I'm not that familiar with your company but think the online auctions are a unique and kinda cool idea. That said personally though attending auctions can be a pain in the butt I kind of enjoy the whole process of making my auctino schedule for the day going to the auctions, being able to physically see the unit and every nook and cranny not just what someone took a picture of.

I don't ever think this business will be back to what it was but eventually I think this whole fad surrrounding the storage auction thing is going to die off and this is comming from someoen who has ebooks, sells lists, etc.

I'm all about the whole work smarter not harder but the actual process of buying the units has to be an in person detailed decision if you want to consistantly buy quality units and get them at a good price.

In my mind if someone can't take the time to attend an auction which in a  is a lot easier and more fun than the process of selling stuff I highly doubt they are going to be at the flea markets on the weekends at 6am or running all over town to consignment shops, dropping off craigslist sales or whatever else.

It is a cool concept and pretty much every type of sale venture and purchase is available on the internet so I suppose there will always be a market for it.

I''ll have to check out your website, I suppose I should have done that before commenting on something I know nothing about really but it is very interesting and I'll check it out. Curious to see if I may change my mind and decide to take a shot at online atuff if pics are good it seems like you can get a good idea of the unit and its contents.

Rog, congrats on the sale, thats fantastic earning on a garage sale.

In my experience and in my area I personally don't think taking the time to have a proper organized sale is going to be worth the return on investnment in terms of your time. Even if you have things priced people expect "garage sale prices". I tried sticking to prices and gave up with that quickly as people didn't bite and I wanted things gone.

Just curious when you talk about craigslist ads are you talking about just ads for a garage sale or actual item listings? The reason I ask is b/c larger ticket items I put on craigslist under say electronics or furniture but  mentioned I'm havnig a garage sale on such and such a day so that would be a good time to come pick up or take a look or whatever. In my mind that's not a garage sale purchase. They came to my garage sale but not exactly a garage sale customer. In that case I could easily seeing making $500 but that would never happen in my area wth strictly a garage sale. That said I do live in a crappy neighborhood with lots of illegals nad stuff.

If I'm going to spend the time tagging things, having tables set up and doing things properly I'll go to the flea market instead of garage sale as I'll get better prices. For garage sale I'll just throw out bins full of stuff and put as much on talbes as I can and make a few makeshift clothes racks to hold the designer an name brand stuff. In my area tagging may get you a little more money but not enough to make it worth the hours if not days it would take to tag all my stuff.

Terrorbow, I guess it all comes down to strategy and we all have our own but after much trial and error I have decided I woudl rather flip items quickly and make some money as well as clear out some room and move on to the next locker as opposed to sitting on an item for 6 months waiting for the right buyer just to squeeze an extra $50 or $100 out of an item.

Obviously you want to make your money back on a locker and a profit so make sure your not letting things go too quickly but one locker that I always think of in relation to this strategy of mine I had probably made about 3k off of a $300 locker and I was still trying to squeeze every last penny out of good items when what I should have been doing is just getting rid of stuff as everything is pure profit and I'd already made a killing off the u.

That 3d last supper pic is one of the last items Ive been sitting on long term. I have no doubt in my mind I could one day find the right buyer at about $500 however its heavy and takes up space and what I should do is sell it for like $80. I think I may just keep it for myself though as its a very unique piece and I like colllecting wierd stuff.

One other strategy for if you live in a rural or hard to get to erea is maybe post a bunch of your "featuer" items on craigslist a few days before you go to the flea market. Say in the listing or when people contact you, I will be at such and such flea market friday adn saturday from 9-4. That your at an easy to get to location, your already there so no time wasted trying to meet upu with people, etc. I've found this strategy to be pretty effective. I did the same thing for my recent garage sale. I figured I'd be sitting around at home doing nothing for 8 hours a day so why not try to get some craigslist postings going as othertimes I'm wasting my personal time waiting for someoen to show up 30 minuets late to buy an item.

Alot of what Im going to say is specific to my area and my experience but flea markets in my area aren't much better than garage sales in terms of the prices your going to get for items.

We do have one kind of upscale flea market in the area but its like $150 for a spot instead of anywhere from $5-$25 so you gotta sell that much more to make your money back if you even do.

