Quick Cash Trick: Garage Sale

Money Smarts has an interesting post today on how to find cash in a flash, with a crazy story of a guy selling a smudge of driveway sealant on ebay. I read that somebody made $1 million in ebay by selling a complete Transformers collection.

My family and relatives’ favorite quick cash go-to trick is a garage sale — de-clutter your house and make money off trash!

Here’s a quick rundown of things we usually sell:

1. Furniture and appliances we no longer use – these are either old furniture we’ve replaced, or appliances you get two or more of during weddings (which reminds me, we still have an unused panini grill and a two-year old ref to sell)
2. Old clothes, shoes and bags – we’d sell them for P10 to P80, depending on the condition and the brand.
3. Books and CDs – CDs are particularly easy to sell, especially computer games. Books aren’t fast movers. We still have a couple of boxes of books left by relatives who went abroad to dispose of. Sigh. Nobody reads anymore.

In one garage sale we held in my boyfriend’s garage, we earned about P6,000. When my sister and her family moved out of the city, they earned about P15,000 from things they’re not bringing with them. Garage sales are common too among retiring ADB expats who are leaving the country, and I save a lot of money by going to these (once got a P2,000 21″ TV set from a Japanese expat).

We’re also trying to dispose of some antique collections my late grandfather left – vintage cameras, video recorders, and knives. We’re cleaning them up one by one and will sell them in antique stores or ebay.