My Favorite Kind of eBay Sale
by Katy on September 25, 2025 · 32 comments
Yawn . . . no designer bags, no valuable jewelry, no 1953 Ernie Banks baseball jacket. Just a couple hangers, a watering can, a darning egg/maraca, a utensil holder and some random dinky remote control. But wait . . . not a standard TV remote control, a remote for a specific brand of electric adjustable bed!
Weighing approximately three ounces, which means I paid 52¢ and then sold it for $75!
People lose and destroy their remotes, so there’s decent money to be made from reselling them. I rarely thrift these days, but I know that big time sellers do good business with overlooked items. Stefany Fuson being one of my favorite reselling Instagram accounts as she’s the queen of overlooked sales!
This is a perfect example of how each reseller has their own areas of expertise, as I pulled this remote from a Goodwill bin that had been out for hours and fully inspected by all the professional sellers. (It actually got wheeled to the back just a few minutes after I found it.) No one else recognized the value. Easy to identify, easy to photograph, easy to list, fantastic profit and then easy to pack up. My favorite kind of eBay sale!
Click HERE to view my eBay listing!
Katy Wolk-Stanley
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{ 32 comments… read them below or add one }
AMAZING!
Now that I’m through my string of shifts, I’ll list my remote from the bins. Mine’s not gonna be as valuable as yours, though. 😉
Yes, please get going!
Katy,
Congrats on your quick and profitable sale. I love that you have educated yourself on reselling over the years so that you can “work smarter not harder”. Thank you for sharing.
I think everyone has their own odd areas of expertise, whether it’s reselling or an entirely different category of life.
That is an amazing profit, and it’s something easy to pack up and send as well. Well done! Making me rethink my leavetaking from reselling.
I pretty much only pick up things to resell if they’re guaranteed to sell and the profit is at least $50 these days. Plus easy to ship!
That’s awesome! Could you tell me how to verify that a remote works? Thank you
I just assume that they do and I’ve never been burned.
I go to a lot of estate sales. Sometimes I line up early with the resellers. They are going after the obvious items, like Midcentury furniture and jewelry and vintage clothes, which go to Portland vintage stores for aspirational prices. (Who pays that much???) Instead, I buy things like the aluminum foil, the paper towels, the toilet paper, pantry items, canning supplies, printer paper, batteries, light bulbs, soap, etc. These are all things that add up at the grocery store, but the sale runners just want them gone. I guess what I’m saying is that, even if you aren’t reselling things, you can find yourself in a niche position when you’re buying secondhand items.
Yesterday, I went to the bins since I had a few items on my wish list. I found one of the items, which was a plain black t-shirt. It was nothing fancy and originally came from a “forbidden retailer”, but it doesn’t count if I bought it second hand. Also, it appears that it was never worn.
I found a few things I wasn’t looking for. That’s the danger of the bins. I found a big Midcentury modern planter! The sold comps on eBay are in the $125 range, though I see people asking $250 and $300. I’m not planning to sell it.
This is a brilliant estate sale plan! I am sure also that too often those things are just pitched at the end of the sale. I know my mom had plenty of unopened soap and similar items in her house when she died. My sisters and I took it all, but even my sisters were ready to throw away the half empty bottle of lotion for example, that we had all been using just the day before.
When my sisters and I had to put mom in assisted living, my one sister started throwing things out left and right. Fortunately, I caught her and put on the brakes as she was about to toss a Tupperware pie saver. I said, why don’t we have an indoor yard sale (October) and put the money from the sales toward mom’s care? Finally, the lightbulb went on. Pretty sad when the baby sister has to straighten out her older sisters .(20 and 16 years my senior – I was a “whoops!”) Earned several hundred dollars that helped pay for mom’s care. Not really anything of significant value, other than some “star and thumbprint” glassware, which was bought by an antique dealer for a fair price.
