- This topic has 5 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 3 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
-
I sold one signed bat last week, and will essentially replace it in my inventory this week with a more expensive Masataka Yoshida signed bat. This bat cost me $40 which seems like a bargain considering the lowest priced active listing is almost $300 and Yoshida is a popular Japanese outfielder for the Boston Red Sox. So a wide collector’s base available. Yoshida has been injured for a bit, so the timing was good for me to get a steal. This was, by a fair margin, the most expensive individual item I purchased last week and I will be shocked if I profit less than $100 on it.
Other than that, just the usual “grind” of looking for quality sub $3 cards for my consignment inventory and the small lots that I sell on eBay. I won two interesting signed stamped football envelopes for the $0.99 opening bid — former Cowboys cornerback Larry Brown and Hall of Famer Rod Woodson, and $10 for Ravens great Ray Lewis. The hammer price was so low that I could easily send these to consignment and do well with them, even with their $3+ oversized fees, but if I have the appropriate sized case for these, I might just do a front and back scan and list them on eBay. These are such oddball items that I can’t tell whether they’ll sell in a day or a year.
I’ve been trying to educate myself about vintage and non-sports items lately because I’ve been watching my consignor’s eBay live auctions a few times a week, originally to get a better idea what I should submit and lately because I genuinely enjoy the time I spend on these streams. Not sure if I will still be buying from the lives in a year, but for now when I have nothing else going on, they’re a fun hang. The hosts have different personalities and it’s a well-moderated and friendly group. Most of all, there are some good deals on the lives and it’s mostly the kinds of cards (sub $10) which I most enjoy buying and selling.
I have really enjoyed seeing all the different vintage cards that get submitted from the 1950s way back to the 1890s. Some worth a lot, most not worth much but some vintage cards do surprisingly well at lives, where there a lot of different factors affect the price like the customer base which changes over the course of the day and the hosts knowledge and level of enthusiasm for any particular card. I won a number of old Charlie Chaplin postcards and Spanish puzzle cards and estampas del cinema for under $5 each via regular 7-day auction last week, and I might send a few of them to lives and see how I do.
What did you find this week?
-
This morning I drove past a local thrift shop and spotted a Regency Pembroke table. So I turned the corner, illegally parked outside the local booze shop and went and bought the table for £15. It just fitted in the boot.
Then I drove over to the Newark antique fair- hadn’t been there for two or three years. It’s now a third the size that it was, and the lines of vans with Irish registrations driving through the crowds to pick up furniture have disappeared. Didn’t buy much- I wasn’t expecting to as the prices are generally over-inflated. One brass artillery shellcase from 1937 made into a naff trench art thing £15, some Sylko cotton reels and a Sylko box £10, and a silver medal to Ada Straw from 1912 for tickling the ivories at the London Academy of Music £10.
Apart from the buying, a nice day out. I got to talk with a dealer from Portsmouth, which was interesting because I was told many years ago about the Pompey accent, but this was the first time I’ve heard it in real life. It’s a kind of mushy West Country accent- in fact he informed me that the word “mush” used as an address- “Hello mush, how’s it going?”- originated in Portsmouth. It rhymes with ‘push’.
-
The Pembroke table is really a work of art. I did a quick eBay search for them and turns out I’m a mere 15 minute drive from securing a pair of Pembroke tables for the low, low price of $400 each. Someday…!!!
There is a Philadelphia word jawn which is a catch-all noun for most any person, place or thing and appeared as a $2000 Jeopardy! clue the other night. That Pembroke jawn was a great find!
-
-
On the other hand…
I did a search on a Nottingham auction house’s results (Arthur Johnson). Pembroke tables sell there for between £10 and £110 (results since September 2020). So I guess mine’s down near the ‘broke’ end!
I guess ‘jawn’ is like ‘thingy’- “I just bashed my knee on that table thingy of yours”.
-
-
Didn’t do much scavenging last week but I did pick up a single Pottery Barn outdoor chair cushion that goes for about $40-50. I picked up a lot of 6 Pottery Barn items for $80 from an outlet reseller on Mercari. The pair of drapes alone have sold recently on Ebay for $120 and have a great sell through rate. When I was going through my inventory I realized how great my PB items are moving and I’m going to go with that… I found 3 new mop refills ($33 value) and picked them up in honor of my new favorite scrappy youtuber https://www.youtube.com/@tuitionaintcheap along with some face cream going on Mercari.
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.