Tuesday, October 20, 2015

All The IKEA Stuff Goes!

At getting about a quarter to over a third of retail prices, I’m always happy to handle any IKEA product. It's more than I can say about a lot of other things. The only problem is that they are cheap brand new already, so I don’t get rich from them. At the other hand they make sure sales and I don’t feel too good for it yet.

This Moppe chest of drawers was one of the better items from an attic clean up early August in my street. The big pile of stuff was across the street and I happily hauled it all in, only to wake up to a mountain of not so interesting stuff. Brought a lot of it to free pick up center where I exchanged it for better things.

Again - I learnt the hard way how important it is when I never sold that kid's table - I didn’t know it was IKEA as the sticker was off, until a viewer was so kind to inform me by email. So I could adapt my listing and look up what IKEA sells it for. Now that was disappointingly little, but the bid I got soon after was not. Best part is the lady lived one block down around the corner, so the chest moved maybe less than a 100 meters.

Another good one was this Ektorp pillow. Out of production, so I hoped for someone especially looking for it and set the price to a third of the average of pillows more or less the same type. It took until last week to sell, but I now know I shouldn’t worry when items like this take time. In the end they always go.

I also picked this simple armchair from across the street, but kept it for a year or two as an extra in case of. Early September decided it was taking place I needed. Also not for sale anymore, but in style among the very lowest priced on the IKEA site. As I found no product name on its label I listed it with the nearest lookalike name in my title. On free bidding nothing happened for four weeks. A few days ago I just set it to a quarter of retail and that worked I think. It went this morning and I was happy with the little amount for a chair that had a stain from its previous owners and an additional one from my cat puking on it.

The vintage red wire chairs were in fact my first ever trash sale at the local auction site, July 2012.

In May 2013 followed by the super sized Bladet vase and the first set of kitchen chairs.

And a week later even these simple cd racks. But they don't have them in the shop anymore, although I didn't check at the time.

I have an idea why I find so much cheap IKEA stuff in my street and neighbourhood, but I must muse about that another time.

Still waiting for buyers now, more pillows, a vase and even more kitchen chairs...

Monday, October 12, 2015

A Tribal Picture Frame


Inspired by the primitive little animals I looked up an old photograph from 2013 of a tribal wooden frame. It’s made of scrap wood and likely held a mirror. Another drop off in my front porch by my neighbour. I thought it would be a great item for my booth at the arty indoor market place, so I dragged it over and boldly stuck 20 euros on it. And thought oops! But my fellow vendors agreed with the price.

They were right. A couple of weeks later, while I wasn’t present, they sold it to what they described as a gentleman who looked like an artist who almost certainly saw a great picture frame in it.


Recently I found some painting supplies in a bag my neighbour gave me. When I read at Things I find in the garbage that there is a market for vintage pencils I thought this expensive aquarelle colour pencils should have a chance. I looked up what they do retail and calculated about a quarter of that. They sold the next day. Not the head prize of course, but I was happy with the successful experiment.


Not so much luck with the gouache paint. It might have sold on line in the end, but as there was a car boot sale opportunity late August I took it along and sold it at the same price as it was listed for.

As proved my recent Etsy sales as well, in general art and craft supplies are pretty good selling products.

Tuesday, October 06, 2015

Trash On Etsy

Before I went on line locally with larger objects, I occasionally listed small easy shippable vintage and curb found items on Etsy. Not for big money but just to keep things going and every sale is one that adds to your ranking.

Now I’ve sold only two handmade items this whole year and I’m listing more and more vintage and supplies. Upping my prices too! It’s too cool seeing it all go overseas and why not make more money of it when the competition in hand made is just too hard.

Not all is really curb found – I have other free sources now – but here are some that I really picked from the garbage.


Somewhere 2007-2008 I found two flat boxes with tiny animal figurines. Quite primitive, probably from India. Priced by hand and likely someone’s flea market leftover stock. I listed the birds on Etsy as the package was, still covered in plastic. Sold fairly quickly but only at $5.

The slightly larger beasts from the other box had hang up wires and I kept them for crafting. Never happened and in the end I sold four at the indoor market place in 2013. The remaining six sat for ages on the lower plank of my coffee table. Finally got tired of looking at them last August, listed, sold $10 within days.

Which inspired to list more crafting supplies. I had dragged a horrible blue chandelier home years ago, spent hours cleaning and getting the beads off, created some earrings, not a success, sold the beads within a few weeks at $10.


Finally, also years ago, large cards full of completely plastic 1980s earrings picked up in an older part of town. Thought I’d sell them around 20 cents euro a pair at markets but people wouldn’t even pay that. Now listed on Etsy the first set already went for $2,50. That sounds poor but I think it’s ok for what they are and it’s a lot more than 20 cents!

Not the most spectacular examples, but these are fun for me and I would’t have sold the stuff anywhere else but on Etsy.