Yard Sale Arbitrage – Vera Bradley Purses
One of my all time favorite ways to make money is through arbitrage. This is the basic process of buying low and selling high with little to no risk. You may have also heard it referred to as flipping.
We’ve all probably participated in arbitrage at some point in our lives. I’m not sure why I love doing it so much, but it feels great to make several hundred percent return for just a little bit of work.
In this first part of my yard sale arbitrage series – I’ll quickly cover how I make 300%+ returns on Vera Bradley purses. Check it out!
Money Making Breakdown – Vera Bradley Purse Arbitrage
- Difficulty (Super Easy/Easy/Medium/Hard/Expert): Easy
- Average % Profit (%): 319
- Average Profit per Sale ($): 12.77
- Time Required (mins): 30
- Profit for your time ($/hr): 25.54
Yard Sale Arbitrage – Vera Bradley Purses – Pros and Cons
Here are a couple of pros and cons to flipping Vera Bradley purses from yard sales that I’ve learned. If you’re interested in giving it a shot, keep these in mind.
Pros:
- Can usually get for $3 – $5 at yard sales if you’re good at bargaining. Package deals are the best and you can get larger discounts! I found someone selling about 10 of these, I only bought the three detailed here below because I hadn’t tried to flip these before. Now I’m killing myself for not buying all of them!
- Pretty abundant at yard sales. I find at least one of these just about every week.
- Sell relatively quickly on ebay (1 or 2 weeks)
- Ship pretty easily and inexpensively
Cons:
- There are hundreds of types of Vera Bradley pattern/style combinations. The biggest pain is searching through all the similar listings to find the style and pattern of the purse you bought so that you can accurately list it. This took me 15-20 minutes per bag and sucked.
- If listing on Ebay, then the 15% fees will knock a bit off your profits. Plus, you have to drive to the post office to ship everything. If I can get the same prices on Craigslist, then I’ll make about an average of 475% profit vs. 319%. I plan to test this for future bags/purses.
- Not sure how easy to sell on Craigslist – will give this a shot.
- Profit in $/hr is a little on the low side.
- I haven’t yet figured out how to scale this process to make a lot of money. You aren’t going to get rich unless you can figure out a way to flip thousands of these things.
Yard Sale Arbitrage – Vera Bradley Purses – Profit Table
Below is a quick tally of how each of the three purses I purchased performed. As you can see – the larger bags definitely do much better % profit-wise compared to the smaller bags. I’ll use this knowledge in the future to load up on any of the bigger purses if I can find them for cheap. These Vera Bradley purses
| Item | Price | Selling Price | Shipping Charge | Ebay Fees | PayPal Fees | Actual Shipping | Profit | % Profit |
| ZIP TOTE – RETIRED COLOR – ” HOUNDSTOOTH BROWN” | $4.00 | $18.99 | $10.60 | $2.96 | $0.69 | $8.60 | $13.34 | 333% |
| KENSINGTON Large Tic Tac Tote | $4.00 | $24.99 | $7.60 | $3.26 | $0.61 | $ 6.60 | $18.12 | 453% |
| Capri Blue (retired) Bucket Tote and Cell Phone Case | $4.00 | $12.99 | $3.77 | $1.68 | $0.46 | $3.77 | $6.86 | 171% |
| TOTAL = | $12.00 | $56.97 | $21.97 | $7.89 | $1.77 | $18.97 | $38.31 | 319% |
Yard Sale Arbitrage – Vera Bradley Purses – Pictures
Here are some pictures of the three most recent sales I’ve made.
Zip Tote – Retired Color – “Houndstooth Brown”
Kensington Large – Tic Tac Tote
Capri Blue (retired) Bucket Tote and Cell Phone Case
Final Thoughts
This was a fun little experiment and turned out to turn a pretty good profit. I know absolutely nothing about purses, so it was neat to make such a high % of profit on a whim. I think as I find more at yard sales I’ll try and make a couple changes to the process:
- List on Craigslist to avoid fees and get slightly higher prices
- Not spend time finding the purse style/pattern and just list it by color and size (this will push up my $/hr)
- Try to learn about other types of purses that have good arbitrage potential – we literally run across maybe 50 purses on a Saturday yard sale outing…
Anyone else care to share their good yard sale arbitrage finds or tips???
I had never thought of doing this. I used to work with a guy in London who travelled to Italy regularly to buy shoes to bring home and sell. I thought he was nuts at the time but I guess he made money on it.
Robert,
This is just one of the many items that can be easily arbitraged. There are probably dozens that I haven’t even found yet 🙂 I’ve heard that mens dress shoes from yard sales can be another one where you can buy for ~$5 and resell on ebay for ~$80 if you know what you’re doing…
I know someone who also goes to yard sales often and sells for a lot higher on eBay. I’d love to start doing this – sounds like a relatively easy way to make money! I just need to find the time…
Lisa E. @ Lisa Vs. The Loans recently posted…Weekend Recap: Adventure
Lisa,
I’m trying Craigslist going forward because the fees on ebay/paypal are ~15%. If you’re out and about on Saturdays you can usually stop by at one on your way to the final destination in about 5 minutes. If I can get selling through craigslist to work, I’ll be making ~$30 – $50 an hour for my time. Not too bad 🙂
My wife loves Vera Bradley and has a couple of their bags. I had no idea they were so easy to grab at yard sales!
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Yep, in my area at least the average yard sale price is ~$4. You can get them for less if you get many at once or drive a hard bargain!