Author - T.C. Lane

Some items you find in a storage unit will be popular year-round: electronics, appliances, antiques and collector items. Other items, however, are definitely worth more at certain times of year than others. The best of these are holiday items, which are plentiful in storage facilities and sell very well during the holiday season.

People store their holiday decorations year-round to save space in their house. These items are usually quite pricey to replace new, so the cost of storage is often a worthwhile expense – especially for people who keep really outlandish yard displays for Christmas and Halloween.

If you can manage to find one of these units, you can sell these items for a substantial profit to the right bidder.

The trick to profiting from holiday decorations is to hold onto them until they’re most valuable.

In July, Christmas decorations are the last thing on anyone’s mind. Right around Thanksgiving, though, plenty of shoppers will be on the look-out for deals on used decorations. If you can find the right market and identify when they’ll be ready to buy and how much they’ll be willing to pay, you can start bringing in the dough.

Christmas isn’t the only holiday that can turn out a tidy sum of profits, though. Halloween decorations are becoming increasingly more complex and desirable, and plenty of people are willing to put down a lot of cash for plastic skeletons, fake tombstones and lots of bagged cobwebs – not to mention gently used costumes. Just stop off in the local Halloween store to see how much these things are selling for new and you can get an idea of what kind of profits you can look forward to.

So if you’ve been holding onto a bunch of Halloween decorations picked up in small amounts throughout the year, here are a few steps for maximizing your profits:

• Figure out where the buyers will be and cater to them. You might consider setting up a yard sale in a public parking lot near the regular Halloween store, if you can legally use the space. Most holiday shops open up near shopping malls or “big box” stores, and shoppers looking for a deal will be sure to spot your display from the road.

• Put together themed bundles to sell a lot of items at once. Find everything that could possibly go together and create a “kit” out of it. You’ll look more professional, and buyers will be grateful that you’ve done all the work for them.

• Find hobbyists online and see if there are any forums where you can advertise your goods. Some “yard haunt” artists will be particularly interested in buying items from you in bulk.

• Sell to local thrift stores. They’re just as eager to make a holiday profit as you are, and most of them will have themed displays. If you want to get rid of things in bulk and don’t care about making a huge profit, this can be an easy way to dispose of your overage. If they don’t buy it, you can always donate it and take the tax write-off.

If you haven’t thought to start picking up holiday items yet, now’s a good time to start. Directly after the holiday, they’ll go back to being essentially worthless, which means that fewer people will want to compete with you for them – leaving you with some very affordable items to choose from.

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In most states, storage facilities are required to hold public lien auctions. This means that the auction must be advertised and open to the public.

The purpose of this is to provide the tenant with ample opportunity to reclaim his property, and also to ensure that the belongings are disposed of and not simply pocketed by the storage facility.

However, this is not necessarily the case in every state. Moreover, these laws are not always upheld. Because there is little legal oversight of storage auctions, quite a few of the smaller and privately owned facilities opt not to hold public sales at all. Instead, they’ll have a few dedicated buyers who routinely take their items, usually for a preset price.

You’ll often find out about this by cold-calling facilities and asking about their auctions. If they tell you that they don’t hold auctions or have “a guy” who handles their abandoned units for them, then you know that they’re using dedicated buyers. You might also notice that some storage facilities in your area never seem to hold auctions; you can follow up with them to confirm your hunch.

Once you’ve determined that a facility in your area doesn’t hold public auctions, you have a choice. You can either take it off your list and focus on other facilities, or you can try to become “the guy” who handles their delinquent units.

Doing so can be quite profitable as there is no competition. On the other hand, you might also end up with a lot of units that you don’t know what to do with. Since you can’t just walk away from a unit like you could at an auction, you have to be prepared to take home a lot of junk items.

In order to become the go-to person for the storage facility, you might need to build up a relationship with them. It helps to be friendly and courteous, of course, and it may also take some time to form a good business relationship and get them to trust you enough to invite you into the fold. Persistence definitely pays off.

Being a facility’s dedicated buyer can have some benefits, but it can also put a damper on your other auction attendance. It’s also not strictly legal in some states. It’s up to you to decide whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks so you can make the choice that will work for you.

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Nearly anything can be sold if you can find the right buyer. Some items have more interested buyers than others, however, and recognizing these items will save you a lot of time and hassles when it comes to reselling. Any time you look at a storage unit, you’ll want to keep an eye out for these easy-to-sell items:

• New, high-quality electronics including flat-screen televisions, gaming systems and good computers. You need to be fairly well-versed in technology in order to identify the high-quality new items from those that are outdated, however. A recent, high-powered computer can be resold for several hundred dollars. A computer that’s a couple of years old might be worth less than $50, and an old-fashioned rear-projection TV is pretty much worthless.

   

• Collectible items. This almost goes without saying since it’s the bread and butter of all the storage auction TV shows, but it’s true: If you can find a bona fide collector’s item in a storage unit, you can probably sell it for a decent profit if you can find the right collector. Not all collectibles are worth the same amount, though, and some can be a bit obscure. Obvious collections that were cared for by their previous owner will be easier to sell for a profit than assorted bits and pieces.

   

• Exercise and sporting equipment. A lot of people buy exercise equipment only to decide they won’t use it, which means a lot of this equipment ends up in storage units. Fortunately, they tend to resell quite well as long as you have the ability to haul and store it. Things like treadmills, elliptical machines and stationary bikes all sell quite well on Craigslist, especially around the beginning of the year when people are making New Years resolutions. Bicycles can also be worth quite a bit of money and tend to hold their value if they’re well made.

Depending on how patient you are, you can also make a decent profit off selling small items that other resellers aren’t as interested in. When bidders see a unit full of clothes, small appliances, dishes and other household wares, they often overlook the units entirely because they’re just not very flashy.

If you can secure one of these units for a cheap price, though, you can often make a profit selling these small items individually through yard sales; over time, the profits really do add up.

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It’s become more and more uncommon for people to carry cash in their pockets.

In general, most people use their bank’s check card or a credit card to make their purchases.

Some people don’t even have banks, opting instead to use a prepaid card or spend money directly from Paypal.

With so much cash being replaced with plastic, it’s important to give your buyers a convenient payment option whenever possible.

Traditionally, most garage sale and flea market sales are paid in cash, and most regular buyers will bring a bit of cash with them.

But how do you reach the people who may have spent the money in their pockets but could still be interested in your items?

Or the people who came just to browse, but found something they really want to buy?

If you can accept credit card payments, you’re one step closer to making a sale that otherwise would not have happened.

Luckily, it’s easier than ever to take credit card payments.

You just need to buy an extension and the corresponding app for your smart phone or tablet.

You can use the card reader on an iPhone, Android or iPad. The funds will deposit directly into your bank or Paypal account, depending on how you set up your account.

There are several different apps and extensions available, so you’ll want to shop around to find the right fit. The best will give you a low interest rate on purchases, so you can retain the most money per swipe. You’ll also want something with a low initial investment and no monthly payments.

The best part of using a mobile card reader for your resale business is that your smart phone or tablet is already a vital part of your business.

• Use the Internet on it to research items.
• Map the way to auctions or markets with a GPS.
• Keep in contact with buyers and sellers through phone calls and emails.

By adding a simple extension, you create a mobile business that can go anywhere; and by offering flexible payment options to your buyers, you can get a leg-up on the competition.

Once your buyers realize how much more convenient it is to buy an item from you than run to the ATM, you can begin securing more sales than ever.

Please leave your creative thoughts on mobile readers in the comment box below.