Selling Vintage Collectibles Online by a Newbie

How to Create a Slideshow with Photobucket for Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly or Retrochick on places where we sell) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:01:00 +0000

Hi Kidz, well I'm here to tell you how to create a slideshow with Photobucket of things you sell (or whatever you like) and then to drop it into your Facebook page. There may be other ways to do it and other places to host your photos, but this is the way I did it and was asked how I did it so I'm telling it here! First you need a free Photobucket account. Once you have set up your photobucket account and have created a folder on your computer (or external hardrive or where ever you keep your pics) where you will have all the pics stored that you want to have in your slideshow, you can then create your slideshow. In my own folder of pics I included one or two shots of each item I have for sale on Bonanzle.

Then in Photobucket make an album called something like “all the things I sell on Bonanzle” or somesuch. On the left hand side of the photobucket page is where you can make your albums. Where it says "add a new album". (see bottom left of screenshot 1) Once you have your album named and have clicked "Save" it opens and you can then upload your entire folder (from your computer or external storage device) up to this album. Where it says “Upload Images & Video” (see screenshot 1 again). Click on “Choose Files” It’s sort of self explanatory if you know how to find the folder you want to upload etc, which I assume you do as you have to upload files to Bonanzle.

It takes awhile to upload the whole folder, you will have to open your target folder (on your computer or external storage device)and select all pics and then click on "Open" - (with Windows XP which I have, you open the folder where you have your pics and select the first pic, hold down the 'shift' key and select the last pic. All your pics should now be higlighted.) Now click on "open" and your pics should start uploading onto Photobucket (see screenshot 2). You can watch it uploading, again if there are a lot of pics to upload go have some coffee or do something else.

When it’s done you then have a page where each pic is listed and you can enter titles, descriptions, and tags. (see screenshot 3) I went ahead and entered all this data copying and pasting from my Bonanzle titles and descriptions, (good thing I only currently have 29 items!) I also took the time to enter the tags as these are what google searches for.

You can see mine at photobucket in the left column.

Click on the link on my Facebook profile (go to Facebook and find the profile for Kelleen Doyle) (see screenshot 4) & click the link retro-chick/Things we sell on Bonanzle
3:16pm Aug 15 and it will take you to my Photobucket page. (also see screenshot 5 for a list of my tags on photobucket)

When thinking up tags just think of any word or phrase that someone might use in a google search that will take them to your stuff. You don’t have to enter titles, descriptions or tags to make a slideshow, you can skip that part, but my feeling is that it is important to get your stuff out there as much as possible anywhere you can, so take advantage of every opportunity to be able to do that.

Once you have entered your titles, descriptions and tags for each picture and saved your album you can go back later and simply add new photos as you add new items to Bonanzle and re-post or re-"share" the entire album on Facebook.

Once you’ve entered all that info for your pics (It seems to automatically save periodically as it goes along which is good because this can be a lengthy process.)
then look at the bottom of the page where it says “return to album” (see screenshot 6).

Now, at the top of the page it says "20 of 20 images have uploaded, Now you can...." (or however may images you personally have just uploaded)

underneath click on where it says "Share your Album", (see screenshot 7)

now you will see (screenshot 8)
that there are some buttons under the heading

"Share an album slideshow",

under that is

"1. Choose where to share this album:"

click on the Facebook button

Next I typed in my bonanzle booth url.

http://bonanzle.com/booths/whateveryourboothsnameis

(mine is http:/bonanzle.com/booths/retrochick )
in the area where it says “whats on your mind” (see screenshot 9)and then my own little blurb about Sweet Past Times and what wonderful and unique stuff I have.

Then click "share" and it should show up on your Facebook profile!! Walla! Like magic!

If you have a business page you can do this by copying and pasting the url from photobucket (again left side of page where it says "URL pick your own!)

just copy the html code in the little window (see screenshot 10) and paste into your business page “whats on your mind”…… and add your info as above. Hope this helps … If there are any questions, please post a comment and please do leave any other comments for me and if there is anything else we can explore together that you would like to know how to do, I will do my best to figure it out and share it with you, just leave a comment to that effect!

