Episode Title

From High-Ticket Sales to Vintage Reselling: How Shay Schindler Replaced Her Income

Show Notes

What if the stuff other people overlook, donate or leave behind could replace your entire income?

Shay Schindler grew up around antique booths, flea markets and estate sales, but like plenty of kids raised around the family business, she wanted absolutely nothing to do with it for a while.

Then she found her way back.

After building a career in sales and online business, Shay started thrifting and reselling on the side. What began as an escape from a sales job she hated eventually became a growing vintage and antique business that replaced her sales income.

And some of the things people will pay serious money for are... unexpected.

Vintage science fiction books. First-edition Stephen King. Old collectibles. Unopened packages of vintage men's underwear selling for hundreds of dollars.

Yes. We also needed a moment after that one.

In this episode of BFD, Leslie and Shay talk about how she learned to spot valuable finds, why older products are becoming more desirable, how her sales experience helped her become a better reseller and why the things you naturally obsess over might be pointing you toward your next business.

Shay also shares how she and her husband are growing the business together and creating content around the strange, overlooked and surprisingly valuable things they find.

In this episode:

• How Shay replaced her sales income through vintage reselling
• Growing up around antiques and eventually finding her way back to them
• How to learn what vintage items and collectibles are actually worth
• Why research is such a huge part of successful reselling
• The weird things people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for
• First-edition books, estate-sale finds and hidden value
• How high-ticket sales skills translate into a completely different business
• Bringing her husband into the business
• Building content around “weird things that sell online”
• Turning your obsessions and so-called bad habits into something profitable

Shay says her lifelong mission is basically to take her “bad habits,” lean into them and figure out how to make money from them.

Honestly? There are worse business plans.

Connect with Shay

Follow The Smarter Reseller on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Facebook.

Welcome to the bfd show, hosted by leslie jefferson.

Welcome back to bfd.

I'm your host, Leslie Jesperson, and today I have Shea Schindler.

And I am really excited to have this conversation because we just talked off camera and I got really excited about what she is doing.

So, Shay, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

You are an antique thrifter.

Like, tell me what you've got going on because I need to know all of it.

Yeah, for sure.

So I grew up, my parents owned an antique booth and so we were always kind of like doing flea markets and estate sales and you know, I went to college and got my first job and I've like started an agency and done the online thing and that's been my career.

But on the side, I've always been thrifting and reselling things and finding hard to find things and selling it online.

And I had a kind of a bad sales job a few jobs back and I really started using the thrifting almost as like a way to distract myself.

But through that I started to like build something and I've built kind of a big online vintage antique shop and I've actually replaced my sales income with that work now.

So it's been kind of exciting and it's definitely like my obsession.

Like, it's what I am doing on the weekends.

It's what I'm obsessed with.

So, yeah, it's been fun.

Wow.

This is.

So the reason I geeked out is because my family owns an antique bookstore, so antique shop and hard to find out of print books.

Cool.

And I am excited to talk about this because as someone who grew up coming, going to the estate sales and like we never had like modern furniture in our house.

Like, it was always what we found.

I. I grew to hate it.

Like, I just wanted new.

I just wanted like, how come our house didn't look like the other kids houses Now I appreciate it.

I'm definitely not.

I'm also allergic to dust, so that hinders things all over whenever we'd go to estate sales.

Like, how was that journey for you?

Did you have a point where you were like, oh, this is so dumb and then you fell in love with.

It or did you always love it?

I definitely had like rebellious.

I don't when I especially, like, as a kid, hated going.

I was like, oh my gosh, I don't want to spend my weekends doing this blah.

But I guess I definitely didn't do it when I was younger.

But I don't know, something, especially today, like things we have fast fashion and like plastic everything.

And I started to really notice, like this stuff feels cheap.

It feels like it's not lasting a long time.

And I'm really into vintage fashion.

So I started getting more into that and I'm like, oh wow, older stuff is really cool.

It's well made.

We can't find anything like that anymore.

And then I realized there's this kind of like growing demand.

It's almost like trend wise on the rise.

It's funny you mentioned vintage books.

One of my first big buys, I bought seven tubs, like big plastic tubs of vintage science fiction.

It was this man's whole collection and you would not believe the vintage science fiction collectors that are out there.

So we sorted through it all.

It was crazy.

That was like one of my first.

I found like a couple $200 individual books in those tubs.

So that was like one of my first dopamine rushes with those.

But yeah, absolutely.

I think I went through the gotta rebel phase, but it kind of slowly came back into my life and now I can't stop thinking about it.

I'm gonna send you over to talk with my stepdad after this because the store is open right now and it's like 10 minutes away.

It's interesting.

