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Hello from another scavenger with a supposedly useless grad degree in art history! I seriously feel like I use mine every day.
Inglewood – Yeah, this piece I have is a great example of all the issues you mention. There’s an Antiques Roadshow segment with two of this artist’s paintings, and the appraiser won’t authenticate them. He gives the owner a ballpark based on “if they’re authentic” and tells her she has to ask an expert. Had to laugh at that one.
No offense taken! I work with appraisers at my day job. It’s an interesting business. Thanks for sharing your experience with online appraisals.
This is a great discussion. Cmtella’s experience lines up with what I’ve suspected about lower profit margins and slower turnover at higher levels.
Right now I’m sitting on a painting that I bought for $2. My research tells me it’s by a famous folk artist, and worth $1000-$1500. Only problem is, there are known forgeries of this artist’s work, and “found at a thrift store” is lousy provenance. No one will buy it at close to full price without an independent authentication. After I do research on my own, track down an appraiser, pay for their expert opinion, and find the right buyer, I wonder if I’ll be that much further ahead than if I spent the same amount of time and money selling shoes and pottery. And let’s not forget there’s still a chance it’s a fake, in which case it’s worth $2.
Seems like there’s a lot of interest in how/if a seller can level up to higher-end goods. It would be great to track down a seller that has actually made this leap and interview them for the podcast!
What I learned this time is that just covering the old labels with a new label is not enough. My label completely covered the old label, and the old data still got picked up somehow.
This week’s tracking anomaly is a package I shipped on Monday, which still hasn’t been scanned at all. I know this happens, and I assume it will turn up eventually, but it’s super annoying to get dinged for late shipment when I hustle to do everything on time. I probably need to just stop looking at my tracking. Just makes me worried and annoyed about things I don’t control.
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.
Sharyn, thanks for the welcome!
Yeah, similar situation with my husband’s job, actually. He works for a big global company, and I don’t scavenge anything they make. Too bad, because it’s stuff people want. But not worth jeopardizing his job.
Welcome! I’m also new to the forums. I’ve been selling for years, and I agree that Scavenger Life is the best resource out there for serious sellers. It totally changed the game for me. As someone who’s newer to Ebay, you’ll be able to avoid the mistakes a lot of us made early on.
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.