You can follow the discussion Widgets and Facebook at Bonanzle.com -just follow this link... http://www.bonanzle.com/forums/7/topics/70414

Reflections on auctions and how to bid and buy

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly or Retrochick on places where we sell) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:21:00 +0000

Howdy folks, here I is again. I've been thinking about auctions. My first auction experience was
intimidating because I just didn't know what to do. It was in Boise, Idaho and well, I just went up to the desk and asked for a number, signed in as it were. It's was pretty easy to get going, really so don't let it scare you. The first thing to remember if you want to take the plunge is to go to the preview. Find out when this is and be sure you leave yourself plenty of time to look everything over. I always had the idea of Christies Auction House or these shows you see on TV auctioning off antiques and thought you had to dress up for it, but really the type of auction you want for a beginner level is not exclusively for fine antiques, although there may be some there, what you want to find on auction is the more common stuff, collectibles and household items.

Check your town for weekly or monthly auctions.

Some auctions are conducted at a home or business that is being cleared. While these house clearing auctions can be fun and have lots of neat stuff try to find an auction house that has regular auctions in a particular location. You might want to just go to your first auction and watch. This is totally acceptable.

When you go to have a look during the preview time, be sure you have time to go home and research the items you are interested in. Some preview times are just before the actual auction but usually it is the day before or if it is on the same day they allow plenty of time before the auction starts. You'll want to take a notepad, pen and your digital camera. Always ask if it is OK
to take photographs before you start snapping away. If it is not OK leave your camera in the car. When you are previewing decide what sort of item you want to check out. You can of course bid on household items for yourself, too, but be careful not to get carried away. Decide before hand what you are willing to let yourself bid on. If you are going strictly to bid on things for resale then give yourself a limit on the money you will spend over all and limit on what you will bid on each
item. Determine this limit when you've researched your items from the preview. Write your limits down next to each item you are going to bid on. You should have a preprinted list of auction items from the auction house. They may have charged a small fee to cover the cost of printing.

You should already know how to research an item (but this has just given me an idea for a blog post. My adventures in research! Watch this space! ...... )

My thought as to how to bid is to bid low....... I am not willing to pay very much at all for an item
until I know for sure how valuable it is and that I will be able to resell it. I consider this my learning period and therefore the cost of what I buy is the cost of learning. Hopefully I can take
some things home for say less than a couple or a few dollars (or pounds here in the UK where I am right now) and be able to them take them back later on and re-auction them if they are not something I want. You can sometimes buy box lots which are several items in a box for one bid. Sometimes you will have to buy the whole box in order to get one thing that is in it. So bid low while learning, don't for heavens sake spend much money until you know more. This may take you months. We are newbies after all!

So then once you have your bidder number, and are familiar with the terms, there is a buyer's premium you will pay on things as well as sales tax so keep that in mind when deciding what to bid on something. The buyer's premium can be 5% on up to 15% or more. I would not want to pay more than 10% myself which is already pretty high, and once you've done your research, you are ready to go and bid. Show up early and get yourself fairly close to the things being bid on as they go along. It can be very crowded and people will want to crowd around. You may have to be slightly assertive. Auctions can take hours so ask before it starts which side of the room they are starting on and when they might get to the items you are interested in. It may be that you can sort of hang about outside for a bit if your items are in the middle or at the end. I would not recommend going away somewhere as I did this once. I thought it would take an hour or more
for them to get around to my things so we went to breakfast, (you may wish to bring a snack and something to drink). Well, they had swept right past my things and by the time I had returned my items were sold. These auctions can actually move quite rapidly, too. You never know. They may move around a bit too and not go in an orderly sweep from one side of the room to the other. I would suggest that you stay for an entire auction a few times and watch and listen so that you can get a feeling for what things are going for, who the people are who bid, (watch their expressions) and how the procedure usually goes. Make notes about items you have interest in but don't wish to bid on, so that you can refer back when you find another piece like it either online, in a shop or another auction.

