Office manager earns about £500 a month reselling charity shop and car-boot finds

An office manager in Oxfordshire said she earns about £500 a month by buying secondhand items at car-boot sales and charity shops and reselling them online.

Kirsty Quinn, 35, of Bicester, said she posts new listings on eBay daily and spends between five and 10 hours a week on the side business, rising to roughly 40 hours a month in busier periods. She began sourcing items to resell while at university and said she intensified the activity about eight years ago after watching others on YouTube; she estimates the venture has generated about £25,000 in total so far.

Quinn detailed a series of high-margin sales that illustrate how small purchases can yield substantial returns. Examples she provided include a Furby bought for £3 and sold for £120, a Tamagotchi bought for 50p and sold for £236, a Care Bear bought for £1 and resold for £50, and a 62-book Goosebumps collection purchased for between 10p and £1 per volume that later fetched £303. She also cited fashion and branded items such as a Vivienne Westwood cabin crew coat bought on a separate platform for £57.49 and sold for £174.99, and a Starbucks Disney's Hollywood Studios mug acquired for £13.49 and resold for £100.

Quinn said discontinued beauty items and clearance cosmetics are particularly profitable. She described finding limited-edition or discontinued products in the reduced sections of high-street health stores and named an exclusive peach-flavoured Vaseline body spray as an example of an item that sold at a marked-up price.

Her approach combines time spent scouting physical sales and shops with digital research. She advised prospective resellers to check eBay's sold prices to determine market value, to shop local car-boot sales, to examine reduced sections in health and beauty retailers, and to engage with online reselling communities for tips. Quinn said she has no fixed budget for purchases and that eBay's sold-listings feature is a primary tool for pricing and market checks.

Quinn described how she allocates the extra income. She said earnings from her full-time job cover bills, while money from reselling funds "guilt-free" treats such as holidays and short breaks; she also used proceeds to help pay off student loans and contribute to a house deposit. She said she would not pursue reselling full-time because she finds it stressful and prefers to keep it a hobby that provides enjoyment and discretionary income.

Quinn said her routine varies seasonally: in summer she attends as many as three car-boot sales a week, posting items for sale every day and spending a minimum of about half an hour daily packaging parcels. Her account underscores the broader trend of small-scale, part-time resellers who combine physical bargain-hunting with online marketplaces to generate supplemental income.