You need to assemble a Collectibles Research Library

A research library to help identify and determine the value of collectibles is an absolute necessity for a dealer. The more you know the better your chances are of finding items to sell and knowing what to sell them for. If you go to your local book store or surf websites such as amazon or even ebay you will find hundreds of different books related to hobbies, collectibles and antiques. Some will cover a wide variety of areas without much detail besides categories, while others will cover either a particular manufacturer like McCoy, Fenton or Roseville. Others will cover a specific area of collecting like Coins, Stamps, Coke memorabilia, Depression glass...and the list seems to go on forever which it does since people collect just about anything. If it gets popular enough sooner or later they're publishing a reference and price guide book about it. You'll also notice at the book store that these books aren't cheap and I've learned from experience you don't find them very often at yard sales or used book stores because people just don't part with them easily and if they do they are scooped up very quickly when found second hand.

So where do you start? When I began going to sales I carried a softcover reference book that concentrated on ceramics and art pottery because I was a collector of Hull Pottery and at that time I was looking for items in that specific area of collecting. This book along with my Hull Pottery reference book were helpful of course but I soon realized that with all the goodies I was finding I wasn't going to limit myself to just ceramics. I soon bought a book on depression glass which was also helpful in identifying the major patterns that were popular with collectors. As time went on I kept adding to my reference library whenever I felt I needed a more detailed knowledge in a particular area of collecting. When I began to sell some of my "treasures" on Ebay I soon saw that I needed to know a lot more. At this point I knew I couldn't afford to buy the books I needed so I headed to my local library and checked out books on collectibles. 5 years ago the selection was rather limited and most of the books were 20 years or older. Luckily the the items I was learning to identify were even older so the books were still very helpful for reference and identification. Then I turned to the web for fill in the pieces and also get a better idea of what current values were. One of the best places to go for identifying and pricing was of course Ebay. I spent hours surfing around looking at listings and checking out auction results and found that one search led to another area of interest and I accumulated a tremendous amount of knowledge reading info the descriptions of auctions from dealers who had a far better knowledge of what they were selling then I had. This still is a valuable source of info for me.

You can also find several websites that are helpful identifying sterling silver and pottery marks. You just have to think of yourself as a detective and take the evidence and clues you have and dig for the answers. Sometimes I hit a dead end and I just store the item away and often find in a search to identify another piece I run across a clue that leads me where I need to go to identify the earlier piece. Places like Replacements Ltd are great for identifying china, silver and crystal patterns although the pictures are often small and hard to work with. But hey it's free. Digging for info can be fascinating at times and totally frustrating at other times but you just have to keep at it. It will pay off well in the end with better sale prices. The more you can tell a potential buyer about an auction item the greater the chance is that you'll get a great price for your auction......but that's another post for the future.

So if I was to make up a list of what kind of reference books should make up the core of your research library I would recommend:

• A general guide to Antiques and collectibles that will list by category and manufacturer
• a guide to identifying sterling silver patterns and manufacturers marks
• Guide to crystal stemware patterns. Replacements LTD sells one that is excellent.
• Pottery and porcelain manufacturers marks both US and foreign
• Pattern glassware identification guide
• Depression glass and elegant glass patterns
• China manufacturers and dish patterns
• How to do books on selling your items on Ebay, online or in antique booths
• A detailed map of your county to save time finding the location of sales.

After you've gotten these and can identify items from the basic categories of collectibles you can then get books that go into more detail on individual manufacturers and areas of collectibles. It helps to concentrate on the areas that you either have experience in either from having collected them yourself or chose areas that interest you personally. You may decide to specialize in a certain area of collectibles for resale which many dealers do. I personally will buy anything I think I can sell at a handsome profit whether it be tools to Waterford Crystal. In my experience I have sold items that were so bizarre that the average dealer wouldn't touch but the money I made always justified it.

Hope this has been helpful and I always appreciate your input since I'm always eager to learn more. Collectibles and selling for profit on Ebay or elsewhere is a huge universe and there's always something new to learn.

Are they really "THRIFT" stores anymore?

