A Hoosier Cabinet History

One piece of vintage furniture that I love and one day hope to have - when living space allows it - is the great Hoosier cabinet. These pieces are not only storage savers, but are just amazing vintage pieces of kitchen history. They can commonly be found in antique malls, used furniture warehouses, and Craigslist (which I highly recommend to check out due to seller's low prices).

The Hoosier cabinet has a great history behind it: practical, functional, and appealing to the everyday woman. Hoosiers were popular between the 1900s through the 1930s. The Hoosier Manufacturing Company was founded in 1899 in New Castle, Indiana and produced what is commonly known of today as the "Hoosier." The company coined the piece of furniture as a "kitchen filing cabinet" and no wonder this phrase worked: if offered a place for all of the kitchen necessities and more. Sold throughout the country, the Hoosier company advertised in popular magazines such as Ladies Home Journal and Better Homes and Gardens, appealing to the stay at home moms. The basic models were large enough to hold both food and kitchen utensils while more elaborate models were complete with flour sifters and revolving condiment jar racks. 

 Basically, the Hoosier served as the kitchen cabinet before built-in cabinets became popular in the late 1930s and 1940s. It was seen as a piece of kitchen equipment that would save time and revolutionize kitchen design, carrying the following motto: "Steps saved in the kitchen give women strength and energy for other things." The company even devised Hoosier test kitchens in order to promote the efficiency and necessity of their cabinets, giving the approval of the Test Kitchen in order to entice more buyers. Housewives were seen as the big buyers of the cabinets, or at least the people to market to in the event that the man of the house did the actual buying. Being a housewife during this time was the norm and so Hoosier played on that.

As the look of the kitchen changed and morphed into more of what we know today with all of the built-ins, the need for a Hoosier declined. To some, specifically kitchen designers who wanted to revolutionize the look of the kitchen, it was a cumbersome piece of furniture that wasn't that helpful in the kitchen. It was toted as a storage space for all of your kitchen needs and provided a working area via the porcelain shelf. However, the tabletop/shelf space was not adequate enough for some when it came to having enough room for baking. The area also wasn't large enough for other members of the family to help out in the baking process. A mother could very well have all of her baking supplies at her fingertips with the Hoosier, but when it came to having little Johnny & Susie assist in forming the dough & cutting out cookie shapes, the Hoosier shelf just didn't provide enough room for all of the work.

 Like everything, the Hoosier went out of style but now is back in style, at least with the collecting and antique population. Hoosiers are finding their way back into the kitchens and homes of Americans, with many taking on restoration projects to restore run down pieces. Some use it as kitchen storage while others use it as a way to display their collections. If you are interested in finding a Hoosier, it is easier than you might think. Craigslist has infinite possibilities, ranging from the pristine to the total fixer-upper. Search in both the antique and furniture section, using the correct spelling of Hoosier as well as misspelled variations such as Hooser, Hoosir. Prices vary depending on condition as well as the urgency of the lister to sell. Read the listing carefully, being sure to take note of the condition description, item location, and of course the price. If the price isn't right for you, be sure to search for the current listing title in Craigslist or scroll through the older ads. If the piece has been listed more than once over a period of time, you might be able to negotiate a lower price.

 If you are willing to travel, there is always eBay. This might be a little awkward for some, but many people sell Hoosiers on eBay by offering local pick up only. If you find one that catches your eye and the price is right, a few hours drive could be worth it. Be sure to come prepared with a big enough vehicle, blankets for covering the item, and able bodies to help move the piece. Sometimes sellers may assist in moving the item, but it never hurts to be prepared. Be sure to ask such questions as where the item is located. Is it on a 1st floor, garage loft, basement? Verify the condition of the piece and don't be afraid to ask for additional pictures or more information. It is bad enough when an item is shipped to you and the seller forgot to mention something totally obvious, but imagine driving a considerable length of time only to find out the piece is not what is pictured online.

Restoring a Hoosier can take time and money, but can be well worth it for a beautiful, vintage piece. A simple restoration with a new coat of paint doesn't break the bank, but those wishing to restore a Hoosier with period-correct flour sifters, shelving, knob fixtures, etc. can accumulate a high price tag. eBay is a great source to find the odds and ends to complete your Hoosier... and also a great place to sell spare parts if you should happen to come across any. These pieces are a great part of the history of the American kitchen and fortunately are still around today to enjoy!

eBay & Beyond for 2014

I started my EBay listing adventure in May of 2013. I don’t remember exactly what made the light bulb turn on that I could buy items strictly to resell, but once I sold that first item and made a profit, I was hooked. The first couple of months, buying to resell was something that I did nonchalantly. If I was at a flea market or a thrift store and I saw an item that I thought I could flip, I would purchase it. I have been going to flea markets since I was little, so the picking aspect wasn’t anything new to me.