My 19 year old son works there now and so they, they focus mostly on the books now.

And I love that you talked about that because that was something that I was always so fascinated by.

The fact that people will pay and that like it's such a hot market.

Like I remember when my stepdad had like a first edition Three Musketeers book signed by Alexander Dumas, like for $10,000, something insane.

The market is there.

Right?

So how are you learning about all of this?

I have always had kind of like a research brain.

So I'm not kidding.

Like in my free time, I'm not watching TV.

I'm watching YouTubers who are out in the field or people like your dad who are like learning and sharing and that is the content I'm consuming.

So literally I am like studying all the time.

And I think just after years and years of trial and error, you kind of get a better sense of what's good and what's not good.

But I'm starting to like do bigger flips now like your dad.

So I found like a first edition Stephen King.

Oh, wow.

That's a couple thousand dollars, you know, so I'm like, slowly, once you build your confidence up, you can kind of start working your way up.

This is so cool.

So Fashion books and what else?

Oh, the weirdest stuff.

You wouldn't believe.

I love it.

You wouldn't believe what people buy.

Like, there's a big market for.

This is so goofy.

But it's coming to my head first.

Vintage men's underwear.

People pay.

I'm dead.

Hundreds of dollars because they don't make them like they used to.

Literally.

So, like old men have fallen in love with this one style of Hanes.

And when you go to an estate sale, sometimes people are hoarders.

So they'll have like new packages.

I'm not selling used underwear, but like new packages that are old and people will pay hundreds for it.

Like, my jaw's on the floor.

Isn't that crazy?

This is crazy.

Good for you.

First of all, for figuring this out that you can flip men's underwear from the 80s.

Literally.

I.

This is so much better than what I was.

We were originally going to.

Totally, totally.

My background was in sales and I do think, like, I come from like a high ticket sales space.

So I think I've been able to kind of translate some of the stuff I learned from that into this.

But like, in terms of just like personal satisfaction and enjoyment, like, I really feeling like I'm in my groove, like hitting my leg in a good spot.

So what is like the next five years look for you?

That's a great question.

So I've recently brought my husband into the business.

So he's now he does all the shipping and he's been sourcing with me and going out with me and we have started to.

He is a creative, so he started to help me like edit videos and put together content.

So I would like to start sharing.

We have an idea for like a series of like weird things that sell online where I can talk about the men's underwear or the vintage periodic table or like whatever goofy stuff that we're selling that week.

And so yeah, we've just started to create videos and we hope to kind of like, I don't know a ton of people who do this.

I need to meet your stepdad.

But I'm kind of hoping to find community and like talk with people who are also doing it and kind of like share the wealth, you know, I've definitely gained a lot of knowledge from other people.

So I'm kind of hoping to like put that back out there and just build something a little bit bigger around people who are interested in old stuff and thrifting stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

And just from what I've observed with my family, it's like once you find something that sells, you, like, go down a rabbit hole of like, oh, this could be a whole thing.

Like, I remember like Playboy magazine, Sears catalog.

That's a good one.

Were.

Because like I said, everything's used to be card cataloged, like from the old.

Now they have a computer system.

But a lot of the work that my son does is like, inputting things into the inventory.

Cool.

So I can imagine the possibilities are endless for you guys in the next couple years of like.

And as trends are changing.

I love that you said you're going to be creating content on this because that's the one thing.

Listen, my stepdad is old man, okay?

He's not going to be.

He's just now getting into Instagram because my son does it.

But, like, I think that is really, really smart of you to be creating the content.

And with your husband being a creative, that's just like a.

A natural thing.

And I'm excited to see how that goes.

Where can we follow along on this adventure with you?

Of course.

Yeah.

I'm on all the big platforms as the smarter reseller, so you can follow me on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts, or Facebook.

Amazing.

Thank you so much.

I can't wait.

I'm literally going to give you my family's info to send you over there.

I'm excited.

I was hoping to do some thrifting while I'm here so they'll be able to turn me on to all good stuff.

Oh, my gosh.

I hope you have the rest of the evening.

My last question, I always ask people, what do you think makes you a bfd?

What makes me a bfd?

I think what makes me a BFD is that I have, throughout my whole career, I take my bad habits and I turn them into businesses.

So I've really tried to lean into things that people thrifting, for example, bad habit are like, I'm obsessed with longevity.

And so I'm actively talking with my friends.

We turn it into a podcast.

Right.

So I'm actively trying to take all of my quote unquote bad habits and monetize them and turn them into something that I make money off of.

And so that's my lifelong quest.

I love it.

Shea Schindler, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me.

It was a blessing.

Thanks for watching and we will see you next time on bfd.