After church and lunch this past Sunday I decided to make a visit to one of the local Goodwill Thrift stores and take a leisurely peek. Now I am using the word Thrift loosely here because I really don't consider Goodwill stores to be thrift stores anymore. I think that most shoppers who browse their local Goodwill will notice that they're not quite like they used to be. I know from experience that 4-5 years ago I could dig through one of their stores and usually find some nice pattern glass or some decent dishes. Perhaps I would find a Dansk teak tray or bowl amongst the rest of the wood items and it wasn't even uncommon to find sterling silver thrown in with the rest of the flatware.

So what happened? I'll tell you. Goodwill woke up and figured out that they were all too often the middleman between the donors and the antique dealers that cruised the aisles looking for inventory for their booths or items to sell on Ebay. Apparently someone at Goodwill management decided it was time to quit being the middleman and they started to screen the items that were donated to them. I don't know how many of you thrift addicts know but in the back of every Goodwill store there is a big printed list of premium manufacturers names up on the wall and when the sorters work on the donations and see those names on an item they put those items in a separate bin headed for the "boutique". If you want to see the list just ask to use the bathroom which in many of the older stores is in the back room and you'll see it.

In most larger cities Goodwill has a separate store they put in a more upscale part of town and you will then find the better items sold in these "boutiques" at prices pretty close to what you'll find in an antique booth or even higher. They even have an on-line auction site for items they feel will sell better that way. Goodwill Online Auctions if you want to take a look. So now you know why when you go into a Goodwill store for the most part you'll look at "Made in China" marked on the vast majority of items for sale. Do I think this disqualifies them from using the word thrift in their store name? Part of me does and the other part knows that they're running a business like anyone else and the goal is to maximize their sales and profits and I just live with it. I will admit that I will no loner make a special trip into town to go to Goodwill because the pickings are so thin for a reseller that it's usually not worth the cost of gas. I must also point out that Goodwill isn't the only one guilty here of cherry picking their donations. Most "thrift" stores now either have someone working for them that has a fairly good knowledge of what are the better selling items or hires a consultant that comes in a few times a week to look things over and advise them on pricing of better items. For the most part the good old thrift store is a thing of the past. In some rare cases you will find a church or local charity based thrift store where you have a better chance of finding stuff that hasn't been pre-sorted.

So what's the solution here or is there one? I feel the best way to gain the advantage back is to be more knowledgeable about what is a premium item then the seller. This applies to any place where you look for inventory to sell. You have to do your homework all the time and research hallmarks, especially of European manufacturers which most "thrift" stores don't know well because let's face it few dealers do off the top of their head unless they are full time dealers and are looking over dozens of new pieces on a weekly basis. You absolutely must assemble a decent library of reference books for collectibles and especially glassware and learn as much as you can about European manufacturers. Knowledge truly is money when it comes to finding bargains for resale. I will devote an entire post (probably several) in the months ahead on learning more about harder to identify manufacturers that will improve your chances of finding items that will sell well.

So how did I do at Goodwill this past Sunday? Well I guess I got lucky or was just a tad smarter. I found 2 Waterford Crystal knife rests, a Stelton Cylinda toast rack designed by Arne Jacobsen, a vintage cookie jar of a dog marked USA which I haven't identified the maker yet but I'd bet it's going to be from a Californian Pottery maker. I found an original Disneyland California tray. Also a hand-painted vanity dish signed by the artist and a few decent books that I can sell in my bookstore. I'm going to estimate I will sell these items on Ebay and in my antique booths for somewhere in the $150-$200 range. My cost was around $10.00. So I will continue to duck into those "thrift" stores and buy their mistakes and pocket the profits.

Where should I sell my yard sale treasures?

You're out at a yard sale and you run across an item such as a nice set of dishes or perhaps some crystal stemware or maybe an attractive porcelain figurine. You know it's got value but what's the best way to try to sell it to get your highest return? This question is always a factor in any purchase I make since if it ends up going from their house and sitting in my house or storage building I'm not making any money and might as well just walk away from the item. How do you decide what is the best way to sell your purchase? Do you use Ebay? Would it do better in your antique booth? Should you sell it on your own website? In my opinion you should have a pretty good idea of what type of customer is most likely to purchase you item before you decide to purchase it. What I mean by that is, which marketplace is going to have the best chance of matching up your item for sale with customers that are most likely to buy it.

