I Ranked the Best Places to Buy eBay Inventory (Tier List)

Added: 2026-04-29

[00:00:00]In this video, we are breaking down the best places to source your eBay inventory, and we are putting them into a tier list. We'll be breaking down the eight most common locations that people source their eBay inventory, and I will be going over my strategy if I were to source in those locations to maximize my profits. If you are new here, my name is Max. I flip high ticket, fast sellrough rate items from Facebook Marketplace to eBay. Here is my 90-day total, and above me are some of my most recent sales. I may be a little bit biased towards Facebook Marketplace, but I will give every other option a fair shot. Let's start ranking these bad boys. Okay, up first we have the Goodwill bins. Now, if you're a fan of the channel, you may think, Max, you're a hater of the Goodwill bins. I'm not a hater of the Goodwill bins. And this will be being placed into Bier.

[00:00:48]Now, why Btier? One, I think the Goodwill pl the Goodwill bins is an amazing place to get tons of cheap inventory. You can go in there and just buy pounds and pounds and pounds of clothing or stuffed animals or whatever you'd like to sell for less than 100 bucks. You can easily get thousands of dollars of eBay or whatnot inventory.

[00:01:06]Now, with the rise of whatnot and live selling, I think the bins have gone up a couple ranks in my opinion. If you're sourcing at the bins strictly for eBay, I think you could be doing a lot better sourcing other items and buying in bulk somewhere else and focusing on the stuff that actually sells well rather than digging through some dirty bins. But this is an amazing place to get cheap inventory where you can buy a shirt for a dollar and sell it for $20 if that is your business model. Personally, not what I do. Can make a ton of money doing it and there's plenty of creators out there who do well. whether it's flipping clothes or shoes from the bins onto eBay or what's making way more money nowadays is selling these items on whatnot. So, if you are sourcing from the bins, highly recommend getting into live selling. Again, not what I do, but tons of money to be made doing it. Next up, we have garage sales. I'm going to put garage sales into the C tier as they are very boom or bust. Lots of times with garage sales, you are driving around, spending a lot of time driving to garage sales or you might not purchase anything that's great to flip. However, when you do find that one good garage sale, man, it can pay for your whole weekend. I remember a couple years ago when I was garage salailing, I bought a lot of 64 Nintendo NES games for $40. I bought all 64 games for 40 bucks, and I sold everything on eBay over a month or two for well over $1,200. Those are the type of deals that you can get at garage sales that you typically can't get anywhere else. However, those come few and far between and ultimately you don't get too many of those great deals. So, garage sales are going to C tier as I think there's probably better uses of time like our next category. Next up, we have flea markets. Now, a lot of people are sourcing at flea markets and having tons of success. When I first started my business, the flea market was my main sourcing method. I would go to the flea market every single weekend, connect with vendors, and make a ton of money flipping high-end electronics and other equipment. So flea markets for me are going into a tier. Now why are they going into A tier? One is your ability to make connections with vendors. If you consistently show up at the flea market every single week, vendors are going to start to know who you are. And if you start telling vendors exactly what you like to sell, they're going to start saving them for you. As long as you're paying them a good price. I remember when I was going to the Mile High Flea Market in Denver every single weekend. I would connect with all the vendors and told them I like to flip cameras and high-end electronics. So that means when I rolled around Saturday morning bright and early, guess what? They had a pile of cameras and high-end electronics waiting for me to purchase because I gave them the price that they wanted.

[00:03:41]They were in the business of selling their stuff quick. I was in the business of selling stuff for top dollar. So their business method worked with my business method and we were both happy.

[00:03:52]These guys don't want to wait as they are getting tons of inventory every single week from buying storage units or buying bulk pallets, whatever they were doing, their whole job was to move stuff quickly. So, if you can go into a flea market, make fair offers, make connections, you can make a bunch of money. I remember going to the flea market and coming home with a thousand bucks every single time just by making connections, just by taking my time using Google image search and sourcing for the best inventory. So, that's why flea markets are going into the A tier.

[00:04:20]Up next we have storage unit auctions.

[00:04:24]Storage unit auctions are going straight into C tier for me as you know again big boom or bust method similar to garage sales. I've bid on my fair share of storage units in my time and I bought two. First storage unit I ever bought I paid $360 for it and it was a 10x20 storage unit. It was absolutely massive.

