Quote:
Originally Posted by Leon
You can definitely do it. Your money will be made on the buys more than the sells. If you buy right then you will be successful. Do a lot of homework, make calculated risks, and hope for some luck. That about should do it.  And all of that being said, it's not easy. |
What Leon said is among the most important things. You can make money on anything if you can buy it cheaply enough.
The stamp guy I learned from told me that as almost the first thing.
The rest he told me?
You don't have a shop to sell. You have a shop to buy.
Become a good guesser. If you take a couple hours to figure out a collection is worth very little you've already lost money. (Most small stamp collections are worth around $20-30 retail) The same sort of thing goes for cards. Can you look at a 5000 count box and tell right away if they're 1991 or earlier? And roughly what condition they're in? And maybe with a bit of breathing room in the box more closely what years they are? That's the bulk of what you'll see, and recent stuff really needs to be bought in bulk and very cheaply. At say $5 for a 3200 or 500 count box you don't even have to check for stars.
Or---Is that item "junk" or something valuable? I've done pretty well with stuff I bought that just seemed to be too cheap.
Don't get married to your mistakes. You'll have that stuff that just won't work for you. Offload it for whatever seems ok to minimize the loss and as long as you've learned from it you'll be fine in the long run. I bought a big box of junk football from him. He had it marked originally at $250, then 200 then 150 then 135. When I told him my offer wouldn't be close he said don't be shy, I know I paid too much and just want them gone. $50, done deal I figured I'd overpaid but still needed a few for those sets. AT the time I could get decent money for random batches of cards on Ebay, $5 for 400, 3 for 100. That sort of thing. It took more work than I'd have liked, but I got around 150 profit by the time I put the last couple hundred with some other stuff.
That lot worked for me, but didn't for him. Different approach different result.
Some of the more complicated stuff involves inventory and what you keep and what gets turned as quickly as possible. I've seen him flip stuff before he got it back to the shop. (Or before he got it back to the table at a show) But I also bought a stamp a couple years ago that I'd priced in maybe 1985
Most of it depends on you. I don't do as well as I should because I'm too slow on the selling end. And often I'm too cheap to buy the sort of stuff that would move quicker.
Don't do that
Steve B