"I had a lot of fun [selling]," says Jason C. Mitchell '92, a chemistry concentrator in Quincy House. After a two-week sale, the novice entrepreneur amassed a $450 profit by hawking furniture, a weight set, a rug and bookshelves.

Mitchell attributes his profits to a keen sense of economics and the climate of the market.

"The trick is pricing your stuff at reasonable prices," he says. "Prices have to be low and if you price things rights, you'll make a sale."

Resident tutor Lori R. Paxton '85-86, who is not a graduating senior but who is leaving Adams House at the end of her term, has her own sales strategies.

"I wasn't anticipating selling that much to students, but if you market yourselves well, you can get a good response," Paxton says. By offering package deals, she avoided haggling. Sometimes, she says she even got a higher price than she had anticipated.

Paxton adds that she won't trash any of the items she can't unload.

"I cannot stand the fact that students throw out things," says Paxton, a self-professed believer in donating salvageable goods to the Cambridge Furniture Bank and the Salvation Army.

But, for students who are successfully striking deals, the garbage and charities are options they have yet to consider.

And despite their successes, marketing is a profession they don't plan to enter anytime soon.

"I don't think I'll be going into sales," Mitchell says.