Oh, a bit more about previewing the items.......

Do not be afraid to pick something up and look it over. Be very careful of course or you will be buying before the auction starts, but do pick something up and look at it's general condition, any damage or wear and look for any marks that will give you information about the piece. The finer things are often behind glass, don't be afraid of asking to see and handle something. Sometimes you can tell a lot about a piece merely by it's weight and feel. If you don't handle something and you think you've done your homework and bid on it and then you take it home and it's got a slight chip or ding and is now basically worthless, you've only yourself toblame.

Now a bit about bidding. How is it done? when to start bidding? when and how to stop? It's easy
enough to start bidding, you just wave your bid number or stick your hand up. Make sure you have eye contact with the auctioneer and he knows you are bidding. When do you start? Well, not on the first asking bid. In other words when the auctioneer comes out with an opening bid, wait to see if it goes lower. A good practise is to wait till he goes low but don't wait until he is scrapping bottom. If you know the value of an item an auctioneer will appreciate it if you start bidding at what would be a reasonable amount. If you wait for an item that is worth several hundred dollars to go lower than say $50 then you are being unreasonable. Of course you want to buy it for as little as possible but you are making the auctioneer work unnecessarily hard
because it is going to go up anyway if it is really that valuable. There is a whole slew of things you need to know about the way auctioneers work and it would take me a lot of time to list them here so I won't but a good resource is the Auction Wally podcast and website. He also has a good ebook on how to sell and buy at auctions.

http://auctionwally.mybisi.com/products/eBooks_171837/?page1

The Auction Wally Network and the Auction Wally website are listed in my links, below.

When you are bidding you can get carried away. Be sure to stick to your plan and your limits. I
sometimes let my husband do the bidding because one time we were actually bidding against each other, so now only one of us bids. But it annoys me when I tell him how much I want to bid on an item and my limit and he bids past it. We end up paying too much for something I was only interested in up to a point.

So when do you stop and how do you stop? Well, if its just got too rich for you just shake your head, No, and lower your bid number and that's all you have to do. Just make sure that the auctioneer is quite clear that you are no longer bidding on that item. Don't shuffle around and wave your arm or draw attention to yourself - just stay still and shake your head, no.

Once you've had a successful bid, now what? Well, you can cash out as soon as the cashier has the item in the computer. This may take a few minutes. You can wait until its all over or you can pay and go. Ask one of the helpers to check you out. They will match your receipt with the item number. Sometimes you can come back the next day and pick things up. Just be sure to take your pieces by the time they want everything cleared out as they have to make room for the next week's items.

Well, I think that's about it, not that hard really. There are tricks to look for to see if the auctioneer is on the up and up or not, but let Auction Wally let you in on all that.

Ask to see if you will be allowed to bring some things in for auction yourself. Some places only
handle their own house clearances and don't want bits and bobs of other people's stuff taking up
room. Just ask - they are willing to help.

Auction people and serial garage-salers and flea marketers like me are a unique brand of people. I like to think of us all as Junktiquers. It's a slice of society where there is a lot of eccentricity. Most of these folks are wonderful and sharing and can be very amusing and informative, especially the ones who have been doing it for awhile.

Happy auctioning!

Social Networking

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly or Retrochick on places where we sell) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 14:11:00 +0000

Hi again, been away..... spent a month with my Mom, then off to Boise to pack and move and store my stuff, take everything we are selling down offline, settle in my 2 cats into a new home and then off I go to live in Belfast Northern Ireland to be with my husband and his Mum. Then we have been hither and yon to England, France and Londonderry NI and are getting settled in now, so hopefully you will forgive me for not posting to the blog in awhile.

I wanted to talk about auctions this time as we have been to a couple of them since being here but I think I'll save it for next time.

