End of Year Report: 2012

I finally have something to write about after two months of no posts. Today I get to brag about my profits for this year and summarize some of my better finds.

Before I start the math, I need to mention that I had three resales in the past month: I sold the ski pole (it wasn't a hiking pole as the seller told me) from March 3rd for $10, I sold one textbook from August 18th for $2.00 (to my sister's university's bookstore buyback), and the Game Boy stuff from August 18th and September 8th for $30 total. I split the profit from the Game Boy stuff evenly between the two days.

I decided to record all my 2012 transactions in a table this year to make everything easier, as shown below:

Date	Item(s)	No. Items / Sets Purchased	Income / Spending ($)	Drove?	Income for Saling Day
1/14/12	Various	8	-13.40	Yes	170
1/17/12	Trekking poles from 1/14		35	--
1/24/12	Nerf Guns from 1/14		65	--
1/28/12	Various	4	-2	Yes	20
2/4/12	Various	3	-0.60	Yes
2/11/12	Various	6	-6.10	Yes	45
3/3/12	Various		-6	Yes	39.16
3/7/12	Book from 3/3		29.16	Yes
3/10/12	Game	1	-0.50	No
3/23/12	Laser tag from 1/28		+20	--
3/24/12	Various	3	-21.20	Yes	63.69
3/28/12	Kindle from 3/24		40	--
3/31/12	Various	6	-6.25	Yes
4/7/12	TI-83	1	-0.50	No	40
4/9/12	Book from 3/24		9.32	--
4/15/12	Nerf Guns from 2/11		45	--
4/21/12	Various	19	-4.45	Yes	22
4/28/12	Silverware from 1/14		10	--
4/28/12	Graphics card from 4/21		22	--
5/2/12	Book from 3/24		14.37	--
5/5/12	Various		-1.25	Yes
5/12/12	Various	10	-3.10	Yes	45.07
6/2/12	Various	5	-1.70	Yes
6/9/12	Various	2	-1.25	No
6/23/12	Various	3	-1.90	Yes	114.65
6/25/12	Book from 6/23		34.65	--
7/7/12	Various	13	-1.85	Yes
7/14/12	Textbook from 5/12		8.68	--
7/14/12	Power Pad from 6/23		20	--
7/14/12	TV Tuner from 5/12		5	--
7/29/12	Various	4	-2.25	No
8/4/12	Various	7	-6	Yes
8/18/12	Various	7	-5.25	Yes	17
9/8/12	Various	6	-2.75	Yes	33.18
9/8/12	Calculator from 4/7		40	--
9/10/12	Goldeneye from 9/8		9.73	--
9/10/12	Keyboard from 1/14		60	--
9/15/12	Large wine glasses	2	-.25	No
9/17/12	Textbook from 5/12		31.39	--
9/24/12	Super Mario World from 9/8		8.45	--
10/14/12	TI-83+ from 6/23		60	--
10/27/12	Various	3	-1	Yes
11/3/12	Book	1	-.10	No
12/7/12	Ski Pole from 3/3		10	--
12/14/12	Book from 8/18		2
12/23/12	Gameboy stuff from 8/18 and 9/8		30	--
TOTAL	TOTAL		+490.10	--

For ease of calculation, I counted "sets" of items rather than individual items; for example, the Game Boy stuff I bought on August 18th was counted as a single set rather than counting all the individual items. Likewise, if I bought a bunch of similar items at one garage sale, say, four Nerf guns, they were counted as one set. The income/spending column is used to tally sales and purchases; a negative figure means I went saling that day, a positive figure indicates a resale. The Income for Saling Day column tallies all the money I made from reselling items from a particular day. The Drove column designates whether anyone drove on that day of saling.

While it's not obvious from the table, I purchased 89 sets of items for $89.65; I resold 23 items for a total of $579.75, or an average of approximately $25 per item.

As you can see above, my total profit before gas was just short of $500, or $27.23 per trip. I'm using the same assumptions I did last year calculating gas costs except I'm assuming gas cost $4.65 per gallon (this year's peak for regular) instead of $4.25 per gallon.

This means gas costs are calculated as:

Cost = 18 trips * 0.5 * 40 miles / trip * 1 gallon / 15 miles * $4.65 / gallon = $111.60.

Keep in mind this is a rather conservative figure; I drove less frequently than 50% of the time and I drove a far more efficient vehicle than I did in 2011.

This means that my profit after gas is $378.50, or just over $21 per trip.

