Almost everything we are selling is stuff of our own that we no longer need or want and need to get rid of. In most cases we do not want to replace these things so have no desire to buy more.

There are two exceptions, and in both cases we only buy things locally that we pick out ourselves. Those two exceptions are certain National Geographic magazines that we buy at a very low price, and some other things we pick out to sell on our web site or on eBay.

Regarding the National Geographics, in selling our own collection we found out that they are very difficult to sell. There are so many printed that anybody that just wants to buy some at random to read can get them from a thrift store for maybe a quarter or less. However if someone needs a specific issue for a school project, research, or because they or a friend is in that issue, they are willing to pay a higher price to get that particular issue. They don’t want to spend hours or days looking through stacks of magazines in different thrift stores and quite possibly never finding the one they want. In that case they are willing to pay us our price for that specific issue.

In order to succeed in this niche market, we have to try to keep as many different issues on hand as possible, because we have no way of knowing which one somebody will want next. Therefore we have a lot of magazines, taking up a lot of space. We have to keep them in order by date and it takes quite a bit of time and expense to keep the collection up to date and to maintain the computer records. For this reason we can’t charge less than what we do.

But we can’t pay much for the ones we buy either. From time to time we go to thrift stores with a list of what we don’t have, spend a couple hours going through the stacks or shelves of magazines, picking out ones we need, and inspecting them to make sure they are in very good condition. We pay maybe a quarter each, or at one store only ten cents each.

Therefore, the only way we can buy magazines (only National Geographic) is if somebody lives close to our house in north Seattle so that we can visit them, go through their magazines, inspecting them, picking out the ones we need, and then we would only pay around ten cents to twenty-five cents each, depending on the circumstances.

If you have National Geographic magazines you want to get rid of, I suggest donating them to a thrift store, a school, or other charity that can use them.

As for other things we buy to sell on our web site or on eBay, we look for things in thrift stores and yard sales. Again this is strictly local to north Seattle and Shoreline.