[00:04:43]It was full of skis, PlayStations, other stuff like that. however, had a bad time because the original owner showed up and wanted their stuff back. It's really hard to make money and try to sell someone's stuff right in front of them.

[00:04:56]So, we took a PlayStation and then gave them all of their stuff back. Felt really bad. We lost 200 bucks on that.

[00:05:03]But ultimately, I feel like we did the right thing because their whole life was in the storage unit. And that's the hard part about the storage unit business is you're often coming through people's personal belongings, people's entire lives that, you know, hit a hard time and they can't pay for it anymore. So, morality of storage unit auctions at a little bit of a low, but again, big boomer business where if you get a great storage unit, you can make a ton of money. Second storage unit I ever bought, I bought it off of Craigslist.

[00:05:30]It was two 10x30 storage units full of Harley-Davidson motorcycle parts. We paid $1,000 for both of the storage units and it took us about a month to sell everything, but when everything did sell, we made over $6,000 parting out all of these Harley-Davidson lots. We sold a bunch of Harley parts to a couple Harley stores. We sold some Harley parts to a guy who wanted to decorate his garage. That was a really great deal.

[00:05:54]Ultimately, if you're sourcing for storage units, Storage Treasures is one of the most common places to purchase your your storage units. However, it's going to be the most competitive. So, if you can find other ways to buy storage units on Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, stuff like that, you might have more success as there's less competition. again, storage units going into C tier as, you know, not the greatest morality. Let's move on to the next one. Craigslist is up next, and Craigslist is going straight into the B tier. Now, why Btier? One, Craigslist is used by many old people who just want their stuff gone, want it gone quickly, and are open to offers. However, there is not that much volume of good stuff going onto Craigslist. Craigslist is primarily used, at least in my business, about once a week to search up all of the items I like to sell. So once a week, I'll search up Wolf Range. I'll search up solar inverter. I'll search up to POSOS. All of those kinds of things onto Craigslist to see if there's any good deals. Craigslist is not as popping as Facebook Marketplace. It is not as common as Facebook Marketplace. Not that many people use it, but that gives you the opportunity to go into Craigslist and make offers to people. Why is it not a tier? Well, there's a lot of scams on Craigslist. Highly recommend you never purchase anything on Craigslist where someone wants to ship it to you. That is a very bad idea. I have learned the hard way back in early days of my business.

[00:07:19]So, do not pay for shipping on Craigslist. Do not pay for shipping anytime really unless you want to get scammed. So, Craigslist going to Btier as you can find some great deals on it.

[00:07:28]However, the volume of deals really isn't there. Let's move on to the next one. Next up is Btock. Now, my buddy Corey with Mission Side Hustle is betock genius. He's bidding on pallets of patio furniture, other furniture, exercise equipment, and making a ton of money.

[00:07:45]However, a lot of this inventory isn't meant for eBay. It is meant to be sold quickly via Facebook Marketplace, and maybe Craigslist. So, if you are bidding on Btock pallets, I highly recommend watching Corey's videos with Mission Sign Hustle. super intelligent, breaks it all down, and good rule of thumb that he shares is that you only pray 30% of MSRP value. And I highly recommend looking up every single item in the manifest before purchasing. Why? Because Costco and BTO sometimes lie about the MSRP prices. So, just make sure their MSRP prices are accurate before you're bidding and you know exactly what you are getting. I have purchased a couple things on BTO before. I bought two pallets of broken Dyson vacuums. It was 49 vacuum for $800. I'm like, I can't go wrong. But the hard part about that is they were all busted, broken, dirty, disgusting. And I could not believe that people were returning these vacuums after using them for months at a time.

[00:08:44]Absolutely unbelievable. However, within that pallet, there were a few vacuums that were brand new in the box, and I was able to flip and make my money back.