I got some great items in 2012. I did 95% of my Christmas and birthday shopping, spending $20 total at most. I bought a smartphone for $1 that I now use as a media, portable storage, and wifi device. I bought a (second) Kindle, four graphing calculators, two Gamecube games that retail for $40+ each used, a new bread machine, and an HD video camera. I also managed, combined with the power of eBay and dumpsters, to assemble an entirely new (to me) computer for under $25 including a keyboard worth more than probably everything else combined.

I still have a few items leftover from this year to sell in 2013. I have two graphing calculators from which I estimate to make $80-100. I have a few Nerf guns that will get me $30-40 and an Alphasmart that, should my scheduled deal go through, will get me $25. This means I'm sitting on an additional potential income of $130-$165.

On this note, I also sold some items leftover from 2011 during 2012:

Date	Item(s)	Income/Spending ($)
1/20/12	Opinel knife from 7/30	5
3/23/12	Laser Tag from 12/10	110
4/20/12	Mechanical Keyboard	40
4/21/12	DVDs from 9/10	10
8/27/12	TI-92 from 8/27	40
9/22/12	DVDs from 9/10	5
TOTAL	TOTAL	+210

At the end of 2011 I had pretty much broken even after gas, so I profited an average of $15 per trip over the fourteen times I went saling in 2011. I'm obviously doing a lot better this year.

I didn't really get to go garage saling in the last three months of this year, just due to weather and schedules. I do have plans to start saling again starting January, weather permitting. Hopefully 2013 will be as fun and profitable as 2012.

Items to Look For: LEGOs

If you haven't priced Legos in the last few years, you probably don't realize that they're absurdly expensive. I'm not sure if they've always been this bad, but decent-sized sets now easily retail for more than $100 and anything in the $20-$30 range is too small to be worth buying.

The problem with buying Legos is that it's pretty much guaranteed that pieces will be missing. This is fine if you're buying them for yourself to build without instructions or to add to a box of mixed Legos. When I was in college, I bought a bag of a few hundred pieces for my dorm to play around with. If you're buying with the intention of having a whole set (either for yourself or as a gift) then you're making a mistake unless you can get them for really cheap.

I've heard that Legos can sell for quite a bit of money on eBay, especially if they come with the box and directions. This is especially true for older sets and some of the more popular themes, like Star Wars. Of course, this requires you to find a full set.

If you have a lot of time on your hands and don't mind making money fifty cents at a time, you can also sell individual pieces on eBay to people who are missing their own pieces. You can sell the pieces for anywhere from 99 cents to a few dollars, but after shipping (even a first class envelope) your profit will be small.

You most likely won't find Legos at garage sales. In the last year I've seen them twice and both times they were too expensive to purchase. Still, if you're looking for a relatively cheap gift or you don't mind spending a little more on yourself, you may get lucky.

11/3/12 Purchase Summary

I didn't actually go garage saling yesterday; I just did my normal neighborhood walk. I bought Colossus by Michael Hiltzik for $0.10. I know nothing about the book but it sounded interesting and the author won a Pulitzer so I thought it would be decent.

10/27/12 Purchase Summary

Today was the first day I went garage saling in more than a month and a half and it was rather disappointing, for me at least. My friend with whom  I went saling bought many items.

I spent a total of $1 on three items: a computer mouse for my parents ($0.25); Upper Hand, a board game that combines Bridge and Scrabble from the early 1980's ($0.50); and a wireless internet camera ($0.25). I bricked the camera during installation. I have no idea how or why it happened but it's not a big deal; I didn't really have a use for it. I did see an item I did want to buy; a guy had a big box of NES stuff that I wanted to resell. He wanted $75 for the set so I didn't even try to work him down.

Today was pretty much a letdown.

Yet Another Broken Record

I've been really bad about updating recently. I haven't been saling recently and I haven't had any great resales (until today), so I haven't had anything to talk about the last few weeks. That changes today and probably only today.

I did set a new record today, selling the TI-83+ graphing calculator I bought June 23rd for $60. Seeing how I only spent $0.50 on it, my profit was 11900%, beating my previous record of 9900% for my old metal detector.

I have done quite well with the $2.65 challenge. So far I've spent $2 and resold $1 worth of items. From that $2, I've made exactly $100: $40 for the first TI-83 I bought and $60 today. Even if I were to retire from saling and selling today; I've still made almost a 3700% profit on my initial $2.65.