This blog will be about what I am learning and who I am learning it from about Social Networking. Apparently this is very important! I listen to some incredibly informative podcasts on my ipod (when I am having my daily walk) including Auction Wally,

http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=25106&cmd=tc

(you can see his feed on the right panel on this page) and

Tips From the Top by the Savvy Seller,

http://thesavvyseller-onlineauctioneducation.blogspot.com/

(also see her podcast feed and her blog ). You can also listen to these podcasts on the computer, you don't have to have an ipod. There is a tremendous amount of information to be had from podcasts. If you want information about them and where they are leave me a comment.

OK, so where have I been and what have I been doing? I've learned to add widgets and badges and all kinds of other neat devices into this blog spot. See all that fancy stuff in the panel? Well I put that there, ain't I clever? it does take some time to do and if you want details again leave a comment and I'll do a blogpost on How To Do some of this stuff ....... I've had my own avatar created and I use it and the same user name on all the sites I belong to. It's called Branding. So my avatar is the little tiny picture of a statue of The Three Graces - (see again the panel where my stuff is) and my username is Retro Chick, in different variants because I wasn't fast enough to claim it in some places. I had to go with hyphens, Retro-Chick and underscores, Retro_Chick. This is one of the things you want to do as soon as possible .... claim your user name and keep it the same. Also choose your color scheme and keep it as close as possible in all the venues in which you will have a presence.

So what do I mean by Social Networking? Well it means you have a presence on one or more sites where you interact with others, such as Facebook and sites where you can sell and interact such as Bonanzle http://www.bonanzle.com/

and sites that are geared to your chosen genre - for me it's

I Antique Online, http://www.iantiqueonline.com/ (see my badge in the panel) and sites that are associations dedicated to your selling interests - for me its

AVCOSA http://www.avcosa.ning.com/ Antiques, Vintage and Collectibles Online Sellers Association

I've discovered Squidoo http://www.squidoo.com/

which is a really cool site where you can make what is called a Lens, a one page website that you can develop with lots of helpful ready made apps and you can have make it about anything you like. You can make money with these lenses by having links to items for sale on Amazon, eBay and others. It's called affiliate marketing. You can also promote your own website or list items for sale. I've just started to use it, I have my very first lens (see my Badge on the panel) and look forward to making more.

Basically what you want to do is get yourself out there and known. People, hopefully, will start checking out your stuff. They will click on your links, they will check out your suggestions of people to listen to and just get to know you. This blog was my first venue to start building a list of friends who will like what I have to offer, one of the things you want to do is offer something extra, an add on bonus, extra content, that's the way e-commerce is going to work in the future. You can't just stick things onto a web page and forget about it. It will just sit there. You have to promote your items at all your selling venues and get people to have a look. Also check out their booths, lenses, pages, blogs, etc.

Now the question arises - how does one have time for all of this? I am lucky in that I am not working outside the home right now and have all day to play around, but really I want to focus on selling as much as possible. Networking is very important but you don't want to spend all your time posting to forums and reading blogs. To tell you the truth I haven't figured it out yet. I've decided to treat it as my job, spend X amount of hours a day learning and building the business, so I think I'll have to allot X hours to posting to my social networks, X hours for this blog, X hours for learning the nuts and bolts of e-commerce, things like Google feeds, attributes, key words, RSS feeds, widgets, badges, etc., X hours for taking pictures and uploading photos of new items and X hours for researching new items each week.

One thing I have found is that if you sign up for a forum make sure you follow it by linking it to your email account. This way you will see right away when someone has responded and can then either read it in the email or click on the link and it will take you straight to the posting. Then you can decide if you want to respond to it and you won't miss anything. Nothing worse than starting a forum or discussion or asking a question and then never coming back - people may start thinking you are a bit flaky! That is not the kind of branding you want for yourself!

