How to Source Inventory for Reselling: The Complete 2026 Guide to Every Sourcing Channel

Finding inventory to flip is the single most important skill in reselling. You can be a master photographer, a listing optimization wizard, and a shipping logistics genius — but none of it matters if you can’t find items worth selling. The resellers making $5,000-$15,000/month in profit aren’t lucky. They’ve built sourcing systems that consistently deliver underpriced inventory across multiple channels.

This guide covers every sourcing method worth your time in 2026, with real numbers on startup costs, expected ROI, time investment, and the brutal truths about each channel that nobody posts on YouTube.

Sourcing Channel Comparison Table

Thrift Stores: The Foundation of Most Reselling Businesses

Thrift stores remain the highest-volume, most accessible sourcing channel for resellers in 2026. The inventory refreshes daily, prices are generally $1-$15 per item, and the potential ROI per item is massive.

Where to Go

Goodwill is the largest thrift chain, but quality varies enormously by location. Goodwills in affluent suburbs consistently stock better brands and quality than those in lower-income areas — that’s just donation demographics. Some Goodwill regions have adopted “boutique” pricing where they check eBay comps and price recognizable brands higher. Avoid these locations or cherry-pick the items they miss.

Salvation Army tends to price more uniformly and doesn’t cherry-pick as aggressively as Goodwill. Their half-off color tag sales (rotating weekly) are a goldmine — everything with a specific tag color is 50% off, bringing $4.99 items down to $2.50.

Savers/Value Village runs similar tag sales and tends to have better organized stores. Prices run slightly higher than Goodwill ($3.99-$12.99 for most clothing) but the quality of donations skews better in many regions.

Local independent thrifts — church thrift shops, hospital auxiliaries, Habitat for Humanity ReStores — are often the best-kept secrets. Lower traffic from other resellers, less sophisticated pricing, and sometimes stunningly good inventory. The church thrift in a wealthy neighborhood that’s only open Wednesdays and Saturdays? That’s where you find $400 cashmere sweaters priced at $3.

When to Go

Best days: Tuesday through Thursday. Weekend warriors hit thrift stores on Saturdays, and Mondays tend to have picked-over weekend leftovers. Mid-week gets fresh stock with less competition from other resellers.

Best times: First thing in the morning when the store opens, or right after the restock window. Ask employees when new inventory hits the floor — many Goodwills restock throughout the day, but some do a big push between 10 AM and noon.

Tag sale days: Know every store’s sale schedule cold. Goodwill rotating color tags, Salvation Army 50% off days, Savers Super Savers Club discounts. These sales effectively double your ROI.

How to Scan and Source Efficiently

Speed matters. A productive thrift run should cover an entire store in 60-90 minutes. Here’s the system:

Clothing resellers: Train your hands before your eyes. Feel fabrics as you push through the rack. Cashmere, silk, merino wool, and high-quality cotton feel distinctly different from polyester. Flip to the tag — brand, material composition, size, country of manufacture. Check the brand against your mental database or a quick Underpriced lookup. Pull anything with potential and pile it in your cart. Do your detailed evaluation and comps check before you get in the checkout line, not while you’re scanning the rack.

Hard goods resellers: Walk every aisle systematically. Pick up anything that looks old, unusual, branded, or that you don’t recognize. Check the bottom/back for maker’s marks. Scan barcodes with the Amazon Seller app or eBay app for immediate comp data. Look for: vintage Pyrex, cast iron, quality kitchen appliances (KitchenAid, Vitamix, Cuisinart), vintage electronics, board games with all pieces, LEGO sets, quality tools.

Book resellers: Use ScoutIQ ($14/month) or the Amazon Seller app. Scan every barcode. You’re looking for sales rank under 500,000 in the category with a net profit after fees and shipping of at least $5. A fast scanner can process 500+ books per hour and typically finds 15-30 profitable ones per trip. Most thrift stores price books at $1-3, and profitable ones sell for $8-$40+ on Amazon.

