How much money could be hiding in my closet?

Did you know there could be items tucked away in your closet or attic that are worth so much more than you would imagine? Something you bought years ago that may be collecting dust could be someone’s dream find! Today, we are sharing a specific example of an item found recently at one of our estate sale client’s homes that proves this point. We also want to teach you how to do a quick eBay search so you can see if anything you have is worth selling before donating or tossing it out!

Right out of the gate, let me share the item we’re talking about with you.

We discovered this L.L. Bean canvas tote.

Isn’t this just a simple and plain canvas tote? Something rough and worn, that you throw things in and go?

Here is where trends come into factor. L.L. Bean Boat and Tote bags (the official name of this style canvas bag) are seriously trending right now! Don’t believe me? Open any app-Instagram, Pinterest, etc. Let’s take a look…..

It’s the bag of the summer. Nearly every store is selling a knock off of this bag right now. People are embroidering them and adding bag charms. What stands out about our bag against these above? Right - the color. This points us in a direction to assume it could be vintage and rare or a sought after colorway. Even if you weren’t aware of this information, you could still do a quick search to check the value.

To start searching your items value, head to eBay. At the top there is a search bar.

Here is where you will begin.

In the search box, you want to type any information you have about your item. Use as many specific descriptors as possible. For our item, the tag tells us it’s L.L .Bean brand. Add onto the search colors, patterns, materials, etc. For our bag I searched “ll bean boat and tote vintage teal”.

After hitting search, I can now filter my results to narrow down the bags to the one’s that most resemble ours. I filtered by brand, color, and category.

These are just the top four results after filtering. As you can see, this very quick search reveals some similar bags that are listed for $600+++.

Again, these bags are LISTED comparables. So what about ones that have actually sold??

To find similar bags that have already sold, we want to open the filter menu again and this time filter by “completed items”.

After adding the completed items filter, here are some of the listings that have SOLD. Between the bags we saw listed and the ones we see sold, we can deduce that we have a valuable bag on our hands!!!!!!!!! This process will work to look up any item that you may be curious about. Our L.L. Bean tote has value because it is vintage, in a rare colorway, and perfectly on trend.

We hope this guide can assist you in discovering a hidden treasure you didn’t know you had!