Swap Meet in Oceanside - 4
Originally uploaded by Jason In Japan.
I had a big storage unit for the 5 years I was in Japan - full of "stuff." No furniture or practical items, mostly just comics, CDs, books, DVDs, toys, etc, etc.
So little by little after I got home I started to sell stuff off. First, I found a guy in LA who bought 30 "long comic boxes" from me for about $600. I only kept about 3 long boxes of my most favorite books.
Then we had a garage sale at the house, and I sold my Laser Discs players, a bunch of Star Wars toys, and other stuff.
I traded in a bunch of CDs for credit at a local used shop, and eventually got my 10'x10' storage space, which I was paying $76/month for, down to a 5x10 space, thus making my monthly rent $54.
I figured that was about it, when I got an email after I listed some comics on Craigslist from the local organizers of a swap meet in Oceanside. They wanted to have a "collector's con" aimed at comic fans, Pokemon fans, anime fans, etc.
It was only $25 to rent the space, and even tho I'd never sold at a swap meet before, I decided to give it a try just two weeks before I was set to leave for Japan.
Luckily I knew a pal, Mark, who had helped when we ran the booth at Comic Con back in July, so I called him up and arranged for him to help me for part of the day. He ended up working the whole 9 hours, and we were pretty busy - I sold over $600 worth of stuff, so minus some expenses I made about $450.
It was a lot of work, but overall it felt good to "give away" some of my stuff and let others enjoy it instead of it just sitting in my dark storage for another potential 4 or 5 years.
-Jason
