How to Shop at a Thrift Store

Thrift stores are one of our main sources for getting products to sell. If you’re going to go out picking for the day, it’s good to be prepared. Here are some tips to help you get started.

• Make a list of what you are searching for. It’s easy to get overwhelmed or distracted inside of a large thrift store full of interesting odds and ends. If you are setting out with a specific sort of item in mind, it’s best to note down what you want, in what sizes, colors, brand names etc.
• Get an early start. Many thrift stores put out new merchandise throughout the day, but others put out the day's stock before opening. If you wait till the evening to start picking, chances are most of the good stuff has been picked through already.
• Inspect everything before you buy. There’s nothing more disappointing than opening up your haul at home, only to discover a big stain on the back of an expensive vintage dress.  Look over clothing for stains, holes, or missing buttons. Test zippers to make sure they are in working condition. Plug in electronics and check for exploded batteries. Smell for cigarette smoke damage. While many things can be easily cleaned, you shouldn't waste your time on things that look too dingy or have many broken pieces.
• Take a stain remover pen, such as Tide-to-Go, with you when shopping for clothes or linens. If there is a stain, test it with the stain remover pen before you decide whether or not to buy.
• Take hand sanitizer with you. The merchandise in thrift stores usually comes straight into a store from someone’s home. Basically, it’s nice to be able to clean up a bit after you've been rifling through a bunch of other people’s stuff for a few hours. If you are shopping at an outlet store with deep bins to dig through, consider wearing a pair of work gloves.
• Take a tape measure with you. This way, you can measure a piece of furniture to make sure you can fit it in your car to get it home, measure a large painting, or anything else on your list.
• Ask about any special sale days or discounts given out at each thrift store. Some stores give student or military discounts. Others have a punch card system or a fill a bag sale.
• Look online for local thrift shops near you. We like to plan out a route to several shops we can visit in one day. You can plug each address into Google Maps to see just how long the trip will take you. This is a great way to explore thrift stores in a new area too.

We have found that using these guidelines saves us the most time and allows us to find the best quality items at the right price for our eBay store.

These are some of the things that we have learned through our own experiences, and we are always seeking to learn something new. Do you have your own thrift shopping tips? Post them in the comments below! We'd love to hear from you!

-Ashley

Taking Back the American Dream

My name is Roderick and I am married to a wonderful woman named Ashley. We have two beautiful children and we make our living by selling on eBay.

We were married in the fall of last year. The previous summer months I spent installing furnaces and air conditioners for an HVAC company. I rarely saw my family that summer, often coming home very late after the kids had gone to bed. I worked nearly 60 hours a week. We were behind in our bills and had a wedding to prepare for. We made it through our wedding only to have to prepare for the holidays. Anyone with children will understand that the holidays can be a financial burden. As the leaves shriveled and fell away so did the hours at the HVAC company. Ashley's work as a full time seamstress dried up as well. We had a holiday to provide for our children and family and we had reduced hours at work with no holiday pay coming to us.

Earlier that March I had found an old binder of Garbage Pail Kids That I had kept from the '80's. I logged on to Ashley's eBay account to see what they were worth. I wasn't sure if I wanted to sell them or not until I started going through them. I found them as charming as I had when I was young and decided to continue collecting them. After all, I had just found a source!

Slowly I began to buy them and then sell off the extra ones. It was just like trading them in the schoolyard, but this time real $ was involved. By the time winter had come, I was making some decent extra cash on eBay with these old stickers from the '80's.

It was enough to see us through the holidays.

As Christmas came and went, ice storms took the financial burden role. We both missed work due to power outages, snow-ins, school closings, and illnesses. These circumstances threatened to break us. We could not trust 40 hour a week jobs to provide for us. When industry is slow, employers cut hours. They give less holiday pay. They downsize. You can work for 20 years at a company and give them your all, only to have your benefits cut and wages reduced when the economy is down.

We hated feeling so helpless, so trapped in work-hell-prison with nothing to show for it.

What happened to the American Dream? Is it in the hands of Corporate America? Do they really have all of the profit? We asked ourselves how we were supposed to provide for our children in a country that raised the cost of living every 3 months yet never raised pay. We were both working 40 hours plus and we were STILL behind in all aspects of our finances.

So we decided to sell more stuff on eBay to make the money we needed. It wasn't long before we noticed that we were doing very well at it- and we loved it! Now neither of us work at traditional day jobs. We work for ourselves.

The American Dream is to make a living in this country and prosper. It is to build something with your bare hands and support yourself with your trade and skill. It is to provide something of worth to your community, to live in the land of the free. Today, Americans grow up to work 40 hour work weeks at companies that don't care if their workers prosper. They work their jobs, scrimping and saving to buy overpriced shiny things that they don't really need, just to make their work-hell-prison somewhat tolerable. They work and work only to barely see their children grow up.

We refuse to do this anymore.

We are a young couple interested in taking back the American Dream of prosperity through hard work from greedy corporations and giving it back to the American Family. We are doing it by selling on eBay. We know that others may benefit from our experience and knowledge. Here in this blog you will find out how we did it, how we make it work for us, and how we have a blast doing it.

Take back the American Dream with us!