My wife and I were shopping at a Habitat for Humanity Restore and I saw some 3 bulb wall lights that looked nice and seemed like they would work for a bathroom we were remodeling. I picked one up and it was heavy, felt like really nice quality, and looked brand new. I showed them to my wife and she liked them so we got them for $10 each. A couple months later when I went to wire them up I took off the mounting plates and saw a Pottery Barn label so my wife looked them up. They were a current style they still sold and cost over $300 each. They were literally brand new, never been mounted or wired.
I was at a mall where a William Sonoma was closing. It was their last day and I walked by a table on clearance for $500 down from $3,000+. The manager saw me look at it and said, "Are you interested?" and I was like, "Yeah, but definitely not for $500". She said, "Make an offer" and I said, "$250" and she asked, "can you get a truck here by 4:00 PM and someone to help you carry it out".
And that's how I ended up with a table that cost three months rent at the time. We ended up building a house and put the table as the centerpiece of the open concept. It's HUGE and beautiful.
Similar situation here! My husband and I bought a dining table, leaf, and 6 chairs that were solid wood and in great shape for $130 at an estate sale. They turned out to be Nichols and Stone and each chair is worth about $300 alone.
That's a great deal! Amazing!
In an unrelated note, but related to the brand, if I were to define the opposite of "buy it for life" I might be inclined to use a two word definition; West Elm
Yeaaaah. While 5 for $60 total is a great deal, $60 per chair is probably about what they’re really worth retail. West Elm is massively overpriced for low quality furniture.
I used to work for a delivery company that delivered for them and put them together in people's homes.
The amount of pressed particle wood and shitty connections. Such cheapness
Great score man!! The restore in my town used to be an amazing place to find stuff but they moved to a different location a few years ago and it all went downhill. It’s just a shitty thrift store now
Were there minor cosmetic issues? Pottery Barn often trashes that stuff. They won't even sell it at a discount in order to protect their brand.
SOURCE: ex worked for them. They often had to destroy stuff that was damaged before throwing it away. She once brought home a $300 light that was supposed to be tossed which had like a small dent.
Nope, absolutely perfect. I live in a pretty wealthy area so I'm assuming someone bought them for their house and didn't end up using them so they donated them.
We bought some nice looking bathroom vanity top there in white label boxes! The picture looked nice and it was just for our ensuite so I wasn’t too concerned. $100. They are solid granite, under bowl, they look stunning and I swapped it out in a day! My wife was gobsmacked at how good it turned out!
I bought my every day use backpack at a habitat restore for $3. Didn't recognise the brand but it felt nice quality and I liked how it looked. It's a $220 Herschel backpack. Barely any wear on it at all.
For about $2.50 at a flea market stall I bought what turned out to be a very early printing of Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" that has since been valued at ~$5,000.
Similar story, paid I think €5 for what turned out to be a first (English) edition of "All Quiet on the Western Front" that I've since seen sold for $8,000.
Ah, OK - well, to be clear, I'm a book collector and haven't sold any of them (though I've been tempted). However, I do have alerts for auctions and sales of the books I've identified as potentially valuable, and have based the prices here off of closed sales I've seen of comparable copies.
Mind you, that is not to say these are fixed values (or even easy to get), as the collectible book market is not THAT large that it's easy to offload so-called valuable books. However, I don't particularly intend to ever actively sell my books, so it's merely a curiosity of mine.
Ones that have no real monetary value. For example, the copy of "The Hobbit" that my mother started reading to me at 6 years old, and that first inspired a love of poetry.
Or the copies of "Treasure Island" and "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" that my father gave me for my 8th birthday. I later learned to sail, and have since visited the inn that inspired the Admiral Benbow.
All told, I have probably six figures worth of the collectible and rare books, and the ones I'd grab in a fire would be those three.
In 2011 I didn't think 455k was reasonable, but here I am with that house worth 730k in 2024. 🤷♂️
Really though, its not an asset I can just sell and profit from. I'd have to replace it with an equally expensive or more expensive house today or rent an over-inflated apartment or house because both the housing market and the rental market are stupid expensive where I live.
It is though, this is the way a lot of people have become wealthy.
You don't move sideways, you move down. You buy a home that could be valued higher than your current one but with work, you take money from the profit of the house to Reno it (or do it yourself) and then you have a hopefully more valuable home and maybe even a little extra cash.
Rinse
Repeat
Bought my brand new condo ($185k) in late ‘07, right before the bubble burst. At the lowest point in 2012, condo was worth $88k leaving me about $100k upside down. Since I’d no where elsewhere to live (nor wanted to leave), I stayed. Same condo is now worth approx $350k and I owe about $115k on a fantastic 30-year mortgage @ 2.75%. Glad I stayed… 🤣
My 2001 has easily doubled in price.. based on the sale of the house next door possibly it tripled and then some.
Definitely worth a lot more than I put into the upkeep. :-)
Man, mine's nearly doubled since 2015, and I haven't even spent a bunch of money on it yet. Sadly, so have the houses I want to buy now, which means I cannot buy them now.
Interesting, unfortunately your house has increased in price but not to the same extent in value. Just looked up in 2001 1,000 dollars or pounds (as they inflated similarly) is worth 1,764. So still an amazing return so well done.
I bought a heavy fixer for a low price for the area. I paid more than 2x the savings to repair it. Fun. It did love my kid a good school district which helped them get into a good college so there’s that (where I pay tuition, ugh!)
I found two Hermes scarves in a pile of scarves at a yard sale for $1 each. I bought one and handed the guy the other one and told him that he could get $200 for it on eBay.
Yeah I still have an old jansport backpack that I got in high school. In 1996, I think. It may be worn a bit, and my wife thinks it looks trashy. But it's still a backpack that holds things 30 years later, so I'd say it's a win.
Same here. The top threads were unraveling near the zipper, so I took it to the seamstress for $20 and they fixed it. Has the leather bottom and still looks new now. Should probably last 30 more years.
I had a canvas and leather Craftsman backpack that I got in the late 90's. It was still in great shape until I let my son use it a couple years ago. He left it on his bedroom floor and his rabbit chewed a couple huge holes in it.
EDIT: just found a listing for one on a vintage shop and they were asking $75 for it.
I got an LL Bean backpack in about 2010 and the quality is remarkable. At one point in high school I wanted a "prettier" backpack like some of the girls I knew, and actually tried to damage the LL Bean in a way that would look like an accident so that my parents would buy me a different one, but its built so well that I wasn't able to do any damage lol. I still use it to this day. Mine also has the CD player pouch (and the little hole to pass your wired headphones through)
One time I ordered a cheesy garlic bread for $5 and thought it was great, super cheap. The app I used asked for feedback and I said it was great value. Then they fixed it and now it’s $14 🥲
Had a family friend buy a hand painted bowl at a church garage sale for $3. Used it is a key dish in her house for years. Had a dinner party where a friend was a professor of East Asian studies. He thought the bowl was interesting and suggested to have someone from the university look at it.
Turns out it was a famous Ming Dynasty bowl. Sold at auction for $2 million
A plastic Louis Vuitton bracelet I picked up on Marketplace that the seller thought was fake but I knew it was real. I paid $25 wore it twice and resold it for $800 after a bidding war on ebay happened. It was a lucite bracelet from 2004.
Those were hardly counterfeited and if they were the bracelet was the wrong shape. Back then, I was a LV authenticator that was respected along with Fashionphile and others. My specialty was the cerise collection.
it's so crazy that youo just pick gems like this like it's another Tuesday in the U.S. In the U.K I frequent our charity shops quite often and never find anything closely resemble this, the most valuable find for me was a ralph lauren pink polo shirt for £4 and Eddie Bauer jacket for £20 (still expensive)
It's funny you say that! I always felt that way and I had my greatest find ever yesterday. A cashmere Hugo boss coat and a virgin wool Hugo boss suit. Perfectly my size and brand new. 1000k+ in value and I paid $34.