I have so many interests that I could spend all day looking around the Internet, (I can't imagine why anyone could be bored if they have Internet access) so if you are like me it's too easy to get sidetracked. I make a list of what I want to accomplish and if I start to get sidetracked I'll stop and write down (on my handy notebook always sitting next to my computer) what it is that interested me and where to go back and look for it later, also I add it to my favorites.

So I had better go now, perhaps I ought to make these blog posts shorter, attention spans and time allotments are short. Do let me know what you think and if I should go into depth about how to do some of the things I've mentioned here. CHEERS!

Computer has been down

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly or Retrochick on places where we sell) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 23:41:00 +0000

I am sorry that my computer has been down (went to the computer doctor) for nearly the whole month of April. I just got it back and am overwhelmed with email. I am going to see if dear hubby will post a blog for me. I'll be back soon!

Adventures in Having a Garage Sale

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly or Retrochick on places where we sell) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:36:00 +0000

Hi kidz, it's me I'm back! I know it's been a week or so since I posted and that's cuz I've been busy, from having my own garage sale last weekend to traveling to Mom's in Arizona to having my birthday. The last was no big deal but it did take a day out of my life.

OK so I had my own garage sale because I wanted to get rid of some stuff. I have not had any sales yet on my sites and I just wanted some of my money back and to get rid of some of the more common stuff I didn't want to handle anymore.

So what about your own garage sale? Would you say that they are a good place to sell your stuff? Well....... not really, but in a pinch and you want some cash and you have all this stuff hanging around, then why not?! But you know what you want to find at garage sales, stuff that's dirt cheap! That's what other people want too, believe it or not. And that's what they will expect. However, you may have bought your stuff dirt cheap (at someone else's garage sale) but you sure don't want to sell it for dirt cheap what would be the point in that??????

Never mind that you fished a nice Bauer Swan out of the bottom of a box of dirty crap, paid 50 cents and took it home, washed it off and researched it and found that even with the chip it might be worth a few bucks. That counts for something. Especially since you are now offering it surrounded with many nice collectibles that also have some value. You bought this swan before you knew not to buy things that are chipped or cracked and because you could always use it as a flower pot. So you can get a few dollars and you can bargain right down to the ground if you want to.

So have you been wondering if you should have a sale and if so how and where? Well I decided to list on Craig's list in my area (avoid the high cost of buying an Ad in the newspaper) and say exactly what was for sale avoiding the words "Yard" or "Garage" in the listing. So here's where buying things very cheaply pays off...... you can price things reasonably and still make a little money. I made $200 in one day. The weather did not permit me to open on the second day. So if you wrote the cost of things on a little piece of tape and stuck it on the items as you bought them, you know what you need to charge for the item in your sale. Remembering that you need to pad upwards so as to be able to bargain downward.

Somethings I was able to make double or triple what I paid for it, and others I was able to get a dollar or two or three over what I had paid and others I just broke even. I did lose a little money on some items but only if I really did not ever want to handle the piece again in my entire life or the customer was buying several things and it was sort of a loss leader.

Just be prepared to bargain, give an inch but not a mile. And don't give things away even if people think you should. It's amazing, really how many people pay full price without even trying to bargain. Guess it makes up for those who think you should knock everything down by half or more! I had a very nice mid-eastern family come by late in the afternoon, boy can they bargain! And I was tired. I did give way for a couple of things but stood firm when the old man wanted me to give him two platters for $1 each when I wanted $2 and $3! Darn it! I told him "NO $1 $1", I said "$1, $2"!! He did not understand "Fire-King" and "Homer Laughlin"! The good thing you can get from having your own garage sale besides some money and not having to repack everything is a lesson in bargaining and how to say NO! Every single thing I have done on this journey of junktiquing has taught me something that is going to ultimately make me successful as a fine collectibles and antique dealer. This is my ultimate goal.

