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how did you sell your stuff

how did you sell your stuff

Old Aug 20th 2003, 9:33 am
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Default how did you sell your stuff

We want to sell most of the contents of the house. We have done carboot sales with varying results. We have big things to sell now, like sofa, tv fridge etc. I would like to hear from anyone using ebay and how succesful that was.

We have had an idea where we put up adverts for a house clearance, and invite people to come to the house to buy things, has anyone done this.

I understand that if you pay somebody for a house clearance, then you end up making very little money.

Some of our stuff is quite new, ie, sofa 2 years old, tv is only six months old.

We also thought about putting an advert in the local paper with a list of all the major items, such as beds and sofas.

Any ideas would be very much appreciated, and any experiences too.

Thanks, Jaz
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Old Aug 20th 2003, 9:49 am
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Default Re: how did you sell your stuff

Hi

Depending on where you live you should have a 'Freeads Paper' so you can advertise for free in there, I actually sold my car in this paper a few years back so you should have some luck.

What about work notice boards or your local supermarket?

Bye for now and good luck

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Originally posted by jaz
We want to sell most of the contents of the house. We have done carboot sales with varying results. We have big things to sell now, like sofa, tv fridge etc. I would like to hear from anyone using ebay and how succesful that was.

We have had an idea where we put up adverts for a house clearance, and invite people to come to the house to buy things, has anyone done this.

I understand that if you pay somebody for a house clearance, then you end up making very little money.

Some of our stuff is quite new, ie, sofa 2 years old, tv is only six months old.

We also thought about putting an advert in the local paper with a list of all the major items, such as beds and sofas.

Any ideas would be very much appreciated, and any experiences too.

Thanks, Jaz
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Old Aug 20th 2003, 10:06 am
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For some reason local supermarkets dont work for us! Dont know why, but the free ads is a good idea.

My head is so full of so many things to do, this is why I wanted ideas, I am misssing the obvious - and cant type anymore for some reason. lol

Thanks Natbat
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Old Aug 20th 2003, 12:34 pm
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Default Re: how did you sell your stuff

I understand that if you pay somebody for a house clearance, then you end up making very little money.

Some of our stuff is quite new, ie, sofa 2 years old, tv is only six months old.

We also thought about putting an advert in the local paper with a list of all the major items, such as beds and sofas.

Any ideas would be very much appreciated, and any experiences too.

Thanks, Jaz [/QUOTE]

We can get 20 free ad's a week in the local Friday Ad, that is if the items are under £53, have done a car boot sale, we've also had the bloke out from the local Auction house, he's valued everything so we have a rough idea of what's worth what, we will have some garage sales soon. What is left we will put into Auction.


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Old Aug 20th 2003, 12:52 pm
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I used Friday Free-Ads too, got good results, you can do it online and if the item doesn't sell, you can rebook the ad for the following week without having to type it all in again.

Most of our goods got sold to friends and relatives. We couldn't believe it, once news got round that we were selling up and going, it was amazing how Uncle Fred wanted first refusal on the sofa, Auntie Bess wanted the toaster, Joe Bloggs (friend of a friend of a friend) wanted the telly........ I had so many requests that I typed everything up as a word document, it was four A4 pages long, and distributed it to as many people as I knew. The phone didn't stop ringing, how come all of a sudden everyone wanted something of mine, whenever I had had visitors previously I hadn't noticed them eyeing up my furniture, now all of a sudden it was highly sought-after. We told everyone first come, first served and such was the demand we had to ask for a deposit, also useful in case they changed their mind at the last minutes (like the day of departure!) One good thing about selling to friends and relatives though, the ones who were buying the beds and other "necessary" items of furniture, they let us use them right up until the day before we left, so we didn't have to worry about living in a virtually empty house for weeks.
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Old Aug 20th 2003, 1:14 pm
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This website is absolutely fantastic if you live in London.

http://www.thegumtree.com/

It's a site for Aussies, Kiwis and Saffers coming over and needing stuff during their two-year stay. Also Londoners use it.

We sold ALL our stuff through this, and got more than we'd actually budgeted for...
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Old Aug 20th 2003, 1:27 pm
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We were like you orginally going to sell everything and start a fresh but my brother who emigrated last year said DONT even though you take into consideration the shipping costs etc it is still a lot more expensive to buy things out there, and yes he made a lot of money on his house and so had the money to buy everything new on his arrival but said he was so glad he did'nt. He also said its is comforting in some way to see all familiar things around them when everything else is new. Good Luck.
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Old Aug 20th 2003, 2:51 pm
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We put a free ad in the local paper for a lot of stuff and were inundated with calls. Had a car boot waste of time they want everything for nothing. Given a few things away to friends and family.

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Old Aug 20th 2003, 3:03 pm
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A lot of people have used ebay. I have put my Son's cottage on there and the price seems to be reasonable. It might be worth a try.
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Old Aug 20th 2003, 3:08 pm
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Originally posted by Gavin B
This website is absolutely fantastic if you live in London.

http://www.thegumtree.com/

It's a site for Aussies, Kiwis and Saffers coming over and needing stuff during their two-year stay. Also Londoners use it.

We sold ALL our stuff through this, and got more than we'd actually budgeted for...
What a great site for selling stuff! I'll certainly be posting some ads. Thanks for the tip Gavin.

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Old Aug 20th 2003, 3:08 pm
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Congrats by the way Tina on your 1,000th post - you've got the same amount of stars as PB now - worrying....
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Old Aug 20th 2003, 3:09 pm
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No worries Ben. Glad to be of help.
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Old Aug 20th 2003, 8:12 pm
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We have found car boot sales to be a complete waste of time and effort.
We priced everything up really cheaply, as we decided that we had to get rid of certain things whatever. If we put something on for 10p people wanted it for 5p.
They start at a ridiculous time in the morning too.
Any bits and pieces I have left over will go to the charity shop.

I might give ebay a go with the bigger items though, as it sounds a lot more successful.

We have decided to take a lot more with us than we originally planned.

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Old Aug 20th 2003, 10:10 pm
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Default selling stuff

We've shifted loads of junk [15yrs worth] by various means, a lot of stuff went at carboots we've done 3 or 4 of them good for selling books, toys, tools and ornaments. I found that not pricing stuff was better than labelling it also saying to the punters "make me an offer" pays dividents as they often offer more than I'd have asked.
Ebay, excellent for selling radio's, records, collectable's and small easily postable stuff. I can see how one could make a living at it as I made more on stuff I sold than a lot of it cost me in the first place.
We also made a list of bigger stuff, bed's, tv's, dining suite etc. and posted it at both our works and touted around our friends and neighbours seemed to work as most of our stuff has sold. Just don't expect big buck's for stuff.
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Old Aug 21st 2003, 9:16 am
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thank you for all your replies.

Since I put the post up yesterday, my husband has sold all our camping stuff and the car!

I think that his notice board at work will come in very useful.

I feel a little bit lost without my car, but I managed before, so I will be able to manage for a couple of months. It is quite sad really, how we rely on things that we dont need.

I think that I will do a list as suggested and hand it round as many people as I can find.

I wonder about asking people to make on offer on things and have a lower limit on our list.

Later we could then put an advert in the paper for a house clearance if things dont go so easily.

Thanks for the tips everyone
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