There aren't many good things about getting older: you can't drink as much as you used to, you start to ache in places you didn't think you could ache before, and you start forgetting things. But, there is a silver lining to this depressingly gray cloud—your old crap might finally be worth something. If you're the kind of person who happened to hang onto action figures, video games, or dolls for decades in their original wrapping, you might be sitting on hundreds of dollars worth of eBay auction returns.
Tread lightly, those of you who hope to strike it rich by selling the treasured keepsakes of your past. Just because you have a bunch of old shit in your basement doesn't mean that you've struck it rich. Rarity, condition, and complete chance have to come together to create the perfect storm that raises the value of your childhood toys above what you paid for them, let alone returns the kind of haul that could pay off your student loans. Sometimes you see items listed for thousands on eBay:
But that doesn't mean it's selling for anything close to that much:
Here's how much you can really expect for all of that old junk in your trunk or storage space.