Sioux Falls garage sale guru gains big following as ‘Thrifter Sifter’

It all started walking his dog and spotting a deeply discounted golf bag.

A couple of weeks after moving to Sioux Falls from Mississippi, Matt Groll took his German Shepherd mix past a garage sale in his new east-side neighborhood.

“I thought, ‘That looks like fun.’ I brought the dog home and ran over there and didn’t really see anything, but as I was leaving, I saw a Callaway golf bag, and it was brand-new,” he said.

Priced at only $3.50, he knew he’d just seen a brand-new one at a sporting goods store for $160, so he scooped it up and listed it for sale online at $60.

“And two people reached out, and I ended up selling it that night,” he said.

Three years later, that one high-margin find has led Groll to a full-time job and his own online brand. Known as the Thrifter Sifter, he now spends his days scouring rummage sales and sharing his finds on social media.

And plenty of people are watching. On Tik-Tok, Groll has amassed more than 1 million followers. Add in Instagram, Facebook and YouTube and it’s over 1.5 million.

This video showing Groll on the hunt for garage sale finds has been viewed more than 10 million times.

@thriftersifter Like & Follow For More!! #whatnotpartner #thriftersifter #garagesalefinds #garagesales #garagesale #rummagesale #yardsalefinds #yardsales #yardsale #ebayseller #ebayreseller #resell #reseller #minecraft #zcoil #zcoilshoes #lisafrank #hotelkey ♬ original sound – Thrifter Sifter

“For the first two years, I was making like $5 a day on social media,” he said. “I’m monetized pretty much everywhere now.”

This time of year, Groll rarely takes a break.

Starting in April, he begins spending three or four days each week scouring area sales. An average day might find him stopping by 15 garages. At some, he’s in and out in a matter of minutes. At others, he has been there as long as 45 minutes.

“I tend to like the older neighborhoods, but I go to them all,” he said. “I’ll go and make a list for the next few days and write down notes for what I’m interested in, and I have an app on my phone where I plug in all the addresses. It’s a lot of planning.”

Becoming ‘Thrifter Sifter’

Originally from north Louisiana, Groll spent five years in New Orleans before moving to Mississippi with family. Before he moved to Sioux Falls, he had a cleaning business. Before that, he was a butcher who ultimately served as general manager and director of charcuterie at a shop that gained a following among local foodies and visitors.

A long-distance relationship led him to Sioux Falls, where he originally planned to continue operating his cleaning business remotely and maybe start one locally.

He’d played around with YouTube in the past but hadn’t done much with social media – until he began doing short videos of his thrifting finds.

While he’d seen some garage sale videos posted on YouTube – from creators who have now become his friends – he hadn’t seen much on TikTok. Within a few months, some of his videos on the platform were being viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

“I was like, ‘This is crazy,’ and it still wasn’t very edited,” he said.

A few months after that, in early 2021, he opened a booth at 605 Antiques and decided to go full time into reselling.

“I’m like, ‘I’m ready to do this,’ and that summer I started doing garage sales a lot,” he said.

On one level, it’s in his DNA. Groll’s mother had a booth at an antique mall selling gift baskets at one point in his childhood.

On the other, he’s entirely self-taught when it comes to digital and social marketing strategy — not to mention retail.

He tends to look for “anything I can buy low and make a good bit on,” he said. “I try to keep my costs like 25 percent or less, unless it’s a big-money item. I tend to favor the old stuff – anything vintage is what I really like to pick – but I will buy newer stuff too.”

It’s not uncommon to find something for a quarter and sell it for $15 or $20. He sells on online sites such as Mercari and Poshmark in addition to his booth and typically limits his searches to the Sioux Falls metro area.

One of his best finds, a small McKee glass bowl, was purchased for 25 cents and brought $230 in resale.

“It was really rare,” he said.

Another major score came from a Sioux Falls home where a family member had been a doll collector and died.

“I got all these Barbies in the original boxes from the ’60s and ’70s, and there were probably 100 dolls – some loose Barbies and some in the boxes,” he said.

“We do a lot of glassware. I feel like there’s glassmakers out there that are really popular now … but the market’s always changing too. That’s another complicating part.”

Social media strategy

Through Groll’s videos, viewers feel as though they’re along for the hunt — albeit a much abbreviated version of his process — as he shows items found and their resale prices, or what he expects they’ll fetch.

@thriftersifter What have you sold recently?!? Like & Follow For More!! #thriftersifter #garagesalefinds #garagesales #garagesale #rummagesale #yardsalefinds #yardsales #yardsale #whatsold #ebayseller #mercariseller #resell #reseller ♬ original sound – Thrifter Sifter

He has learned “the first five seconds are the most crucial because you can really lose someone’s attention,” he said. “I’ve tried to get rid of all the fluff and get straight to the point and try not to repeat myself.”

Not only is Groll creating videos and sourcing garage sales in real time — he’s also stockpiling for the rummage sale off-season, which will begin soon. That means gathering both enough items to resell and enough footage to provide ongoing content.

“I have enough videos to last until April right now,” he said.

He’s also working with an editor, a freelancer he found locally who was “just kind of a natural,” he said.

“I’ve been trying to find someone good for a long time.”

There’s a bigger purpose behind his social media content too. Groll said he hopes watching it inspires others to learn how they, too, can generate income through garage sales.

“Growing up, I lived paycheck to paycheck my whole life,” he said. “I wish I’d known about this sooner. It could have helped me a lot. I would go to Goodwill and buy plates for the kitchen because they were cheap and I couldn’t afford brand-new. But I thought about it like, ‘What if someone could find something for 25 cents and make $50 a month and pay their light bill?’ That’s why I started the channel. I felt like people could benefit.”

And they have.

“People message me sometimes about how they were behind on money or bills and now they made $3,000 this month from reselling,” he said. “I’m excited. I’m really just trying to get people pumped up to think it’s cool.”

Groll still has a booth at 605 Antiques and does live auctions online. He now tends to lean more heavily on his garage sale finds than he does on items he finds at thrift stores — which, in Sioux Falls, he said he’s found to be not as stocked with resale possibilities as other places.

“I still thrift in the winter; I just don’t do it as much,” he said.

While he and his girlfriend considered other places to live, “I like it here,” he said. “Other than the winter, it’s pretty nice.”

Eventually, he might use his earnings to pursue his other passion — in the kitchen.

“I actually started the reselling to own my own restaurant one day,” he said. “We may still eventually one day, but for now I’m going to continue Thrifter Sifter.”