Making Money with Holiday Decorations

Holiday StorageSome 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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T.C. Lane

Travis Lane is the Head Geek here at Online Storage Auctions ℠ & Texas Storage Auction Schedules & News ℠. A former real estate appraiser & investor, turned professional storage unit buyer, turned webmaster & author. He's a passionate guy who loves to laugh, help others, & spend quality time with loved ones and friends.

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