1. Christian Dior J’adore (used): On eBay for 30$. It didn’t take long to find a buyer for this! Found in Westmount almost a month ago.
2. Christian Dior Hypnotic Poison (used): On eBay for 50$. Found that same day in Westmount. A couple years ago I would have looked at you pretty funny if you told me that I’d be making decent money selling used perfumes on eBay.
3. Shaving mug and two vintage razors: On eBay for 30$. I’m glad to see this stuff go. I recently added the “best offer” option to help move them out the door. I’ve already received positive feedback. Found mid September in St Henri.
4. Grand Etteilla Egyptian tarot deck: On eBay for 90$. Found in the Plateau last summer, but not mentioned in the blog.
5. Coco Chanel, Guerlain Shalimar perfumes: To a reader for 50$. Found a couple weeks ago in Westmount.
6. Non-working U2 Special Edition iPod: On eBay for 45$. This didn’t take long to sell! Found a month ago in Mount Royal.
7. Cloisonne urn: On eBay for 115$. Found last October in Mount Royal.
8. Unopened pack of 5.25″ floppy disks: On eBay for 22$. I wonder why this person wants these disks… are they for a collection or for use? Found in Mount Royal over a year ago.
9. Five hockey cards from the late 60s: On eBay for 55$. I found them last year in Ville St Laurent but never got around to mentioning them on the blog.
10. Yard sale: 21$. The sale was doomed from the start because I misplaced the key to my storage. However, I was able to sell a few things I happened to have in the car. The foot traffic wasn’t as good as usual either way, likely due to the nearby F1 festival and street fair. A few readers came out, which was nice.
Total: 508$, 9048$ since the new year began. Not a bad figure. Averaging 250$ a week isn’t exciting at this point, but it pays the bills.
New listings
I’ve been pretty productive these past two weeks getting new things up on eBay. The most notable of this batch might be the art deco Asprey catalogue, which I listed for over 2000$. I won’t be surprised if I have to lower that price, but in this business it’s better to aim high than guess low.
1. 14k gold Bechtel pin
2. 1913 Ottawa Champions Canadian League Baseball Photo Postcard
3. Michael Kors "Michael", 70% full
4. Vintage NIB Lacoste Eau de Toilette
5. Vintage NIB Lacoste Original After Shave
6. Guerlain Les Meteorites Powder for the Face, 1982
7. Boss DB-12 Dr. Beat Digital Metronome
8. Vintage Order of the Ahepa secret ritual book
9. 80gb Zune for parts / repair
10. Chanel tortoiseshell sunglasses
11. SAFCO Mercury TN102 low speed Handpiece
12. Metzler Zeiss Umbramatic sunglasses
13. Rare 1930s / Art Deco Asprey Mail Order Catalogue
14. Ipod Nano (Kijiji)
Not a bad haul, really. Hope you found your storage key.
Really hope you sell that Asprey catalogue. One day, you should let us know how you determine ebay listings. I think at one point you mentioned that you would sometimes list as auction, but visiting your ebay profile I see all listing are at set prices. Is there any reason in particular for choosing buy it now over auction?
Good luck with your hunting!
I very rarely do auctions because buy it now listings generally return better prices. I’ve done more auctions in the past, but I’ve regretted the last few I’ve done.
The reason you get better results with set price listings is because all you need is one very motivated buyer to make the sale. If you do auction, you will need two equally motivated buyers to achieve the same price, which might be hard to find within that seven day window – especially for more niche items.
I might consider doing an auction in the future if I think the demand is high enough to attract multiple highly motivated bidders. Occasionally (rarely) auctions realize higher prices that you’d expect. I’d also do it if I wanted to unload the item fast for whatever reason.
I should probably write a page about this at some point, but feel free to ask me any other questions you might have.
that’s interesting that someone bought the iPod. I have an iPod touch with 8 gb I bought in 2009 and didn’t use much (I am not very technologically proficient). wonder if I could sell it.
I’m sure you could. They hold their value pretty well it seems
A thousand dollars a month can sure make a big difference …
Sure can, in my case it means I can eat!
Great sales! I think set designers/movie producers buy things like the floppy disks. I’ve sold some saran wrap from the 50’s to someone I’m sure was a set designer. Fingers crossed for a quick sale on the catalogue!
Maybe the person who bought the unopened pack of 5.25″ floppy disks was making a music video: http://tinyurl.com/pufm45p 😉
I was assuming they had real use for them. There are people who still run their old computers, or collect old computers, and thy might find the need for older floppies. There are also odd bits of equipment that had floppy drives that might still see use. There’s probably a whole sub-industry keeping that legacy equipment going; too unique or expensive to easily replace.