I hated to see some things go for the price knowing that they were worth more, but hey, it is a sale out of my garage and I wasn't having to post things online, it was cash and I didn't have to ship it. Also things are just not selling right now. I got rid of some nice cast iron skillets that were pretty heavy to move around and would never have sold online. One rather large skillet was about 12 or 13 inches across and I sold it for $10. I bought it for $3.33, so that was a win. I sold a small skillet with a lip (no sides, more like a round griddle with a handle) along with it and then I noticed that both my round griddles were gone. Hmmmmm..... they needed 2???!!! And only paid for one. Well what a shame. I did put a high price on my Griswold waffle iron and wasn't gonna budge from the $50 price as I KNOW it's worth more and am willing to wait until I can sell it online.

All my things were smalls. I don't handle big things like furniture as I've said in a previous post. I have a friend who made $700 in a 3 day garage sale recently. But a lot of her stuff is big and heavy and costly. She doesn't keep track of what she pays for things. So who knows how much was really profit?

So if you are thinking about giving your own sale but don't want to give stuff away in a garage sale, I say go ahead, but advertise it as a Collectible Sale or some such. And then put good bright signs up in the neighborhood that simply say "SALE" and if people want stuff dirt cheap then too bad.

I was going to post about buying from garage and yard sales and estate sales, etc, but I wanted to blog about my own sale while it was still in my head. Next time I will write about my experiences on where to buy stuff.

I am also doing a lot of research on e-commerce and will share what I am learning with you in upcoming blogs.

Tata for now!

Deciding what your niche will be

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly or Retrochick on places where we sell) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:35:00 +0000

In the interests of not spending too much time blogging I am going to limit my blogs to how much I can type in half an hour. I just received my new Royal Doulton Beswick storybook figurines book so I am anxious to get to it. I am building a collection of Beatrix Potter figurines for our one year old granddaughter and it so much fun!

I guess what I have found in this adventure so far is fun. So I think when deciding what to focus on as far as things to sell I would ask myself what am I drawn to? What catches my fancy and what interests me the most? What seems fun? What would be relatively easy to research? The next thing to ask yourself is ... Is there a market?

What we found is that your net should be fairly wide but not too wide. I first loved glassware but quickly found that this is a difficult niche to start out with mostly because there are hardly any marks or signatures on glass and you have to be fairly knowledgeable about it to distinguish even between older glass and newer glass. So our attention quickly turned to ceramics. Now this is a very broad field, it encompasses Art Pottery, utilitarian pottery, china of all kinds including dinnerware, figurines, teasets, etc. It basically covers anything that was made from some sort of clay, mud or paste. There are even many different kinds of what generically we call China. We decided to keep things small. We don't want to deal with anything that is heavy, difficult to move, store or ship. That pretty much leaves out furniture and tractors! But it is broad enough to give us a HUGE field to play in.

One word about having a niche. I feel that even though your major focus of research and study is your niche DO NOT ignore other items of value just because it is not in your niche. If you are at a sale or auction and see something of interest and you don't know what it is, take notes and if you can take a picture and go home and research it. You can do this inside your niche of course too. Basically don't walk by a Van Gough just because you spot of Rookwood vase. Yeah, right, like you're gonna find a Van Gough at an estate sale! But you get the point.

So here you are! You think you know what you want to focus on, now what? Well, here's what we did. Start small, (and cheap - I mean 50cents, a dollar, I mean CHEAP!) pick up a few pieces in your category of interest ........ my first find was a Homer Laughlin china set for $5. Boy was I stoked when I saw the price guide said that one of the fruit bowls was worth over $20!!! Wow oh wow, I quickly did the math and figured I had $300 worth of china for only $5!....... Then reality started to sink in when I started looking closely at it all.......... and when I started to learn that CONDITION is everything!

Rarity and condition seem to be the biggest factors as far as price or even being able to sell it at all. Price Guide values are for MINT condition FULL RETAIL pieces during good times from what I can tell. They seem a complete fantasy to me! So when I started seeing all these chips and cracks and dings and flea bites, wear and crazing..... well, anyway I sorted out the best pieces with no damage and my $300 shrank considerably. But I learned some very valuable information about Homer Laughlin, American ceramics, dish sets, condition, price guides, what you can get on ebay for such items in today's market ( basically nothing) and so I consider it a win situation over all!

