The unexpected value of things you thought you had to throw away as trash… Treasures you might have at home that would be profitable if you sold them.
We teach you the ultimate recycling technique!
How long are you going to stay up looking at cards? It’s late, go to bed!”
At the end of last year, a 40-year-old male FRIDAY reporter went home to his parents’ house in Sendai and was scolded by his elderly mother. She had unearthed some trading cards she had collected as a child that were lying in a closet in her room. Although it had been about 30 years since they had been purchased, they had been sealed in film, so they were not in a bad state of preservation.
When the new year dawned, he took the 50 cards back to his home in Tokyo and brought them to a Trekkahouse in Akihabara (Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo), where he bought them. One after another, the cards fetched high prices: 8,000 yen for a Pokemon card, 4,000 yen for a Yu-Gi-Oh card, and so on. In the end, the reporter won 60,000 yen, which he would normally not have been able to afford, and enjoyed the wine of victory along with grilled meat.
As I get older, I have more and more memories, so it becomes more and more difficult to organize the things in my home. You can ask a contractor to throw it all away, but there are many cases where you later think, ‘If I had sold it properly, I could have gotten a good amount of money for it.
By disposing of and selling unwanted items in small amounts, you can not only earn money but also make your life lighter in the future,” says Yasushi Kikuchi, author of “How to Capitalize without Discarding” (“Shikatsu x Mercari: How to Capitalize without Discarding”).
However, many people find it a hassle to take their junk to a buying store or pawn shop every time they need to buy something. This is why we recommend using flea market apps such as “Mercari. By making good use of these apps, junk that has been sitting in a closet can be transformed into a treasure that can generate a large income. The first thing to look out for is old electrical goods. Sachie Kawasaki of “All About Flea Market App Guide” explains.
Old VHS decks and cassette decks are no longer in production, so they are in demand by some enthusiasts who are part of the retro boom. Video tapes and cassette tapes also sell for the same reason. Fans and black telephones with a Showa-era feel are popular as interior decorations in coffee shops and other places. Old cameras sell even if they are broken, as there are various types of customers, including those who repair and use them, those who use them as objects, and those who are looking for parts.
Unused smartphones can also fetch a higher price than if they are traded in at a cell phone store. People often buy them for the expensive parts inside.
It is not unusual for the purchase price of such electrical products to exceed 10,000 yen. In addition, “just the remote control” and “just the manual” can sell for several hundred to several thousand yen for people who prefer paper manuals or who have lost the remote control.
Broken china and old clothes sell for new prices !
Daily necessities such as clothing and tableware, which are more affordable than electrical goods, can also fetch surprisingly high prices. In particular, UNIQLO clothing is a very popular category.
UNIQLO products are so popular that they have been removed from the rankings as a “Hall of Fame” item, having ranked first for three consecutive years in the ranking of brands bought and sold on “Mercari. Every season, UNIQLO introduces new products with minor changes to existing products.
Normally, one would tend to think, ‘Since the same products are sold year round, there is probably no demand for clothes I bought years ago. However, there are many fashion lovers who are particular about what they want, saying, “I want the design that was sold in that season of that year! I want the designs that were sold in that season that year!
The reporter, too, failed to buy a pair of the beige color wide chinos from UNIQLO’s new autumn/winter 2012 JW Anderson collaboration, and bought them on “Mercari” for almost the same price as new ones.
Broken pottery is in demand as a material for “kintsugi,” a process of restoring broken vessels with lacquer and decorating them with gold powder, so you should not throw them away even if they have been dropped. Many buyers think that brand-name tableware that is only slightly chipped is OK if they can use high-quality tableware at a low price,” he said.
In addition to the product itself, there are other things that add value to brand-name products.
The empty boxes, paper bags, and ribbons of luxury brand goods can be sold to influencers for use in photo shoots. The same goes for luxury whiskey and brandy containers, which are in demand for interior decoration and as accessories for photo shoots.
Some people enjoy the atmosphere of empty bottles with ordinary liquor. A bottle of rare liquor can fetch more than 100,000 yen. For the same reason, it is better to sell empty perfume bottles instead of throwing them away,” says Kikuchi.
Even things that are as good as trash can fetch a price. Writer Yumi Kuwana, author of “Zero kara Hajime Mercari (Starting from Zero: Mercari),” says, “Toilet paper cores, for example, have a price.
Toilet paper cores and plastic bottle lids are in demand for children’s crafts. For toilet paper cores, I would like to sell about 50 in one go, and 100 can fetch more than 1,000 yen. All of these items sell to people who say, “It’s too much trouble to collect them on my own, so I’d like to outsource the work for less than 1,000 yen.
Pine cones, driftwood, and acorns are used as objets d’art and for aquariums. Pine cones, in particular, are used to decorate Christmas trees, so we recommend selling them in winter.
When the reporter checked “Mercari,” he found that some extra-large pine cones sold for about 1,000 yen each, and driftwood for 5,000 yen. Also, perhaps because fewer households take newspapers these days, 10 kg sets of newspaper were selling for around 1,000 yen. They are probably used for crafts, calligraphy, wrapping, and other purposes.
From the February 20/27, 2026 issue of “FRIDAY