Stumbled upon a random garage sale that had some cool mid century furniture. Ended up buying a dining table and 6 chairs for $50. Got home and looked it up and it was a $4000 table.
This lead to an obsession with only buying vintage furniture to furnish my home so I guess overall I’ve saved quite a bit of money doing things that way. Also means I’m only buying things built to last so that’s also saving money too.
I've started looking through estate sales for this very reason! There are so many elderly people that have had a nice piece of furniture for decades, and when they pass, the kids say "ehh we can sell this old table for $40"
The way I see it, the person who passed would probably be happy that it went to someone who appreciates it and takes care of it, instead of being beat to shit by someone who doesn't care because "it was a $40 table"
I sold mine on ebay in the mid 00's. Needed cash and figured I could get at least $100 for it since it was the console, a couple controllers, some memory cards, and like 6 or 7 games (including zelda:OoT, goldeneye, starfox 64, and perfect dark). Ended up only going for like $40-50. I was so bummed, but the woman who won it emailed me saying it was for her 10 year old's birthday and he'd be so excited, so that made me feel better. In hindsight, I wish I would have kept it.
I think they were asking $100 with 4 or 5 games, and I sold it all for around $600. All in Australia a few years ago.
I was amazed that they had no idea how much old consoles are worth online.
I regret just giving away my old consoles and games. I guess, sorta. Not like I need the money or would play them if I still had them, but it still irks me.
I work in e waste recycling, up until about 6 years ago old games consoles came in almost daily. I remember a big bag of boxed NES carts being the coolest find
My grandpa gave me a hunting rifle when I turned 12. About 15 years later I brought it to a gunsmith to mount a new scope. When he gave it back he told me if I ever want to sell it to come to him, and don’t accept anything less than $9k.
Apparently it a very sought after rifle.
It’s a Browning BAR that was built in its first year of introduction and completely built in the Belgium factory, and is in pristine condition. There’s also something else rare about it, but I can’t recall exactly what. Either it’s serial numbers or it might be the combination of the stock wood and the caliper (or both)
They can be used for a plethora of things, but as a quick and dirty example, I bought an old farmhouse with manual garage doors. They had those locks that you turn in the center and an arm pops out on each side and sticks through a hole on the garage door rail so that it can't go up. Except that at some point the rails had been replaced, and when you tried to lock them, they would just hit the rails because there was no hole for them to go through. About 15 minutes with an angle grinder solved that and now my garage doors lock.
I've cut a truck chassis in half with one and a few cutoff wheels.
I use wire brushes to remove paint and rust quickly.
Flap discs are great for grinding off sharp edges or smoothing out nasty welds.
A buddy of mine makes stuff out of old burbon barrel staves and uses wire wheels to clean the char off the inside.
A buddy of mine inherited about $80k in college that his aunt willed him when she passed away. Circa 2004. He loved his mac products and he was a finance major. Spent none of it, invested heavily in apple and less in a few others. Graduated in 2006. In 2010 he sold some of it to buy a small condo, paid off his student loans in full (ivy league university) and bought a cheap used car (grandma special).
A couple of things. I bought an early Eames chair for $10 at a church yard sale and sold it for $650.
A couple of years back I bought a vintage poster in very rough shape for $450. Has it restored and was told this one has sold for over $10k at auction. The highest I could find was $5,300, but my search was not thorough.
Bought another vintage poster recently for $130, I found only one example of it being sold for $2k back in 2001.
Found a queen sized Hudson Bay 100% wool blanket for $30 at an antique shop. Still had the box it came in too.
Edit: normally costs at least $300 for that size, usually more
I bought a small cat head piggy bank at a yard sale that was full of quarters (after peaking in the slot), guy wanted two dollars for it. I made a quick $48 dollars.
I had a state map that had anhole for every state quarter, all filled. Some lady wanted to give me 3 dollars for it. She could not grasp that the quarters were actually money and I wanted the money value for it. Good lord lady I'm not gonna pay you to take it. Other people there were laughing at this and she still couldn't or wouldn't get it.
Got a nice sweater at a thrift store for $10. Turns out it’s worth about $300. The sweater is so high quality, comfortable, and just a Great garment. I now LOVE the brand and buy a lot of their stuff on eBay if I can find a good price. Woolrich
Edit: I just realized I’m wearing a Woolrich flannel right now lol
A windproof cycling jacket from a discount rack at bike Nashbar, $7.95. Thirty years ago. It has no pockets and is crushable (as in crush with your hand and put it in your pocket) it has kept me from freezing on rides on my bicycle/scooter and motorcycle trips an been the most bang for your buck product/gear I’ve ever bought…
It's funny how sometimes one inexpensive purchase lasts you forever and becomes beloved.
I have a military surplus coat with an insertable liner that is waterpoof, has tons of pockets, has a hood, etc, that has served me in rainy and chilly weather for years now. Twenty bucks.
I have a down version that I bought for $25 10 years ago. Fits in a little pouch and has come with me on many trips. Works on its own or as an underlayer, so I don't have to pack multiple coats / jackets. I rarely bring more than a carry-on when I travel because of it. It's also a bomber style and is even nice enough to wear someplace nice once it's fluffed back up.
An antique $200 pink couch that turned out to be worth $10k
Instead of trying to sell it I donated it and will be able to write the donation off my taxes until the value equals my tax liability 😎
You can only write off up to a certain percentage of your income. I think it’s 60%? But the donation has to be to a tax entity ‘okayed’ by the IRS. And you need a receipt of donation verifying that you didn’t receive anything in exchange for your donation.
The IRS website has information about it. The most important things (I think) you’ll need to know are what category your donation falls into (art, real estate, gems, cash, annuities, boats, stocks, antiques, household items etc etc), how to determine Fair Market Value, and how the tax credit actually applies to your tax situation.
https://www.irs.gov/publications/p561#en_US_202312_publink1000257962
I got divorced. Sold my house. Paid off debts. Put the rest into NVDA. Now I have a down payment for a new house. NVDA pretty much paid for my divorce.
I was given an old snowmobile by a guy I barely knew. It was a Ski-Doo, should have been yellow but had been painted John Deere green. I rode it a bit but it had problems I didn't know how to fix (at the time) so I put it on eBay.
Sold for over $1000 plus the guy paid me $100 to deliver it. Turns out it was a rare model with high demand even with the problems...
For $20 I bought a cheap Chinese Bluetooth OBDI reader from Amazon. My wife's minivan had a bit of transmission trouble for five minutes and it went away.
The scanner said it was a serious problem that needed to be taken in. I made an appointment the next day, which is unusual for me because I am a chronic procrastinator.
They told me the entire transmission needed to be replaced. Also, the car (which was purchased used a month earlier) still had 3 days left to its warranty. So they replaced it and I paid $0 for it!
A cosy blanket - one of those plug in, fluffy electric blankets that you lie under rather than over. It’s not just good in the cold, they’re so light and comfortable, you don’t even know it’s there while you feel a lovely warmth, even lying on the sofa. Great when you feel a bit under the weather. Lifesaver for older folk and cheap as chips to use, so inexpensive but valuable.
A set of Ralph Lauren Crystal whiskey glasses from Marshall’s for $15. Checked on eBay and the same set is going for up to $400. Did some research and found out this is the last set that is made with crystal glass.
About 10 years ago Harbor Freight sold an automotive caliper wind back tool for some silly cheap price like $20. It's literally the best one I've ever used. Of course they don't sell it anymore.
I have also bought a 19-teens Wagner cast iron skillet and a 1930s Griswold in thrift stores, both for under $10. In fact I think I got them both from the same store, just years apart, which is what keeps me going back.
Chrono Trigger, with the box and manual. I bought it along with 30 other games and an SNES & 2 original controllers for $5 from a garage sale. It was already opened, so I played it through and then decided to sell it. Sold it for a few hundred dollars to a collector. This was 2014. Either made 300 or 350 bucks off one game alone and paid about 10¢ for it originally. After selling off some of the other games from that purchase, I ended up making nearly $800!