It wasn’t until I had multiple sales that I decided that with more knowledge and time, I could turn this buying to resell into a part-part-part time job. Gradually month after month, I would spend more time looking at sales on ebay, reading blogs, and joining reselling and ebay Facebook groups to increase my knowledge and train my eye on what items to buy. At the end of 2013, I walked away with $1,067 in pure profit. To some resellers, they make that much in one day. For me, this was an accomplishment and an acknowledgement that if I put in more time and more research, I could bring in even more money.

Having the extra cash is something that helped me out this past year. Whether it was for unexpected car maintenance or even helping with Christmas gifts, my wallet didn’t feel the pinch as much when my PayPal funds provided some cushioning. I envy those that are able to be full time ebay sellers and not have to work in the corporate world. There is money to be made from thrifting and that’s my goal in 2014.

So what will it take? Have you made your New Year’s Resolutions? Most will commit to healthier eating, spending more time at the gym, less gossip, and more real interaction. All of these are attainable if one puts in a solid effort. However, I haven’t made resolutions as much as I have made goals.

My main goal is to at least double my profits from 2013. $2,000 is a drop in the bucket for most, but for me to sell that much would be great. If I can triple my 2013 profit, that would be even better – but, let’s start small and work our way up!

How will I do this? I’ve already taken two steps in order to make my EBay “business” easier. I have purchased a photo studio light box. I’ve gotten tired of dragging items outside to set them up on my deck. I don’t want to have to deal with shadows or pictures that need excessive touch ups. With the light box, I have different backdrops to choose from and now I don’t have to worry about making sure that the picture background is okay. The second step is I have finally ordered a scale to weigh items. Finally! Though I have gotten pretty good at estimating the cost of a package shipped out priority, I have lost money by underestimating the cost to ship. I also am looking forward to printing out postage at home and scheduling pick ups of the items I sell. While there are a few local post offices in the area, it will definitely be a real time saver to just put the boxes on my porch and have the mailman take them away.

The third thing that I did was join The Appsters. This is a private group run by Danni Ackerman of The Danni App. If you are new to reselling, you must check out The Danni App! There are old podcasts on Itunes but also check out her website and join her Facebook group. The amount of information that is posted on a daily basis on the Facebook page is unbelievable. A whole new world of reselling is opened and you won’t believe what can sell on EBay! I started listening to the podcasts over the summer and really enjoyed hearing about the “Score of the Week” and the adventures of going to yard sales.

On the Facebook group, I kept hearing about the Appsters and having access to webinars and all sorts of other information not available in the regular Facebook group. This is a pay subscription group, with the cost of either paying by the month or paying for a year. The price per month is $29.95 and the year subscription gives you twelve months for the price of eleven. I thought about joining for a few days, tossing the idea around in my mind. For someone just starting out in reselling, I thought that the money that I paid per month could be used instead for buying merchandise or even for other necessary things like gas and groceries. For me, that $30 could be used in so many other ways. But, then I thought of it in reselling terms: I had to sell one item – just one item – at $30 a month to cover the cost.

I said yes to signing up to the Appsters. I took a leap because I want to double, triple, quadruple my EBay sales and gain more information about the world of reselling. If I would just stay stagnant, sure my sales might increase a little but I want to be even more profitable and more knowledgeable about the world of thrifting and reselling.

 Good luck with all of your goals and resolutions - make it happen!

Here's to 2014 - eBay & Beyond!

Betting on Clark Griswold - A Taz Mug Find

“Shitter's full!” Say this phrase and many people will know what you are referring to. Show them a glass shaped like a moose head with antlers for the handles and many people will know what you are referring to. Drink out of a Tazmanian Devil mug and many people will…. what? Read on & learn.

A few months ago while perusing The Danni App Facebook page (“Like” the page now! Well, wait until you are done reading this post first!) I came across a BOLO – Be On the Look Out – for a Taz mug. I thought what could be the big deal about this mug since it was just a ceramic face of the Looney Toon character, who never was one of my favorites. The big deal was the winning auction price at a whopping $127! For a Taz mug! I was intrigued and began reading everyone’s comments about the mug.

