Finding "stuff"

So the hardest part about selling "stuff" on ebay is that you have to find the "stuff" you want to sell! I purchased a couple lots of clothing (even got one off of ebay!!), but you can't just list it all at once or you become your own worst competition. So we list the items slowly and make sure there's lots of different stuff at the same time. We started off with things we already had... I had a sheer ton of Creative Memories inventory that I've slowly been depleting, mostly at some seriously reduced prices, but they sure weren't bringing in anything downstairs in the closet! Once you start looking, you find plenty of things you'd be willing to part with if you could possibly get a little money for. Mom is really hoping we start in on everything we left there in her basement!

Anyway, the clothing I purchased is maternity, so Rachel modeled it all for me for pictures for the ads! She is so cute and she really seemed to enjoy herself. I hope so anyway! I don't remember enjoying anything when I was pregnant!!

So we have been listing the clothing, the scrapbooking, and several odds and ends we find. Most of the antiques we have are more valuable to us than anyone else, but it seems like antiques do the best on ebay. So last weekend we went to an auction! Talk about fun!! This was bigger than I ever could have imagined, but since it was my first, I have no idea if that's just how they are. They had three 6-8 table rings of stuff that they mostly sold a box at a time. Then there were four more farm flatbeds full, plus furniture and steel/iron antiques surrounding this guy's garage. We spent less than $150 and had the car absolutely PACKED!! It was mostly little $1-5 boxes of assorted stuff. We had gone to this guy's garage the night before to see what he was going to have. It was all packed in so tight that we hardly saw anything! But we took some notes and went home and did some research on what we saw. Saturday morning we kept hearing, "Oh, you're the folks that came up last night?" Ok, so that's not so common, but we're still glad we did! Things we liked were in boxes with lots of other stuff, so we really had to know what we were doing. Everyone else would bid on things that caught their fancy, but we're off of our salary now so every dime counts for us!! We are pretty sure we did well. We got things photographed yesterday and started listing some of them last night. The boys are having the hardest time. A lot of these things are antique/vintage toys. They can't believe we want to sell Hot Wheels track and old cap guns. They are pretty sure those would be better off in their hands. I told them they could pray however they wanted, but this is our bread and butter now! It's still hard. The hardest part is putting a shopaholic on ebay daily. Michael keeps looking at his email and wondering what I'm bidding on now. I'm trying. It's just really hard! I really feel for the boys too! It's rough!! We all have to have a little self control, but that's pretty much life!