Top Places To Buy Cheap Mid Century Modern Furniture...
For many Mid Century Modern Enthusiasts, a question that always seems to be on our minds, is where can we find and buy Cheap Mid Century Modern Furniture and Decor? Even as a full time reseller the question is often on our minds, wanting to make sure that we've left no stone unturned. Below is a list of some of the most common places to source cheap Mid Century Modern Furniture and decor.
1. Thrift Stores:
Thrift stores are one of the best places to buy cheap Mid Century Modern Furniture and Decor, and have the highest ROI for your time. Most people who work at Thrift Stores and set the prices for furniture aren't familiar with the nuances of Mid Century Modern furniture, and often times you can find extremely valuable pieces for next to nothing. The beauty about Mid-Century Modern furniture is that while the ones who collect it will pay a premium for it, the majority of people however haven't even heard of MCM, let alone know what its true value is.
Most people see their grandparents old furniture as valueless and donate it to thrift shops when they pass, or sell it at estate sales. We buy most of our mid-century modern furniture from thrift stores, and I'd recommend developing a route. If you want to read about the tips and tricks to developing a route you can do so here. We live in a city thats not very big and I'd say within a 1 hour perimeter of our apartment there are around 45 thrift shops. We've been to everyone of them at least 5 times but now when we go on our route we only stop in at about 25 of them. The reason for this is every thrift shop is different. Some might not do furniture, some might price furniture way to high or some are just too far out of the way. A successful thrift shop route lets you hit as many thrift shops as quick as possible that have furniture and don't price too high. That being said as you develop more items to buy and sell you can almost always find a weak spot in all thrift shops. So go out, hit the town, and develop your thrift store routes.
2. Flea Markets:
Flea markets are not only extremely fun, but they're also a great place to find and buy Mid Century Modern Furniture and Decor. Flea Markets like Thrift shops have a huge ROI because there are basically a ton of mini thrift shops all packed into one convenient location. Flea markets can be hit or miss for furniture but as you develop your arsenal of items you look for, you'll almost always find things to buy and resell.
3. Craigslist:
Craigslist is a great place to source cheap Mid Century Modern Furniture. Its also a great place to start if you have a day job that allows you to be in front of a computer or check your phone periodically. Craigslist is great because people post new furniture ads every minute and you don't have to leave the comfort of your house (or job) to see if its worth it for you to drive out and pick an item up. The only cons to using Craigslist to source is that the best deals go quick, sometimes within minutes of an ad going live. Theres a few tricks we recommend to stay ahead of your competition when using Craigslist, and you can read about it here.
4. Garage Sales:
Garage sales are a great place to buy cheap Mid-Century Modern Furniture, but often times you will have to drive to many garage sales before you find MCM. However the more you develop your arsenal of items you look for when buying to resell, the more lucrative Garage Sale days will become. Last week we stopped off at a garage sale and bought a mid-century modern teak credenza for $27 that sold the next week for $500 through our Instagram Store (you can read about the benefits of having an Instagram Store here).
5. Estate Sales:
Mid Century items at Estate Sales tend to be either extremely cheap, or extremely expensive. It just depends on who's running the Estate Sale. If it's an Estate Sale ran by the family, you'll find some amazing deals, if it's ran by a company however, you won't be so lucky. For company ran Estate Sales, try showing up on the last day as they typically will discount all items by quite a bit.
6. Storage Auctions:
Storage Auctions are another unique place to look for Mid Century Modern Furniture Deals. They can be either quite fun, or very frustrating though. You can find them in either live form (trying googling your town/city and the words "storage auction") or online. Online is the less time consuming of the two options as you can buzz through multiple Storage Auction's photos fairly quickly, where as with live storage auctions you'll be at the mercy of the auctioneers pace, and you usually have to drive from one location to the next. Live auctions though tend to have the better pricing as there usually won't be another Mid Century Modern reseller there.
7. MaxSold:
Online estate sale auction website that is nationwide. If you haven't heard of it go there first and see if any auctions are ending in your area now. Again though like storage auctions these tend to be either very profitable or very expensive. Actually this can be a great place to sell items as well if its done right.
8. Curbs/Alley:
Sounds crazy but honestly it goes back to what we said before, most people don't know this type of furniture has value. Towards the end of the month as people move out a lot of people put furniture in the alleyways or on curbs, hoping someone will take it and spare them a trip to the dumps. This might sound like something you'll never do but last month we picked up an Eatons arm chair for free (obviously) took it to our upholstery guy who charged us $150 in labor and $50 in fabric to redo the upholstery. It sold a week later for $875.
9. Auctions:
If you're not sure how many Auction Houses are in your area or where they are, spend some time googling them. Attend everyone of them at least a few times. Usually they are once a week. They tend to be a bit of a coin flip, sometimes you steal things from the seller and make great profits and other times people will completely overpay for items because they got into a bidding war.
10. Facebook Marketplace:
Facebook Marketplace is another location where people list furniture for sale. It's easy to use and you can find some really good mid century deals if you spend a little time on it.
11. Letgo, Close5, Etc..
There are a lot of these apps out there, my recommendation is to download them all, and spend some time with each of them to see which apps are being used the most in your city/state.
The key to finding cheap Mid Century Modern Furniture and Decor is to look in as many places for it as possible. If you source furniture in a combination of the above places, you'll be sure to find some good deals!
Cheers,
MCP
