I’m still here.
Just a quick post to let you know that I am still around. I have been busy toiling away on another project for a while, but I do plan returning to my quest to make $1,000,000 out of $1. So, please continue to check back with me and see where it goes! ~T
Green Thumb? – Not so much.
I apparently still have a way to go before I can refer to myself as a “green thumb”. Not the kind that effortlessly grows plants mind you. I’m talking about the green thumb that can grow money into more money of course. As I expected, this is no easy task. I spend a respectable amount of time making the circuit to the various thrift stores or antique shops in my area only to come up with items that may sell but also very well could be flops. Maybe the idea is to be a little less cautious when it comes to taking a chance on some of these items. Although we’re not exactly talking about a whole lot of money here, I am still inclined to try and keep from losing it. Heck, it wouldn’t be all that difficult to suffer a setback that takes my little pot-o-gold back to its starting point. After all, I almost went there with my lug nuts deal. So, I guess I am coming to a couple of conclusions (thinking out loud here). For starters, I need to start thinking outside of the box. What is it that one can do with a few dollars to “get ahead”? A friend suggested I might go and purchase a snow shovel with my money and await the next snow storm. This is a good idea, however, I think I would feel inclined to hop in my car and drive to the next neighborhood in order to peddle my services. Am I so vain and self-conscious that I would prefer that my neighbors not witness my pursuit of side work? As the great former governor of Alaska says, “you betcha”. Sarah Palin aside, I guess I will keep this idea in my back pocket. Hey, coincidentally, it is supposed to snow all weekend. Would I be a bad parent if I dragged my 5-year old out there with me under the guise of father/son time? Hmmm. Now that’s outside the box, yeah? He already has a snow shovel too. Maybe it’s time to show the boy how hard working people manage to put food on the table. Although I guess I should pay him for his efforts. Maybe I need to edit my “Rules” to include a “No Slavery” clause. I guess I’ll sleep on that one.
The second item, I probably need to address, is my unwillingness to risk my money on an investment. Real-world investors do not make it big without taking on risk, so why would I be any different? I suppose it’s a little easier when you actually have enough capital that you are able to create a stop gap and still have something left over to reinvest. I’ll have to consider this the next time I’m out on the thrift store circuit and see if one of these items starts to look a little more appealing.
Well, now that I’ve hashed things out a bit in front of your eyes, what suggestions do you have? There have to be a few out there. Feel free to drop a quick note in the comments section and provide some advice and guidance. This money will grow one way or another. ~ T
Comic books sell for a lot of money apparently.
So I made my usual trip around town to the various thrift stores plus an antique store I haven’t ventured into in a while. The antique store is enormous. I couldn’t believe how much stuff these people had managed to cram inside their building. I’d hate to be the one to have to relocate this place. Anyway, there were a few intriguing items here that I thought I would look up. I found a cool Andy Griffith Show lunch box, a 1940′s Pez truck, a Star Trek 8-piece Pez dispenser collector’s set and a couple of old-school baseball gloves among other things. When I look these items up, although there was some demand for each of them, it looked to be a little too much of a gamble. The one item that really got my curiosity up was a Batman: The Dark Night Returns comic book. When I looked this one up on eBay, I saw a big demand for it. I watched one sell this morning for almost $42. The store had it priced at $5. Needless to say, I raced down there, the next morning, to walk in as soon as they opened the door only to find out that the book was a 2nd printing. Apparently these do not go for nearly as much as the 1st printing. I had looked the 2nd printing value up and saw that it could go for around $10, but again it may be a little risky to try it. It may not sell at all.Although this particular comic book did not pan out to be a great investment, it certainly got my interest up in the world of comic book collecting. I’ve never read the things nor had any interest in collecting them. But now, I could be persuaded to look into them a little more. I think I do want to return to the store and jot down some of the other comic books they have just to see if there is any chance of a little gem in among them. So, no new investments to report just yet. But I will be sure to tell all about what I do end up with next time. ~ T
I didn’t lose my money after all – so far.
So the Brother inkjet cartridges finally sold on Monday. Yey! I’m just glad to walk away from them without losing any ground. I purchased the cartridges for $1.75. After 3 auctions and lowering the price or shipping each time, I ended up selling them for $2.99 + $4.00 shipping. Toss in the $0.26 auction listing fee plus $4.90 to ship it and I have a net profit of 8 cents. At least Look at the bright side. At least I didn’t have a loss after all of that.