[00:08:51]Tons of work to make. 600 bucks and I had to get rid of probably 30 vacuums in the trash because no thrift stores wanted them. But can be good. Just don't buy anything that's fair value and make sure you are checking every single item in the manifest to make sure the MSRP is accurate. So BTO going into the A tier as again you can make a ton of money and it's fairly easy as stuff just gets dropped off at your door but you need to do your research and know exactly what you are doing. Let's move on to the next one. Next item up is thrift stores. Not the Goodwill bins, just thrift stores where you buy stuff off the rack. And for me, that is going straight into the D tier. Now, why? Ever since COVID, thrift store prices, it's not hidden fact, have gone up through the absolute roof. Thrift store prices are incredibly expensive now, and competition is higher than ever. I remember when I was thrifting for inventory probably three years ago, I would get to Goodwill at 8 a.m. and there would be a line of 20 people sitting in there waiting to do the exact same thing as me and fight over the exact same inventory. When you're going into the thrift stores and digging through a bunch of junk for the one item that's really good, you are wasting a lot of time and a lot of potential on doing other things. This is a very high volume business where if you are going to make money sourcing at the thrift store, you have to buy many, many, many items and your eBay has to have thousands of listings for you to make a pretty decent full-time income.

[00:10:16]And there's nothing wrong with that. If you want to do that, that is totally okay. However, it takes a ton of time to list something for 30 bucks and do it over and over and over and over again.

[00:10:29]If you're going to source at thrift stores, go to the bins because stuff is going to be a tenth of the price as it is at the regular thrift stores and ultimately same quality. So, if you're going to source at thrift stores, think again. Really, ultimately, I I think there's any of these options are definitely better than thrift stores.

[00:10:46]Thrift stores are common again, but the prices are so high. It's big boomer bust. You rarely find anything that's worth more than 200 bucks. maybe once a week if you're lucky and sourcing consistently. It takes a long time and it's almost impossible to do $100 an hour reselling from thrift stores. You can do it from all of these other locations, but it's very difficult to do it selling from regular thrift stores because that's a lot of time to list, a lot of time to ship, a lot of time to source, a lot of time to drive for a bunch of low ticket items. So thrift stores for me going into the D tier. I will never be sourcing at thrift stores ever again. And ultimately in the last couple years I haven't even walked into a thrift store unless it was to buy clothes for myself. So thrift stores going into the D tier. Let's go to the last category. Up next going into the S tier as you know is Facebook Marketplace. Facebook Marketplace in my opinion is by far the best place to get inventory for eBay. It allows you to specifically search for items that sell fast and sell for a ton of money. Just recently, I purchased this Toast POS lot. I paid $1,200 for the entire lot with five with seven handhelds, a couple monitors. Everything you see behind me here. Total eBay listed value is $3,200.

[00:12:03]It took me 30 minutes to drive, maybe 15 minutes to find the deal as I source for on Facebook Marketplace for 15 minutes every single day. Talking an hour 15. It took me 45 minutes to clean and list everything. So, 2 hours in, we'll add another two hours for shipping. And after that, my hourly rate is going to be right around 400 bucks an hour.

[00:12:22]Facebook Marketplace is absolutely unreal for targeting the best inventory to flip on eBay. You can go to eBay, sort by highest price plus shipping for all of your favorite categories. Whether it's espresso machines, appliances, solar inverters, POS equipment, EV chargers, any of those categories that have high sell through rates on eBay, you can specifically target the bestselling ones on Facebook Marketplace.

[00:12:44]That's how I get all of my recent sales.

[00:12:46]All of my inventory comes from Facebook Marketplace. And I will not source anywhere else. And it is the highest time leveraged opportunity when it comes to sourcing.

[00:12:56]No other category beats it. And every single thing you see here on the on the tier list, I have personally tried. So, after four years of being a full-time reseller, I I'm never going to source anywhere outside of Facebook Marketplace unless it's experimental. Facebook Marketplace is alltime the best place to get your inventory, and I will stand on that until I die. If you want to learn more about sourcing from Facebook Marketplace, subscribe. I have tons of videos on this channel about how to source on Facebook Marketplace, what to search for on Facebook Marketplace, and how to run this entire business completely for free. So, go ahead, subscribe, watch some of my other videos, and I will see you next week. If you want more one-on-one help, join Master Marketplace, 170 plus members who are all crushing it selling from Facebook Marketplace to eBay, and I could not be happier helping them out.

[00:13:47]So peace.