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Hi Liz! I am also Liz! And I also sell books on eBay! Here is a link to my store with sold listings, so you can see how I list my books: Stuff My Mom Threw Away
It is true that books are a long tail item, but I sell them all.the.time. (I just sold one now while writing this!)
For vintage and antique books, I do not lead with the title of the book but instead, lead with the date. A lot of people that buy books on eBay aren’t looking for a specific title. They are looking for something in a genre. Many of my book listings have the title near the end of the listing title because the book title is so obscure. People love to buy old books just because they are old, and they search on terms like “Antique books” or “Vintage Bible Stories for Children” or “Antique Poetry Books”.
Don’t waste listing title space with words like “Rare”.
That Zohar book on Judaism? Try a title like “Vintage 19XX Jewish Mysticism Kabbalah Zohar Book of Splendor “.
For your Vintage BIBLE TALES FOR VERY YOUNG CHILDREN by Lenore Cohen 1934, I would change that to “Vtg 1934 Bible Tales for Young Children Christian Stories”.
For Boston, Vol. 2, Upton Sinclair, (1928), Albert and Charles Boni, A Novel, I would change that title to “Antique 1928 Novel BOSTON Vol 2 by Upton Sinclair”.
Books are one of those things that a lot of sellers hate to sell. They are heavy. They take up a lot of room. Most do not sell for a lot of money. But you can often get them very cheaply, if not free, and they are easy to ship, (people give me boxes of free books ALL the time). Media Mail shipping is your friend.
Hope this helps -(the other Liz)
Just buy the Simichrome. A tube is less than $9 on Amazon and lasts forever. You only need a little bit to test for Bakelite.
I am so sorry your handmade gifts to your friend were not appreciated! I crochet as well and don’t make many gifts for others anymore. People don’t understand how much time and money it takes to make these things.
I am crocheting a little World of Warcraft Murloc for my husband as a tiny surprise for Christmas. It’s a fun little project and I think he’ll get a kick out of it.
People are crazy. Don’t let their crazy ruin your day or week!
I was once threatened over an old family bible. Lots of talk about how I’d burn in hell because selling bibles was a sin (HAHAHAHA! So selling the bible is what’s going to make me burn in hell, and not any of the other nonsense I’ve been up to? lol) and that I was destroying another family’s history (the bible had genealogy info in it that I was happy to forward on). Blah blah blah.
On the flip side, I was approached by someone that wanted to buy all the items I got from their relative’s estate. There was some sort of family squabble where the relatives in California didn’t communicate with the relatives in Texas, and the Cali people got nothing when the house was sold. They approached through a 3rd party and said they’d buy anything I had. I got $100-ish, they got their family photos and were happy with the price. I probably could have gotten more for the photos, but they were very polite and I didn’t want to be a jerk about it.
The problem with sites like Craigslist, FB marketplace, LetGo is that they require a lot of back and forth between buyer and seller. A lot of buyers (and sellers) don’t want to bother with that, especially for small items.
-List all death piles by March, (local auction company has one last auction tomorrow, then is on vacation until March. I have a deadline!)
-Pay off all debt except for the house (if I get the death piles listed, that should provide enough income to pay off the debt)
-Double my profit over the previous year
It depends on my mood. Sometimes I’m happy to talk with randos I see at the store. I mostly like to fly under the radar, however.
Flying under the radar is pretty much impossible if I bring my kid with me, because he will say “SO ARE YOU FINDING ANYTHING GOOD TO SELL ON EBAY, MOM?!” as loud as possible, multiple times. The ladies that the church thrifts are squirrely about resellers, so I try to prep my kid before we walk in “Dont say anything! Just pretend we are regular shoppers, not resellers!”, but it never fails. “IS THIS GOOD FOR EBAY, MOM?!” Ack!
I really need to get one of those heavy duty tape dispensers. I can’t work a tape gun for anything.
On my wish list to improve my store: a tabletop lighting kit, a tape dispenser, and a box sizer. I’ve been using a regular box cutter to resize boxes, but sometimes the cuts come out a little wonky. Rumor has it that Santa is getting me the lighting kit.
Hubby bought me this cart, which has helped with the schlepping of things from one end of the house to the other, (computer is at one end, storage room the opposite end).
I think my next project will be adding more shelves to my storage room. It came with some built ins, which is fantastic, but I could use more.
Feeling this so much because I just sold a big, beautiful, glass torchiere lampshade. It’s heavy and about 80 years old and will probably take me an hour of fretting and fussing over it to get it packed to satisfaction. I’ll be holding my breath until it arrives.
I am fascinated by the block of wood with 5,000 coats of paint. Now I kind of want to make one, but I know I lack the dedication to keep that project going for 14 flippin’ years.
I have not noticed a large uptick, but I did have a buyer apologize and say they did not realize ebay had sent an invoice. They paid as soon as the unpaid item case opened up.
My dad, siblings, and I did this in an older house we remodeled. No idea if the new owners every opened the walls to find what we left! I don’t even remember what we left behind except for the front page of the newspaper.
The veterinary hospital I worked at was remodeled, and we pulled old newspapers from the 1920s out of the walls. Headlines like “Houdini Dead!” and a few about Mussolini rising to power. The papers were actually older than the building, but they’d been used as insulation! I guess they were saving up the papers for a long while, in anticipation of building the hospital.
