20+ Items In Your Basement That Could Be Worth a Lot of Money

It’s spring cleaning time and you might want to double-check this list before throwing things out.

1. Gold jewelry: Your local pawnshop might want to buy it.

2. Antique dolls and Vintage toys: Like Barbie, classic Hot Wheels, etc., and the 1870’s Bisque Fashion doll featured above.

3. Pyrex dishes: Vintage cookware in general is valuable. Here are the valuable pieces of Pyrex to check.

4. Computers. If you have old tech in your basement, it might be valuable. Especially if it’s an Apple 1 or Apple II, which are worth thousands of dollars.

5. Books. Not all old books are valuable but some are. A general rule of thumb is the first edition of a popular book in good condition with a dust jacket (20th century or later) will bring in the most money. A signed copy is worth even more.

6. Handmade Quilts: Quilting is a lost art and homemade quilts can be worth some money. Find an appraiser through the American Quilter’s Society.

7. Cereal boxes: This is strange, but a true one. On eBay, some people are willing to pay $1,500 for a variety of brands’ vintage boxes.

8. Cellphones: Much older phones, including the “brick” phones and the first iPhone, now called the 2G, can get $$ in the collectible market.

9. Coins: I wrote about this recently about how people are collecting nickels. Rare coins can be worth money, like the Flowing Hair Silver/Copper Dollar 1794/95, which was auctioned for $10 million. And sometimes circulated coins are worth way more than face value.

10. Glass bottles. Again, antique items fetch more money. Look for bottles in purple or gold, perfume bottles, etc.

11. Postcards. This one surprised me. I am a postcard collector and vintage ones are the most valuable.

12. Musical instruments. If they are in good condition, you might be surprised how much you can get.

13. Old lamps. Even if they don’t work, they can be worth some money. Keep an eye out for manufacturing labels from names like Tiffany, Steuben, Stickley, Louis Poulsen, and Stiffel.

14. Vinyl records. Digital music has taken over but many people appreciate old school records.

15. Vintage cameras. I have my grandfather’s old camera. It could pay to check out the value of old cameras.

16. Duck decoys. This was an odd one to me. Vintage duck decoys in pristine condition today can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

17. Board games: Vintage board games (like the one above) and handheld video games are popular. For example, one of 5,000 copies of a 1933 edition of Monopoly Atlantic City, went for $146,500.

18. Old trunks. French-made trunks might sell for $2,000, while an average one produced in America might go for a couple hundred.

19. Boomboxes. On eBay they could get a couple hundred. But if that old boombox in your basement is a Sanyo M-X920K, you might be able to get a couple thousand for it.

20. Furniture. Real antique furniture can fetch good money. Look for Chippendale to retro Ikea.

21. Vintage cookbooks. Even the most widely used cookbooks from the 1950s and 1960s can command high prices. Good condition copies of Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book are highly prized (prices range from $10 to $450 on AbeBooks).