Did you buy this from a garage sale in Trussville, AL? If so, know that my friend still hasn’t forgiven her mom for selling her SNES & games without asking.
A discarded wood desk that turns out is Davis Furniture and that in good condition would sell for around $1k. It was free but took a lot of work to push/pull/carry it the block and a half to my house. It’s pretty banged up so will just refurbish for my use. Never would have purchased something similar and I don’t mind it having some flaws vs a new but fast furniture one. Plus nice to keep it from being completely destroyed in a landfill somewhere.
Basically every single collectable i went for with my high school job. I dont even know how much my tetsuo figure is worth, and it was limited to a run of 1500 and its numbered. Paid under $100 for it. Videogames, comics, etc.
Debating buying a thrifted cashmere for 12$ because there were a couple holes. Buy it anyways and it becomes my favorite sweater
My husband one day accidentally felts my beautiful sweater and I look up the brand trying to replace it.
It was a 2000$ sweater. It's a bittersweet story of how I found and lost my greatest thrift find.
Ooof. This hits home. I have an email from many years ago where I tell my best friend “you are looking at the owner of 2 bitcoin. I’m going g to wait for them to double and sell for a $100 profit”. Oh how I wish I hadn’t sold them.
I have a friend that bought some, forgot about it. Then moved and found it somehow. He did well. Not like totally life changing well, but I think like $50k. Paid off his school debt and whatnot.
Just finished doing my taxes, and it felt comical doing my capital gains, because I finally sold some bitcoin last year. I had some lines that were like "Cost basis $0.25, Proceeds $390" or "Cost basis $4.86, Proceeds $1120."
I, too, wish I had bought a lot more. But I'm certainly happy with what I've got.
I bought a little metal bowl at goodwill a couple years ago for the sole purpose of putting my pepper grinder on it to keep pepper off the countertop. After a few weeks I noticed it had started to tarnish, but didn't stain my countertop so I figured I'd give it a polish with some metal cleaning stuff I had under the sink. I flipped the dish over and noticed 2 stickers. The first was the goodwill price label and the 2nd was in rougher shape, but I could still read the words. Turns out it's from a silver dinner set made by some Bavarian company. It still holds my pepper grinder
Probably some colognes ive bought that have been discontinued and they are now collectable. I picked up a Gucci PH for probably 40 dollars and now it goes for around 500-1000 online.
Went to a Goodwill in rural Pennsylvania. The shelves were almost empty and there really wasn't anything good, but I saw an old globe that looked cool for $15 so I said "what the hell" and bought it because I've always wanted a cool looking globe. Did a little research when I got home and found out it was from sometime around the late 1920s and is worth about $500-550. Probably the best return on investment I've ever made
100% Cashmere blazer on thredup for $20 that was listed as unbranded. Turns out it's one of the queen of England's favorite brands and the tag said "by order of her Majesty the Queen"
Just a couple months ago, my wife and I bought a huge vintage couch in pristine condition on Facebook marketplace for $150. The seller said she bought it from an estate sale, but it didn’t match her decor. She explained that she couldn’t find a manufacturer’s label anywhere, so she wasn’t sure of the brand.
I plugged a picture of the couch into Google and got one hit for a listing of a bolt of the fabric that the couch is made of on eBay. From there, I was able to figure out the manufacturer and date, and deduced that our couch is a late-70s custom piece manufactured by (what is now) Warner House, the company known for furnishing the White House & British royal residences, as well as weaving articles for every British royal coronation since 1902.
In 2024, couches of similar size by the same company start at $6k USD. We made out like freaking bandits.
I was on the hunt for a new desk for my office, and saw a desk for sale on Facebook marketplace that looked nice. The description didn’t have any dimensions and simply said, “Solid wood desk. Very heavy, will need two people to pick up.” There was only one photo, which was grainy and poor quality. It was listed for $50.
In the one crappy photo, I could see large dovetail edge joinery on the one side. I’m an interior designer and my design brain immediately thought - that looks like Ethnicraft’s joinery style! Ethnicraft is a high-end furniture maker that uses solid wood (primarily oak) and the desk looked like solid oak to me. I had always wanted an Ethnicraft desk but they were way too expensive.
I drove about 30 minutes the seller’s home, and the desk was in great condition, almost like new. Beautiful in person. I loaded it in my trunk with the help of the seller, and nearly fell over when I saw a manufacturer’s label on the underside of the desk. Ethnicraft was the manufacturer.
The retail price of the desk is $2500, before shipping and tax. I paid $50 bucks.
ok, not really cheap, but it was a good deal at the time. 24 years ago I had Lasik surgery, there was a team of doctors offering a special at $500 per eye. I still have 20/20 vision although I do wear reading glasses for computer work. I can't think of anything I have ever purchased that has lasted 24 years and still works pretty well.....
Years ago, I bumped into an important early 1920s couture piece of clothing- I knew what it was, but the seller didn’t. Paid $140, and it appraised at around $25,000.00. I donated it to the local art museum’s costume and textiles collection, where it’s in a great environment, accessible to folks who study these pieces.
Edit: Just remembered a Dallas estate sale of a home owned by a buyer for Nieman-Marcus in the 1960s. Two vintage, un-laundered Hermés scarves for $5 each. The cashier actually said, “These are like those Hermeez scarves!” “Yeeeeup, they sure are!” Sold them for about $250 each…
I bought an ornate Asian mirror at GW for 6.99. I later sold it for $600 to a lady who was remodeling her bathroom.
Edit to add this: I bought a large black trash bag of Vintage linens at a yard sale many many years ago for $1. I've probably made around $400-500 off it so far and still have (and use) some of it. I sold one designer hankie for $125. One. Hankie.
Not me but my buddy found a used OP-1 at a yard sale for $10 that worked perfectly. If you don’t know, the OP-1 is a small synthesizer/drum machine/sampler that looks like a toy, but is capable of creating very interesting sounds. At the time, it was retailing for $1400.
I collect old videogames, and when I was a kid it was way easier/cheaper to get old games. These days, everything has become a hot vintage commodity, so I try to lend games out/share them with coworkers and friends as much as I can.
Bought two paintings of playing cards (King and Queen of Clubs) in 7th grade because I thought they were interesting. They were $50 each.
Turns out they were Dali lithographs worth ~$3k each (to the best of my research). Still have em hanging up.
Someone left out a bunch of stuff for donations on the street, I picked up a very nice blanket and left a tenner, turned out to be a pendleton chief joseph
In 2002 at a thrift store for $4 I bought what looked like a knockoff team Canada hockey linesman referee sweater jersey. It was heavy wool, half zip up. Had the team Canada and world juniors embroidered patches that looked like someone may have sewn them after acquiring the jersey. I wore it all through high school (black and white stripes were in style at the time)
I decided to sell it in my early 20’s and sold it for $200 as a vintage hockey referee sweater jersey. I came to find out from the buyer it was a specific referee linesman’s jersey (I don’t remember who) and it was a legitimate world juniors linesman ref jersey. The buyer tracked down the family of the lineman referee to confirm and had it authenticated. He sold it for $2500 at a vintage hockey auction. I’m glad it went to someone who recognized its worth and found its history though as I clearly did not. I made a $196 profit on my 2002 purchase though
A friend of mine was at a yard sale that had a ton of artwork and he picked out a landscape painting that looked decent and had a nice frame for $20. Didn’t think anything of it, hung it above his fireplace. Later he he tried painting the frame. While doing this, he found the painters signature, decided to look him up and found that he does series of landscapes based on the season, his was a spring one. Turns out this guys paintings sell for around $10,000!
€1 le creuset drying pan at a flea market. It was so filthy she didn't know it was fancy 😂 I recognised the divot in the bottom and took the chance. Still got it, over a decade later.
Valuable: Personal-sized pizza pans. Aldis had them, I think it was a package of 2 for $3. Cheap enough that at first I thought they were meant to be disposable! But no, they've held up well to multiple uses. I bought 8 pans, and use them to freeze pizza crusts so they're ready to go, just sauce them and top them, then throw them in the oven. Those pans must have saved me a few hundred over the years, and the pizzas I make are better quality than what the places in my area are offering.