As for the Honda wheel locks. If you’ll recall, there was/is drama associated with this auction. Remember the guy, who won the auction, realized that these may not fit his car? He asked that I refund the purchase price and keep the shipping cost for myself. I would have been more than happy to do that. The problem was that I had already sent the package out and unfortunately USPS delivered it to him in a bit of dis-array preventing him from placing the wheel locks up for auction himself. After going back and forth a bit and after getting photographic proof from him, I finally told him to make a damaged product claim with eBay and that I would refund his money after I received the wheel locks from him. I decided to do this for a couple of reasons. First, I had apparently listed the shipping class as USPS Priority on the auction, but when I shipped it, I had chosen the least expensive rate which was Parcel Post in addition to packing it in a flimsy plastic envelope. This was very stupid on my part because I realized later on that not only would the flat-rate Priority box have been much stronger than my shipping envelope, but it would have only been 5 cents more! Lesson #1: Don’t skimp on service for a little more profit. Anyway, it was last Friday when I told him to file the claim and I haven’t anything else from either the buyer or eBay. I did, however, check eBay’s terms and they allow him 45 days to file the claim. That’s very nice. So now I have to decide on whether to hold his money for him or keep moving forward. If I invest it somewhere else to try and grow it, I may have it tied up and will be unable to pay him back out of that money. Will I be violating my rules if I have to pay him with my own money from outside this experiment? We’ll see. ~ T
The customer isn’t happy and the USPS sucks.
I wanted to post a quick update for those of you who might be wondering what cliff I have fallen off of. I assure you, I’m still here. I haven’t “invested” my next bit of money just yet as I apparently need to wait and see how a certain situation unfolds. Apparently after 9 days in transit, my wheel locks, en route to New York, finally arrived in packaging that was completely obliterated by our beloved mail system. This wouldn’t normally be too much of a problem since they are just steel nuts that are tough enough to hold the wheels on a car. But luck would have it that this particular buyer realized that he had, in fact, purchased parts that would not work on his particular vehicle. After I had already shipped him his package, he requested that I refund the purchase price and keep the shipping for myself. This I would have been happy to do if only I hadn’t already dropped the package off at the post office. So, the only option was for him to put the wheel locks up for auction himself once they arrived. Now you see the problem, don’t you? Of course this guy is not happy because he cannot put this package, the United States Postal Service has so kindly remodeled, up for auction in its current condition. Of course, he thinks I sent it to him like this even though I included the actual photo of the thing, in perfect shape mind you, in my auction description. Now we are at an impasse. He wants to make a claim with eBay which apparently affords him the right to receive the purchase price + shipping + return shipping from my eBay account. Joy. I have asked him to hold off on making that claim until I can get some digital photos from him and so that I can make a call to the Postal Service who, by the way, will never get my freaking business again. Seriously, these folks have lost or damaged too many of my shipments. I too would damage packages out of shear boredom if I had to drive around town in that stupid little van all day. In fact, if the United States Postal Service had testicles, I would kick it in them! I digress. So, there you have it. My first lesson in shipping damages, returns, filed claims & unhappy clients. Great. I’m loving every minute of it ya know. So, come back and see if I have given up all of my profits or if the bleeping Post Office helps me out. Until next time… ~ T
Maybe my package was here?
No bids, No dice
Today, my assistant and I decided once again to attempt another trash-to-treasure flip on some relic we might discover at the thrift store. Hey if it worked once it should work again, right? I think he was probably just in it in case we discovered another red tractor that needed a new home if you ask me. So we hopped into the family cruiser and pointed it toward our local junk shop. Within five minutes of our arrival we new this may not come as easy as we had planned. As you may have guessed, there was nothing but junk here today. Although I did find another very cool 8 mm reel-to-reel projector! I didn’t bring it home this time as the first one is still tucked away in our office closet. I thought we might be turned right back around by the new “hall monitor” of house clutter when we arrived back home. So, my assistant and I mounted our trusty steed and made our way to thrift store number 2. With only about 5 minutes to spare here before they locked the doors, we hurried in and around only to discover that today’s selection at #2 was nothing to write home about either (except, I am actually writing about it here after all. I digress). So the only thing to report in today’s post is that there is nothing to report except maybe that those bleeping inkjet cartridges still didn’t have a buyer at the end of this week’s auction! Once again I re-listed the stupid things but this time the starting bid is a paltry $2.99 and it’s only a 3-day auction. I’ll be less upset when they don’t sell after watching them for only 3 days as opposed to watching them for a full week only to have to re-list once again. I’ll be content with just selling these things without losing the $2.50 I put into them. A word to the wise (wiser than me that is), do not start out trying to turn a little bit of money into a little more money by attempting to “flip” inkjet cartridges. Everyone and their mother is hawking these things on eBay. Oh well. So ends week three in the great $1 to $100 experiment. No one said this would be easy and it really isn’t so far. But hey, if it were, we wouldn’t be sitting in cubicles staring at computer screens all day, right? Stay tuned. The current bleeping ink auction ends on Wednesday. Hopefully I’ll be able to report that I didn’t lose my $2.50 ~ T
He said “Let there be profits” – And there were profits.
