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I’m the lady from last week who sent the comments about the high-end collectibles/antiques market. It was fun to contribute to a lively conversation! It also helped me finally remember to sign up for the forums.
I’ve been buying and selling on Ebay since the late 90s. The first things I sold were some vintage toys. This was so far back in the Dark Ages of the internet, that I didn’t even upload any photos! They all sold. I was in college at the time and was kind of a terrible seller. Thankfully I’ve learned since then.
I’m strictly a hobby seller, and have a store that I try to keep at 150+ items. I have a family and a full-time job, so I have about an hour every night for listing and/or shipping. Everything else, including scavenging, I do on the fly – often on the way to or from work. I gross anywhere between a $300 to $1000+ per month, depending on time of year and how full my store is. It’s some nice extra income that we’ve used for house repairs, vacations, and big purchases like electronics or cars.
I sell a variety of vintage and designer stuff – mostly clothing, art, books, some housewares. The usual hodgepodge. Like Jay and Ryanne, I’m trying to move more towards the higher end. My time is super limited and I’d like to spend it selling things that give me a better return.
I’ve learned so much just from listening to the podcast for the last couple years, and look forward to learning from all of you.
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Thank you all for the warm welcome! I’m glad folks found my comments interesting. I keep my day job very separate from Ebay, but I just had to chime in this time.
T-Satt, thanks so much for your insights in your interviews and on the forum. I’m a pretty analytical person who likes number-crunching, and I’m still learning a lot from you.
Sourcing: I’m doing this on a much smaller scale than most of you, and I don’t depend on the income, so it’s OK if a week or two goes by and I don’t source or list anything. I have two good thrift stores that I can hit up on my way home from work. This year I started doing well at those kinda junky, lower-end antique malls – I hit those up while traveling. I’m also sourcing in my garage a lot these days – I’ve gotten more minimalist as I get older, and have old collections and memorabilia that I’m liquidating. I would love to do more estate sales and auctions, but they really don’t fit in with my work and family obligations right now.
These days I only want to deal with things I can sell for $50+, unless it’s something I pulled out of the garage and the alternative is donating it. Nothing that needs repairs or deep cleaning, because I’ll never get to it. After doing some number crunching last year, I also decided I need to sell things for 7x their purchase price to get the profits I want, though I admit I don’t observe that rule very strictly.
Another fun fact: I can’t sell the same types of things that my employer buys, or I have an obvious conflict of interest. We’re very specialized, so it’s easy to stay out of my own way. However, if I ever jumped ship to work somewhere else, I might have to liquidate/donate a bunch of my stock.
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Cool that you can get solid returns from an antique mall. Everytime I’m in there, there just isn’t any meat on the bone to flip!
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The antique malls in my town are way too posh, so I don’t bother. But if I’m traveling and run across one that seems kind of junky, I try to stop in. Some of my best finds this year came from one in my parents’ town. I found a grubby bag of ephemera for $20 or so (marked “Bag of Books”), researched the pieces, and broke it into 11 listings. 2 of those listings are still kicking around, but the rest sold pretty quickly for between $20-$125. Also found some nice MCM art at a mall in Tacoma.
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My husband works for a cosmetic company. There have been employees in the past who were fired because they sold stuff they got from work. Because of this, I won’t sell any product from his company to sell on eBay no matter how I obtained it. In fact, I mostly stay away from cosmetics in general.
On the other hand, his office building was renovated and some measuring devices were being thrown out (like calipers and the such), so he brought those home for me. I did quite well with them, and it wasn’t an issue.
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