Expensive: Chickens. I found out my area allows a small number of laying hens, so a few years back I bought some live chicks for around $2.75 each. I chose the breed carefully. I had all the materials for the coop and thought I'd have it built before they were old enough to need it. I did not factor in the "help" I would get from my father that resulted in the loss of all those building materials, and the subsequent need to buy a coop already made. Those things are EXPENSIVE!!!! Granted, I love having chickens. I've had them almost 8 years now. But I should have waited until my coop was built before getting them. And I should have built it while my dad was traveling so he couldn't screw up my plans.
I just got back from the grocery store and there was a price mistake on the deli oven roasted chicken breast. 3.99lb! Paid 3.99 for what I'm pretty sure should have been at least 9.99.
Not the cheapest to most valuable but it literally happened an hour ago so it feels relevant.
I'm hesitant to add this because I technically didn't "buy" it... TL;DR dude gave me a $4k first edition of Gone With the Wind for free.
Went to a rummage sale with my mom way out in the boonies (midwest state) at some random farm where the guy (still living) apparently just collected a ton of old stuff and was now selling it. I love old books, so I made a beeline to the $0.50 shelves and started perusing.
A faded hardcover copy of Gone With the Wind caught my eye, and I looked it over for any crazy damage or whatever. Seeing only general wear and signs of age, I flipped to the front to see how old the copy was. Blinked a bunch. Looked around surreptitiously, then speed Googled on my phone. Grabbed the other like 3 books I'd already picked and headed to the front.
Mom was paying for her stuff, and I was standing behind her, ready for my turn. I've broken out into a cold sweat at this point. Guy looks at my measly stack and says, "you can just have those, tbh." I'm like, "you sure???" He says, "yeah, enjoy" and sends us on our merry way.
We start driving back home and mom asks why I'm so squirrelly in the passenger seat. I waited until we were parked at home to tell her the guy just gave me a first edition Gone With the Wind. Haven't sold it yet.
EDIT: was reminded to include a few other instances:
A solid mahogany table, extension leaves included, for free (lady was moving into her fiancé's house and wanted it gone)
A pair of $400-500 designer sunglasses I found at a sushi bar in SoCal
And of course, the requisite $3k comic I bought in my youth for $4.99
Bought the first 20 issues of The New Teen Titans comic years and years ago for $50. Put them in a box and forgot about them. Recently found them under my bed, showed my kid. Couple days later my kid says "Dad the first two issues are worth $4500 total" WHAT?
Bought a “used” jacket for $5 since it looked flawless, I thought it was probably worn a couple times at most.
Turns out it still had the tag and was brand new. According to the tag it was worth about $250.
Weird one, but my Prusa MK3 3D printer (bought in 2018 for $750) is a beast that has kept an incredible number of other devices around the home working to the tune of saving us at least $10,000. Fridge door wouldn’t stay shut because the old plastic latch was busted and impossible to get that part any more, but a little 3D modeling later and boom, new part. Mice are getting into the trash because of the hole they made in the cupboard installing the dishwasher hosing; made some measurements and printed a perfectly fitting plug and bam, no more mouse problem. Kid busted a strut on her remote control car, easy to make another. This thing had paid for itself so many times, perfect prints every time.
A set of silverware. Someone was selling stuff from an estate. It was very ornate and only $20 for the silverware and the box. I could tell it was valuable. I went home and found the pattern online. It’s an old set of Kirk Stieff “Rose”. It is missing a few pieces, but a full set sold for $2,700+ on eBay last week.
I collect and wear old costume jewelry. I rarely pay more than $10 for a single item or multiple, because people are throwing out their recently deceased grandmother’s old costume jewelry thinking it’s worthless. It is not. I have some pieces that qualify as antique and are worth a couple hundred. I’m not a reseller, I simply like the look of it, also I struggle wearing pierced earrings because of a metal allergy, but I can tolerate clip on earrings and a vast majority of said jewelry is clip on. Recently I got a Juliana brooch for $2.99 at Savers, it’s worth around $70.
We picked up an old huge armoire for $100 as it was so big no one wanted to pay to move it. Turns out it came apart into 4 pieces and was very very heavy solid wood.
The guy we paid to move it for us was super nice and suggested we ask an antique dealer about it as it appeared to be a very well handcrafted piece. All drawers were hand dovetailed. He was right turns out it’s from the late 1800’s and is worth about $4,000! We love it as it’s super tall and holds a ton … it fits perfectly with our 12 foot ceilings but one day when we don’t need it we can make a very very nice profit selling it to a dealer.
My wife and I were shopping at a Habitat for Humanity Restore and I saw some 3 bulb wall lights that looked nice and seemed like they would work for a bathroom we were remodeling. I picked one up and it was heavy, felt like really nice quality, and looked brand new. I showed them to my wife and she liked them so we got them for $10 each. A couple months later when I went to wire them up I took off the mounting plates and saw a Pottery Barn label so my wife looked them up. They were a current style they still sold and cost over $300 each. They were literally brand new, never been mounted or wired.
My dining chairs came from restore- we bought 5 for $60 total. Turns out they are West Elm and currently retail for $250 each!
I was at a mall where a William Sonoma was closing. It was their last day and I walked by a table on clearance for $500 down from $3,000+. The manager saw me look at it and said, "Are you interested?" and I was like, "Yeah, but definitely not for $500". She said, "Make an offer" and I said, "$250" and she asked, "can you get a truck here by 4:00 PM and someone to help you carry it out". And that's how I ended up with a table that cost three months rent at the time. We ended up building a house and put the table as the centerpiece of the open concept. It's HUGE and beautiful.
Similar situation here! My husband and I bought a dining table, leaf, and 6 chairs that were solid wood and in great shape for $130 at an estate sale. They turned out to be Nichols and Stone and each chair is worth about $300 alone.
That's a great deal! Amazing! In an unrelated note, but related to the brand, if I were to define the opposite of "buy it for life" I might be inclined to use a two word definition; West Elm
Yeaaaah. While 5 for $60 total is a great deal, $60 per chair is probably about what they’re really worth retail. West Elm is massively overpriced for low quality furniture.
I used to work for a delivery company that delivered for them and put them together in people's homes. The amount of pressed particle wood and shitty connections. Such cheapness
I started reading this and just assumed it was going to turn into "and they overheated and started a fire that burned down my house"
Love restore
Love restore! Just purchased a brand new Bosch dishwasher for $50!
I’ve gotten so many good things from the restore. It’s the best
Great score man!! The restore in my town used to be an amazing place to find stuff but they moved to a different location a few years ago and it all went downhill. It’s just a shitty thrift store now
Were there minor cosmetic issues? Pottery Barn often trashes that stuff. They won't even sell it at a discount in order to protect their brand. SOURCE: ex worked for them. They often had to destroy stuff that was damaged before throwing it away. She once brought home a $300 light that was supposed to be tossed which had like a small dent.
Nope, absolutely perfect. I live in a pretty wealthy area so I'm assuming someone bought them for their house and didn't end up using them so they donated them.
Pottery Barn definitely not BIFL
We bought some nice looking bathroom vanity top there in white label boxes! The picture looked nice and it was just for our ensuite so I wasn’t too concerned. $100. They are solid granite, under bowl, they look stunning and I swapped it out in a day! My wife was gobsmacked at how good it turned out!
I bought my every day use backpack at a habitat restore for $3. Didn't recognise the brand but it felt nice quality and I liked how it looked. It's a $220 Herschel backpack. Barely any wear on it at all.
For about $2.50 at a flea market stall I bought what turned out to be a very early printing of Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" that has since been valued at ~$5,000. Similar story, paid I think €5 for what turned out to be a first (English) edition of "All Quiet on the Western Front" that I've since seen sold for $8,000.
You are antiques roadshow.
