Get the latest money-saving advice from second market specialists Tinka and Boosha.
VIDEO COMING SOON:
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Copyright © 2009 by Persephone’s Haven
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Tinka: Another thing you can buy on the second market, which a lot of people don’t realize, is jewelry. You can buy some of the most fabulous costume jewelry you’ve ever seen! For $2.50, you can buy a very high quality vintage pin, and if you get a book* and really know your jewelry, you can find something that is a real treasure, like Sarah Coventry, which now has gone out of sight.
But you just have to go around — you know, once a week — if you are on your way home and you pass a thrift shop on the way home, and they’re still open, just drop by and walk around the store for ten, fifteen minutes and see what you can find. You are bound to find something you want to carry home, and you’re talking under two dollars. Where can you go find a treasure for two dollars? You can’t, not in this day and age!
If you like vintage jewelry, the second market is the market to find it. I have a gorgeous little humming bird with a movable wing. If you bought it in an antique store, you would pay $12 for it. I’ve got another one that’s a very pretty enameled fish. Another pin I have is from the 50’s. In a consignment shop or a re-sale boutique, you would pay $15 to $25 for this one pin! But if you’re willing to go around and look, you could buy that same pin for 50 cents, if it’s your taste.
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Tinka: There is one particular thrift store that has 144 wedding dresses that somebody donated. These dresses are absolutely stunning. Most of them went for $500 to $1000 per dress, retail. Now you can get these dresses on the 2nd market for usually less than $100. I think some of them are $125, but most of them are under $100. And if they think you really need to get it, and can’t afford it, I guarantee you, they will work with you. You don’t have to pay the whole price. There is just about every kind of wedding dress imaginable, almost every thrift store you go in, they have a section where they have wedding dresses.
Vivienne: And tuxes, too, right?
Tinka: Yes. You may have to have it cleaned, but it’s not going to cost you a whole lot — you will get a $1000 gown, and it will cost you $65 to clean it. So if you’re trying to save money on your wedding — and weddings are very expensive today — I think it would be a good idea for you to go around to thrift stores, and see what you can find. You may not find what you’re looking for, but it’s worth the try! A lot of these gowns are brand new, never been worn — they might have been tried on, but they’ve never been worn. And most of them have a price tag of $500 – $700 – $1000. There’s some Vera Wang, and there’s other names that you would know, if you now about bridal.
Vivienne: So if you just got engaged, and you’re planning your wedding next June, start prowling the thrift stores now looking for that perfect dress, and save a bundle!
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It’s been a while since I put anything up for auction at eBay, but I just loaded 5 more books starting as low as .99. They cover tarot, psychic development, and pathworking. Click here to check them out. I also have an eBay store with lots of other books and items for sale. Click here to visit Persephone’s Haven on eBay.
Happy reading!
BB,
Vivienne
Tinka: The nice thing about shopping on the second market, you can change your wardrobe 4 or 5 times a year, and still look good, and when you get tired or wearing it you just send it back to the thrift store, and somebody else gets it, if it is still in good shape.
Boosha: You stick with us and we’re going to show you a lot of the secrets of Second Market Shopping.
Tinka: We’re going to show you brand names; we’re going to tell you where is the best place to go, and what’s the best time to go. The 1st of the month is when you want to go thrift shopping, because if you go by the 15th all the things are just about gone, okay! Usually re-sale stores stock once a week. So either the Monday or the Saturday you want to go first thing in the week. You also want to….
Boosha: Find out what day they are gonna have a bag sale, if they have a bag sale. Could be a Tuesday or Thursday, could be on Saturdays, could be Wednesdays and Saturdays. And different stores are going to have different prices on the bag sales. Even if clothes are 50 cents or a dollar, you are still going to get a better buy by buying a bag, in quantity, everything that fits into that bag will cost you anywhere from $2-5 depending upon the store.
Tinka: That’s like Boosha said, when you go to a garage sale, you pick all the things that you know you want and take them up. Offer — don’t embarrass the woman. Offer her a decent price, and say, “can we work with this? Can I get this, you know, for this amount of money?” If she says okay, fine. If not, then you have room to dicker about what’s going on. In other words, she will say “I want $,” and you say “You know, I am trying real hard, can I get it for $4.50?” she’ll probably give it to you, because she doesn’t want to bring it home.
