If you want to know how I feel today, it’s quite good. I made $37 by doing nothing but hauling items to a co-op, where they held the stock for a booth rental fee, and the typical crowd shuffled along and bought some of it. I was not getting these numbers months prior–I was just getting a little above the rental fee. However, I started to make headway and feel very glad for it. I had started flea marketing last year. One of the vendors was kind enough to suggest the co-op. After investigating, I realized it was perfect for my range of wares–far better than the flea market since it was for several days a week instead of once per week except during winter. I eventually turned my business around so dinnerware is at my weekly haunt and the loose media goes to the co-op. It took forever, but I like my footing now. It will get better.
Of course, that does not preclude the typical miasma that comes with working independently on a project. When you dumpster-dive, make sure you know what it is and whether you can find proper parts for it. That goes for board games, too. I found that one, a “Scene It? Jr.” from the early 2,000’s, did not have one of its player pieces. I bought parts online and intend to inflate the price over the typical board games I sell strictly because it cost a bit of cash to complete it. Then again, I can spice it up by saying, “Extra Parts”, as an insurance policy. If you didn’t notice, I sell things with the explicit notion that people will read or play them.
Speaking of board games, one of the vendors at my weekly stop was moving out of a position. So, most of the items were on the chopping block. I ported over new shelving and such to dress up my booth. One of the things I found was a cache of board games of all kinds. Cardboard and plastic make a deadly combination when they smell odd or musty. Thanks to having six windows in my apartment and plenty of spare time, I brushed and aired out the boxes and their contents, putting them in a fumigator if needed, or left them in the sun for a moment so they could be rid of the foul smell. It wasn’t extreme, and a few days in the windowsil did the trick for most. It was little different than buying them at Goodwill or Savers, however, since very few clients know how to care for a board game. The conflicted and contradictory advice for storing such things coincides with the impression that board games are disposable. If you’ve seen episodes of Board James online, you might want to challenge that idea or perhaps agree but for reasons that are subliminal when watching the character’s unraveling across the show’s three seasons. There are no documented instances where mold is deemed conducive to fair mental health.
“Treat your cardboard box with care. Take care of the box and it will take care of you.” –Iroquois Pliskin
Other times, you have big things you think are expensive, but are just unwieldy and contentious to manage. A few items might just be heavy, but are cast iron and rusted. After excising as much rust as possible, you realize they could use some seasoning with oil and oven heat. It is a winning affair, however, if the buyer sees something that is both clean and workable instead of something that will take lots of work to salvage. Remember: you’re here to sell something useful, not halfway to being useful. In a few cases, like a rusty but heavy sledgehammer, you can get away with it, but not cookware, certainly not a cauldron or fry pan. Season those things first, then tell the buyer how to season it before they buy it!
And even when you manage the trinkets, you will find that your best efforts will be futile anyway! Today, I discovered that I cannot salvage a wireless subwoofer whose components are purely wireless. They are out of stock, no longer supported by the company, and nobody online had the relevant transmitters, wires, or other necessary hook-ups and dongles. Of course, this was set aside near a dumpster–nobody wanted it. However, it isn’t in your best interest to do that since it’s electronic waste. Disposing it is a little more involved. Of course, if you want to be frugal or just dickish, take a screwdriver, dismantle the device and excise that lovely speaker magnet for utility purposes.
I also discovered today that I cannot get a microwave oven to work if its spinning mechanism breaks off in my attempt to dislodge it. Even with comparable replacement parts, it cannot be done. Therefore, that one has to get recycled. A couple other microwave ovens required recycling, too. I already want to eliminate the rust in my microwave oven of many years (it has a clock I can read in the dark and I know how to use it), so I am using a loaner in the meantime. Once the old one gets the fix, the other one will be sold at a minor margin.
There are other business-related things I have done this week as well. Since I sell books and other temperature/weather-sensitive media through a few co-op booths, I make it a point to catalog and price items before I transport them. Most people assume you need a few cardboard boxes, but those are too unwieldy and even fragile; I will shred the cardboard as newsprint for when I want to fumigate a somewhat smelly book, but I’m not aching for cardboard boxes to transport them. Instead, I purchased actual milk crates–sturdy, plastic cases used to transport all kinds of merchandise, notably gallons of milk or dairy products. They sold them in stores but, in 2019, endless Tiktok/Instagram videos where people tried dangerous stunts involving milk crate staircases chilled the retail market from selling them. While they cannot port every dimension of product, they fare very well with most book sizes. I kept several milk crates for personal storage for many years but, despite being thirdhand (I never sneaked into a dairy plant to swipe them myself), I eventually deposited them at the backlot of a local grocer so they could return them to the companies that had purchased them. Lucky I bought the ones I harvested from some chain retailers.