A friend’s family had a large dumpster delivered to her parents’ home for their estate clean-out. Her brother tossed everything because he didn’t want to deal with any of it. At the end of each day, my friend would climb in the dumpster to retrieve items that she knew she could find good homes for.
Li,
Great minds think alike. I still have my spray bottle of half-full Great Value window cleaner, bought from an estate sale for 25 cents. I bought it the year I moved into this house, 2010. I’ve since refilled it zillions of times. This year, I had to replace the sprayer top since the original one broke. But it’s still the same bottle.
I’ve also gotten canned goods, pasta, packages of trash bags, big bags of paper clips, shoe boxes full of pencils and pens, office supplies, unopened toiletries, a sewing box full of spools of thread, needles, pins, etc., books, utensils, water hoses, massage shower heads, sunglasses, one of those metal stands that you put plastic trash bags on in the garden (heavier than the new ones), an antique silk-covered French Provincial sofa, a rocking chair and even a TV/DVD player from those sales. Go on the last afternoon and things will be 50 to 75% off. Sometimes even 95%. They often bag a lot of mundane things together, such as those paper clips, and I’ve found some of the best and most useful bargains that way.
That’s so smart to buy standard household items from estate sales!
Yes, buying used is always better than getting expensive new items. I literally spend pennies on the dollar for these mundane things. I also get stuff at garage sales and thrift stores and even around apt. complex trash dumpsters. If I’m buying from someone’s home or at a yard sale, I just look around to make sure they are clean. I’ve been inside estate sales where the interior of the house is so filthy, it’d make the city dump look like it’s Martha Stewart’s place. I’ve also seen yard sales where the property looks like the city dump. Needless to say, I get out of those places ASAP.
I can vouch for it that toward the end of cleaning out an estate, the survivors can get “stuff fatigue” and just start throwing things out (or selling them for pennies in an estate sale, if they’re having one). I’ve now seen this happen twice: first with my SIL when she was cleaning out my MIL’s house, and more recently with a widowed friend.
SIL was sole executrix for my MIL and didn’t consult any of the rest of us on what to keep or dump, except that she enlisted DH and his trailer to do dump runs (which was how we managed to salvage a lot of stuff). Suffice it to say that DH was nothing like SIL, or I wouldn’t have married him in the first place. 😛
And the widowed friend was thinking about having an estate sale, but just got overwhelmed by all the STUFF and has called in a junk cleanout service. I do understand, since her late DH was a borderline clinical hoarder. But all the same, I regret the waste. Maybe there ought to be “junk doulas,” the same way that there are now “death doulas”?
A. Marie,
My mom did something similar after her second husband (not my dad) died, and she was downsizing from her house to an apartment. At the time, my son was a toddler, and as a FT working mom, my free time was very limited. She kept telling me to come over and take what I wanted; I didn’t really want much, except for the Christmas ornaments I had grown up with (many were vintage even then, but it was more for sentimental reasons). Without any warning, my mom hired a junk company to come clean out the basement – take it all! – which they did…including the Christmas ornaments I wanted, and several designer handbags and other $$ items of my mom’s. She told me about this after the fact. I was furious, and years later, I’m still a bit salty over what happened.
I also go to estate sales and head straight to the household goods! I’ve gotten cleaning supplies, foil/ziplocs/wax paper, pantry stuffs & canned goods still within their “best buy” date, all for pennies on the dollar!
Li,
Oddly enough, I have never seen things like toilet paper, printer paper, cleaning supplies, aluminum foil, etc., at estate sales. Maybe I get there too late, and someone else has scooped them up? I don’t know, but I would definitely grab them if available!
Yes! Kitchen items are often so inexpensive. I’ll often look for canned goods that are not expired, as those are usually priced at $0.25 around here and we can supplement our pantry as well as have plenty to donate to the little free pantries (like little free library stands) in the area. Ready to eat soups, canned fruit, beans, pie filling – anything is helpful.
