The Consignment Assignment (One Man's Trash)

The Consignment Assignment (patent pending) is a fun game you can play at home with your friends and family. All you need is a couple bucks, a second-hand (or consignment) shop and a discerning eye for worth.

The rules are simple. First, set a predetermined allowance for your game. In my case, Thiftko was having a 50% off everything Labor Day sale, so I set our spending limit at $5, which would net us $10 worth of merchandise to play with.

Next, take your cash and spend it! You can buy as many or as few items as your budget will allow. The goal is to find items that you think are worth more than their thrift store price tags indicate.

Once you have your items, it's time to turn that trash into cash. List your items on eBay, starting each auction at the same amount. List low. You might think your haul is worth a lot, but it's up to the bidders to decide who's winning this round.

The winner is the individual whose combined auctions net the most profit.

The first item my girlfriend chose was an electronic "Keep Safe Diary". Unless you know the code, you can't access the diary's secret-laden innards. Fortunately for us, the code resets to A-B-C-D when you replace the batteries. Unfortunately once we got the diary open, we found a whole lot of nothing. There is an indentation where a pad of paper might have once been, but nothing more. Obviously I had hopes of finding a repeat of the little girl's journal I reviewed several weeks back, but since this is my girlfriend's game piece, maybe it's for the best that there are no added incentives.

We had been inside Thiftko for a good twenty minutes and the increasingly poor air quality was starting to have a negative effect on our well-being. I had two items, but my girlfriend only had the journal, so she decided to take a blind leap of faith and grabbed the closest item. She wound up with this tiny Native American Bear. A strong, if not desperate choice. People love bears and they respect Native Americans. With Thanksgiving just a scant few weeks away, I could see this cub being a big hit on the auction block.

As a side note, my girlfriend had been carrying around a painting for most of our time inside Thiftko. It looked like something the art teacher at your high school would hang on the walls by the auditorium before a school concert. It was more a gag item than a serious contender for the prize. I think once my girlfriend saw how furiously I was checking every shelf that she realized she better take this competition at least semi-seriously as well.

I'm admittedly nervous about my picks. I chose this three-headed dragon puppet based mostly on the fact that it still retained its original tag. Not only did it have its original tag, but there was an orange sticker on said tag that boasted a price of $19.99. I don't know who originally priced this puppet at twenty bucks, but if I could achieve a bid of anywhere near that price, I would have this contest all locked up.

In general, stuffed animals are not good choices for re-sale on eBay. However, puppets do marginally better than toys without holes you can stick your hands in.

Captain Hook and Peter Pan here are actually one item. When you see Hook, he's sitting on Peter. When you see Pan, he's sitting on the good Captain. The opposite figure is ingeniously hidden within that inconspicuous burlap sack on their butts.

If I lose this game, I will have no one to blame but myself. I chose two stuffed toys when I know that stuffed toys don't perform well on eBay. At least with the dragon, I can hold onto the hope that someone will want him because he looks new, but Captain Peter here looks like he was made for a school's craft fair. Their faces look like the puppets they taught us how to make in school by scrunching up cotton inside pantyhose. Other people were taught that, too, right?

No one is going to want this abomination. I don't even want it. I think the Thriftko fumes had started affecting me by this point. I was like an infant mesmerized by a game of peekaboo. Oh no, it's Captain Hook! Where's Peter Pan to save us? There is he! Now where's Hook? There he is!

I'm not feeling confident about this one.

Also, Peter looks more like Link from Zelda. Maybe I'll list this one under 'video games'.



I will probably list the auctions on Sunday. I heard somewhere once that auctions that end on Sundays perform better. I guess people have more time to surf the internet on lazy Sunday afternoons. I'll update this post at least once more with the results, but I'll probably post again once the auctions are live.

Place your bets in the comment section on who you think will win. Remember, my items are the 3-headed dragon and the Peter Pan/Captain Hook atrocity. My girlfriend's items are the electronic diary and the Native American bear.