Thrift Store Sourcing Red Flags

• Stores that check eBay comps before pricing (increasingly common at Goodwill)
• “Boutique” or “curated” sections with near-retail pricing
• Stores that pull valuable items for their own online sales (Goodwill’s shopgoodwill.com auctions)
• Locations with heavy reseller traffic — if you see five people scanning barcodes, the gems are gone

Estate Sales: Where the Big Scores Live

Estate sales are liquidations of an entire household’s belongings, usually after a death, divorce, or major downsizing. They’re run by professional estate sale companies who organize, price, and sell everything over 1-3 days.

Finding Estate Sales

EstateSales.net is the primary platform. Filter by your area, check the photo galleries, and bookmark sales worth attending. The listings usually include 50-200 photos — study them before going. You can spot valuable items in photos that the estate sale company underpriced.

EstateSales.org is the secondary platform with some listings not on the main site.

Craigslist and Facebook — some estate sales, especially family-run ones without a professional company, only get listed here. These are often the best deals because pricing is less sophisticated.

Estate Sale Strategy

Preview if possible. Many estate sales offer a preview day or preview hours the evening before. Walk through, note items and prices, research comps on your phone, and plan your priority list. Know exactly what you’re grabbing at the door.

Day 1 pricing vs. Day 3 pricing. Estate sales typically run Friday-Sunday. Day 1 (Friday) has the best inventory but full prices. Day 2 (Saturday) is often 25% off everything. Day 3 (Sunday) is 50% off or more, sometimes even “fill a bag” pricing. The strategy depends on the items:

• High-value, competitive items (vintage jewelry, quality tools, collectibles) → Go Day 1, first in line
• Bulk items, furniture, common kitchenware → Wait for Day 2 or 3 discounts
• Dead stock and leftovers → Day 3, offer to take entire lots for pennies on the dollar

The early bird line. Popular estate sales have lines forming 1-2 hours before opening. Estate sale companies often use a numbering system — you arrive early, get a number, and can leave and come back. Some use online numbering (text a number to get your place). Check the listing for the process.

Negotiation at estate sales. Always ask “Can you do better on this?” especially on Day 2 and Day 3. Most estate sale companies have authorization to negotiate. If you’re buying multiple items, bundle them and offer a package price. “I’ll take all five of these for $40 instead of $65” works surprisingly often.

What to Look for at Estate Sales

Estate sales from households where someone lived for 40+ years are goldmines. Look for:

• Vintage clothing and accessories — pre-1990s designer labels, quality leather goods, vintage band tees
• Mid-century modern furniture and decor — atomic age lamps, Danish modern furniture, Eames-era pieces
• Vintage kitchen items — Pyrex, Fire-King, Le Creuset, cast iron, copper cookware
• Tools — quality hand tools, vintage power tools, machinist equipment
• Electronics — vintage audio equipment (turntables, receivers, speakers), vintage cameras
• Collectibles — coins, stamps, vinyl records, sports memorabilia, military items
• Art and prints — original artwork, signed prints, vintage posters

Garage Sales and Yard Sales: Highest ROI Per Dollar Spent

The average garage sale prices items at 10-20% of retail value, and they just want it gone. Your per-item cost basis is often $1-5, and the ROI per item can be astronomical.

Route Planning

Thursday night prep. Check Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, Garage Sale Finder app, and local community Facebook groups for weekend garage sale listings. Pin every sale on Google Maps. Prioritize sales that mention specific categories you sell (electronics, vintage, brand-name clothing) and multi-family sales (more inventory).

Plan a geographical loop. Start with the highest-priority sales and route efficiently. You should hit 10-20 sales in a 4-5 hour Saturday morning window. Start at 7:00-7:30 AM — the best deals go to the earliest arrivals.