Love that you have found a profitable niche!
When I started going to the bins, it was .59/lb, glassware .39/lb.
I’ve successful picking up eyeglass frames.
Wool runner rugs are still $3, I’ve picked, cleaned and sold at my friends schwanky resell home store.
I, too buy light bulbs, napkins, purchased 4 cans off bar keepers friend for .25 each at estate sales. The spices were free, picked up the glass ones for gifting my bbq rub.
I love that you get glass spice jars to use again!
I am so in awe of your sales prowess! Well done! I also like the little green man from Mars icon on your eBay account. Very cute!
One of my relatives used to go to property auctions, like when they were about to close and tear down a school or hospital or business or factory. He’d bid on strange items (specialized machinery, etc.) that no one else paid any attention to, and usually buy them for next to nothing. He’d research what they were and how much they sold for — and then offer them on eBay for about half that. (Although his “Buy it now” price was maybe 10-25% off the “new” price.)He made tons of money doing this! Very profitable hobby. Loved hearing him brag about it, as his stories were a lot of fun.
Thank you for noticing my alien eBay logo. My sister designer it when my eBay was 95% selling Hanna Andersson striped dresses and pajamas.
I love that your relative was doing the work to recognize industrial items. Those are not easy to store/ship, etc, so they unsold most of the tie. However, the potential profit is fantastic for those willing to do the work!
Katy, you have such an eye. Buying a used remote control would never occur to me. Good job and nice reward. Over the years I have collected sets of cloth napkins at garage sales and thrift stores. My first stash had more than 2 dozen napkins in a bag for $2.00. From that time on I never bought another package of paper napkins. That’s all I use whether for lunches, dinners, or parties. I have continued to add to my original stash with colors for all seasons. Most are no-iron and the rest require little more than a quick touch up. Over the years the savings really adds up.
1) Raining today and, if I didn’t do laundry today, we wouldn’t be able to be seen in public. Washed 1 load of jeans, slacks, shorts, and towels, which DH put in the dryer. Load #2 was underoos, double- barrel sling shots, sockies and shirts. Shirts on hangers in the bathroom. Other items hung on my make-shift “clothesline” in the spare room. Load #3 was bedlinens. Those went in the dryer.
2) Got a cardio workout wrestling clean sheets onto the bed. If there’s one task I hate (other than doing dishes and filing), making the bed comes in at #3.
3) Found a penny.
4) Ate the last of the store brand tortilla chips with some warm nacho cheese sauce on them for lunch.
5) Making chicken noodle soup for supper. Chicken came from the “treasures” reclaimed from DH’s DS snd DBIL’s basement, chicken broth I had on hand, mirepoix I canned last year, and all I had to do was buy a bag of egg noodles, which was about $1.69. We’ll get at least 3 meals out of it and I will take a bowl to my sister on Saturday.
Loved “ double barrel sling shots” ! I’m Irish, and Irish babies are given words to play with in their cribs, instead of toys! Do you have any green blood, I wonder?
Question for those of you who pick up clothing along the road.
This morning at the grocery I saw ONE sock hanging from a handicap parking sign. I debated whether or not to take it. I didn’t. The thought did occur to me that there may be people (amputees specifically) who only need 1 sock. Case in point, one of my pastors is an amputee. Lost his right leg up to his groin at the age of 17 (he’s 56 now) falling out of a tree onto a barbed wire fence.
What would you have done if only one sock?
Melissa N,
I’m sure other folks have some clever ideas re: want to do with a single sock. If I come across a single sock in, say, a parking lot, I wash it and then put it with my pile of hole-y/worn out socks, and send them to Smartwool. You can “buy” a mailing bag from them with purchase (I think the bags are free, but you do pay postage). They then recycle the socks, which can be of any size or brand. (I know some people darn socks, which is great, but I don’t have the skill or interest in doing that. High five to those who do.)