While I love National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and have watched it many, many times, the scene where Clark Griswold is drinking out of a Taz mug at the office was never one of the main scenes that stuck out in my head. While I may have forgotten about it, others definitely have not. Apparently having this mug is a big deal, a big deal that brings in bring money on EBay.

I stumbled upon my very own Taz mug one day when I was visiting an antique store by my house, one that I have been to many times. I’m sure this Taz mug had been sitting at this certain booth for quite some time, but I just never noticed it with “eBay vision”. It was sitting next to a Miss Piggy mug, which my eyes quickly bypassed as my pupils grew wide with seeing this Tasmanian devil. It felt like I had found the holy grail of Christmas mugs! I turned the little white tag over to find the selling price of $20. $20?!? I couldn’t believe it. This price seemed too steep for my blood, but knowing that they are popular on eBay, I took out my phone and did a quick search while I nonchalantly looked through the rest of the booth. 

There were a few mugs that were up for auction, with bids ranging in the $50-$70 mark. A buy it now option of $149.99 made me chuckle as I switched to looking at the sold listings. Every mug that had been listed had sold.. and not just for mere pennies. Most auctions ended with bids between $90 and $120 and even higher priced buy it now options had been purchased. Obviously this was a no-brainer in regards to purchasing, but I left the store and left the Taz mug behind because I couldn't justify spending $20 on it.

This decision haunted me for the rest of that night and into the next morning, when after looking a little bit more on eBay, I decided that leaving this mug at the store was a bad decision. A profit was pretty much guaranteed and I would more than get my money back. Off to the antique store I went, where the mug was still sitting in its' spot, ready and waiting. Lucky for me, that weekend the store was having a special holiday event with most booths having sales. The mug's price was dropped down to $16 and I left the store eager to get listing!

It was a slow go with the auction, getting plenty of views and watchers, but no bidders. I had an offer of $70 with free shipping, which I immediately passed on. I had started the auction at $49.95, following in the footsteps of other sold mugs, and knew to wait it out. As the days went by and no bids, I began to wonder if maybe my purchase was a mistake. I added the option of a buy it now for around $90 something, lowering it down to $85.95 with two days left in the auction. There were a few other Taz mugs listed at the same time, all with bids. I was sweating!

Finally, within the last day or so, the bidding started. Dollar by dollar, the bids increased until the winning bidder won at $106.67! I ended up walking away with around $75 profit, after fees which isn't too bad for spending $16. Would I do it again? I'm not sure. Knowing that the mug would sell, I knew that spending the $16 wasn't going to be too big of a risk. Making a $75 profit was good, but that profit would have been even better if I would have paid much less for the mug (say around $1 to $5). 

Lesson: One can't be afraid to spend money to make money in the eBay reselling world. However, you need to make sure that whatever money you spend, you can clearly make a profit on, especially if you are spending larger amounts of cash. While spending $16 might not seem like much to some people, if you can only make double that in profit, it really isn't worth your time or effort. Buy low, sell high!

Christmas Sales & Ebay

It's that time of year again when everyone packs up the car and heads out to their favorite shopping mall in order to score the best deals on toys, home goods, clothes, and everything in between. November through January are high volume times on eBay, due to people searching for the perfect gift and then after the holidays buying what they really wanted. Due to this, my eBay sales should have been soaring through the roof. Everything that I listed should have sold. I should be feeling like Santa, delivering gifts all over the country. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I've hit a slump - a major one. For whatever reason the reselling gods see fit, my sales this month have been zilch. Yes, I know it is still early in the month but that doesn't account for having listed almost twenty items for the end of November and not having one of them sell. Bah humbug. 

So what is the problem? I've gone the Christmas route and have listed vintage/retro Christmas items... I've offered free shipping... I've lowered my prices and yet nothing. When times like these happen, I always tell myself that I've had enough and that it is time to hang up the eBay hat for awhile. Maybe I've lost my touch, maybe my "eye" for things has grown cold, or maybe there is just a dry spell at my local thrift stores and estate sales. I still consider myself a newbie at this reselling business, so I am constantly learning. Having dry spells is one of the processes of learning, albeit an unhappy one.

So what can us resellers do when the sales run dry? First, take a look at your inventory. What are you buying and how much are you paying for it? Spending money to make money is always a risky business. For me, spending $5 on one item is a huge bargain but to others this $5 could be chump change. I always think of it as "If I buy one item for $5, how much profit can I expect to make? Is this profit more than if I bought five items for $1 a piece?"

