1/14/12 Purchase Summary

Today was the first garage saling day of 2012 and I would say it was better than any day we had in 2011 and maybe even 2010.  Sales were consistently excellent.  Before I mention my purchases I want to highlight a few of my friends' finds: a Breathalyzer for $0.25, a French press for $0.50, and a Droid Eris (complete with accessories) for $20.  The Breathalyzer was so cheap because the people who sold it thought it was broken; my friend took it home and got it working within a few minutes without having to spend the $70 $30 to get it calibrated.

I'm not going to discuss my bargaining today (I didn't really do anything exceptional today) but I have provided a short album of my purchases.




I bought the AlphaSmart for $1 as an investment; I think I can get $20-$40 for it.  (For those of you who don't know what an AlphaSmart is, Wikipedia can explain it better than I.  I bought the silverware for $5 knowing it's real silver.  Unfortunately, I think it's silver plating so it's basically worthless.  I'll be sure to provide and update in the future regarding however that turns out.  The Nerf guns cost me $2 total; I think I can resell them for $40-$60 if I include the Nerf target board I bought in December.  The keyboard is mechanical, which, for those of you who don't know, is something of a collector's item right now. Unfortunately, it's a knockoff so I won't get much for it; I'll probably make around $20 on it.  The hiking poles cost me $1.  I have them listed on Craigslist for $45 but if they don't sell that's fine; I'll just use them as backups.  The Perot sign is from his 1996 election bid; I think I'll use it as a decoration -- I like tacky things.  Finally, not shown in the album is a puzzle I got for my sister's birthday ($0.25 new) and a stack of maps I got for $3.  The stack of maps contains mostly National Geographic inserts from the 1960's and 1970's but it also has some star maps, a map of the moon, and a map of Mars.  They're all pretty large; I think the smallest is something around 2'x2.5'.

For those of you who cannot add, this totals $13.40.  Even if I sell just the Nerf guns I'll be making a pretty good profit.  I hope today was indicative of the rest of 2012.