This rarely happens, but I found a whole organic chicken and a four-pack of fresh ground beef burgers on 50% off this morning at Aldi.
On the way there I stopped at Ollie’s Outlet for the large bags of SunMaid raisins for $1.99 per bag, and bought cat litter and puppy pads.
Wore today the Gloria Vanderbilt jeans (they were new without tags) and a super cute top bought yesterday at Goodwill. I laundered them upon bringing them home and dried them on a rack overnight. My $10 outfit for trawling for bargains!
1. Gave blood yesterday for the first time in a long time. I have to say things have really improved in these blood drives! I helped myself to raisins, cookies, and gummies afterwards. I was supposed to get a $10 Amazon gift card, but I forgot to ask about it. It could be I won’t get a electronic one in my email, either, because apparently when I signed up, I messed up, and it all had to be done over again on site. Oh well, I helped someone and I got the snacks.
For two days now I’ve had pumpkin bread pudding for breakfast. It was in the freezer, where I’m trying to lighten the load.
3. I chopped some onions and saved the skins to add some color to homemade broth.
4. Used my second 20% discount coupon at Walgreens to buy Debrox for my stuffed up ears. There was also a $2 discount which I had to get online; luckily the nice cashier helped me.
5. I picked up bagels at the little free pantry.
@Katy, I am so impressed with your success with these Bin things. I don’t think we have anything like them, but I also don’t know where the nearest GoodWill is – we have Salvation Army and a lot of local thrift stores (Lions club, Hospital auxiliary, and so-called ‘private’ ones). I usually just go to Sassy Lion because my friend works there, and usually I come away with something (like the brand new wooden cheese board, with three little cheese knives inset, picked up this week to gift to my daughter)
1. I dropped my cell phone and cracked the front. I had wisely decided that fumble-arthritic-fingered me would be wise to get a good case AND insurance. I now have an appointment to get the thing fixed in the big smoke. Will cost a bit but way less than without the insurance. The case has saved me from multiple other cracks. The insurance is a good one, not through the phone company and more comprehensive with better turnaround. Sigh, though. It was a spectacular drop, mind you, so poor phone, of course it hurt itself.
2. My buddy gave me back the dog towels I had gifted her when my old girl went over the rainbow bridge. Now that I have a new dog, I am glad to get the dog towels back – I didn’t expect to get a dog so soon!
3. I am ending up with a roommate (not a tenant – a temporary free offer for her). A friend of my eldest son has moved back ‘home’ to our valley. Her father is considerably older and had suffered a fall, is now in a home with dementia and not much more time on this plain, and her life had kind of blown up on the other side of the country so there were lots of reasons for her to get back home.
When she first got here she moved into the home of a friend’s sister, however that home has lots of partying with substances and alcohol, and this young woman is sober – or trying to be. She has some financial challenges and needs a safe place to land, and I had offered her a room before she came back, so she has gladly taken me up on this.
I am excited to have her here, which is happening over the next couple of days. A bit of company and an opportunity to help out. We have a good, direct and loving relationship, and I anticipate that any challenges will be easily discussed (not that there will be many, if any).
One bonus is having another person around for the new dog. My young friend is a real dog lover so there will be lots of cuddles and additional walks as my new puppers settles in.
4. A bit of a frugal fail: the third car I have, which I had lent to a friend’s son, has ended up with an exhaust issue (diagnosed by the son, thank you for small mercies, someone who got on the problem right away). The son will get it to the repair shop for me, yay ( I will pay for the repair, however having someone do the repair shop run is priceless right now).
5. The rat problem continues although there are fewer. Wonder James came and reset the traps that are up high, and I took advantage of the Seniors 15% discount (as I am NOW A SENIOR!) as well as a coupon to buy yet MORE mashed potato flakes. My new dog has proven interested in ratting, and succeeded in getting on a couple of days ago (YAY!) so with the three pronged approach I hope to get this problem resolved before winter really arrives.