I paid fifty dollars (I think including tax) in 1984 for my first box of ten 5.25inch floppy disks. Those were name brand, I didn’t trust generic floppies for some time. But I don’t think I’d ever need to buy a new floppy, if I really needed some, I have plenty that could be reused. And just at the tail end of floppy era (when USB flash drives started becoming cheap) I ended up buying 25 and then 50 3.5inch floppies at really good prices. Since I only used a few, they remain for posterity.
I did once find a box of 8inch floppies outside a church after they had a sale, I think there was more tan one box. I brought some home for history, they were the first 8inch I’d actually held in my hands. But it made me wonder what I’d missed at the sale, I imagined some exotic old computer.
Michael
My middle-class parents who worked in finance and nursing respectively throw out almost everything after using,and discarded knick-knacks,antiques,etc regularly during my childhood and threw out or sold good furniture only to buy new furnishings.They also sold houses every three years.I long for stability in my life,and I love collectors of antiques,sports cards,knick-knacks,wine,etc.I admire hoarders and archivists and dislike people who throw out too much stuff.There are too many anti-clutter rants.I am tired of people like that.I love your blog for all the treasures you rescue.But you can only rescue a small fraction of all the treasures that are thrown out in Montreal.People have to learn to throw out less.Your views on this?
People should definitely throw out less (even if it’s bad for my business, ha ha). I think government could do more to help encourage this.
For example, in today’s post I found another laptop in a recycling bin, and in the previous post I found a box full of paints in a bin. These items do not belong there, and in the case of the paints they might even ruin a batch of recycling. The city could try harder to inspect what people put in the bins, and perhaps give warnings and fines if they put the wrong things out.
There is a “Give Box” near my place. It’s like a locker that people put free things in, often books, clothes, kitchenwares, and so on. I think we should have a lot more of these. They don’t take up much space and are easily maintained. It would make it easy for someone who is moving last minute and doesn’t have time to deal with things to drop off their still good items.
I think there could be a broken electronics section of the Give Box, where people could drop off their broken things (like toasters, laptops, etc) for others to find and repair. The government could do more to teach people to learn how to repair, perhaps by funding a local repair cooperative.
But yes, a lot of the problem lies with the people throwing things out. There is a fine balance between minimalism and hoarding, both of which seem a little too obsessive. I think in general that we should create less new junk – there’s so much useless, crappy plastic crap around these day that simply should not exist. But why is it made in the first place?
It’s also certainly true that the upper class, and to a lesser extent the middle classes are particular bad at throwing good things out. They just don’t have the same concept of money and value as other people do. I’m sure there are many richer people who do care, but I’m definitely way more likely to find ridiculous things in front of expensive homes.
Those working laptops from a couple weeks back are a good example. A poor person (like me, before I invested in my current laptop) would have loved to have one of those, and likely would have used it until it fell apart. However, for these people (with a home valued at close to 2 million dollars) it wasn’t worth the effort of selling or giving away. They either don’t understand how much someone else might appreciate the laptop, having been sheltered away from true financial hardship for so long, or they just don’t care.
I think some waste though results from a certain amount of self-loathing, especially in the older generations. I think a lot of people who were born in the 1920s to 1950s feel like time has passed them by, given all the changes that have occurred (especially in recent years). My grandma, for example thinks of a lot of her old things as junk that no one would want, even if I think the items (and the culture and lifestyle they are symbolic of) are super cool. A grandma of a good friend of mine nearly threw out her collection of old family photos because she assumed that no one cared. It’s sad, and my generation could probably do better job at showing our elders that we think they’re cool.
So, to conclude this rambling, I think the government could do more to encourage people to reduce, reuse, and recycle, and perhaps put more effort into punishing people who abuse the system. However, it’s also important to have conversations with our friends, parents, siblings, and anyone else regarding their trash-related habits, and perhaps discuss ideas of reducing waste. That micro level activism can be extremely effective.
You have some great stuff listed right now, hope it all sells! Just an FYI, I clicked on the link for the Asprey catalogue and I thought the front cover had a whitish stain or water damage mark. I read your description which said it was in great shape, and I had to go have another look at the main picture. I realized that the white stuff I was seeing was a camera glare, not a stain. But you might want to redo that picture so a potential buyer doesn’t think the same thing I did. Just a suggestion. Good luck!
Thanks. I think most will sell with time, though I have a few listings that I might take down if they don’t sell soon. Sometimes it’s hard to know where a market is and where it doesn’t (at least for a price that’s worth the time).
I definitely agree. I should scan the cover, but until I do I figured it was better to have the listing up there than not. I hope to get this done at some point, though I’m moving soon and might not have time until that’s over and done with.