For example, take the duck figurine pictured at the start of this post. At first glance it looks like an ordinary ceramic figurine that you might find in any booth at an antique mall (which I did by the way) that you would likely see selling for $3-$8. It's attractive and was in mint condition with no flaws and would make a lovely addition to someones animal, bird or duck figurine collection. Now when I eyed this figurine I figured that it wasn't just a Japanese or Chinese export and picked it up to see what kind of mark if any it had on it. Well it turned out to be made by Richard Ginori of Italy which few dealers know is a maker of high quality dinnerware, porcelain figurines, lamps and other ceramic wares. The dealer selling obviously didn't know since the price was $5 when I bought it. After purchasing the item I could very easily have taken it over to my booth, made out a new tag and put it up for sale for $175 and it would have been a good deal for both me the seller and also the buyer since Ginori figurines are hard to come by and aren't cheap. Trouble was I knew that it likely would take a year or more for someone to walk into my booth and know anything about Richard Ginori figurines and buy the item. My booth just doesn't get that kind of customer browsing through it very often I figured. I knew that an item such as this needed to have the whole world as it's marketplace so Ebay was the place to sell it especially since the most likely buyer would be a European who was more familiar with the company and it's products. I listed it on Ebay and it sold for a handsome price and I had my money in less than 2 weeks. Ebay was the right marketplace to maximize my sale price and make a quick sale too.

Now if I had found a decent set of dishes with a mid range value in the $75-$200 they would have ended up in one of my booths. Most dishes are hard to get a good price for on Ebay due to the high cost of shipping involved and the customer really doesn't get the best opportunity to observe the condition of the whole set before bidding and there's always the added fear of breakage during shipping. With the exception of high end china or serving pieces that a buyer wants to add to their pattern I don't feel Ebay is the best place to sell dishes in quantity if you want to get the highest return. Ebay I feel is the best place to sell items that have a more limited group of potential buyers or you're selling an item such as sterling silverware or china or anything which is from a specific pattern and will be bought by someone who is actively searching for pieces in that pattern. Your goal is to place your item for sale where it will sell quickly and for a good price. You don't have to get the highest possible price as long as you're getting it fast enough. Velocity of sales is a an important factor in sales because inventory that isn't selling doesn't earn you anything and the expense of displaying or storing it cuts into your profit margin.

Items that I feel that are more suitable for antique booths are lower valued dishes, glassware, jewelry, coins, books, artwork, furniture, nostalgia type items, postcards, pottery, and generally bulky or heavy items that are expensive to ship. I hate to see someone pay $10 for a platter or planter or similar heavy item and then get hit with $15 for shipping. I know that with the cost of gas and the distance that some customers would have to travel to an antique mall or flea market it might make sense to go ahead and pay the high shipping for the item but as a general rule I won't sell an item that I feel the shipping will be higher than the sale price.

Items that I would sell on Ebay are more unique and rare and need to have a much larger area of potential buyers than those that drive through my town and love to browse antique malls as a way to pass the day or spend their weekends. Ebay gives you a whole world of possible buyers if they are currently in the market for what you are selling and take the time to search for it. Most experienced buyers know if they want to find specific items or out of the ordinary one's that it's easier to locate them on Ebay or on a website then hunting through an antique mall. Take advantage of that to maximize your sales potential.

Be willing to get Dirty to find treasure

In my experiences at moving sales and especially at estate sales when the seller pretty much has to get rid of everything in the house and clean it to the bones you need to be willing to get dirty searching for treasure that is truly buried. Many times there are sheds, detached garages and rooms and closets that are filled with boxes that the seller just didn't have time to dig through when setting up. This is especially true at estate sales when the seller who is usually hired displays the nicest items in the kitchen and living, dining, and family room. The bedrooms are usually left with clothes and furniture and often boxes that have been piled with linens and paper items. Often those boxes have vintage clothing, gloves, handy work and photos buried in them. Keep your eye out for anything that you can see had a lot of hand made work done on them. Make sure textile items are clean and not damaged. Often I have found old sheet music and photos or unframed artwork piled on shelves in a closet that have been totally ignored by other shoppers in their rush to find the obvious. Look in drawers to see if anything has been missed since many times these sales are pulled together in a hurry.