Early bird ethics. Showing up before the posted start time is controversial. Some sellers hate it and will turn you away. Others are happy to let you buy early because they want stuff gone. A good rule: if the signs are out and people are setting up, a polite “Is it okay if I look early?” is acceptable. Showing up at 6 AM when the sale starts at 8 AM is pushy and burns community goodwill.

Negotiation Scripts That Work

Garage sale negotiation is different from retail negotiation because the seller is emotionally motivated to get rid of stuff, not maximize profit.

The bundle offer: “Would you take $15 for all of these?” (pointing to $30 worth of individual items). Works 80% of the time. Sellers love seeing a pile of stuff leave at once.

The honest flip: “I buy and resell stuff online — would you take $5 for this?” Some sellers respect the honesty and will give you a deal. Others will decide they should “check eBay.” Read the room.

The end-of-day sweep: If you have time, circle back to sales at 1-2 PM. Sellers who haven’t sold much are demoralized and will take almost any offer. “I’ll give you $20 for everything on this table” can net you $200+ in resale value.

The “I only have cash” play: “I’ve only got $40 on me — can you do the whole box for that?” Only use this when it’s plausibly true and the offer is reasonable.

Seasonal Garage Sale Calendar

• March-April: Spring cleaning sales begin. Great for sporting goods, outdoor equipment, and winter clearance items
• May-June: Peak garage sale season. Highest volume of sales, most competition from other buyers
• July-August: Moving sales pick up as families relocate before school starts. Moving sales have the best prices because they’re on a deadline
• September-October: Fall sales with back-to-school cleanouts, summer sports equipment
• November-February: Dead season for garage sales, but estate sales and indoor sources fill the gap

Online Arbitrage: Sourcing Without Leaving Your Desk

Online arbitrage (OA) is buying products from online retailers at clearance or sale prices and reselling them on Amazon or eBay at full market price. It’s a legitimate and scalable sourcing model, but the margins are thinner than most YouTube gurus show.

How OA Actually Works

1. Find a product on Walmart.com, Target.com, or Amazon itself at a discounted price
2. Verify the product sells for a higher price on your selling platform (usually Amazon FBA)
3. Verify the sales rank is strong enough that it’ll actually sell within 30-60 days
4. Check that after Amazon FBA fees, shipping to Amazon, and cost of goods, your net profit is at least $3-5 per unit
5. Buy in quantity (5-50 units) and ship to Amazon FBA

Key OA Tools

• Keepa ($19/month) — The essential Amazon price and sales rank history tracker. Shows you price trends, sales velocity, and how many other sellers are on a listing. If you’re doing OA without Keepa, you’re flying blind.
• Tactical Arbitrage ($59-$99/month) — Scans retailer websites and compares prices against Amazon listings. Finds potential OA leads at scale. Saves hours of manual searching.
• BuyBotPro ($29.95/month) — Chrome extension that overlays profitability analysis on Amazon product pages. Shows estimated monthly sales, fee calculations, and profit estimates.
• RevSeller ($99/year) — Similar to BuyBotPro with profitability overlays on Amazon pages.

OA Reality Check

The OA space has gotten significantly more competitive since 2020. Realistic expectations for 2026:

• Average ROI: 30-80% after all fees (not the 200% you see in YouTube thumbnails)
• Minimum viable investment: $500-$1,000 to start with enough product diversity
• Biggest risk: Price crashes. You buy 20 units at $15, plan to sell at $30 on Amazon, and two days later a competitor drops to $18. Your margin evaporates.
• Time investment: 10-20 hours/week including product research, ordering, prepping, and shipping to FBA
• Gating issues: Many profitable categories and brands on Amazon are gated (restricted). You may need invoices from authorized distributors to get ungated, which can take months.