Vivienne: And what’s the general rule of thumb for bargaining and dickering for people who aren’t used to that?
Tinka: If you know you would go to the store and you’d buy this item for $60, and it’s in the box at a garage sale and it looks brand new, and she wants $40 for it, offer her $25. She will probably take $25. Please don’t offer her $6, don’t offer $4 or $2. Because truthfully, would you like somebody to do that to you, if you had paid that kind of money for it?
Boosha: And the other thing you can always ask someone, instead of saying “well, I’ll give you $5 bucks,” say, “well would you take less?”
Tinka: Don’t ever say to someone “I will give you.” Because, one, it makes them defensive, and two, put yourself in their shoes, okay. If you think that that item is worth a certain amount of money, you don’t want someone telling you “I’ll give you.” You want somebody to tell you, “what would you take.” or “I only have so much in my purse. You know, what’s the least amount you would take?”
Vivienne: And especially in these days, because the economic times are so bad, people are selling their treasures for a very low amount and its hurting.
Tinka: Right!
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Gail2003 is an eBay power seller, and she has a lot of items along the lines of what we discuss in the Second Market Shopping video: vintage clothes, baby clothes, sewing patterns, and lots more! She has 100% positive feedback (1830) and great prices. She always has around 100 items up for sale, and they sell so fast that her inventory is constantly being updated, so make sure to check her out on a regular basis.
Also, she’s gotten together with Boosha to create a new product: “Boosha Beads!” As soon as she’s got the link up, I will post it here. I can’t wait to see what they put together!
Happy shopping!
BB,
Vivienne
A couple of tweaks to fix, then all that’s left to do is export the audio to Audacity so I can clean up the audio; get together with Tinka next weekend to put in the final text balloon comments; and lastly, clean up the video. And it’s done! So within a couple/three weeks it should be available.
I’m also working on researching some of the topics referenced in the video (like art glass, vintage jewelry, etc.) to create white papers for bonus materials. There will be several of those.
I hope to get some preview clips up soon as well, to give people a taste of the great information contained in this video.
So keep checking back at Second Market Shopping for updates, or sign up here to be notified when the video is available:
Tinka: It used to be that everybody had this knowledge. It was taught from mother to daughter. It is not being taught anymore. We are living in a society right now where every every penny counts. You need to be able to create something out of nothing.
If you drive up some place and you see they are selling junk, drive away, don’t even waste your time. You don’t want to buy something — I don’t care how much you like it — don’t buy it unless you know you are going to wear it. Otherwise you’re going to have a closet full of clothes that you don’t wear. Make sure that you are going to wear it, or you know somebody they would love to have it, or that you can resell it.
Don’t buy something that has a stain on it and think you can get it out. Don’t buy something just because you like it, and it’s ripped and you know you can’t fix it. If you know you can fix it, buy it, because you’ll love it when you get it home. If it doesn’t have a label and it looks good, or it’s a label you don’t know what it is, as long as it looks good and you like it, buy it, because you can’t go wrong. But don’t spend your money on things that you are not going to use. Only buy what you need, and what you are going to use. That is the secret.
If you are buying glassware or china, buy the best you can buy. Don’t buy something that is cracked or chipped. Don’t just spend your money because it has a name on it. In other words, if it has Wedgewood on it, but it’s got a big chip, unless you really love it, don’t buy it.
You don’t want to buy a piece of glass that has a chip in it — it has no value, unless you want to keep it for yourself. If you’re re-selling it, you want a perfect piece. Now, if you don’t care and you just love it to death, and it has a little tiny chip where you can turn it and you can’t see it, that’s fine, and you’re going to love it! And if you’re paying a quarter for it, you’re going to love it even more!
If it’s really heavy, and it’s not chipped, and it’s lead glass, even if it doesn’t have a name on it, it’s still a beautiful find. It’s something that someone paid a lot of money for on the first market, and you are getting a real deal on the second market.