The eBay auctions have ended. One item sold and one item had to be re-listed. Unfortunately the inkjet cartridges, even with one auction watcher, ended without a buyer. eBay lets you re-list for free for a month. So, they are back up for sale. They already have one watcher, so maybe this is the same person and they just didn’t get home in time to bid last time and will come through this week. Let’s hope. Anyway, that’s the bad news.
Now for the fun news. My auction for the Honda Wheel Locks actually went quite well. If you recall, I had purchased these for a mere $1.75. The winning bid was $10.50. That’s an $8.75 gain. Hey not too bad if you ask me. On top of that, I had put $10.00 in the auction details as the shipping cost. I didn’t exactly know what the shipping cost would be on what amounted to lug nuts. But when I shipped them today, the actual cost was only $4.90. Tack the extra $5.10 onto the auction profit and we have a gross profit of $13.85. Now we’re getting somewhere. Of course, I need to deduct for eBay listing fees and PayPal fees. So, the numbers look like this:
Sale of Wheel Locks: $10.50
Shipping Amount Charged: $10.00
Actual Shipping Cost: $ 4.90
Purchase Price of Wheel Locks: $ 1.75
eBay fees: $ 1.57
PayPal fess: $ 0.89
Total Net Profit on Wheel Locks: $ 11.39
And that’s just one of the items I spent my original $5 on. Hopefully the inkjet cartridges will bring at least another few dollars. It’s not exactly a speedy process to make something out of nothing (or very little of something in this case), but I would take these profit percentages each and every time! I know that’s not going to happen. But hey, any profit is good profit. So far my $5 “investing” account balance has turned into a whopping $13.55. And I still have the other auction out there that will hopefully add to the pot. From $1 to $5 to $13.55 in two weeks. I’m happy with the progress and am looking forward to the big money. Stay tuned! ~ T
To eBay they go
After some research on eBay looking at what kind of demand these three items showed and looking at what they have sold for in past auctions, it looked as though the wheel locks ($1.75) and the inkjet cartridges ($2.50) had the best shot at selling much less making a profit. So, off I went to the thrift store to make my purchases. They went up on eBay on Sunday and end Sunday Jan. 17th. So, far there are no bids on either, but at the time of this post, the wheel locks have two people watching the auction (which means they basically bookmarked it and that’s a good sign that the item will sell) and the Brother inkjet cartridges have 1 watcher.
This is not exactly the most exciting price point to play with, but hey you’ve gotta take your baby steps. And if my $1 turns into $10 or $15 this quickly, then I’m all for sticking out the boring stuff. Check back and see if my items sold and for how much. Maybe I’ll be able to start buying some fun stuff soon!
- By the way, as for that Super 8 projector I was so interested in, I went ahead and picked it up as a side project. The thing wouldn’t power up at the store, so the clerk knocked another $2 off of the price and gave it to me for $4. I got home, took it apart and it turns out it really does work. So, with any luck, a side story will be that I made a nice little profit from this 1967 projector. In any case, It’s pretty cool to play with some old school technology. Anyone in the market for a nice portable ’67 Super 8 projector? ~ T
Thrifting is actually kind of fun.
Following a bout of illness this week, I decided to trek out and hit a few thrift stores in town to see what I might conjure up for my next “investment”. My thought was to hit the LP section (you know, those black vinyl discs with sound-making grooves embedded in them?) and see if there was at least one gem in among the selection. So, I loaded my five year old son up and headed for the stores. En route I explained the whole “experiment” to him and why we were going shopping. He thought it sounded like a cool idea. Me too.