Second, don't buy everything in sight. It is super tempting to load up a shopping basket or cart at Goodwill in the hopes of flipping for a profit. There is that adrenaline rush when you think of all of the bids that could start over an item. Do your research by taking your items to a non busy part of the store and look up each piece as best as you can. You must remember though that mobile eBay does not show all of the solds/completeds. This needs to be kept in mind when you are searching for something and nothing is coming up... chances are that if you bring up the same search on a desktop, you will get some hits. Again, compare the asking price to what your selling price will be.

Third, have a good attitude. This one I am constantly reminding myself of. If you don't a great item in one store, who knows what could be waiting for you at the next thrift shop you walk into. There is good stuff out there, sometimes sitting on the shelves for months and other times it is that item that has just been put on display that morning. Positivity goes a long way - think that you are going to find that $100 profit item and you just might!

Who Gives a Hoot ~ Reselling Retro Owl Patio Lights

There are many different sources to gain stock from when looking to resell on eBay or Etsy. Some choose only garage sales while others are thrift store junkies. I like to visit and shop from all sources, whether it be a thrift store, estate sale, or flea market.

A few minutes drive from my job is a fairly new "junkers" store. It is kind of a mish mosh of an estate sale, thrift store, and flea market. The owner gathers all of his stock from a plethora of sources. He does estate clean outs, store clean outs, and even advertises for people to dump off their unsold yard sale items at his store for free. How convenient that he wants to take stuff off of their hands!

Pricing is pretty simple with a color coded system. Colored dots represent a specific cost, ranging from 75 cents up to $10, and then some prices are as marked. The store carries a wide variety of items from actual antiques to shelves full of cereal and kitchen cleaners. Some of the stuff that is posted for sale is actual junk - broken and severely chipped items, damaged goods, etc. There are other items that are fairly nice but priced high and thus not good for someone looking to resell. I know that the owner sells on eBay because I have heard him discuss with his fellow employees about items that he has placed on eBay and how much cash he is bringing in.

Keeping this fact in mind, when I shop at this "junkers outlet" in the hopes of finding items to resell, I try to look for things that he perhaps overlooked. Owning a store and doing clean outs takes up a considerable amount of time, so I get into the mind frame of finding the smaller, inconspicuous items that could have been overlooked but could still make a profit.

A few weeks after Halloween I stopped in before work to see if there was anything new on the shelves and if Christmas stock was being put out yet. I ventured to the holiday section and to my surprise, found an overlooked treasure. In a plastic container sitting amongst the Halloween items was a set of seven blow mold owl lights, the kind that were/are popular for patios and RVs. The container also had a set of seven packaged light bulbs and the electric cord that held the lights. I thought for sure that these were going to be priced over $10, considering that the store owner is an eBay seller. I was sticker shocked when the colored dot on the owls corresponded with the $3 dot. A quick look on eBay left me with little to consider - the owl lights were now going home with me.

There were plenty of sold owl lights on eBay, along with auctions and Buy It Now options that were currently running. Most of the owl sets were the red, greens, and darker blues while the set I had were of a pastel color. Taking a look at the ending bids for those that had sold in the past month, I decided to start mine at a price that seemed comparable with the starting bids of others: $28.50. Within a day, I already had a bidder and it was nothing but up from there!

During the bidding war, I actually had 4 buyers that set up automatic bidding (you can only view this after the sale is complete). I was happy with getting the starting bid but even more thrilled when the auction ended with the winning bidder paying $53!! After fees were deducted, I ended up banking a profit of $41.92. Not bad at all for a $3 investment!



I felt a little tinge of satisfaction that I was able to flip this item that Mr. Junker didn't see the value in. This goes to show you that people in the reselling business - including myself - cannot know everything about everything. These owls were an easy flip and Mr. Junker could easily have listed them on eBay and made more than the $3 that I purchased them for. However, his loss was my gain and that's how it is in the reselling business.

We all have a niche and have been able to fine tune our eyes to spot the treasure amidst the trash. However,  we all pass by objects sitting on shelves that are just glowing with dollar signs and profits to be made because we don't know - or haven't yet learned - certain maker's marks, specific rare toys, and silverware patterns. That is one of the best parts about this reselling business: We can learn! We can research, study, and get to know what can make us a profit so that we aren't glancing over valuable objects as we peruse the thrift store shelves.

~ Flea Fact ~

Give a hoot & research! Dedicate a few hours a week to searching on eBay for hot selling items, learn about a specific glass company, research a toy manufacturer. Learn a little about a lot and watch your profits come flying in!