Home Run! Cha Ching! How I made $170 today while sitting in my easy chair.

I'm very excited today because  I was able to turn a pair of old shoes I plucked from a box marked FREE  into $170! Hungry for more?
  

                               REAL OR FAKE ? ----WHO CARES?

       It was roughly 5 days ago when I was in a local second hand store looking for my next fix. It seemed like I was having to look too hard to find something worth flipping. Usually, when I feel like this, I tell myself its time to go. It doesn't happen often, but if you find yourself doing this it usually means to walk away. For me , it must have meant I was trying too hard because just as I began to leave, an old card board box full of old shoes stopped me. It was marked FREE  with black marker. Naturally , this is the first thing that my eye was drawn to because Ive learned free means opportunity without risk. Heres what I came out with.

   Please keep in mind the fact that Cris really cleaned these up before the picture was taken.I wish I would have taken a before picture but honestly I didn't see anything there at the time. The shoes were high tops and were bent over in half . DIRTY and CRUDDY dosent even begin to describe how bad these shoes were.

    These shoes are made in Italy by the GUCCI company and they are EXTREMELY expensive. I knew that they were a designer shoe but I had no real understanding of just how much a Gucci price tag demands.
       After a little Internet research I was aware of two things:

     #1   Gucci is expensive and therefore they are copied by knock off companies that produce fakes.

    #2   It can be rather difficult to tell the difference between  a real and a fake.

• Have serial Numbers? Check.
•  Feels like leather? Check.
• Says "Made in Italy " on the inside insert? Check.
•  Handsticthed " Crap i dont know. CRIS!"

 Needless to say Cristal knows her sewing but neither of us could really tell even though I know she wanted them to be real .

          I decided to list them on EBay starting at $29.oo  with a buy it now price of $170 ( just in case ). I didn't want to ruin my seller rating which is your credibility with potential customers. I took lot of  detailed pictures and described them as accurately as I could, explaining what the serial number was emphasizing how worn out they were and made sure to state that I couldn't guarantee they were authentic because I just didn't know.

        The only thing I neglected to leave out was the fact that I got them for free. I left that out because nobody , regardless of the value of the shoes, wants to think they are buying someone Else's junk. Or that your making money off of them. They like value like anyone else.

         I still don't know if they were real or not but it matters not to me because this morning someone clicked the " Buy It Now Button"  for a cool $170 ! They slipped right past  the other 4 people who were slowly bidding them up at $40 . They then paid for them 5 minutes later. I'm a happy man today! Keep your eyes open you never know where they might show up!

                                         SOME OF MY OTHER CLOSED AUCTIONS TODAY

   Don't worry , I had never heard of FOOBLITZKY either. Apparently it an early computer game that flopped hard after being released by computer company  Infocom. It actually has some history behind it that can be found on wikipedia. Remember the huge Floppy discs? This one was made for IBM.
    Some of the games were made for Apple too and some of them are selling for $150.Mine was missing the dry erase markers  and the box is absolutely trashed. I disclosed its condition in my auctions description so I wouldnt run into any unhappy buyers.. It set me back .50 cents at Goodwill. It sold today for $24.99!

                           Infocom computer game SOLD   $24.99
                                                                   PAID   $ 0.50
                                                       shipping/fees     $6.15             
                                                                 PROFIT $18.34 !                         

    

                        The Columbia Jacket  -AN Example Of What Not To Do

Lesson #15 - Learned this week. When you find a NICE  item , make sure you can photograph it properly. That way you can show the world how special it is.

I was very excited when I found this jacket on the rack for $3.99.It was different and it had the name "Columbia" On the jacket. I know Columbia clothes to be rather pricey anyways but this was different because it also had  Verizon embroidered on the front. It also had two embroideries on the back. One said USA LUGE and the other Official USA BOBSLEDDING TEAM 2012 !  Im going to make this short and sweet:   If you cant provide the right kind of lighting to photograph your treasures . WAIT UNTIL YOU CAN . The patches were not clearly shown here and I feel i could have done a LOT better here. This could have very well have been an Olympic  team members jacket worn during the 2012 olympics. From what we gathered it probably was. Moving on,.

Sold  $30.49

Paid $3.99

Shipping and fees $9.00
            Profit  $17.50 !