In this business it is critical to continue to keep learning and adapting.

Here is a recent story where an interaction with a customer turned into a win-win situation, always the best kind. The customer was happy with a great deal and I got not only a solid sale but exceptional insight on the specifics of what they were looking for.

Translation, items that will sell.

It started with a pair of blue denim jeans with the label 26 Red. I picked these up one day at a Good Sammy for the decent sum of $5. There were no comps I could find but I knew of this brand as growing up a young nineties kid myself, my best friend loved this brand and wore them all the time. So I picked them up and later listed them for $100 with a vintage 90s title. It did not take long before I had a few watchers on these jeans and then some interesting eBay message exchanges began.

The guy who initially contacted me (and would later become the buyer) hit me straight up with a low ball offer via eBay message to circumvent my auto decline which I had set at $50. His offer came with a story, however, that my pair of jeans had a sort of providence (originally being made in Australia in the 90s) and later being sold out to a chain store which decimated the brand by outsourcing the manufacturing, reducing the quality and simultaneously cheapening the price. There was quite a story for this pair of jeans. Anyway, it turned out that my pair of jeans was from the chain store days, obvious from the made in China tag, (and not even from the 90s – they were from early 2000s) but still had some value, just not as much as I was hoping for.

I had a figure in mind that I wanted to get for these jeans, and was fairly sure they would not take long to sell gauging by the interest the listing was receiving. Unfortunately, his offer was about $20 under what I really wanted to get for these and so I was left with a conundrum. Here was a buyer who obviously wanted these and had put in a large amount of time to communicate what these were, what he would pay (and had paid previously) for these vs ones that were made in Australia.

I had an idea.

Here was a guy who loved these old nineties styles, so much so that his friends continually gave him shit for it – his words. It is funny that the 90s look seems to be making a rebound, as all eras seem to as the youth of these eras enter their 30s and 40s and seek nostalgia. That concept is for another post later.

I made an offer of a different kind. I realised was that this guy was a loot crate of niche information about obscure vintage brands from the nineties. So in exchange for the additional $20 off the listing I asked for a list of brands that he (himself) would buy. That way I knew I was looking for things which I knew would sell (and even had an avenue of a potential buyer) should the right size appear.

The list as follows:

Brands I Wear From The 90′ Would Be –

26Red,

Cross Colours,

Klue,

Blank,

Independent,

Element,

Ecko (Another Brand That Sold Out To Kmart In the Early 2000’S)

Mambo (Sold Out To Kmart Around 2005, Early T Shirts Can Be Worth 50 – 250 Due To Artwork By Reg Mombassa)

Some Select Baggy Quicksilver Jeans,

Alien Workshop,

Pelle Pelle

And A Few Other Random Brands Like:

Rocawear,

Blunt,

Alphanumerics,

Kuta Lines.

I chose to view this exchange as a form of delayed payment and potentially an immensely valuable interaction should I come across some of these brands later in the wild. Indeed since this interaction I have found a few items from this list at decent prices mainly due to their obscurity I think.

I also did actually make $25 total profit on the sale anyway so it really was a Win-Win-Win

• Win (buyer)

• Win (seller-present)

• Win (seller-future)

There are multiple types of value.

Money, information and the application of information.

In this reselling game, they all matter.