Networth: $360k
Back on February 5th, I decided to run a very small resale experiment at Goodwill. I bought four items for a total of $33 just to see if I could turn it into a profit. It wasn’t meant to be anything serious, just a quick test to understand the process better.
It took about two and a half months, but as of two weeks ago, I sold the third item. Early on, I thought I had already broken even after selling the second item, but I completely underestimated how much fees would impact everything, especially on Etsy. Once I actually checked the numbers, Etsy had taken close to 38 percent of the revenue, which caught me off guard.
The four items I picked up were a pair of DC Flash Converse, a Nerf gun, a salt and pepper shaker, and a New York City snow globe. I sold the shoes for $40. After $8 shipping and all the fees, I expected to be somewhere around $27, but in reality I only ended up with about $19. That alone shifted the entire outcome of the experiment. At that point, I thought I was close to break-even, but I was still about $6 to $7 in the hole.
The Nerf gun sold on eBay, which felt a lot better from a fee standpoint. I paid $7.99 for it and ended up basically breaking even, maybe even losing a few cents. It didn’t bother me much at the time because I assumed the first sale had already covered most of the costs, but that assumption turned out to be wrong once I looked at the actual numbers.
Right now, I’m either $4 or $5 positive on the entire trip, depending on how I account for everything. It’s not a big win, but it proves the concept. If I scale this and get better at picking items, there’s money to be made. This was a very small sample size, but it taught me a lot. I also realized I have no idea why I bought that salt shaker. It was only $2.50 because it was half off, but still, not a great decision. I got a little lucky with the Nerf gun sale, but I also realized pretty quickly that I made some poor picks.
So far, I’ve sold three out of the four items, and now I’m just hoping someone out there needs a salt shaker. The other two items I bought felt like clear winners at the time, so overall I’d call it a 50/50 result. Logically, if I keep doing this, I should improve my eye for what sells and what doesn’t.
Going forward, I plan to make more Goodwill trips on my days off and treat this more seriously as a sourcing channel. My next experiment will probably be buying a liquidation pallet. I’ve read a lot of mixed things about them, and most people say they’re not worth it, but I want to see for myself.