Best Garage Sale Find?

[jeffrey]

What is the best garage sale / flea market / yard sale find that you have ever made? Were you looking for this particular item, or did you happen to just come across it? When you do go to these outlets, are there always something that you search for?

[disneysteve]

My best purchase was a model of a cruise ship, the kind you'd see at a travel agent. It was a plastic model mounted on a wooden base with a clear plastic cover over it. The case was cracked but the ship was intact. I found it in a box under a table at a garage sale and bought it for $1.

I put it on ebay that night and it sold for $213.

[QuarterMillionMan]

Upon returning home one day my neighbor had a garage sale. I bought his surfboard (fairly new) for $60. I had many surfboards of my own so I had no use for that one so I put it in the Pennysaver and sold it for about $280. On a different note with that same neighbor, they once invited me over to their kid's birthday. I gave the kid a new basketball in the box. Later at another one this neighbor's garage sale, I was that same basketball for sale still in the box(lol).

[97guns]

i bought 4 brand new ceiling fans for $5 a pop and dumped them for $60 each

[rennigade]

My grandmother used to work at the salvation army. I went to visit her one day and went to the back room where they sort everything. There was an RC R2D2 still in the box, box was a little beat up. I bought it for a quarter and sold it on ebay for $65.

[Goldy]

My best pickup at a garage sale would have to be my facetron gem faceting machine. I was flipping though the online garage sale ads and spotted the facetron name in the text so I quickly drove down to inspect it. Ever since I was a kid I was interested in making gem stones but the machines are so darn expensive that its not something you can really justify doing as a hobby. Anyway, the thing looked great and after a little negotiating I got it for $450 and it came with all of the laps (grinding wheels), rough material, settings, and tons of books. I calculated that it would cost over $6,000 to replace all of that and if I wanted to I could sell the whole thing for $3,000 easily on ebay. I'm just glad I decided to check the ads that day.

[Gailete]

I found an old art book for a dime that a year later I sold on line for $200+ I also found a set of architecture books that I got for $20 and by the time I was done selling the ones that would sell, I had made over $1000+!!! At that point in time I was buying and selling books to sell on line. Now I sell mostly patterns. A friend was selling off her old patterns and I got three boxes for $2 and after getting rid of the worthless ones, I had about 100 left (so cost 2 cents each) that I have been selling for the last couple years and have at this point made several hundred dollars just from that one purchase.

Unfortunately I don't get to many yard sales any more.

[shaggy]

The Beatles "butcher block" LP, found in a thrift store in Northern California for $1 back in the late 1980s. Sold it for a huge profit.

My husband and I used to make the circuit of all the thrift stores looking for valuable LPs, but the sorters started culling all the good stuff before it got to the floor, so we gave it up.