A guest post by a fellow eBay seller with lots of knowledge on collectibles and antiques. Enjoy!
Recently Suzanne asked if I would like to be a guest on her blog. Having seen her insightful comments on Twitter, I considered myself honored with the invitation. First off, let me introduce myself. My name is Norb Novocin, known as KnowsEbay on Twitter and by
estateauctionsinc on eBay. With my wife, Marie, we have made our full time living on eBay for the last 12 years. We are considered million dollar Gold Power Sellers, with over 34,000 sales and still 100% positive feedback. We recently finished our first book, “Getting Sold on eBay -- A Treasure Hunter’s Guide To Making Money”, due out in February. Thus, we do think we have a smidge of knowledge about the subject Suzanne asked us to address, “What to Sell on eBay”.
Through the years we have tried many things, before we fell back into the HUGE niche we have found ourselves in, plenty of room for you to jump into it. What we specialize in is antiques, collectibles, the unusual, quirky and just plain different. We acquire our items from a number of sources, auctions, flea markets, yard sales, thrift stores, antique shops, consignments and have even been known to end up with some items from dumpster diving. We try to not spend more than 2 days a week acquiring items, as we need the additional time to get them up on eBay.
We look for items that are genuinely old or unusual and have trained our eyes to spot those. Before we trained our eyes, we found comprehensive books, like
Kovel’s Antique and Collectibles Annual Price Guide to be valuable in educating ourselves as to what things are and their value. (We also use eBay’s completed auctions search engine to help value items.)
We tend to look for items that are not inundated on eBay, so once you have acquired it and listed it on eBay, you don’t have to fight a crowd in getting your item seen. When you do find that special item at one of the buying sources we mentioned above, try and follow this simple rule of thumb. Acquire the item at 25% or below the Kovel’s price, or 50% or below the average price on the completed items on eBay. (Don’t work off the top price on the eBay site, its easy to get burned at that way. Instead try and figure out a good average price of what like items have brought.)
You will notice we have been very vague on what items to go after specifically. That is because you don’t really know what you are going to discover when you go seeking items. Through the years we have found anything and everything and in turn have listed it. Returning customers love the eclectic and the surprise of never knowing what they will find. Some of our fun highlights, A Fully Mounted Buffalo Head, (It went to Germany.), The Keys To The End Of The World, (Russian ICBM Nuclear Bomb Launch Keys – you know the pair that the guys have to insert and turn at the same time to launch the missiles.)The United States Cold War Museum bought these. A Broken Bat Nailed together, ended up being a used game bat, used by Stan Musial. Found it at a Dr.’s estate sale for five bucks, it sold for $3,750 on eBay.
As you can see, we have been all over the map, just finding the genuinely old, the unique, the quirky and profiting from it. You can do it too. Just set your heart and mind to learning to recognize the unusual and get out there and start. Good Luck!!
