Chapter 8
WHAT DO YOU BUY
Many people have asked me what do you look for when out on the road searching the yard sales flea markets and estate sales. The best answer I have been
able to give
is what ever I think will resell and I can buy at a reasonable price.
In this world today there are many different thinks collected, from barbed wire to glassware, so what do you search for. First let me say I have over the years learned
the hard way on what to buy and what not to buy. Markets are always changing and the thing about today’s market is you can get on the net and pretty well tell
if something is selling or not.
If you surf eBay and find twenty-five or thirty different auctions on a certain type of glassware and 90% do not have a bid stay away from that
particular item
unless you have a lot of storage space and like to gamble with your money, remember you always want to make a quick turnaround on your investment and the net allows
that now, so why burden yourself down with items you have to hang on to for a long
period of time waiting for the collectors to start buying again.
It takes a long period of time to learn what is selling and what is not. The best route to take would be to find a collectible or antique you know is
selling, you can find a lot of the item and they are cheap to buy, then work with the item and learn by buying and selling that item. That is not saying you should not
start branching out as you go along.
I made the mistake of getting into sports trading cards when I first started selling on the net and actually lost quite a bit of money, simply because I did not have the
knowledge base to deal with the card market. By the time I had learned the ins and outs of selling cards the market was so bloated I sold everything at once and stayed
away from cards.
There is one item I always keep an eye out for and that is autographs, they may be in books signed by the author, Records signed by the singer or group, photographs
signed by singers or movie stars.
EXAMPLE; I was at an auction last year in central Kentucky, the auction was one of those with several estates with mostly left over items from other sales.
I had spent the time before the auction going through the boxes and digging through some boxes set under a table I found a box of old family
photographs. The unusual thing about the box was the photos were of a black family, apparently one of the estates was from an elder black woman’s estate.
There were over three hundred photographs dating back to the early thirties up to the seventies. I knew as a lot the photos would sell on the net for a few
dollars so I continued to look through the box and came across two 3x5 autographed photos of Duke Ellington.
The photos were in excellent condition and signed on the back of each photo. Since I was at an auction with all white people and most were in the red neck
range I knew I could get the box very cheap so I slide the Ellington photos back to the bottom of the box and waited until the box came up for bid.
As usual this particular box was one of the last to go and I had to bid on several other boxes with it as the auctioneer had grouped several boxes as they
were not selling. I spent nine dollars to get all the boxes. I gave away the rest of the boxes before I left the auction to a flea market dealer and kept the box
of photos. The photos later sold at auction for over sixty dollars each. The box of old photos sold for fifteen dollars.
So always keep autographs in the back of your mind when working yard sales and auctions.
A good market now is computers and software, Although I am sure the new items still sell well on the net I am talking about the older items. Especially Apple computer
products. I never pass up old Apple software. The old five and one-fourth size floppys that are from Apple will always sell. I have sold Apple operating software
for over fifty dollars a disc. Although this was an exception I have never lost money on buying old software. EXAMPLE:
I always try to frequent the local charity store in my area stores run by a nonprofit organization that sells donated items such as Goodwill. I have bought three early
Apple computer systems for less than twenty dollars each. All three systems came with lots of software. I sold off most of the software and kept the computer systems
for my classroom to use as a sort of museum for my students. I now have the systems with no money invested.
Markets are another thing I look at when I am searching for items. The net has opened up a market that is beyond belief. Not only can we sell in every state in the
union but we also have the international market,which is just now becoming a factor in selling.
Selling to people overseas is become bigger everyday. I find now even selling just records over half of my sales in certain areas of records is from England,
Italy, German, Japan and Korea. In most cases the international sales is higher per item than in the United States.
The one great thing about selling on the net is the different items that can be sold. You don’t have to just search for antiques and collectibles. You can sell used
clothes just as good as you can antiques and collectibles. The used clothes for example are a great market at the present time. In the past twenty years clothes has
taken on names and high priced that which are in high demand. The quality of these clothes are superb and the used in most cases look as good as the new.
Disney has contributed to this market by allowing their cartoon names to be used on children’s and adult clothes.
Mickey and Minnie will always sell on the net along with the usual new character of the year from the movies. The name brands Levi,
Faded Glory, Gap, limited and other brands are great sellers in different areas of the US and overseas. So don’t think you have to just focus on one certain category.
If you are into clothes it may be the area you want to specialize in.
You should always sell what you like to work with. I have finally settled down to one particular category which is old records and paper, being books, magazines and
old letters and advertisements. I am a product of the fifties and sixties so music has always been a part of my life. I find the older I get the less time I have to
spend on the road looking for things to sell and I get a huge amount of enjoyment out of working with records and paper.
I use the same techniques and procedures in searching for records and paper as I have done searching for other items and it works just as well with the exception of
having to have more people in my network to help locate old records. The one thing you have to keep in mind is why you are doing this. Is it for money alone or is it something you really enjoy doing. Personally I never do anything I
do not enjoy. There are too many different ways I can make
money to have to spend my time in misery making money. This book for example is not a work of making money although I would like to have the satisfaction of knowing
I can write something people enjoy reading. My enjoyment is reliving my past experiences through the years searching out antiques and collectibles to resell.
Conclusion
This book has not been written to describe any certain type or style of antique but a journey into how to find valuable antiques and collectibles to resale.
I have taken you on a few of my Saturday trips and I hope you enjoyed the time spent with this book. I have spent many hours digging around yard sales,
and other places to find items for my collections and to resale. This book is part of that journey and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did in writing it.
There are many valuable antiques out there but they are not only hard to find but also most people do not have the knowledge to recognize a really valuable piece.
I find that I still have problems with certain types of antiques so I try to stick with what I know.
A valuable antique can be found in the yard sale of your next door neighbor or lying in the bed of a pickup truck at the local flea market. You can never find it if
you don’t start looking. You may never find the piece of a lifetime to make you rich, you will become rich in memories if you pay attention to your hobby.
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