About Us
Trader Chris Consignments is based in the charming town of Apex, North Carolina.
It's our mission to take the stress and guesswork out of selling valuable estate items, and assist clients in getting the best price for their items. We have been in business for over ten years now, and have shipped nearly 22,000 consignments worldwide. We strive to meet or exceed the competition in every aspect. You’ll get one-on-one service with a knowledgeable sales professional who knows how to maximize the appeal of your items and can address any questions or concerns that you have about the process. Our pre-sale research and worldwide exposure results in quicker sales and oftentimes higher prices than what may be possible locally. For valuable consignments, our commission rates beat the competition, hands down.
As told by Trader Chris
Origins
Growing-up, my father fell in love with garage sales. At least 1-2 times a month in the spring through fall, Dad would head out early on a Saturday morning to hunt for treasures. I could always tell when he had a good day when he came home with a big smile. Sometimes, he simply found good deals on things for the home, like tools, furniture, or a vital piece of yard art.
Most of the time, he found interesting odds and ends that would get stashed away for months or years, to be given away as gifts when the occasion presented itself.
As a result, Christmas at our house was never normal by any standard. Since Dad typically paid $0.10 on the dollar for most of his items, he could afford to buy 10 times the normal amount of Christmas presents for us (in addition to the things we had requested from Santa).
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It wasn’t unusual to come down Christmas morning to find the entire room filled with presents and sometimes spilling into another room. He would often chuckle with delight and say “Oh yea!” as he watched us unwrap the gifts that he had squirreled away throughout the year. Although the presents were sometimes a bit weird, they were often thoughtful --and sometimes really funny! As I got older and started high school, the internet was becoming more popular. When I first learned about eBay, I thought it was like some magical store where you could buy anything. My first purchase was an Aiwa Minidisc player, so that I could make my own music mix for the gym. Later on, my first sale was the factory CD player for my 1994 Dodge Dakota. I had it replaced because it wouldn’t play burned CDs very well and was missing a knob. Someone out there thought it was worth about 2/3 of the value of the new unit I had just installed. I knew that I had stumbled onto something good!
Years later, after graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill, I was commissioned as an officer in the Navy and decided to leave service in 2009 (right at the height of the recession . . .oops!) I was hired as a financial advisor in Chapel Hill, which I did for about two years -- but my heart just wasn't into it. So, one day I quit. I told my wife that I was going to start my own online business and she thought I was crazy! I originally attempted to sell whatever people brought to me including self-help books, lots of grandma's china, and even a used mattress (that was gross). Eventually, I began to see patterns in the items that were selling well, which helped me improve the business.
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Towards the end of my first year in business, my father called me out of the blue and was really excited about a Barbie Doll he had just purchased at a garage sale for $4.
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"Dad," I said, "what's so special about a Barbie Doll?"
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"Well, I think she may be valuable," he replied.
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Dad would not mail the doll to me, so I picked her up when I was visiting him a few weeks later. The Barbie didn't come with much, only an overcoat, so we decided to buy all of her missing accessories on eBay. We found the original outfit, shoes, sunglasses, earrings, a stand, and even an empty original box. Next, we sent the doll off to a Barbie restoration specialist who cleaned up the doll, washed and styled her hair, and touched up her make-up. Total costs came to about $200.
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We decided to put the Barbie up for auction without a reserve price and immediately started receiving inquiries to purchase it. The bids shot through the roof and on the last day the doll had reached over $3,000. In the closing six seconds there were three additional bids and the doll sold for $3,938. I was blown away!
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However, what came next is what really made an impression. The winning bidder send me a message to tell me how happy she was to have won the auction. She said that she knew the doll was going to be expensive, so she had started a "Barbie Savings Account" a while ago. She explained that this was the same doll that her older sister had owned and let her play with when she was a little girl and it brought back fond memories to her. That's when I realized that I had found my calling.