Now it's time to really get dirty. If you're not afraid of bugs head for the garage or inquire about the attic and if there are outbuildings or sheds that's even better. Often I have been able to find antique tools, or not so old tools that are always in big demand on ebay. These are often priced cheap since most estate sales are done by women who aren't usually familiar with what certain tools are used for and what to value them at.

Note the item in the picture at the top of this post which I found in a corner of a garage. That's a plunger blasting box used for setting off dynamite. The seller had an idea of what it was due to it's shape and the fact that it had a brass label on it stating it was a DUPONT Blasting Box. But the plunger handle was stuck and you couldn't get it to go down. I asked how much they would take and we agreed on $5. Now since I have a natural knack for mechanical things I managed to open it up and fix the plunger which only required lubricating the gears and moving the plunger up and down until the grease got spread around enough. I ended up selling it on Ebay for almost $300 because it actually still generated power and worked. But even if it didn't You easily could have gotten $40-50 for it as a display item for either a business, an engineer who collects these kind of tools and gadgets or it may even have ended up at your local Bennigans in Colorado as memorabilia.

Sheds and attics many times are loaded with old enameled pots and pans which always sell well, or ceramic garden planters that end up being early McCoy, Roseville, Hull and other collectible pieces. Condition is often poor but you can find really nice pieces from time to time. Old newspapers with historical headlines and books are often found too. You might find nice pieces of furniture or picture frames that can be refinished and brought back to life.

Always be looking for items that are hand made and if the condition is good buy it since labor costs were much lower generations ago and give these items an intrinsic value built into them. Great Grandpa didn't go down to the local Wal-Mart or Target and buy pre-fab furniture, he made it himself.

So take some damp rags or better yet diaper wipes to clean yourself up with after you dig through the mess. The dust you get on your will pay off many times over I promise you.

Get a Head start on advertised Yard Sales

Want to get to an advertised yard sale ahead of the crowd? Here's a way to do it. Go to the online version of your local paper late at night and check the classifieds. Most papers I have found will post the following days classified ads around midnight and sometimes earlier on their online versions of the paper and you can look at the sales that look the most promising for the kind of items you are looking for. Most will have a set up where you can click on the ads that interest you and let you click on it and make up your own list of ads to print out. Then you can take some time with your city map and plan your route and prioritize the sales you want to get to early. This method always helps me save time and gas and of course you'll see other unadvertised sales along the way that you can hit too. Many times I will find nicer stuff at the "piggy back" sales that people will pull together to take advantage of the other guys advertising and signs, so don't ignore them. The dealers will usually hit the advertised sales at the break of dawn and cherry pick them before the rest of the crowd because they know this method of getting the info early.

Yard, Garage, Estate Sales and Ebay 2

Well is that a whopper of a fish or not? Actually this little fishy nearly didn't get caught. As I was exiting the local Goodwill with an impatient daughter I caught a glimpse of this wild colored mounted fish on the shelf. At first I didn't think much of it except that it was bright orange and had a bit of an art deco look about it. When I picked it up I could tell that it was carved and appeared to be made of Bakelite. I always am attracted to items that have a lot of craftsmanship put into them since I consider them art most of the time. It cost 69 cents so I put it in the basket and headed for the cashier and it had a new home.

Now when it comes to Bakelite there are a few ways to test it that are very reliable and I tend to stick to the 409 test. Make sure it's good old fashioned Blue 409. Spray some on a paper towel and rub the object for a while. If you notice a yellow stain on the paper towel similar to what a nicotine stain looks like it's Bakelite. It doesn't matter what color the Bakelite is you will get a yellow tinted stain on the rag or paper towel because the 409 reacts with the formaldehyde in the Bakelite.

