As I was for many years, my friend Cheryl is a single mother. Cheryl’s daughter will be the first of her 3 daughters to go to college. This young lady wants to be a primary school teacher because she loves children and wants to one day have something of her own and having those free summers and vacations with her own children in the future is very important to her. To begin with, she will be attending a 2-year high school, since she doesn’t want to go into a lot of debt to get her degree. She sounds like a good head on her shoulder, don’t you think?
The FAFSA was approved, the Pell Grant was received, and after all the grants have been awarded and all the money has been applied to room and board, books, computer, and tuition, there is still a shortfall. Finding the last $4,000 for her daughter’s freshman year of college has been a challenge for my friend, especially since she doesn’t want to take out any student loans. So, we started brainstorming about how to quickly raise money for college tuition. That’s how we found it!
I remember many years ago when Cheryl’s grandparents passed away, she was left with many items to make whatever she wanted. I also remembered that some of those items were vintage treasures, antiques, and collectibles. They have always been in boxes stored in the basement and we both agreed they would probably never go up for display and the girls probably wouldn’t want them either. We got busy digging up those treasures, cleaning them up, and started taking pictures of everything. There were lots of salt and pepper shakers, old and pristine kitchen items, a large collection of dolls, a couple of very old, heavy and ornate chess sets, vintage jewelry and clothing, as well as other curious things. We even discovered a collection of old WWII stamps and memorabilia.
I came up with this idea of selling stuff online because my husband recently told me that our sister-in-law had started liquidating her brother’s hunting gear by wearing it and selling it on E-Bay. She, in one afternoon, made nearly $1500 by auctioning off her extensive old Ducks Unlimited items. Not bad, I’d say.
It was a pretty good day when those deals started rolling in after we put your grandparents’ antiques and collectibles on the auction site. What seemed almost impossible to raise $4000 in a month became possible. Cheryl knew that her grandmother and grandfather would have absolutely no problem selling these things for one of her great-granddaughters to continue her education.