With 45,000 garage sales in America every weekend, it is a wonder there are so few headline success stories. If you are driven by saving a pretty penny or love the challenge of digging through bins to find that hidden treasure, I have some tips that will save you time and money. I have decades of first hand experience of how to break into that untapped market of hidden treasures.

Step one: Have a plan. There are many apps out today that will assist you in planning your path. If you are strategic, you can hit one garage sale after another without making a wrong turn or going out of your way and wasting gas. Your Android options are limited Yard Sale Treasure Map, Garage Sale Rover, and Garage Sales, Everywhere!. If you have an iPhone you have significantly more options with Yard Sale Mapper, Garage Sale Wizards, Yardsale, and Private Garage Sale to name a few. These will keep you on track and give you new item alerts so you can fully meet your bargain hunting potential.

Step two: This step takes a bit of homework. If you are planning on buying items that you can flip and sell quickly, know what you are looking for in advance. Know what name brands will sell and how to tell if they are fake or not. The best way to become what I call a “garage sale millionaire” is to become an expert on a handful of items, so when you come across those items, you know how much, if anything, they’re worth on the market. Another helpful tip if you are short on time is to use a reverse image search in Google. It will look up items that look similar to the object you are thinking about buying and pull up Ebay items of the same item. This is a great advantage to improve your treasure hunting experience!

Step three: Become a real person to the seller before negotiating a price. Your goal is not to ask for such a low price that the seller is insulted. Ask for around 50% of what the item is priced at. But be strategic as to how you begin the conversation. Start off by chatting about the weather. Simple conversations go a long way and when people have time invested in you, they feel more obligated to give you a better deal.

Follow these three steps and you will be on your way to a becoming the next great garage sale success story. Want to gain some more knowledge and helpful tips, check out The Garage Sale Millionaire Book. You can purchase it here!

Thanks for reading!

–The Garage Sale Millioniare