Well after determining I had a carved piece of Bakelite I headed to Ebay to search for a similar item to see if it had much value. When I got the results of my search I was amazed to find that Bakelite items were HOT however it was mostly jewelry pieces especially bangles that were the best sellers, followed by broaches and pins. There wasn't anything close to being what amounted to a piece of mounted Bakelite sculpture. Well I really liked the look of this item but decided to take my chances and put it up for sale. Maybe I had something that was really special. Well it went on for 10 days and sold for $69.50 which was the reserve I put on it. I have to admit I was disappointed it only made the reserve price but I did get 100 times what I paid for it. Since it wasn't a jewelry item it just didn't have the appeal that I hoped it would. It was however a nice piece of artwork that now lives in Japan to be enjoyed by it's new owner. Glad I saw it out of the corner of my eye while being rushed out of the store.

TO BE CONTINUED.................

Yard, Garage, Estate sales and Ebay

Well since we won't be traveling due to all the obstacles I decided to price up some items for sale in my antique booths and get some items on Ebay for sale. A lot of times when my wife and I travel I'm hunting in thrift stores and stopping at yard and garage sales looking for "treasure" to sell. Sometimes "saleing" can turn an otherwise lackluster day into an exciting and profitable one. I can't tell you how many times I have actually paid for the cost of an out of town trip with items I've bought on the trip and then selling them either on ebay or at my antique booths. At the very least I pay for the gas.

I have been a mail-order stamp dealer for 35 years now and that still accounts for the bulk of my collectibles sales but over the past 6-7 years I have been adding more to my income from sales of items I've picked up from yard, garage and estate sales or the local Goodwill and thrift shops. Stamp dealing is my true area of expertise but as a general rule you don't buy stamps for resale in your own home town. I have to buy most of my stamp inventory from auction houses or wholesalers in New York, Chicago and other major cities. When it comes to antiques and collectibles you don't have to go any further then within a mile of your own house many times and there's the added bonus of getting out and socializing with the seller and other buyers looking for a bargain. Since I'm buying for resale my motive of course is different than the average yard saler but it doesn't change the excitement of the hunt.

I first started yard saleing at the request of my wife who wanted the company and I figured, "sure, I'll maybe find some tools I can use". And that was my main goal as I chauffeured my wife around the area and dug through boxes dragged out filled with God knows what in the homes and yards of strangers. I really can't remember when it dawned on me that some of this "junk" for sale could be possible money makers. I have long been a collector of art pottery from the early 20's-50's, especially Hull Art Pottery which I always hunted for in antique stores when we traveled and decided I would broaden my search at sales from the garage to household and kitchen items. I didn't find much Hull pottery but was finding items from other manufacturers and items made by Wedgwood, Waterford, and other names that sounded familiar that I knew were not cheap when originally sold.

Since I had been selling stamps on Ebay for a couple of years with a good deal of success I decided to take a shot at selling some garage sale purchases also on Ebay. To sell stamps I used a scanner to generate pictures of the stamps I had for sale. However you can't scan a 3 dimensional item like a set of dishes or lamp or sterling silver item. You needed a digital camera to get pictures to sell items like that on Ebay. Now back in the late 90's digital cameras were far from cheap and many listings on Ebay didn't even have pictures for the items for sale. Since I figured I could use a digital camera for other business purposes I bought a Sony Mavica for the low price of $495 to take pics for my ebay items. The mavica was a very handy camera for my needs since it stored the pic files on a floppy disk you could just pop out of the camera and into the computer and upload you picture for your listing. Having pictures for your listing was a big advantage over other sellers because it removed a lot of the mystery for the buyer as to what they were bidding on since depending on just a description was a risky situation. Well before very long I found myself selling $500 or more a month of garage sale items that I may have paid a total of $50 or less. This was getting exciting to say the least and I was definitely hooked on yard sale hunting as a money making "hobby".

TO BE CONTINUED.....................................

To start perchance to continue.......

Well everything has to have a beginning. I have been fascinated reading others blogs and wondered how it would be to have one of my own. So I've decided to at least get my feet wet and hopefully be diving in before too long. I will have to sit down and set some goals as to what I want to accomplish with this forum and at this point I just want to use it as a way to reach out to others and share experiences or dreams and take advantage of that knowledge and perhaps share knowledge of mine that will be of interest or help to others. Who knows it might be the beginning of something significant but baby steps first. Each long journey begins with one step and I'm taking it. Hopefully many other's path will intersect with mine. Let the adventure begin.