My first big estate sale score, an herbalism book goldmine, and how I learned to love reselling items from estate sales
Finding an estate sale on Craigslist
This was the Craigslist ad:
“Mom died and we’re cleaning out her house. She had some nice things, but there’s nothing super expensive. Mom was into alternative health, herbalism, holistic medicine. If you’re looking for some odd, out of print book about herbalism, spiritualism, dousing, plant spirit medicine, color therapy you name it, we’ve got it. Come on down.”
Any experienced Amazon bookseller should be salivating right now. If I was going to write an ad that described my #1 estate sale fantasy, it would be probably read exactly like this.
Two ways I knew this estate sale would be a goldmine
#1: “Alternative health books“: Astute readers notice I mention this book category a lot. Two reasons for that: One, that’s all anyone in this weird town I live in reads. And two, it’s a high-profit Amazon category. When you throw in keywords like “out of print,” “odd,” and “plant spirit medicine” (whatever that means), I just hear the cash register sound on rapid-fire repeat.
#2: The seller had low self-esteem: I know it’s important to maintain some tact here because an estate sale does follow a family death, but… I can’t help it: The hosts seemed to think this sale wasn’t very good. Note the line: “There’s nothing super expensive.” This ad had the tone of a 13-year old asking a girl out on his first date. “I know you’re probably busy Saturday, but I thought maybe if you wanted to come over…You know, if you’re not doing anything…”
When reselling items from estate sales (or anywhere), this kind of low-self-esteem could only mean cheap prices and volume discounts.
Sorry for being a savage, but… actually, I’m not that sorry.
This estate sale had one catch
I left out one thing: I saw the ad at 1pm. And the sale began at 8am.
That meant I was 5.5 hours behind every other Amazon bookseller and random person into reselling items from estate sales in a 60-mile radius who was certainly as frantic for this sale as I was.
Yes, I actually make money handling my life this sloppily… I can’t explain it either.
Arriving at the estate sale
The house was packed. I asked the woman at the card table where the books were, and she pointed up the hallway. When I turned the corner, I found a room so packed I couldn’t even see the bookshelf. I quickly assessed it wasn’t the books the crowd was after, it was the massive collection of herbal remedies that filled the balance of the room.
Waiting for the crowd to clear, I retreated to the living room and found a box of 90 classical CDs. Price: 10-cents each. I slightly over-paid the cashier $12 for the box, greasing the wheels (just slightly) for what I knew was coming: A lowball bulk offer for the entire book collection. If that crowd ever cleared.
Finally I saw a half-dozen people exit the book room with boxes of herbal tinctures, and I made my move.
This is what I saw when I walked in:
Game on.
In the first few books I scanned, I found a well-ranked title selling on Amazon for $30. The sale was crowded, but oddly the shelf appeared untouched. I didn’t see any noticeable signs other Amazon booksellers had pillaged it. But I knew I had to make a move, fast.
I found one of the hosts and asked if he’d consider a flat offer for every book. He told me to throw a number at him.
Napkin-math on estate sale book collection profit
This is where I did the “bookseller math.”
- I estimated 150 to 300 books.
- I factored in the 10 or so books I’d scanned, and how there was at least $80 in Amazon profit in that small sample.
- I factored in the subject matter: A high-profit book niche.
- I did the very, very rough math on what I thought this collection would bring me on Amazon.
- I divided it by 10.
I stood back, rubbed my chin a little, took a few deep and dramatic breaths, and said –
“How about $75?”
He said yes.
My timing couldn’t have been better. Within minutes, two people arrived who were clearly there for the books. I started filling boxes while he stood guard, telling anyone who came near the bookshelf they were taken. One woman got a little testy, announcing to the room the injustice of not being allowed a “fair chance” to go through the books herself before stomping out.
Sorting the book collection
Once home, the book collection itself was as impressive as I expected. And exactly as advertised. Just a ton of very very obscure old books on herbalism and “new age” medicine. Many of them were self-published and not even on Amazon, so I would be setting up a lot of Amazon product pages to liquidate this collection.