It’s just a matter of a frame of mind; you have to be willing to stop your car, get out of your car and dig through a little bit of someone else’s garbage. Sometimes you can find the most fabulous treasures. People are just buying, buying, buying, and not wearing, wearing, wearing, and they get all these things and they have to get rid of them. I’ve been to some of the warehouses, and I mean, they are stacked to the ceiling, in big plastic garbage bags, but if you keep looking, you can find almost anything.
This is a lifetime gift. Once you learn to do this, you can survive in the hardest of times, because you are always able to give what you need to your family at a much lesser cost than you would normally pay. If you have small children, pass it on to your children. This knowledge, this common sense — they need to learn about the value of things, and not just labels.
And that’s what we are going to teach you – is how to buy quality. The names, and what to look for.
Vivienne: If you want to be notified when Second Market Shopping with Tinka and Boosha becomes available, please sign up below; you will be emailed as soon as the video is ready.
Vivienne, Tinka and Boosha
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I’ve added dozens of new books to the Second Market Shopping category in the Persephone’s Haven bookstore, including Garage sale, flea market, and lace and linens books.
I’ve added a new Antiques category, including an Antiques Roadshow division, an Antique Traders division, and Lovejoy books and DVDS. I’ve also added a Collectibles category, and I’ve given the vintage clothing and accessories books their own category.
Happy reading!
BB,
Vivienne
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Vivienne: What would you say to people who turn up their nose at going to a thrift store or feel too proud to buy something in a thrift store?
Tinka: Truthfully the thrift stores today are not like they used to be. They are very clean. They are almost like going into retail department stores. Especially like the ASPCA or the goodwill or the church stores. Most of them the clothing is clean, it is set out and a lot of it is actually sized, so you don’t have to go through every rack to find your size. They are making it easier and easier, and it’s going to be a wave of the future, because most people cannot afford to pay retail. There is a market for retail and there is a market for the second market. The second market is for you. Garage sales, thrift stores, church resale, rummage sales, pawn shops, consignment shops. If you go in your directory for your town you can find this information. Mostly the church thrift shops are very very good.
Boosha: Go to the best neighborhoods — if you go to a neighborhood that is kind of questionable, you’re not going to find the best stuff. But people that have houses, woman all the time buy stuff, put it in their closet and never even take the tags off of it, and they never wear it.
Tinka: You can find paintings, you can find glass, you can find antique books, there is nothing that you can’t find on the second market if you’re willing to go around and look.
Boosha: You find these things all the time, you just have to know where to look. And that’s where Tinka and I are going to help you.
Vivienne: If you want to be notified when Second Market Shopping with Tinka and Boosha becomes available, please sign up below; you will be emailed as soon as the video is ready.
Vivienne, Tinka and Boosha
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Boosha: You can get so many nice things by going to the unusual places to shop. You don’t have to pay retail market price for these things. You can find things online, you can find things at eBay, you can find things on Craigslist, you can find furniture at thrift stores. There are so many places you can go, just as long as you can get over the fact that you’re not buying it brand new, and you think that someone else doesn’t want it or use it and that its no good.
People throw away things every day that are very very functional and useful. Like Tinka’s patio chairs and table — we found them beside the road, brought them home, cleaned them up, and spray painted them black. Everything looks better when it’s spray painted black!
Tinka: And it’s wrought iron! It’ll last for 150 years, it will not rot!
Boosha: With the economy the way it is now, we think that everyone should have the opportunity to learn how to save money shopping on the Second Market, so we would like to help you. We have an informational video coming out soon that we hope that you will enjoy.
Tinka: And give you some really good results.
Boosha: We are going to teach people how to go into pawn shops, and never be afraid to walk into a store. I have people that tell me “oh my gosh! You go to a pawn shop?” And I go “Sure, I have bought many pretty things.”
I have bought diamond rings for a fraction of what they were worth. I bought a necklace, which started out as an earring, and I simply clipped the back of it off and put it on a chain, and now I have a very pretty diamond necklace. You have to think outside the box. Don’t look at it, if it’s an earring, and think it’s going to be an earring. It could become a brooch, or it could become a necklace.
Vivienne: So think outside the box, be creative, and never be ashamed or afraid to walk into a second market venue — these techniques make you smarter than the average bear!
BB,
Vivienne, Tinka and Boosha
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