Thank you for the item suggestions. It seems as if thrift stores do offer quite a bounty; do you use the Amazon seller app on your phone to determine items' profitability? I saw that some people mentioned using this app while others discussed using paid apps. Any recommendations for helping to identify those profitable items more quickly? Thank you again.
I use the Amazon app occasionally, but since I pay for
www.inventorylab.com, I get their app Scoutify for "free". It's much better overall. It calculates your profit based on your buy cost and you have links to CamelCamelCamel within the app. The benefit of the Amazon app is that it tells you if you're not allowed to sell the item you just scanned (I'm not approved to sell in Auto or Health and Beauty for example). Comes in handy if I find say a small air compressor designed to be kept in the trunk of your car. It might be categorized as Auto or it could be Home Improvement. I can only sell the latter.
Experience is really the best teacher. But the big thing with Amazon is that it's not eBay. If a customer on Amazon buys something listed as "New", it had better be new. There are items I find at thrift shops all the time that I could
probably sell but the box is in such bad condition I don't bother. The profit on one item isn't worth getting a bad review, plus they'll probably just return it anyway.
My best thrift store items seem to be sort of unique/niche. Book sets are often good. I found this old encyclopedia set for children (theme was Charle Brown) for like $10 and sold it for $40. I sold a 99 cent VHS tape(!), brand new, for $80. It was some movie from the 50s.
At big box stores, it's really trial and error. I've had success with home improvement type items and believe it or not, children's bedding (sheets and comforters branded with Star Wars or Despicable Me, etc). Sometimes you just get lucky. I was at Target to get something for myself when I noticed they were having a huge bedding sale. Items that normally wouldn't have been profitable suddenly were so I walked out with $300 worth of sheets.
Spend a few minutes scanning even at stores you might not think would have anything. I've gotten a surprising number of things from Home Depot.
I try to make at least $10 per sale. I've gone lower than that (if I can buy 10 of 1 item and make $7 on each one, I'll probably buy it). Ideally you want to be making more than that so you can afford to lower your price if other sellers or Amazon start competing. The good news is that I rarely lose money and when I do, it's usually a loss of $1-$5. Some sellers do a lot of consumable items, but you have to be approved in those categories and it's harder and harder to get that approval. If you can sell makeup, you might find lipstick on clearance for $1 but it's selling for $7. Your profit per item is only $2 but if you can sell 10 or 20 units a day it adds up. I've seen Target end-caps with dozens of marked down items like this. This is low margin, high volume route.