A word about checking for condition on ceramics and glass...... use your fingers as well as your eyes. Your eyes can easily overlook a tiny chip but your fingers will find it. Run your fingers along the rims and over the surfaces, you can even close your eyes, just don't drop it or bang it against something. They tend to frown on that. DO NOT buy anything at this level if it has any damage and this includes excessive wear. Even a plate that has a lot of cutlery marks and nothing else wrong with will be considered damaged. If you go to http://www.replacements.com/ and look up a piece of china, these prices reflect MINT condition, as if it just came outof the kiln. Down the page you will see the prices have dimished 25% to 50% for the slightest damaged. If you want to buy something that is damaged just for study fine, but do not pay much for it because the value is not there.

I am not going to go over what any of these terms mean in my blog for the interest of time, as you can use wikipedia or google and look them up for yourself.

My half hour is up, so let me say that in my next blog I will go over where we found things, what we first picked up and where we look for things now.

Take care and thank you so much for reading, please spread the word to anyone that is thinking of starting up or who has started. Thank you to my first 2 followers and their comments!!! It is very encouraging to keep going.

From the beginning

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly or Retrochick on places where we sell) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 20:25:00 +0000

Ok, now I am gonna start from the beginning of our adventure. Remember the film Adventures in Babysitting? Hysterical! And that's what it has felt like sometimes. Here is where we have things posted, (can't say "sell" yet as I haven't sold a thing). www.bonanzle.com

what a great place to mingle and get information. And very easy and quick way to get things up for sale. I stumbled across Auction Wally's podcasts early on as I like to download them onto my ipod and listen while getting my workout done. I think his podcasts have been the single most influential source of info for me. He steered me to Bonanzle and Daryle Lambert, more on him in a bit, and Vintage List and lots of other places and things. See my favorite links below.

So, what does one do when they decide to fulfill their long time fantasy of dealing in antiques and collectibles and don't know a darn thing cuz they have always told themselves that there was too much to know and it would be too hard to learn? Well, first you stop that silly self talk and dive in with both feet, couple of arms, ears, eyes and brain. yes I did have all that going for me so what was this silly stuff about not being able to learn it? NO there is not the University of Antique Collecting and I wouldn't be able to afford it anyway. So now what? Well what you DO NOT do, I know cuz I did it, go out and buy everything that looked remotely old at every garage sale and thrift shop you pass by. Now I believe that every thing I have done or bought was a learning experience even if I was learning NOT to do something! But you can learn from me and not do what I did. If you are selective and cheap and buy only things that are in very good to excellent condition you will thank yourself later. Don't buy anything chipped, dinged, cracked, overly crazed or otherwise damaged just because it's old.

Buy very cheaply that way you can have your own garage sale later and maybe double your money when you realize that you have just loaded yourself up with so much stuff that it has become a burden.

There are 2 ways to go about this I think. The first one is what I call the shotgun effect. You buy anything that is trade-able, in that there is a market for retro/vintage items that you can still find cheap at garage sales. The trouble with this approach is that you find out that right now the market is so flooded and the economy so bad that these things are not moving or they are going for dirt cheap. So unless you really love to surround yourself with lovely retro things and are willing to quickly be over run with these items to the point where you don't really know what you have, find a niche you like and become very selective. The good old days of ebay I think are over. Cuz you can't sell it for much there anymore.