The results
Here are the numbers:
CDs
Sellable quantity: 35
Average Amazon Sales Rank: 343,713 (for music, this is not very good)
Listing price: 367.76
Estimated profit: $220
Cost: $12
Books
Sellable quantity: 110
Average Amazon Sales Rank: 1,736,031 (for books, this is not very good either)
Listing price: $1855
Estimated profit:$1,113
Cost: $75
(Note: These numbers do not count the many titles which had no listing on Amazon, that I had to set up product pages for. I’m still going through this process, but I will be listing at least 15 such books at $99.95 each)
Total cost: $87
Total estimated profit: $1,333+
A note about the (bad) Amazon Sales Rank
When buying in bulk, you invite a lot of books into your inventory you might not have purchased otherwise. An average rank of 1.7 million would be extremely unusual for a shipment of books that were individually chosen. But with bulk buys… it’s a different story.
If I already have a book in my possession, and it will bring me at least a $3 payout on Amazon, I’m probably shipping it in – if its a book I’m very confident I’ll sell in under six months. For books with a worse Amazon sales rank, I’ll gradually increase my profit standards, but point is: Turnover isn’t everything. Profit is.
I don’t hate estate sales as much anymore
After the release of Book Sourcing Secrets, I got some bad feedback from students for talking badly about reselling items from estate sales. The criticism is probably valid. It’s just that estate sales always felt to me more like football games than high-end garage sales. I like my book-sourcing absent of violent, elbowing mobs.
But what can I say… With numbers like these, I’ll take a few elbows for a $1,000-an-hour return all day long.
-Peter Valley
Peter,
Glad you had a good score. I recently had a similar experience with an estate of a priest. I bought 100 religious books for $1 each with the average sale price of $20. I have been selling about 10 per day! Religion is a great category! In my neck of the woods, estate sales are subdued and the library sales are full of super aggressive scanners. With estate sales, people are looking for various things, with the library sales, everyone is there for the sale reason!
Peter – CRUSHING IT, as usual I see. One of my ‘You See A Plush Bunny, I See Money, Honey’ readers had similar luck but with plush toys at an estate sales (3,000 Care Bears, paid $800 and sold half of them to date on Amazon for over $30,000 total.)
Keep up the great work and insight,
-Jordan
Awesome! Another reason to pick up your awesome book: “You See A Plush Bunny, I See Money, Honey.” (unsolicited plug). That’s a massive score.
I just bought out an estate sale of all their books yesterday. The sale advertised as having enough books to open your own store and they were not kidding. I walked in ten minutes before they were shutting down, quickly scanned the shelves and hit on a couple of decent $20-$30 books hidden amongst the dregs. I offered them $50 for everything left and they took it. I spent the next two hours packing up books into boxes and hauling them out to the car. I don’t have a final count yet, but it will be somewhere in the vicinity of 800-1000 books. Just the rejects I sell to the local used bookstore will at least triple my money. Have scanned about 40% of them so far and have found at least 100 books worth sending in for FBA including nice handful of books in the $50-$100 range ranked under one million. Nothing has hit for over $100 yet, but with only $50 invested in them I can’t really lose at this point.
That’s a crazy story. Amazing score! Very, very jealous.
A quick update. I ended up with about 250 sellable books that were shipped off to Amazon last week. I started to haul off the rejects to the local used bookstore and have so far collected $135 with about 7 boxes of rejects to go. $85 in my pocket before a single book hits the Amazon warehouse.
Awesome!!!
Cool score! I wish I could FIND a cool estate sale too.
I just scored 50 “estate sale books” from a library sale – they were seperate section, that were 3 for $1 – but lady charged me 4 for $1, lol – she was being nice.
