar with how quickly it sells. So we stay on the look out for these items. Many times we just buy things that are odd or unique and get lucky. The more we research the better we are able to keep our eyes open for the great deals.

We use eBay simply because it’s easiest for us right now. We didn’t want to manage accounts on too many platforms and have found their fees reasonable, love the ad options and global shipping program. We are on the look out for ideas so if you know about something easier please reach out. 🙂

There are so many factors that effect how quickly you can sell something. 1. How many others are selling the same item? 2. What’s the condition of your item? 3. What key words did you use in the listing? 4. How rare is the item? 5. How did you price your item compared to others?….As you can see there are many factors that can effect your ability to sell quickly. Our best words of advice would be to be patient, practice makes perfect and if it doesn’t sell….just have a yard sale to clear out your inventory! Lastly, don’t be afraid to run a promotion or discount sale to move old inventory online.

As often as possible!!! We live in an area that has a lot of snow, so we have to make the best use of time during the summer and fall. Typically we go out to yard sales and estate sales while the weather is warm and “stock up” for the holiday season. During the winter is when you will find us doing online auctions and thrift stores more often.