We reached our first thrift store and it was actually pretty exciting. I wasn’t expecting any real excitement just yet as the $5 level is still a bit difficult to profit from and seemingly not a very interesting price point for investing. But my opinion changed when we entered our first thrift store. Seriously, there are actually some pretty cool things in these places. We browsed clothes, dishes, televisions (even with black & white screens!), trinkets, jewelry and much more. Although intriguing, I would say 99.9% of these items are useless for my current objective and/or could take way too much time waiting for some buyer to come along and take interest. It turns out that there’s a fine line between desirable and “who the hell cares” when it comes to trying to turn a profit on something so insignificant at the $5 price level. There were, however, a few items that caught my eye. Now these are not very exciting products to most, but in my history of eBay transactions and searches, these few items, in my opinion, would have a good chance of returning a nice little profit without requiring multiple listings in order to do so.
The first item was a set of 4 Honda wheel locks in their original package for $1.75. Again, not all that interesting to most, but I know what these sell for at the Honda dealer and I also know that there are a lot of young guys and girls out there building up there Japanese and Korean “street racers”, you know the ones with the obnoxiously loud potato cannon of a muffler? These things sell at the dealer for $30-$50 depending on the car they are for. These kids also put some nice expensive wheels on their obnoxiously loud cars. There is potential here.
The second thing I found was one of those Laser Balls that measure the speed of your pitch. It’s basically a baseball with some sort of G-sensor in it that displays your pitch speed on an LCD screen embedded in the ball. I’ve seen them in the various “unique gadget” stores in malls and they are around $30 new. There could be something here as well.
The third item within my price range was a new, original packaging set of 3 Brother brand inkjet cartridges for $2.50. Of course I didn’t know at the time how new the printers were that these worked with. But, we all know that ink cartridges aren’t cheap. They’re certainly worth more than the $2.50. A little research will tell.
There was one more item that completely intrigues me, but it is $6.00 DOH! It’s one of those Super8 Reel projectors. It is in it’s own carrying case and the case includes it’s own viewing screen. It is in great shape and had an inspection tag that certified it was in good working order as of a few years ago. I know that people collect these and it may just have some value in it. I informed my wife that I wanted to buy and sell this thing as a side project since it was not an allowed investment under the rules of this blog. I don’t even have it yet and she’s already relegated it to the storage shed out back. No excitement on her part I see. By the way, I looked this projector up on eBay and saw that it had sold for between $75 and $150. For $6, I’ll take a shot as long as it still works.
My son and I photographed all of the items, noted their prices and moved on to the next two thrift stores. He was happily playing with his new red sturdy metal farm tractor which we picked up in the first shop for $8 (these things run for at least $25 when they’re made of metal like this one). Although content in the back seat, his desire to reach the next two stores was building. He was anxious to find out what other new and exciting toys dad might buy for him at these places. That didn’t happen. However, I did take the opportunity to show-n-tell a real-life vinyl record for him describing how while spinning around, the grooves in it actually resulted in music coming from the stereo. Let me tell you, he was ecstatic! No not really. Anyway, a quick dip through these albums reminded me that I didn’t know nearly enough about music and the demand on certain LP’s to wade any farther. I decided it best to stick to what I know for now. There’s no reason in taking too much of a gamble just yet. Nothing at the last two stores really caught my attention although it was odd to go back in time and walk through my childhood in seeing many of the gadgets from that era in these stores. Old 80′s VCR’s, humidifiers, dish ware, kitchen utensils and televisions all stirred up my childhood memories that I thought had been deleted. You should try it some time. It’s strangely pleasurable.
My next step is to research these finds and see if there is any chance that any of them could actually sell for a profit. So, I will return with my assessment and decisions. Sorry for the lengthy post today and I hope you’re still reading at this point! ~ T
Investor’s Block
I’ve been looking for different ways to “invest” my $5 over the past few days and have not come up with any foolproof plan just yet. The danger lies in the time it could take for my return to materialize. As I continue to search for interesting ways to profit from this $5, I am putting out a call for suggestions from my many thousands of fans. Stop laughing. This is serious. So, chime in and maybe we can put it to a vote if I get a few good ones. I am sure you guys will come through! ~ T
