How Vintage Reselling Paid for Hannah Valentine's College Tuition

Hannah Valentine graduated from Lindenwood University with no student loan debt — and her tuition payments came from an unusual side job: reselling used clothes. After scholarships, her tuition ran about $4,000 to $6,000 a semester, and reselling secondhand pieces covered the final three years of her degree. She started in 2017 as a high school sophomore, listing clothes from her own closet on the resale app Depop.

Now 25 and a cofounder of Drop Soda Market, a monthly vintage market, Valentine has turned the habit into a full-time business. So far this year she reports about $48,000 in gross revenue, with roughly 98% of it coming from pop-up markets rather than online sales. On a busy market weekend she sells as many as 250 pieces in a day, typically priced between $20 and $30, from an inventory of more than 1,000 items she keeps in her studio.

Her model depends on cheap sourcing and hands-on repair. Most inventory comes from Goodwill Outlet stores, where clothes are sold by weight — now about $2.09 a pound — and she washes, hems, and fixes zippers and buttons before pieces are sold. Costs mount quickly: booth fees run $500 to $800, and one recent market trip to Memphis cost about $1,000 before her first sale. Her best single flip was a $40 Donnybrook coat bought on Facebook Marketplace and resold for $450, helped by the fact that Rihanna had worn the same style. All figures are as Valentine described them and were not independently verified.

The Economics of a $48,000 Resale Year

Why Pop-Up Markets Replaced Depop

The most telling number in the story is not the $48,000 — it's the 98%. Valentine says nearly all of her current income comes from pop-up markets, not Depop, the platform that started her business. Markets let her move up to 250 pieces a day and cut out the listing-and-shipping work of online resale. Her own results suggest the trade-off is decisive.

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The Cost Structure Behind the Revenue

Gross revenue is not profit. The real economics sit between weight-based sourcing at about $2.09 a pound, repair time, and event costs — $500 to $800 booth fees plus travel, which pushed one Memphis trip to roughly $1,000 before a single sale. Her $20 price floor is a discipline move: it forces each piece to cover the labor of restoration, while items needing little work subsidize the rest.

Where the $450 Coat Price Comes From

The Donnybrook coat flip is a compact lesson in pricing power. Years of rack experience taught her which labels hold resale value, and a celebrity hook — Rihanna had been photographed in the same style — let her sell a $40 purchase for $450. It backs her broader point that knowing what will sell is accumulated knowledge, not a gatekept secret.

What Aspiring Resellers Can Learn From Her Numbers

For readers weighing a clothes-reselling side hustle, Valentine's numbers give a realistic baseline — and a warning about costs.

  • Budget the full cost of each event. Booth fees of $500 to $800 plus travel made her Memphis outing about $1,000 before the first sale; a market day must clear that before it profits.
  • Price the repair work in. Her $20 minimum exists because washing, hemming, zippers, and buttons take time on many pieces.
  • Compare channels by time, not just sales. Markets moved up to 250 pieces a day and now generate about 98% of her income, versus Depop's share.
  • Chase provenance, not just condition. A $40 Donnybrook coat resold for $450 after she displayed a photo of Rihanna wearing the same style.
  • Watch sourcing costs. Goodwill Outlet pricing has risen from under $2 a pound to about $2.09 — a small but real squeeze on resale margins.