Where to Find OA Deals

• Walmart clearance (walmart.com/clearance) — Sort by percentage off, filter by department
• Target Circle deals and clearance sections
• Amazon Warehouse Deals — Buy damaged-box items at discount and resell as new (only if the item is genuinely new/sealed)
• Kohl’s clearance — Stacks with Kohl’s Cash for absurd discounts
• Home Depot and Lowe’s clearance — Tools and hardware have strong Amazon resale
• Branded website sales — Check brand websites directly during seasonal sales

Retail Arbitrage: Boots on the Ground in Stores

Retail arbitrage (RA) is the in-person version of OA — you walk into a store, scan clearance items with your phone, and buy anything with a profitable spread on Amazon or eBay.

Essential RA Tools

• Amazon Seller App (free) — Scan any barcode and see the current Amazon selling price, fees, and your potential profit. The built-in profitability calculator is accurate.
• Scoutify/InventoryLab ($69/month) — More advanced scanning with profit calculation, historical price data, and inventory management. The gold standard for serious RA sellers.
• BrickSeek (free basic, $9.99/month premium) — Checks local store inventory and clearance prices at Walmart, Target, Lowe’s, Home Depot, and others before you drive there. Premium shows exact in-store prices and stock levels.

Best Stores for Retail Arbitrage in 2026

Walmart: The clearance aisles and endcaps at Walmart are RA ground zero. Look for yellow clearance stickers. Items marked down to $.03 or $1.00 are going to zero — grab every unit. The toy, electronics, and seasonal sections have the best finds. Check the hidden clearance in the back of departments, not just the dedicated clearance aisle.

Target: Target’s clearance follows a predictable markdown schedule — 15% off week 1, 30% week 2, 50% week 3, 70% week 4+. Items with the yellow/red clearance sticker showing 70% off are RA gold. Target’s toy clearance in January and July is legendary.

Home Depot / Lowe’s: Hardware and tools resell extremely well on Amazon. Clearance power tools, seasonal items, and contractor packs have consistent margins. Check the overhead racking for clearance items — they’re hidden up high.

CVS / Walgreens: Health, beauty, and personal care clearance. Small items with low shipping costs and consistent Amazon demand. The margins are thin (20-40%) but the items are lightweight and easy to ship.

TJ Maxx / Marshalls / Ross: Brand-name items at discount prices. Look for recognizable brands that sell at full retail on Amazon — kitchen gadgets, home decor, brand-name beauty products. The challenge is that inventory is unpredictable.

RA Seasonal Patterns

Liquidation Pallets: High Risk, Potentially High Reward

Liquidation pallets are bulk lots of customer returns, overstock, or shelf-pulls from major retailers, sold by the pallet or truckload at steep discounts from retail value.

Major Liquidation Platforms

B-Stock (bstock.com) — Direct auction platform for retailer liquidation. You can bid on pallets directly from Amazon, Walmart, Target, Home Depot, and others. Each auction shows manifest (list of items), condition, and retail value. Pallets typically sell for 10-25% of retail value.

Bulq.com — Curated liquidation lots at fixed prices. Categories include returns, overstock, and new-with-damage. Lot sizes range from small ($100-$300) to full pallets ($500-$2,000). They show the condition mix upfront (e.g., “40% new, 35% like new, 25% salvage”).

DirectLiquidation.com — Auction-style platform with pallets from major retailers. Shows manifests and condition grades. Heavy on electronics and general merchandise.

888Lots.com — Fixed-price lots, often smaller quantities (cases rather than full pallets). Lower barrier to entry — you can start with $50-$200 lots.

The Hard Truth About Liquidation

Manifests can be misleading. A manifest says “Apple AirPods Pro” — you picture sealed retail boxes. Reality: it’s a customer return with one earbud missing and no charging case. The “retail value” on the manifest is the MSRP of a new, complete item, not what your return/damaged item is actually worth.

Cherry-picking is real. Some liquidation companies pull the best items from pallets before selling them. You get the leftovers. B-Stock direct auctions from retailer-owned storefronts are less likely to be cherry-picked than third-party liquidators.