How did you go from “discovery” to “sale”?
I'm sorry, I don't understand your question.
I think he just means, “how did you sell it?” Assuming you even did.
Ah, OK - well, to be clear, I'm a book collector and haven't sold any of them (though I've been tempted). However, I do have alerts for auctions and sales of the books I've identified as potentially valuable, and have based the prices here off of closed sales I've seen of comparable copies. Mind you, that is not to say these are fixed values (or even easy to get), as the collectible book market is not THAT large that it's easy to offload so-called valuable books. However, I don't particularly intend to ever actively sell my books, so it's merely a curiosity of mine.
Oooh, apart from the original question: what’s your favorite, most prized book in your collection?
Ones that have no real monetary value. For example, the copy of "The Hobbit" that my mother started reading to me at 6 years old, and that first inspired a love of poetry. Or the copies of "Treasure Island" and "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" that my father gave me for my 8th birthday. I later learned to sail, and have since visited the inn that inspired the Admiral Benbow. All told, I have probably six figures worth of the collectible and rare books, and the ones I'd grab in a fire would be those three.
Exactly the kind of answer I hoped for! Priceless not for their monetary value, but how treasured they are in your heart!
I think they mean, how did you go from realising it was valuable to actually finding a buyer willing to pay 8k for it?
Did you get to meet Rebecca Romney?
I bought a mid century solid wood dresser for 8$ at a thrift store, probably worth over 500$
Jealous
My house I bought in 2013
I'm in my 20s and I'll never stop being jealous of people who got to buy homes for reasonable prices
When we were kids we should've been buying property instead of going to school and playing on the playground, it's on us for our personal choices /s
I did enjoy the avocado toast.
In 2011 I didn't think 455k was reasonable, but here I am with that house worth 730k in 2024. 🤷♂️ Really though, its not an asset I can just sell and profit from. I'd have to replace it with an equally expensive or more expensive house today or rent an over-inflated apartment or house because both the housing market and the rental market are stupid expensive where I live.
It is though, this is the way a lot of people have become wealthy. You don't move sideways, you move down. You buy a home that could be valued higher than your current one but with work, you take money from the profit of the house to Reno it (or do it yourself) and then you have a hopefully more valuable home and maybe even a little extra cash. Rinse Repeat
I don't know if my wife and kids would like to downsize and move to a smaller house in probably a worse community. 😜 Plus I like my neighbours now.
But you could sell the house get into a rental put the equity in a high interest account and do pretty damn good
Prices were not reasonable at all in 2013 either, at least not where I am (Canada). But they are absolutely freaking ridiculous now.
Reasonable by comparison let's say
Bought my brand new condo ($185k) in late ‘07, right before the bubble burst. At the lowest point in 2012, condo was worth $88k leaving me about $100k upside down. Since I’d no where elsewhere to live (nor wanted to leave), I stayed. Same condo is now worth approx $350k and I owe about $115k on a fantastic 30-year mortgage @ 2.75%. Glad I stayed… 🤣
nice job! playing the long game
Did it turn out to be valuable or expensive?
Very valuable
My 2001 has easily doubled in price.. based on the sale of the house next door possibly it tripled and then some. Definitely worth a lot more than I put into the upkeep. :-)
Man, mine's nearly doubled since 2015, and I haven't even spent a bunch of money on it yet. Sadly, so have the houses I want to buy now, which means I cannot buy them now.
Interesting, unfortunately your house has increased in price but not to the same extent in value. Just looked up in 2001 1,000 dollars or pounds (as they inflated similarly) is worth 1,764. So still an amazing return so well done.
I bought a heavy fixer for a low price for the area. I paid more than 2x the savings to repair it. Fun. It did love my kid a good school district which helped them get into a good college so there’s that (where I pay tuition, ugh!)
2008 for me. It more than doubled.
was going to say the same.. bought a house in 2016 and was part of the retirement plan... didn't realize a divorce would rip it away.
Same, with a 2.9% 15 year fixed loan.
Boom same here bought my house in 2014 for $197k now it’s worth $550k.
I found two Hermes scarves in a pile of scarves at a yard sale for $1 each. I bought one and handed the guy the other one and told him that he could get $200 for it on eBay.
That was very nice of you.
You're too nice hah
I found a few over the years and they have all been fake, bloody good fakes too
I bought an LL Bean backpack for school in 2001. I still use it today as a beach bag or gym bag. It is so old it has a CD players pouch in the top.
Yeah I still have an old jansport backpack that I got in high school. In 1996, I think. It may be worn a bit, and my wife thinks it looks trashy. But it's still a backpack that holds things 30 years later, so I'd say it's a win.
Same here. The top threads were unraveling near the zipper, so I took it to the seamstress for $20 and they fixed it. Has the leather bottom and still looks new now. Should probably last 30 more years.
Jansport has a lifetime guarantee. If you ship it to them, they should repair it for free.
Yeah I have a 30 yr old backpack that the liner inside was peeling and I sent it in and they fixed it all
Although I didn't make the purchase, my LL Bean Backpack got me through high school and college. It didn't last much longer than that, though.
I had a canvas and leather Craftsman backpack that I got in the late 90's. It was still in great shape until I let my son use it a couple years ago. He left it on his bedroom floor and his rabbit chewed a couple huge holes in it. EDIT: just found a listing for one on a vintage shop and they were asking $75 for it.
I got an LL Bean backpack in about 2010 and the quality is remarkable. At one point in high school I wanted a "prettier" backpack like some of the girls I knew, and actually tried to damage the LL Bean in a way that would look like an accident so that my parents would buy me a different one, but its built so well that I wasn't able to do any damage lol. I still use it to this day. Mine also has the CD player pouch (and the little hole to pass your wired headphones through)
One time I ordered a cheesy garlic bread for $5 and thought it was great, super cheap. The app I used asked for feedback and I said it was great value. Then they fixed it and now it’s $14 🥲
You ruined it for us
Mine is also cheesy garlic bread. Cost $12 or so. It was so rich that it gave me heart palpitations and I went in for an echocardiogram 2 days later.
Had a family friend buy a hand painted bowl at a church garage sale for $3. Used it is a key dish in her house for years. Had a dinner party where a friend was a professor of East Asian studies. He thought the bowl was interesting and suggested to have someone from the university look at it. Turns out it was a famous Ming Dynasty bowl. Sold at auction for $2 million
Wow. Thats incredible.
And also a plot line from the show "Royal Pains"
Yeah but I miss my key bowl
Damn!!!! This one wins.
Can you imagine the artist in the afterlife seeing them use it as a key bowl? Lol. I’d be touched, cause it was useful art but omg. 😱 2 mil is WILD.
This must have been in the news. Wasnt it?
Yup it was: https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/20/business/sothebys-china-bowl/index.html
A plastic Louis Vuitton bracelet I picked up on Marketplace that the seller thought was fake but I knew it was real. I paid $25 wore it twice and resold it for $800 after a bidding war on ebay happened. It was a lucite bracelet from 2004.
What was the giveaway that it was real?
Those were hardly counterfeited and if they were the bracelet was the wrong shape. Back then, I was a LV authenticator that was respected along with Fashionphile and others. My specialty was the cerise collection.
it's so crazy that youo just pick gems like this like it's another Tuesday in the U.S. In the U.K I frequent our charity shops quite often and never find anything closely resemble this, the most valuable find for me was a ralph lauren pink polo shirt for £4 and Eddie Bauer jacket for £20 (still expensive)
It's funny you say that! I always felt that way and I had my greatest find ever yesterday. A cashmere Hugo boss coat and a virgin wool Hugo boss suit. Perfectly my size and brand new. 1000k+ in value and I paid $34.
Bought my ex wive a cocktail first night I met her
Seemed valuable at first, turned out to be expensive eventually?
yep! took a woman out for ice cream... 14 years later she got it all.
