Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Squeezing Money Out of Turnips


They say that you can't squeeze blood out of a turnip. That may be true but I bet my brother could find someone to buy the turnips and then you could use that money to buy some blood. Why is it that you want blood again? Sorry, I regress. Over the years I have observed my brothers uncanny ability to find and create money making opportunities.

His first large scale venture that, I can remember, was the shoes, expensive shoes, Jordans. My brother Phil had systematically eliminated the middlemen in his quest to get cheaper and cheaper base prices on "custom made Jordans." Every drug dealer and pimp in Cincinnati was giving us wads of Benjamins to get their hands on our shoes. We were the exclusive dealer in Cincinnati. We even had a kid at Westhigh slinging for us. After making a good amount of money we decided to call it quits. US customs seized one of our shipments so we took that as a sign that it was time to move on.

Our online sales ventures started even earlier when our mother made the mistake of taking us to the Goodwill surplus auction. I'm pretty sure that selling vintage video game equipment on eBay was another one of his ideas. I'm still not sure how he got an eBay account though being that he wasn't yet 18. He had his ways. As we bought and sold we learned and as we learned we made more money. Over the years we have made tens of thousands of dollars from eBay sales alone.

If you are his friend on Facebook you get to see some of his schemes forming as his status changes. An example being "Philip Richard Thoms Just picked up 582 packs of stride. Off to the dry cleaners and office depot!" Two out of three of those activities are money making schemes. Rather he's buying a thousand packs of gum, trading on craigslist, buying industrial equipment online, or recycling, you can be guaranteed of one thing, he's making money at it. My brother is recession proof.

6 comments:

Francy said...

So your brother is the reason why the rest of us who take our coupons to the store to get ONE free pack of Stride are s.o.l. Thanks Dan's brother!

And I'm sure those "tens of thousands of dollars" have been properly reported to the IRS!

DanThoms said...

Believe it or not we both claim self employment on all of the money we make from eBay, every last penny. And yea, he is the one who bought all the gum but if you see him I'm sure he'll give you a pack.

Fran Cushing said...

You are a good boy Dan.

Mr. Thoms said...

I've only bought 1600 packs or so thus far. I've only wiped out 3 stores.

melanie said...

Oh, seriously..Phil is now Mr. Thoms???
How did he get all the gum?

Mr. Thoms said...

Stride is on sale at Krogers 3 for $2. There was a coupon in the paper for $2 off 3 packs. I purchased additional coupons from a coupon dealer.