Tip Tuesday: Consignment Sales

I have been busy busy busy this past week sorting things for the consignment sale I signed up for. I was hoping to make enough money for Christmas gifts, but we had to take my car in for repairs to something with some kind of case- (sorry, car parts not really my thing) and the 3rd try to fix a problem I'm been having since the flood (yes, last year!) Let's just say it involves a large family of mice and me having to vaccum out my car every time before I go somewhere.  Happily, my car is finally mouse free (they finally figured out they chewed all the way thru the firewall!) and sadly the bill for both things was almost $500! Ouch!

I took my 250+ clothing items to the consignment sale last Monday and when I went to pick them up this Monday found out I had sold everything except 4 items! I made enough to pay over half of my car bill and have another sale closer to home next week. 

Why am I mentioning this?  Well, several reasons:

First the pros:
consignment sales are great places to get rid of old inventory, your kids outgrown clothes, toys etc
you can use the money you make to buy them bigger clothes, and repeat, repeat, repeat, 
For example I spent about $100 on baby girls first set of clothes and then keep using the money I make from selling them to buy the next size of clothes.
it makes for empty boxes and totes that you can now store your ebay stuff in! 

the cons:
mostly time- for all of the time it takes to price it all, its not a great ROI, my hubby correctly points out that I could make way more money listing or shipping to FBA
the time to sort, wash, iron, tag, haul store etc
having to find or buy hangers

I however, was happy to make some extra much needed money with things that were just taking up space, and my children had already gotten use out of. For kids clothes, it's the best money I've made, and I could have made more if I had volunteered also. I have almost 10 empty bins to store ebay stuff in and I am happy.

I am however hard at work again with digging up some more items to take to the sale next week, since I was planning on having a lot of stuff to take from this sale. I hope I can at least make enough to finish paying for the car bill. I am going to try to take the toys, books and baby gear I didn't get priced last week to the sale this week.

Ebay, Etsy, Amazon and Bonanza have all picked up a lot in the last week. I sent in 14 more boxes to FBA last Friday and my first box was checked in about an hour ago and is already selling!
I hope to have another 14 boxes ready to go in by this Friday. I will update on what's sold later in the week.