*This post may contain affiliate links. We may receive a commission on purchases made through links at no extra cost to you. Thank you so much for supporting this site. Read the full disclosure here.*
We recently have had 2 yard sales, and are planning a third pretty soon. We are selling everything to go travel the country by way of RV starting THIS summer! (We still have SO MUCH to get done). At the last yard sale I pulled out a couple of big items that I didn’t expect to sell, but thought I would give it a try. I have two old arcade games. Well, I have way more than 2, but these two I am selling first! One is a dart board, and the other one is an old IKari Warriors arcade game. Both are coin operated and pretty cool. I had this grand vision of a huge game room filled with old arcade games. I don’t think that vision is dead, it is just not the right timing at the moment and we need to sell the pieces I have collected.
I brought the arcade games out at the yard sale and posted $350 on them. They got a lot of looks, but nobody really serious at that price. It’s not something just anyone is going to pick up and throw in the back of their car. Because they take a bit of work to move around, I would have accepted an offer for $250 at the yard sale. I didn’t really want to drag them back into the back of my truck, and back to the storage unit. They were both positioned to the right of this yard sale pic. 🙂
Well, no one made me an offer for $250 for either machine. So back to the storage unit they went. At least the girls loved helping me load it into the back of the International. This lift is pretty darn cool, I almost don’t want to get rid of the box yet! haha. (The box is coming off and we are going to put a truck bed on the back instead so we can hauling the 5th wheel travels trailer.
We posted the arcade games on Facebook the same day as the yard sale, but still no bites. Well, besides an offer for $100. I decided to try something I don’t do very often, and list them on for an Or Best Offer (O.B.O.). I don’t typically do O.B.O. because some people just waste my time offering ridiculously low offers. But I guess I can’t blame them for trying.
Instead of posting them for $350, or even $400, I decided to post them each for $750 OBO . I was curious if I would get any looks, and there were 3 watchers on one of them within the first hour of me posting it! Most often if an item has 7-10 watchers, it will sell very soon. Well, I received an offer on the dart board game the next day for $450! I accepted. The buyer lived an hour away and was going to come pick it up, so I told him to come inspect it and make sure it was what he wanted before paying for it. The reason I did this is because just the other day I dealt with a ‘newbie’ who won an item, and then emailed me and said he needed me to deliver it for the item price we agreed on. I told him I was unable to deliver his item for free as my time and gas need to be compensated for. (He was a couple hours away and occasionally I will deliver an item, but only if I am compensated for my gas, labor and time!)
That item had other watchers on it, and once he won it, they are notified it was sold and can no longer watch the item. I have also gotten a couple e-mails from him telling me to stop emailing him. He doesn’t realize it is ebay emailing him to remind him to pay, it’s not me. That kind of stuff will happen occasionally, and you just have to deal with it and be nice to people. Every job has some things you may not love about it, and this is one of mine, but I still wouldn’t change a thing! I love my own schedule and absolutely love finding treasures tucked away at the flea market, and hidden at thrift stores and yard sales!
To help prevent a similar thing from happening with this buyer, I emailed him and asked him to come inspect the item before paying for it. He met up with me, checked it out, and bought the dart board. This meant that I made an extra $200 than I was going to accept for it at the yard sale! Love when that happens!
I hope he gets some great use out of that dart board! Maybe he has a vision for a game room too. I can only dream about it right now. But at least I have an extra $450 and some space in my garage to help me feel better about it. 😉 Oh, and I bought it from a vendor at the flea market for $40 a couple years ago. Made over 10x my initial investment! 
I plan on trying this approach to some of my future items. I don’t do a lot of O.B.O. listings currently because people always offer so much less. But if I list it a decent amount over what I would take for it, it should have the potential of making some great returns!
It’s true that I love going to our local flea market every weekend. But, there are several other places I like to buy my items from. If you drop us your e-mail and follow our flipping adventure, I would love to give you our new list of BEST PLACES TO BUY ITEMS TO FLIP! Check it our HERE!
And if you are ready to pull the trigger and get moving on your flipping side hustle to make some extra money for your vacation this year, add to your savings account, or even to keep the lights on (that is why we do it!), then check out our Flipper University E-Course HERE!
Happy Flipping!
I Want To Hear From YOU!
Do you ever do ‘Or Best Offer’ listings on ? Does anything stop you from selling on ebay?
If you still have the ikari warriors let me know!!! I live on the space coast and will pick up!!!
Haha – Sorry Walter! We sold them!
When you use or best offer on ebay does this encourage people to click and bid there best offer than posting the item as is?
Hi Brittany! Yes, if I post an item for best offer, most likely I will get offers for less, and not get the full price. But it helps to set the price a little higher and then accept their lower offers.
if you were anywhere near nj I woold make an offer on the I kari.
Haha. 🙂 I liked that machine too!! I really wanted to keep it for my future game room. Oh well. Have you played this game before?