Average liquidation ROI is 100-200%, not 500%. After accounting for non-functional items (expect 15-30% of a returns pallet to be unsellable), testing time, listing time, and shipping costs, your real return is more modest than the YouTube thumbnails suggest.

Realistic pallet budget breakdown: You buy a $500 pallet with $3,000 manifest retail value.

• 20% is unsellable junk → write off $100 of your cost basis
• 30% sells for 30-50% of retail → $450-$750 revenue
• 30% sells for 50-70% of retail → $450-$630 revenue
• 20% sells for 70-90% of retail → $420-$540 revenue
• Total realistic revenue: $1,320-$1,920 + hours of testing, listing, and shipping
• Net profit after all fees and shipping: $400-$900 on a $500 investment over 2-4 months

That’s a reasonable return, but it takes significant time and storage space. Don’t invest your rent money based on pallet flipping YouTube videos.

Liquidation Tips That Matter

• Start with small lots ($100-$200) to learn. Losing $100 on a bad lot is tuition. Losing $2,000 is painful.
• Stick to categories you know. If you don’t know electronics, don’t buy electronics pallets.
• Factor in freight shipping costs. A $300 pallet might cost $150-$300 to ship to your house.
• Test everything immediately and sort into “sell,” “parts/repair,” and “trash” piles.
• Some of the best money is in parting out electronics that don’t fully work — a broken laptop might have $50 in sellable components (charger, screen, keyboard, RAM).

Wholesale Sourcing: Consistency Over Treasure Hunting

Wholesale sourcing means buying new products directly from manufacturers, distributors, or wholesale platforms at below-retail prices and reselling at or near full price.

Wholesale Platforms

Faire (faire.com) — The largest wholesale marketplace for independent brands. Minimum orders vary by brand, often $100-$300. Net 60 payment terms on first orders. Free returns on first orders. Best for home goods, beauty, food, and gift items. Ideal for Amazon or your own Shopify store.

Alibaba — Direct from Chinese manufacturers. Minimum order quantities (MOQs) range from 10 to 10,000+ units. Lead times of 15-45 days for production plus 15-30 days for shipping. Best for private label products or commodity items in bulk.

DHgate — Similar to Alibaba but geared toward smaller quantities. Higher per-unit costs than Alibaba but lower MOQs. Good for testing products before placing large Alibaba orders.

Wholesale Central / TopTenWholesale — Directories of US-based wholesalers. Quality varies widely. Verify any supplier before sending money.

Wholesale Economics

Wholesale margins are thinner than thrift store or garage sale flips, but the consistency and scalability are the trade-off.

• Typical wholesale discount: 40-60% below retail
• After marketplace fees (15% on Amazon, 13% on eBay): Your margin is 20-40%
• After shipping, FBA fees, and returns: Net margin is often 15-25%
• The advantage: You can reorder profitable products infinitely. You’re not hunting for one-off items — you’re building a repeatable product line.

The Wholesale Trap

Many “wholesale suppliers” you find online are actually middlemen marking up products to near-retail prices. A real wholesale price is 40-60% off MSRP. If someone is offering 20% off retail and calling it “wholesale,” they’re a dropshipper’s supplier, not a real wholesaler.

To find real wholesale accounts: attend trade shows (ASD Market Week in Las Vegas is the biggest), contact brands directly through their websites, and look for “authorized distributor” pages on manufacturer sites.

Facebook Marketplace Sourcing: Buy Low, Sell Higher

Facebook Marketplace is both a selling platform and a sourcing goldmine. People list items at convenience pricing — they want it gone today, not maximize value. Your job is to spot the underpriced listings before other flippers do.