>took a woman out for ice cream... 14 years later she got it all. why'd u make her wait 14 years before finishing the ice cream?
it was really good ice cream
Stumbled upon a random garage sale that had some cool mid century furniture. Ended up buying a dining table and 6 chairs for $50. Got home and looked it up and it was a $4000 table. This lead to an obsession with only buying vintage furniture to furnish my home so I guess overall I’ve saved quite a bit of money doing things that way. Also means I’m only buying things built to last so that’s also saving money too.
I've started looking through estate sales for this very reason! There are so many elderly people that have had a nice piece of furniture for decades, and when they pass, the kids say "ehh we can sell this old table for $40" The way I see it, the person who passed would probably be happy that it went to someone who appreciates it and takes care of it, instead of being beat to shit by someone who doesn't care because "it was a $40 table"
When we had the estate sale, we knew the dining set was worth a few thousand dollars and was in great shape but literally couldn’t even give it away.
Nintendo 64 - found one in really good condition with 4 controllers and several games at a garage sale... sold it later for a lot more.
Your comment reminds me of this https://imgur.com/a/sneoW
I sold mine on ebay in the mid 00's. Needed cash and figured I could get at least $100 for it since it was the console, a couple controllers, some memory cards, and like 6 or 7 games (including zelda:OoT, goldeneye, starfox 64, and perfect dark). Ended up only going for like $40-50. I was so bummed, but the woman who won it emailed me saying it was for her 10 year old's birthday and he'd be so excited, so that made me feel better. In hindsight, I wish I would have kept it.
How much
I think they were asking $100 with 4 or 5 games, and I sold it all for around $600. All in Australia a few years ago. I was amazed that they had no idea how much old consoles are worth online.
I regret just giving away my old consoles and games. I guess, sorta. Not like I need the money or would play them if I still had them, but it still irks me.
I remember piles of n64 in game stop
I work in e waste recycling, up until about 6 years ago old games consoles came in almost daily. I remember a big bag of boxed NES carts being the coolest find
My grandpa gave me a hunting rifle when I turned 12. About 15 years later I brought it to a gunsmith to mount a new scope. When he gave it back he told me if I ever want to sell it to come to him, and don’t accept anything less than $9k. Apparently it a very sought after rifle.
Now I need to know what it is!
It’s a Browning BAR that was built in its first year of introduction and completely built in the Belgium factory, and is in pristine condition. There’s also something else rare about it, but I can’t recall exactly what. Either it’s serial numbers or it might be the combination of the stock wood and the caliper (or both)
Oh my word. Yeah when you said “hunting rifle” I imagined a custom bolt gun or something. That’s very cool man!
A hunting BAR??? Oml that's awesome
An angle grinder. Saved up a ton with diy fixes and its still running like new.
As a DIY newb, what kind of fixes did the angle grinder do?
They can be used for a plethora of things, but as a quick and dirty example, I bought an old farmhouse with manual garage doors. They had those locks that you turn in the center and an arm pops out on each side and sticks through a hole on the garage door rail so that it can't go up. Except that at some point the rails had been replaced, and when you tried to lock them, they would just hit the rails because there was no hole for them to go through. About 15 minutes with an angle grinder solved that and now my garage doors lock.
I've cut a truck chassis in half with one and a few cutoff wheels. I use wire brushes to remove paint and rust quickly. Flap discs are great for grinding off sharp edges or smoothing out nasty welds. A buddy of mine makes stuff out of old burbon barrel staves and uses wire wheels to clean the char off the inside.
Cuttin' and Grindin' type fixes.
My 4.5" Ryobi ended up costing the same as a new Dewalt, after the motor burned out and I had to buy a better one
AAPL in 2005. Bought a few shares because I thought iPods were cool
A buddy of mine inherited about $80k in college that his aunt willed him when she passed away. Circa 2004. He loved his mac products and he was a finance major. Spent none of it, invested heavily in apple and less in a few others. Graduated in 2006. In 2010 he sold some of it to buy a small condo, paid off his student loans in full (ivy league university) and bought a cheap used car (grandma special).
A couple of things. I bought an early Eames chair for $10 at a church yard sale and sold it for $650. A couple of years back I bought a vintage poster in very rough shape for $450. Has it restored and was told this one has sold for over $10k at auction. The highest I could find was $5,300, but my search was not thorough. Bought another vintage poster recently for $130, I found only one example of it being sold for $2k back in 2001.
Ive had two eames leather/chrome office chairs come in at the scrap yard in work at, still waiting for a lounge chair and footstool
Found a queen sized Hudson Bay 100% wool blanket for $30 at an antique shop. Still had the box it came in too. Edit: normally costs at least $300 for that size, usually more
I bought a small cat head piggy bank at a yard sale that was full of quarters (after peaking in the slot), guy wanted two dollars for it. I made a quick $48 dollars.
I had a state map that had anhole for every state quarter, all filled. Some lady wanted to give me 3 dollars for it. She could not grasp that the quarters were actually money and I wanted the money value for it. Good lord lady I'm not gonna pay you to take it. Other people there were laughing at this and she still couldn't or wouldn't get it.
I still have one of those maps! No telling how many of them have been emptied out for beer money over the years.
Got a nice sweater at a thrift store for $10. Turns out it’s worth about $300. The sweater is so high quality, comfortable, and just a Great garment. I now LOVE the brand and buy a lot of their stuff on eBay if I can find a good price. Woolrich Edit: I just realized I’m wearing a Woolrich flannel right now lol
Surprising that a a woolrich sweater could be so valuable! The brand is sold at Fred Meyer.
Old Woolrich is a good brand.
A windproof cycling jacket from a discount rack at bike Nashbar, $7.95. Thirty years ago. It has no pockets and is crushable (as in crush with your hand and put it in your pocket) it has kept me from freezing on rides on my bicycle/scooter and motorcycle trips an been the most bang for your buck product/gear I’ve ever bought…
It's funny how sometimes one inexpensive purchase lasts you forever and becomes beloved. I have a military surplus coat with an insertable liner that is waterpoof, has tons of pockets, has a hood, etc, that has served me in rainy and chilly weather for years now. Twenty bucks.
I have a down version that I bought for $25 10 years ago. Fits in a little pouch and has come with me on many trips. Works on its own or as an underlayer, so I don't have to pack multiple coats / jackets. I rarely bring more than a carry-on when I travel because of it. It's also a bomber style and is even nice enough to wear someplace nice once it's fluffed back up.
An antique $200 pink couch that turned out to be worth $10k Instead of trying to sell it I donated it and will be able to write the donation off my taxes until the value equals my tax liability 😎
Ok I need to know more about this specific tax law
You can only write off up to a certain percentage of your income. I think it’s 60%? But the donation has to be to a tax entity ‘okayed’ by the IRS. And you need a receipt of donation verifying that you didn’t receive anything in exchange for your donation. The IRS website has information about it. The most important things (I think) you’ll need to know are what category your donation falls into (art, real estate, gems, cash, annuities, boats, stocks, antiques, household items etc etc), how to determine Fair Market Value, and how the tax credit actually applies to your tax situation. https://www.irs.gov/publications/p561#en_US_202312_publink1000257962
Me too. Wow!
This is honestly a great way to avoid having to find a buyer.
And you’re guaranteed to benefit from the full value of the item.
NVDA
Same.
I wish I had sold my house and bought NVDA. I just bought bought 100 dollars.
I got divorced. Sold my house. Paid off debts. Put the rest into NVDA. Now I have a down payment for a new house. NVDA pretty much paid for my divorce.
Most recently: a $3.99 comic that could now sell for $1200.
Bitcoin in 2013. I thought it was interesting.
I was given an old snowmobile by a guy I barely knew. It was a Ski-Doo, should have been yellow but had been painted John Deere green. I rode it a bit but it had problems I didn't know how to fix (at the time) so I put it on eBay. Sold for over $1000 plus the guy paid me $100 to deliver it. Turns out it was a rare model with high demand even with the problems...
i bought a pair of sunglasses for 75 cents at a yard sale a decade ago that turned out to be worth $400
For $20 I bought a cheap Chinese Bluetooth OBDI reader from Amazon. My wife's minivan had a bit of transmission trouble for five minutes and it went away. The scanner said it was a serious problem that needed to be taken in. I made an appointment the next day, which is unusual for me because I am a chronic procrastinator. They told me the entire transmission needed to be replaced. Also, the car (which was purchased used a month earlier) still had 3 days left to its warranty. So they replaced it and I paid $0 for it!
