Bancroft Buy and Sell opens

June 8, 2017

From left, David and Susanne Elvin celebrate the opening of Bancroft Buy and Sell with their son Jordan. / SARAH SOBANSKI Staff

By Sarah Sobanski

Bancroft is now home to a buy and sell store — not associated with the Bancroft Buy and Sell Facebook group.

“That’s what every body asks when they come because it’s Bancroft Buy and Sell. That’s just a Facebook group, this is an actual store,” said co-owner Susanne Elvin.

Elvin and her husband, David, opened Bancroft Buy and Sell mid-May. The two have been considering opening the shop for a while — this summer happened to be the right one to get it done.

“We’ve been talking about doing this for years and years. All of the sudden we saw this storefront for rent so we thought let’s try this for a couple months and see how it goes. It’s gone really well, I’m really surprised,” said Elvin.

Elvin has previous business experience from owning a restaurant with her mother in Trenton. She took to in-home nursing when her mother became ill, but she’s always wanted to work for herself.

“We figured, why not now? The real estate is great down in this area. A lot of places that were up for rent, that have been for rent for quite a while are starting to get stores in them,” she said.

The store buys gently used items such as cellphones, TVs and tools, down to frying pans. It also partners with Urban Liquidation in Trenton to sell new items.

“[Urban Liquidation] do[es] a lot of buyouts like from Bass Pro Shop. They’ll get truckloads of items from them. Whatever they can’t sell like hip waders, people are more prone to buy them up here than they would there. We got a trade off on a lot of things — like drones. We can’t keep them on the shelf.”

Bancroft Buy and Sell will only buy items, however. They don’t want to get into the liability that comes with being a pawn shop.

“On the pawn shop side of it without doing loans. Someone might bring a TV or something. We won’t loan them for it, we’ll buy it outright and resell it.”

Elvin said while the shop isn’t associated with popular buy and sell groups on Facebook, the shop’s Facebook page could open up further opportunities.

“I get a lot of questions on Facebook, ‘What would you give me for this, what would you give me for that?’ The best idea is just come in, let us look at it, and we’ll try to make a fair deal for both of us,” she said.

Bancroft This Week asked if Elvin had any advice for other entrepreneurs looking into opening businesses in the area.

“Just do it. Don’t think about it, just do it.”