Ok, the second way is the Daryle Lambert way and he tells it best at http://www.31corp.com/ . Basically you leave all the common stuff alone and only look for fine collectibles, art and antiques. He tells his method the best and so if you are interested you should go to his site. I have come to the conclusion that this is the best way for me as I now have all my spending money tied up in inventory that I can't sell. I have gotten some really lovely things and have only some of them up for sale on my selling sites and I really don't want to go the ebay auction route as I would rather wait until things turn around and I can actually get a decent price for my item. PHEW! that was some run on sentence, wonder if my editor husband is going to smack me over the head with pedantry! So it is my choice really. I can afford to wait. ( thank God for pedantic editor husbands)

So I am thinking of going to a flea market and selling so as to recoup some of my money. I did have a garage sale last summer and was able to claw back a bit of money, but really when someone shows up at a garage sale are they not looking for bargain basement prices too?

The trouble with method two is learning restraint! How can I pass by that lovely old bowl? Never mind that is not marked! So one must unlearn method one!

So now that you have several (hopefully not gazillions) of items, research research research! Handle it, feel it, look it up all over the internet, go to the library, the antique malls and shops and hone in on finding something similar or the same and see what it is selling for.

Ya know, this was not going to be a blog of me teaching, cuz frankly I don't know anything, but it sort of sounds that way doesn't it. What do I, a newby have to teach? Only what I have learned the hard way if it is informational to others. Maybe I should try a different approach in my next post.

OK enough for now. PLEASE comment and help me out if you have any hints for me. Thus far these are my experiences, thoughts and feelings about the ADVENTURE IN ANTIQUES AND COLLECTIBLES!

Hi folks, my Introduction and musings on my adventure into the land of collectibles

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly or Retrochick on places where we sell) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:39:00 +0000

HI, I'm Kelly and I am married to a wonerful Irishman named Brian. The two of us have decided to get into the trade of dealing antiques and fine collectibles. We are starting from scratch. We knew nothing when we started last summer. We have learned an incredible amount in the 7 months since. I am starting this blog to record and share the road so far traveled and to be traveled. It has been frustrating to start at such a bad time for the world's economy and it is very difficult to get answers to the gazillion questions we have had since starting our education. But it is a good time to learn, I just wish I could sell something~............ but anyway, here we are..... ain't we cute!

So, let's see.......... we have decided to persue this line of "work" for several reasons,

1) we both love old stuff

2)I in particular travel between the states and Northern Ireland and that makes if very hard to hold down a job

3)we have no money for retirement and what little we did have is pennies now.

4) we think this will be really fun!

so we are in it for the long term and are not going to let the current economic situation deter us. However it is hard to not get discouraged right now. When we find something really cool and in really great shape and should be selling for a decent price it ain't . So the questions that come up are along the line of ............ is this just temporary and if we keep buying right will it turn around and eventually we will be able to sell our collection for reasonable money sometime in the near future? Or.......... is our research leading us astray and these things are not really worth what we think they are? Afterall something is only worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it, right? for instance is a fine piece of art pottery not worth more than what you can get for it right now on ebay or any other site? We don't feel that way and are willing to wait til the right buyer and their circumstance comes our way, but we would also like to sell something! Then arises the question....... are we pricing correctly? I know that the prices in price guides are fantasy at this point and that one cannot think of getting what might me considered full retail but what is the right price then? We do not want to give things away so we are very reluctant to list things in an ebay auction right now because so many things are being passed on or being sold for pennies...... it truly is a buyer's market right now and that is good for us in one respect in that we can aquire things for study and research cheaply, but that tends to tie up our money when we can't put it up for sale.

Well, that's enough for now....... we are working on our own website and will post the url when we are ready to launch, so for now you can see some of our items on www.Bonanzle.com and www.seeauctions.com under the user name Retrochick. We will be changing that username soon as we have decided to go in another direction, away from things retro and more into finer collectibles and antiques so we will be changing our name to reflect that. Not that I don't love things retro and have a few really neat items, but we are finding that they really aren't selling well and you need lots and lots of them. We want to refine our search into a few finer things rather than the shotgun approach. Please check back, especially if you are new at this like us, maybe we can help each other out so please do comment and post your own url, username, favorite sites, sites where you sell (or are attempting to sell, LOL!), etc..... tata for now, be back soon!