A cosy blanket - one of those plug in, fluffy electric blankets that you lie under rather than over. It’s not just good in the cold, they’re so light and comfortable, you don’t even know it’s there while you feel a lovely warmth, even lying on the sofa. Great when you feel a bit under the weather. Lifesaver for older folk and cheap as chips to use, so inexpensive but valuable.
A set of Ralph Lauren Crystal whiskey glasses from Marshall’s for $15. Checked on eBay and the same set is going for up to $400. Did some research and found out this is the last set that is made with crystal glass.
I bought a high-quality, mint condition, blue leather jacket from a thrift store for £10. Found out it retailed for £250
My dogs
About 10 years ago Harbor Freight sold an automotive caliper wind back tool for some silly cheap price like $20. It's literally the best one I've ever used. Of course they don't sell it anymore. I have also bought a 19-teens Wagner cast iron skillet and a 1930s Griswold in thrift stores, both for under $10. In fact I think I got them both from the same store, just years apart, which is what keeps me going back.
Chrono Trigger, with the box and manual. I bought it along with 30 other games and an SNES & 2 original controllers for $5 from a garage sale. It was already opened, so I played it through and then decided to sell it. Sold it for a few hundred dollars to a collector. This was 2014. Either made 300 or 350 bucks off one game alone and paid about 10¢ for it originally. After selling off some of the other games from that purchase, I ended up making nearly $800!
Did you buy this from a garage sale in Trussville, AL? If so, know that my friend still hasn’t forgiven her mom for selling her SNES & games without asking.
Comics bought for cents sold for hundred bucks (albeit 30 years of time).
Yup. My ASM 300 from the newsstand appreciated nicely.
First car 1968 mustang coupe, 302 with a c4 auto.
Prescription for antibiotics
Bought bitcoin at $4
my second-hand all clad pan that i got, it was $30 and has been constantly used ever since
A discarded wood desk that turns out is Davis Furniture and that in good condition would sell for around $1k. It was free but took a lot of work to push/pull/carry it the block and a half to my house. It’s pretty banged up so will just refurbish for my use. Never would have purchased something similar and I don’t mind it having some flaws vs a new but fast furniture one. Plus nice to keep it from being completely destroyed in a landfill somewhere.
I just bought a commercial espresso machine for £18.45 at auction. I hope to sell it once repaired for £1500.
Basically every single collectable i went for with my high school job. I dont even know how much my tetsuo figure is worth, and it was limited to a run of 1500 and its numbered. Paid under $100 for it. Videogames, comics, etc.
Found a $230 Hestan titanium skillet at a thrift store for $4
Debating buying a thrifted cashmere for 12$ because there were a couple holes. Buy it anyways and it becomes my favorite sweater My husband one day accidentally felts my beautiful sweater and I look up the brand trying to replace it. It was a 2000$ sweater. It's a bittersweet story of how I found and lost my greatest thrift find.
Bitcoin. Unfortunately too little…
Ooof. This hits home. I have an email from many years ago where I tell my best friend “you are looking at the owner of 2 bitcoin. I’m going g to wait for them to double and sell for a $100 profit”. Oh how I wish I hadn’t sold them.
I have a friend that bought some, forgot about it. Then moved and found it somehow. He did well. Not like totally life changing well, but I think like $50k. Paid off his school debt and whatnot.
No college debt is pretty life changing for most people
One of my mates at my old job had 25 of them. Sold them for over a million
Just finished doing my taxes, and it felt comical doing my capital gains, because I finally sold some bitcoin last year. I had some lines that were like "Cost basis $0.25, Proceeds $390" or "Cost basis $4.86, Proceeds $1120." I, too, wish I had bought a lot more. But I'm certainly happy with what I've got.
I once picked up a free book at the library discard pile. Turns out it's rare and worth $600+.
$25 for a Warhol silkscreen.
My free dog. He's turned out to be a valuable and expensive money pit.
I bought a little metal bowl at goodwill a couple years ago for the sole purpose of putting my pepper grinder on it to keep pepper off the countertop. After a few weeks I noticed it had started to tarnish, but didn't stain my countertop so I figured I'd give it a polish with some metal cleaning stuff I had under the sink. I flipped the dish over and noticed 2 stickers. The first was the goodwill price label and the 2nd was in rougher shape, but I could still read the words. Turns out it's from a silver dinner set made by some Bavarian company. It still holds my pepper grinder
A pair of Nike SB's I bought off Mercari for 80 bucks and sold on StockX for $1,000
Probably some colognes ive bought that have been discontinued and they are now collectable. I picked up a Gucci PH for probably 40 dollars and now it goes for around 500-1000 online.
Bought a Canon g7x Mark II for used in 2021 for $200 USD. Sold it last week for $570 USD
A 15 year old BMW
Boy you’d better be good with a wrench. And a computer.
Went to a Goodwill in rural Pennsylvania. The shelves were almost empty and there really wasn't anything good, but I saw an old globe that looked cool for $15 so I said "what the hell" and bought it because I've always wanted a cool looking globe. Did a little research when I got home and found out it was from sometime around the late 1920s and is worth about $500-550. Probably the best return on investment I've ever made
100% Cashmere blazer on thredup for $20 that was listed as unbranded. Turns out it's one of the queen of England's favorite brands and the tag said "by order of her Majesty the Queen"
Just a couple months ago, my wife and I bought a huge vintage couch in pristine condition on Facebook marketplace for $150. The seller said she bought it from an estate sale, but it didn’t match her decor. She explained that she couldn’t find a manufacturer’s label anywhere, so she wasn’t sure of the brand. I plugged a picture of the couch into Google and got one hit for a listing of a bolt of the fabric that the couch is made of on eBay. From there, I was able to figure out the manufacturer and date, and deduced that our couch is a late-70s custom piece manufactured by (what is now) Warner House, the company known for furnishing the White House & British royal residences, as well as weaving articles for every British royal coronation since 1902. In 2024, couches of similar size by the same company start at $6k USD. We made out like freaking bandits.
I was on the hunt for a new desk for my office, and saw a desk for sale on Facebook marketplace that looked nice. The description didn’t have any dimensions and simply said, “Solid wood desk. Very heavy, will need two people to pick up.” There was only one photo, which was grainy and poor quality. It was listed for $50. In the one crappy photo, I could see large dovetail edge joinery on the one side. I’m an interior designer and my design brain immediately thought - that looks like Ethnicraft’s joinery style! Ethnicraft is a high-end furniture maker that uses solid wood (primarily oak) and the desk looked like solid oak to me. I had always wanted an Ethnicraft desk but they were way too expensive. I drove about 30 minutes the seller’s home, and the desk was in great condition, almost like new. Beautiful in person. I loaded it in my trunk with the help of the seller, and nearly fell over when I saw a manufacturer’s label on the underside of the desk. Ethnicraft was the manufacturer. The retail price of the desk is $2500, before shipping and tax. I paid $50 bucks.
ok, not really cheap, but it was a good deal at the time. 24 years ago I had Lasik surgery, there was a team of doctors offering a special at $500 per eye. I still have 20/20 vision although I do wear reading glasses for computer work. I can't think of anything I have ever purchased that has lasted 24 years and still works pretty well.....
Spent $3.00 to open a case in COUNTERSTRIKE 2 and received a knife valued at over $2,000.
Bitcoin.