What to Buy on Marketplace

• Furniture — Free and cheap furniture is everywhere. A solid wood dresser listed for $20 (or free) can be cleaned up and resold for $150-$300. Mid-century modern pieces underpriced by people who don’t know what they have.
• Electronics — Game consoles, computers, monitors, cameras. People upgrade and dump the old stuff for cheap. A PS4 listed at $75 sells all day at $150 on eBay.
• Power tools — DeWalt, Milwaukee, Makita appear constantly from contractors upgrading. Buy at 30-40% of retail, sell at 60-70% of retail.
• Sporting goods — Peloton bikes listed for $200-$400 that sell for $600-$800. Golf clubs, kayaks, weight sets.
• Baby/kids gear — Strollers, car seats (check expiration), high-end baby items depreciate fast for the original owner but retain resale value online.

Marketplace Sourcing Strategy

Set up keyword alerts. Use Facebook’s notification feature or a third-party tracking tool to get instant alerts when items matching your target keywords are listed. Speed is everything — a mispriced item gets 20 messages in the first 10 minutes.

Search common misspellings. “Palaton” instead of Peloton, “Kitchenaide” instead of KitchenAid, “Bose” spelled “Boss.” Misspelled listings get less traffic and less competition.

Expand your radius. Set your search to 60-100 miles. People in smaller towns price lower because there’s less local buyer demand. The drive may be worth it for a $300+ flip.

Message immediately, pick up same day. “Is this still available? I can pick up today with cash.” That message gets priority over “Is the price negotiable?” Sellers want speed and certainty.

Storage Unit Auctions: The Gambler’s Sourcing Channel

Storage unit auctions happen when renters default on payments and the facility auctions off the contents. Thanks to Storage Wars romanticizing this, competition has increased since the show’s era, but legitimate deals still exist.

Finding Storage Auctions

• StorageTreasures.com — The largest online listing platform for storage auctions. Many facilities now run online-only auctions through this platform.
• StorageAuctions.com — Secondary platform with additional listings.
• Local facility websites — Call storage facilities in your area and ask about their auction schedule. Many smaller facilities still do in-person auctions.
• PublicSurplus.com / GovDeals.com — Government surplus auctions occasionally include storage-type lots.

Storage Auction Strategy

Set a hard budget and don’t exceed it. Auction fever is real. A unit that looks promising can easily bait you into paying $800 when the contents are worth $300 retail. Most experienced auction buyers set a maximum based on what they can see from the doorway and stick to it.

What you can see matters. You typically get 5 minutes to look from the doorway (you can’t enter the unit before bidding). Look for: brand-name boxes, furniture quality, signs of organized packing (someone who packed carefully likely packed valuable things) vs. garbage bags thrown in (probably junk).

Average unit reality: Most storage units contain clothes, basic furniture, and household items worth $200-$500 at retail. After your time sorting, listing, and selling — plus the items that are trash — your profit on an average unit is $100-$300. The viral finds (vintage collections, electronics hoards, designer handbags) happen maybe 1 in 20 units.

The cleanout cost. Whatever you don’t sell, you have to dispose of. Budget $50-$150 for dump runs on a typical 10x10 unit. Some facilities require full cleanout within 48-72 hours.

Moving Sales: The Underrated Gold Mine

People moving — especially on short timelines — will practically give items away. A family that sold their house and closes in two weeks doesn’t have time for eBay. They have time for “come take this and give me $20.”

Finding Moving Sales

• Craigslist “Moving Sale” search — Filter for posts mentioning “must go,” “everything must go,” “moving out of state”
• Facebook Marketplace — Sellers who mention “moving” in their listing are often willing to negotiate aggressively
• Nextdoor app — Neighborhood-specific moving sales with less competition from resellers
• Military base communities — PCS (Permanent Change of Station) orders mean predictable, urgent moving sales with quality household goods

Why Moving Sales Beat Garage Sales

The seller is under a hard deadline. There’s no “I’ll just keep it if it doesn’t sell” option. This shifts all negotiating power to the buyer. Offer to take everything remaining for a flat price — “$100 for everything left in the garage” — and you’ll frequently walk away with $500-$1,500 in resale value.

