Product Description

craigslist and eBay have created exciting new electronic venues for locating and reselling obscure but valuable estate sale items, making it easier to be a successful estate sale "prospector" today than ever before. But with so many items to choose from at a typical estate sale, as well as other buyers to contend with, how can you quickly choose a few inexpensive items that you can resell at a significant profit, either as an interesting hobby or as an income-producing small business? What will you need to plan for before you start? And how do you use craigslist and eBay to the greatest advantage? This book will help you get started!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #197304 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 100 pages

Customer Reviews

A really useful handbook
Like a lot of people these days, I'm a regular eBayer- it's a great way to clean out the basement and pick up a few $$$ for the toy account while you're at it. And like a lot of people, I can't pass up a good estate sale. I'm always looking for a deal. So of course when I was given a chace to review this book, it seemed like a natural.

What Landahl has writtten is a short, but very useful how-to that guides the absolute beginner through both finding goods to resale, and the best way to sell them on eBay, Craigslist and other outlets. He's got a lot of great tips and specifics that go beyond the mchanics of posting and selling. Lendahl gives you strategies for setting prices, posting photos, writing titles, and making your sales look as attrative as possible. He even covers details like the best source for inexpensive scales to determine shipping costs.

There are chapters on how to find good estate sales, how to identify good merchandise, examples of good and bad finds, maintaining a good rating, and what kinds of books to buy- and what kinds of books not to buy.

This book alone won't make you a successful estate sale prospector- you still need the drive to shop those sales and maintain your eBay sales. Not everyone can do that. But if you're motivated, and looking for a good source of additional income, Lendahl's book is a very good place to start.

How to find treasures and resell them online
I sell books for a living, and get quite a few of them at estate sales. Something I've never gotten around to is trying to buy some of the other knick-knacks you see at sales and reselling them on eBay. One of my favorite TV shows is Antiques Roadshow, but I've always stuck with books when it comes to my Internet business. After reading this book, perhaps I'll reconsider.

"Estate Sale Prospecting for Fun and Profit with craigslist and eBay" is a nice, easy-to-read book about how to get started selling obscure but valuable items bought at estate sales.

The idea behind the book is that two key tools have made it easier than ever to be a successful estate sale "prospector." First, craigslist, a free online classified service, allows you to quickly find all the upcoming sales in your region. And, of course, eBay enables you to put your items up for auction before a worldwide pool of buyers. The advice in this book helps you develop a system for buying a few inexpensive items at each estate sale for reselling profitably on eBay. And in that sense, it's just like bookselling -- you get better with experience. And you're not going to get rich, but you'll probably have some fun.

The author, John Landahl, got into online selling when he was cleaning out a closet and found a box of old marbles, which he nearly threw in the garbage. Instead he listed the marbles on eBay, where they sold for $94, and a new hobby was born. Landahl gives many more examples of successes and mistakes he's made along the way.

If you're interested in estate sale prospecting as a hobby or a business, I recommend this book.

A good place to start if your are thinking about selling on e-Bay as a hobby or business
One of the things I have learned while working for myself is that most people harbor a dream of working on their own. They don't know how hard and difficult it is in reality, but they know that they like the regular paycheck and security (however illusory) of having a place to go everyday. Those for whom the dream becomes a need begin looking for side businesses they can do as a hobby or something a bit more. This book is a good beginner's guide for those who love to shop for real buys at estate sales and yard sales. Beginning with this information, including the author's well expressed cautions, these folks can begin to turn what they enjoy into some extra cash.

John Landahl shares what he has learned from his own experience about how to get started in this. He tells you how to use craigslist to find likely sale events (and to dump items that didn't sell on e-Bay) and how to conduct yourself while looking for good things to resell. Probably the best part of the book is when he shares examples of what worked for him and what did NOT work. He even includes some photographs of those items. The cautions, if heeded, can save you lots of time and money.

He shares with the reader how to get into this hobby / business without too much upfront cost, what you will need to do it right, and what is overkill. One of the things most people find when they get into business is that what they thought would work usually doesn't. Landahl tries to save you some time without having to learn these for yourself.

Towards the end he explains the business in terms of baseball. It is a terrific metaphor and helped me to understand what the experience is likely to be. Things won't be sunny and perfect in any business, but each has its own pattern of challenges and opportunites.

The author does share with us that there are hundreds of books on how to learn the mechanics of e-Bay and that this isn't the purpose of his book, and I agree that this would have consumed too much time away from his topic. However, I wished that he had shared a few likely titles. Maybe he avoided that because they are continually coming on the market and didn't want to list something that would be too soon outdated.

If you are thinking about selling on e-Bay for fun or as a business, this is a pretty darn good place to start.