Anyway, the milk crates are easily stacked and you can see inside of them as well–to some degree–so you can catalog your wares without any fuss. The alternative is to purchase sealable storage tubs. These aren’t too bad, but they are plastic so they can trap moisture and cause a problem with spoiled product. On the other hand, I bought several because they make wonderful fumigators. A fumigation trick is where you seal a smaller item inside a container full of material that draws in adverse scents or odors. This after getting rid of as much mold or other issues as possible. I use a blend of shredded and crumpled newsprint (e.g. grocery store flyers), baking soda and, most effectively, activated charcoal, and leave the books or other media inside a milk crate that is inside this container for at least one month or longer (mark the calendar). Be sure not to let anything come in contact with the books and media. After a month, I tried a sniff test and noticed a major difference between when I put the books inside and when I extracted them. It does take time, but if you want something done right….
It also pays to check old media and see what you can salvage. More often than not, you can, but it will take some work and a delicate approach. This is true for CDs and DVDs. While nobody has a working DVD-RW player for their PC except as a dongle (very rarely will you see them built into modern PCs, even though that is a failure of communication waiting to happen), actual use of CDs and DVDs should interest those who prefer physical media or can at least convert them into ISO’s for posterity or other purposes. However, a lot of people will just say, “No,” whenever they see the state of the jewel case or behold endless nicks and cuts on the discs themselves. You never know unless you try playing them and, after all, sometimes you can and it was just dirty.
I established a basic process after purchasing disc media in bulk: clean them first, then decide what market they fall under. If you do the reverse, you’re not in the right mind and will get bored too fast. Once you have cleaned and sorted them, you will have a better way of knowing if it is worth your time to work with the disc. Sometimes, while buying people out, it’s real easy: just figure out what genre the discs fall under and work your way through them. If you find any still-wrapped discs, as if nobody had even opened the package up, even better; you can charge a little more than usual if you’re sure the disc won’t fail. Still, you’re not interested in the marketing just yet–only that the discs will work and the customer will not feel cheated.
Once I have a bunch, I systematically inspect and clean the discs, ensure there are actual discs (vendors cannot keep track of loose media very easily and thus I will eat up flea market vendors with bulk sales and negotiations; if something isn’t there, I make it a point to address it to them whether they had any control or not), remove most if not all of the stickers I may find on the packaging, and store them in a milk crate until I can print proper tags for the co-op. If you want to try cleaning and reselling CDs, take care–I use assorted cleaners and a microfiber cloth. Also, I make sure I have everything in reach, so it’s more ergonomics and methodology.
It’s a drawn-out process, but it isn’t necessarily dull. Sometimes you can put a sparkle into the process just by dressing up the actual merchandise. For CDs, that’s a tricky affair. On the other hand, I hound vendors for picture frames that I can resell. This is home decor, so it is best seen in an indoor environment. However, I see how boring-looking the frames are without anything inside them. Often, when you purchase frames at a craft store, they might have a stock sample photograph inside to give you an impression of what the frame’s design is best used for (e.g. elaborate ones have a wedding picture, or a commemorative plaque for vellum or a diploma is patterned differently). So, what I’d do for kicks is to print out my own fan art or artwork in general to provide the flair needed for people to look at the frame. If they buy it, they can perhaps see a note about the artist with contact information–a business card! Suck it, Bateman.
Of course, there are also pricing conventions and what I do to sell comic books or stray electronics but, as it stands, flea marketing is a far more invested hobby and business than at first glance. Never let that deter you if you wish to try your hand at it. The only thing that can deter you is your anxiety over whether anything is happening and, to be fair, it will if you’re patient and dilligent.
What do you think? Yes or no? No, really–you think I’m being way too methodical or sinking time into something that won’t pan out? You think you can do better? Let me know!