Flea markets and garage sales everyone wants something for nothing, I'll throw out wheat I think is a ridiculously low price like $2 just wanting to unload stuff nad people will offer me 0.50 cents or a dollar.

I hate the flea markets where everyone has stores with new stuff in packaging i like the ones with people like me with tables nad unique items. I think at these people see your not as store like as others and think prices should be next to nothing.

My attitude is this, I make my money back nad a decent profit on craigsilst, resale shops, ebay and everything else is basically free stuff thats 100% profit to me. If I sell it for a dollar its still all profit.

I think the hardest thing to do I know for myself an I imagine others is to let stuff go for hte price people are willing to pay and not holding onto stuff for this made up price you have in your head. i have come to this realization and still struggle with it. Obviously there's a balance between looking for the right buyer and giving stuff away but you got to find it.

To the op, you mention high price items. This is totally an assumption on my part nad may not be accurate at all but I imagine your $200 items are really $80 your $100 items will go for $50 and your $75 items will go for $20.

I love watching dave on storage wars say these vending machines 5k a piece, yeah right i see brand new ones on craigslist for like 2k everyday.

things are worth what someone will pay for them. if they are not selling you are not exposing them to enough people or arent marketing them right or the price your asking is too high.

im always surprised when an item i think will fetch seveal thousand dollars goes for $120 but othertimes a used fishing knife I would have sold for $3 winds up selling on ebay for $100

FreeStorageAuctionLists.Com was featured in an article in the Connecticut Examiner this past week. We just got a short snipet at the end of the article but still cool.

You can check out the article at the link below...

http://www.examiner.com/pop-culture-in-hartford/storage-wars-most-bizarre-find-yet-on-new-season

If your anything like me you have some items you think of as valuable or you think could be big ticket items if you found the right buyer but keep getting no interest or low ball offers?

What are 3 items youve been holding onto waiting for the right buyer to come along? also whats an item or two youve held forever and finally sold for much less than you hoped for?

i had a few of these from my garage sale the other day.

Okay I had my garage sale this past Friday and Saturday. I decided not to spring for teh $35 ad in the paper. Advertised on a lot of online garage sale sites, some free local classifieds sites, and put some signs all over the place.

I said no early birds in all my ads but as expected had people showing up at a quarter after 7 for a garage sale that started at 9. I actually had a pretty good crowd probably over 30 people the first day another 20 the second, actually did better on Friday a weekday than I did on Saturday.

Man are people at garage sales cheap. There were certain items still brand new in packaging that at a flea market might get you $20 or more I'd tell people something like $2 and they would still try to haggle me down. I had lots of non english speaking mexicans at my garage sale whichw as good as they bought a lot but I had people literally buying 0.50 cent items and paying me with pennies.

I cleared out a lot of stuff and made a little money off stuff that otherwise would have just gone to goodwill so that was good but all the effort of sitting outside all day, getting organized and setting stuff out to make a relatively small amount of money wasn't really worth it I think I'll stick to flea markets.

You figure at 0.50 cent per clothing item you'd have to sell 100 items just to make $50 bucks. I basically woudl give people a garbabe bag and tell them to fill it up and give me like $5 or $10.

I pretty much got my good money off white soccer mom types and just let stuff go for pennies to everyone else as that's all I coudl get.

Overall not terrible probably made about $150 but that was also putting some ads on craigslist for a bathroom vanity, pot rack, etc so a lot of it was craigslist pickups during my garage sale as opposed to strictly garage sale profits.

I wound up not labeling things. I had planned on making a everything on this table $1 everything onthis table $2, etc but people showed up early I didn't have time to get organied and just started throwing stuff out on the driveway so didn't really have any labels. Not sure if that worked out better or worse. Had I had labels saying a buck maybe people wouldn't have bought it or woudln't even have tried to haggle however at the same time not having prices maybe people felt they could get me down to nothing.

Overall though happy with the turnout. My gf's friend had a garage sale last week and had one person show up so I was kind of worried I'd go to allthe effort for nothing so at least I had a decent crowd made a buck and cleared otu my garage.

I was wondering if anyone knows anything about this? I'm curious about what it is as well as what it's worth.

I may have posted this a long time ago but seeing as how we have lots of new members figured maybe someone would know.

It's a 3D picture or sculpture of the last supper. Seems to be made out of porcelain or ceramic or something like that.