Sadly most had some water damage, but managed to get 50 older motorcycle/karate books without issues that avg listed for $55 sale price, $44 avg gross profit. Super high rank, but almost NO FBA listing with these, so will see…
One of my best library sale scores yet, but only doing this for 4 months.
Local library (for a city of about 39000) had a $3 bag sale this past weekend. (Hardly ever have a bag sale…last one was $5 a bag.) Needless to say, I grabbed up marginal stuff as well as good sellers. The guys with the scanners were all over. (I don’t have a cellphone.) Of course, I have a different approach: batches — got submarines, authors like Vonnegut and Bradbury, Revolutionary War, a bag of Max Brand paperbacks and another bag of John D. MacDonald and Donald (Matt Helm) Hamilton. I will list on eBay and expect to make some pretty good money. Magazines used to be my favorite there, but I cleaned them out of good stuff awhile back which has not been replenished. BTW, my big score was in a small town I lived in several years ago, at the library sale. I helped set up before the sale and there were a couple boxes of Civil War magazines…I nailed the 440 magazines the moment the doors opened for preview night…brought in $1000-2000 on eBay in batches of four for ten bucks plus shipping sold to guys completing their collections. In the meantime, my latest experiences have led me to seriously consider eliminating everything else and focusing on books.
Your comment “yes, I actually make money handling my life this sloppily” gave me much hope — I seldom get up in time to beat the crowds at the estate sales… but I have found a lot of success going to things late and getting really great deals then! I love the idea of making an offer on all they have. It’s funny, two – three years ago, before I had even heard of Jordan’s “Plush Bunny Honey” book (I have now purchased and read it) I ended up at a yard sale that had a huge collection of Boyd’s Bears. I didn’t know much about them but they were all pristine with their little tags and such — a collection of their Mom who has passed away. I offered them $35, they took $50 — I felt so brave. I got home and counted 53 bears. I started researching them and my heart sank a little as they seemed a bit of a “has been” item — but then I started thinking, all I have to do is make $1 a piece and I will have made my money back. I hauled about 12 of them into the antique mall where I had a booth and, dang, by the next weekend most of them had sold! I had already make my $50 back! I still haven’t gotten any of them on eBay — have sold them at the antique mall and have about 25 left! I tossed them back into the antique mall for a few final weeks as I am closing my booth at the end of the month so they will finally get to eBay this summer or fall. And, anything I make now is profit!! Isn’t it fun?? Judy
I read this post over the summer. The very next day I saw a garage sale posted on facebook. It was in a very rural area but I recognized the barn pictured in the background as the one at a berry farm where the parents passed a few years ago and the kids had taken over the business. There was one picture that had boxes that looked like they might have books in them. I instantly thought of this post and wondered if they had farming, soil, business, and the like, books. It was a Sunday at 3pm and I was worried that they were closing up the sale. When I got there, they were still pulling out boxes of books from the attic, ha! In the end, I walked out with 8 boxes of books for a bulk price of $20. Their dad was an avid coin and paper money collector and these were his reference books! Most of the books had 2M – 8M rankings. In 3 months I’ve sold 17 of the books for a payout of $499.58 and still have 71 still in stock (UPS lost a box of 10 books, one that was selling for $200 – grrrr!). They are slow movers, but with this kind of payout I can afford the storage fees! Thanks so much for this post, Peter! I read them all now.
Then there was the post about buying out old video store VHS tapes – which I did the next week in another remote town. 691 tapes – then I read more recent posts about how that market is tanking…. Oops. I’m in the middle of Q4 Amazon madness, but will sort and figure out what the heck I have and will do with them all in January. 🙂 At 25 cents each ($172.75 total), the loss won’t be a big deal if they don’t pan out.
In Cincinnati, many estate sales are handled by “specialists” who earn a tax free income every weekend by pricing and managing estate sales and also loading every available surface with crap they drag from sale to sale. The bad news is that they know how to price and know value, mostly. I ignore the commercial sellers. If I can find a true family estate sale, there is opportunity for money making.