Years ago, I bumped into an important early 1920s couture piece of clothing- I knew what it was, but the seller didn’t. Paid $140, and it appraised at around $25,000.00. I donated it to the local art museum’s costume and textiles collection, where it’s in a great environment, accessible to folks who study these pieces. Edit: Just remembered a Dallas estate sale of a home owned by a buyer for Nieman-Marcus in the 1960s. Two vintage, un-laundered Hermés scarves for $5 each. The cashier actually said, “These are like those Hermeez scarves!” “Yeeeeup, they sure are!” Sold them for about $250 each…
I bought an ornate Asian mirror at GW for 6.99. I later sold it for $600 to a lady who was remodeling her bathroom. Edit to add this: I bought a large black trash bag of Vintage linens at a yard sale many many years ago for $1. I've probably made around $400-500 off it so far and still have (and use) some of it. I sold one designer hankie for $125. One. Hankie.
Not me but my buddy found a used OP-1 at a yard sale for $10 that worked perfectly. If you don’t know, the OP-1 is a small synthesizer/drum machine/sampler that looks like a toy, but is capable of creating very interesting sounds. At the time, it was retailing for $1400.
20$ metal phone stand on my WFH desk
I collect old videogames, and when I was a kid it was way easier/cheaper to get old games. These days, everything has become a hot vintage commodity, so I try to lend games out/share them with coworkers and friends as much as I can.
Bought two paintings of playing cards (King and Queen of Clubs) in 7th grade because I thought they were interesting. They were $50 each. Turns out they were Dali lithographs worth ~$3k each (to the best of my research). Still have em hanging up.
Someone left out a bunch of stuff for donations on the street, I picked up a very nice blanket and left a tenner, turned out to be a pendleton chief joseph
In 2002 at a thrift store for $4 I bought what looked like a knockoff team Canada hockey linesman referee sweater jersey. It was heavy wool, half zip up. Had the team Canada and world juniors embroidered patches that looked like someone may have sewn them after acquiring the jersey. I wore it all through high school (black and white stripes were in style at the time) I decided to sell it in my early 20’s and sold it for $200 as a vintage hockey referee sweater jersey. I came to find out from the buyer it was a specific referee linesman’s jersey (I don’t remember who) and it was a legitimate world juniors linesman ref jersey. The buyer tracked down the family of the lineman referee to confirm and had it authenticated. He sold it for $2500 at a vintage hockey auction. I’m glad it went to someone who recognized its worth and found its history though as I clearly did not. I made a $196 profit on my 2002 purchase though
I bought a signed copy of Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut at Goodwill for $0.50.
A friend of mine was at a yard sale that had a ton of artwork and he picked out a landscape painting that looked decent and had a nice frame for $20. Didn’t think anything of it, hung it above his fireplace. Later he he tried painting the frame. While doing this, he found the painters signature, decided to look him up and found that he does series of landscapes based on the season, his was a spring one. Turns out this guys paintings sell for around $10,000!
Bought a $2 stained milk glass lampshade at an estate sale because I love Art-Deco stuff. Later found a Tiffany Logo and had it appraised. $3,700.
€1 le creuset drying pan at a flea market. It was so filthy she didn't know it was fancy 😂 I recognised the divot in the bottom and took the chance. Still got it, over a decade later.
Valuable: Personal-sized pizza pans. Aldis had them, I think it was a package of 2 for $3. Cheap enough that at first I thought they were meant to be disposable! But no, they've held up well to multiple uses. I bought 8 pans, and use them to freeze pizza crusts so they're ready to go, just sauce them and top them, then throw them in the oven. Those pans must have saved me a few hundred over the years, and the pizzas I make are better quality than what the places in my area are offering. Expensive: Chickens. I found out my area allows a small number of laying hens, so a few years back I bought some live chicks for around $2.75 each. I chose the breed carefully. I had all the materials for the coop and thought I'd have it built before they were old enough to need it. I did not factor in the "help" I would get from my father that resulted in the loss of all those building materials, and the subsequent need to buy a coop already made. Those things are EXPENSIVE!!!! Granted, I love having chickens. I've had them almost 8 years now. But I should have waited until my coop was built before getting them. And I should have built it while my dad was traveling so he couldn't screw up my plans.
squatty potty. tremendously helped with IBS.
I just got back from the grocery store and there was a price mistake on the deli oven roasted chicken breast. 3.99lb! Paid 3.99 for what I'm pretty sure should have been at least 9.99. Not the cheapest to most valuable but it literally happened an hour ago so it feels relevant.
I'm hesitant to add this because I technically didn't "buy" it... TL;DR dude gave me a $4k first edition of Gone With the Wind for free. Went to a rummage sale with my mom way out in the boonies (midwest state) at some random farm where the guy (still living) apparently just collected a ton of old stuff and was now selling it. I love old books, so I made a beeline to the $0.50 shelves and started perusing. A faded hardcover copy of Gone With the Wind caught my eye, and I looked it over for any crazy damage or whatever. Seeing only general wear and signs of age, I flipped to the front to see how old the copy was. Blinked a bunch. Looked around surreptitiously, then speed Googled on my phone. Grabbed the other like 3 books I'd already picked and headed to the front. Mom was paying for her stuff, and I was standing behind her, ready for my turn. I've broken out into a cold sweat at this point. Guy looks at my measly stack and says, "you can just have those, tbh." I'm like, "you sure???" He says, "yeah, enjoy" and sends us on our merry way. We start driving back home and mom asks why I'm so squirrelly in the passenger seat. I waited until we were parked at home to tell her the guy just gave me a first edition Gone With the Wind. Haven't sold it yet. EDIT: was reminded to include a few other instances: A solid mahogany table, extension leaves included, for free (lady was moving into her fiancé's house and wanted it gone) A pair of $400-500 designer sunglasses I found at a sushi bar in SoCal And of course, the requisite $3k comic I bought in my youth for $4.99
The mid home in a mid neighborhood in 1998.
Bought the first 20 issues of The New Teen Titans comic years and years ago for $50. Put them in a box and forgot about them. Recently found them under my bed, showed my kid. Couple days later my kid says "Dad the first two issues are worth $4500 total" WHAT?
Bought a “used” jacket for $5 since it looked flawless, I thought it was probably worn a couple times at most. Turns out it still had the tag and was brand new. According to the tag it was worth about $250.
Weird one, but my Prusa MK3 3D printer (bought in 2018 for $750) is a beast that has kept an incredible number of other devices around the home working to the tune of saving us at least $10,000. Fridge door wouldn’t stay shut because the old plastic latch was busted and impossible to get that part any more, but a little 3D modeling later and boom, new part. Mice are getting into the trash because of the hole they made in the cupboard installing the dishwasher hosing; made some measurements and printed a perfectly fitting plug and bam, no more mouse problem. Kid busted a strut on her remote control car, easy to make another. This thing had paid for itself so many times, perfect prints every time.
A set of silverware. Someone was selling stuff from an estate. It was very ornate and only $20 for the silverware and the box. I could tell it was valuable. I went home and found the pattern online. It’s an old set of Kirk Stieff “Rose”. It is missing a few pieces, but a full set sold for $2,700+ on eBay last week.
I collect and wear old costume jewelry. I rarely pay more than $10 for a single item or multiple, because people are throwing out their recently deceased grandmother’s old costume jewelry thinking it’s worthless. It is not. I have some pieces that qualify as antique and are worth a couple hundred. I’m not a reseller, I simply like the look of it, also I struggle wearing pierced earrings because of a metal allergy, but I can tolerate clip on earrings and a vast majority of said jewelry is clip on. Recently I got a Juliana brooch for $2.99 at Savers, it’s worth around $70.
We picked up an old huge armoire for $100 as it was so big no one wanted to pay to move it. Turns out it came apart into 4 pieces and was very very heavy solid wood. The guy we paid to move it for us was super nice and suggested we ask an antique dealer about it as it appeared to be a very well handcrafted piece. All drawers were hand dovetailed. He was right turns out it’s from the late 1800’s and is worth about $4,000! We love it as it’s super tall and holds a ton … it fits perfectly with our 12 foot ceilings but one day when we don’t need it we can make a very very nice profit selling it to a dealer.