Today, I did something that I have not done for months. I watched television. Television service is not available for a reasonable price at my house, so my husband and I decided when we moved in that that was something that we could do without. Neither of us miss it much, and we are so busy that we feel like having television would either cause us to spend time watching television and not doing other things that we want to do and need to do, or we would not watch enough television to make it worth what we paid for it. Anyways, we are out of town for a few days and are staying somewhere where there is television. One of the programs that we watched tonight made me think about an idea for a home based business.
If anyone has ever watched the show “Storage Wars” on A&E, you know that when self storage units are abandoned, their contents are often auctioned off to the highest bidder. While the people that are featured in that program all have brick and mortar stores that they stock with the items that they acquire from buying those storage unit contents, I think that it is possible to create a home-based business around the same idea. Throughout the program, when the buyers found items in the storage units that they did not recognize, especially things like furs, jewelry, collectibles, and antique items that looked like they could be valuable, they brought them to people who could appraise them. Many of the appraisers were also dealers of the kinds of items that the buyers were bringing to be appraised, so there was always the opportunity to sell them to the appraiser if they were satisfied with the offer.
In order to run a home-based business selling items found in abandoned storage units, you could take certain items to appraisers and dealers in your area, and you could sell some of the more mundane items on eBay. Of course, this will work better if there are a diverse collection of antique, jewelry, and collectible dealers in your area so that you have places where you can bring a lot of the items. Also, if you live in a climate where the weather is good, you can display some of the larger items in your yard or have a yard sale to sell the contents of the storage unit that you bought.
As with any home-based business, this business idea involves risk. Even though the concept seems fairly simple, it is essential that you go through the business planning process step by step to see if it is a viable option for you. This includes assessing whether storage units in your area are available for auction, whether there are shops where you could bring your items to be sold, and many other factors. With some careful thought and planning as well as a keen eye for a good bargain, you could build a successful resale business.
Photo by click on morguefile.com.