Dumpster Diving: Free Inventory if You Know Where to Look

Let’s address this honestly — dumpster diving carries social stigma, but plenty of six-figure resellers started this way, and some still do it to supplement sourcing. Free COGS is the highest ROI possible.

Legality

Dumpster diving legality varies by jurisdiction. In the US, the Supreme Court ruled in California v. Greenwood (1988) that trash placed in public areas has no expectation of privacy. However:

• Municipal ordinances may prohibit it. Check your local laws.
• Private property dumpsters (behind stores, in gated areas) may be trespassing to access.
• “No Trespassing” signs make accessing that dumpster illegal regardless of local laws.
• Locked dumpsters or compactors — if the store locked it, they don’t want you in it. Respect that.

Where Resellers Dive

Bookstores (Barnes & Noble, Half Price Books) — Damaged-cover books are often discarded but perfectly readable and sellable. Media mail shipping keeps costs low.

College dorms at end of semester — Students throw away electronics, small appliances, textbooks, dorm furniture. May and December are peak times. Some colleges set up “free” areas specifically for this.

Retail stores during resets — When stores reset planograms, display models and discontinued items sometimes get tossed instead of returned to the vendor. Electronics stores, game stores, and office supply stores are known for this.

Apartment complex dumpsters — End-of-month move-outs generate enormous amounts of usable goods. Furniture, kitchen items, electronics, and clothing are commonly discarded.

Ethics and Common Sense

• Never make a mess. If you open bags, re-bag what you don’t take.
• Don’t dive in compactors — they’re genuinely dangerous.
• If a manager tells you to leave, leave. Don’t argue.
• Clean and sanitize everything thoroughly before listing.
• Disclose condition accurately — “Found item, cosmetic wear” is fine. Misrepresenting a salvaged item as brand new is fraud.

Building a Multi-Channel Sourcing System

The resellers who build real businesses don’t rely on one channel. They build a weekly routine that hits multiple sources:

Monday-Wednesday: Online arbitrage research. Scan clearance sites, check Keepa alerts, place OA orders, prep and ship FBA inventory.

Thursday: Estate sale preview and research. Study EstateSales.net listings and photos. Plan Friday estate sale route.

Friday morning: Hit priority estate sales at opening.

Friday afternoon: Thrift store run at 2-3 stores.

Saturday 7 AM-noon: Garage sale route (10-15 sales) planned Thursday night.

Saturday afternoon: Process and list the weekend’s finds.

Sunday: Facebook Marketplace sourcing — respond to underpriced listings, pick up purchases.

Ongoing: Check liquidation auctions, restock wholesale products, scan storage auction listings.

Seasonal Sourcing Strategy

Your First Week of Sourcing: A Practical Starting Plan

If you’re starting from zero with $200 to invest in inventory:

Day 1: Download the eBay app, Amazon Seller app, and Underpriced. Learn how to scan barcodes and check sold comps. Practice at home with items you already own — check what your stuff is actually worth.

Day 2: Visit 2-3 thrift stores. Budget $50. Buy 10-15 items you’ve verified have sold comps at 4x+ your cost. Focus on shoes, brand-name clothing, or hard goods you’ve scanned. Take photos, note your cost per item.

Day 3: Check EstateSales.net for upcoming sales. Browse Facebook Marketplace for underpriced items in categories you know.

Day 4: Hit a garage sale route (Saturday morning). Budget $50. Negotiate everything. Focus on volume — 20 items at $2 average cost = $40 spent.

Day 5: List everything you bought. Photograph, research comps, write descriptions, price competitively.

Week 2+: Repeat. Expand to new channels as you build capital from first sales.

The key to sourcing is reps. Your eye for profitable items gets sharper with every trip. The reseller who’s been thrifting for two years spots a $200 item from across the store in 3 seconds — not because they’re smarter, but because they’ve scanned thousands of items and built an internal database of what sells. Start building yours now.