Tales and thoughts from the trenches - story of a rookie con seller.

[RCheli]

I'm much more likely to sell stuff to other dealers at a discount if it's just not the type of book I generally sell.

 

I mostly do Silver to present. I have a smattering of Gold, but if a dealer wants to buy $200 worth of Gold (which I would likely not sell otherwise) for $125 and I know I have only $50 into them (or whatever), I'm more than willing. Then when I go to their booth, I expect (and usually get) a similarly good deal.

[the blob]

if it makes you feel any better it doesn't look like detective 583 is a $75 book in NM raw on ebay, so you sold a $25-$30 book for $10. less salt in the wound.

[rjpb]

Buying a book for $5. that you think you can sell for $15. seems like a real waste of time. Seems like you could make more money collecting cans. I know that it is the thrill of finding something a dealer missed. I do it all the time on bigger books. But even those I'm really not making big money at it. And you don't make anything until you sell it.

 

I do better at flea markets, swap meets, antique stores and estate sales. The sellers usually have no idea what they have and deals come up where you can sometimes make a little real money.

 

But if you buy 100 books for $5.00 that you can sell pretty easily at $15, that's now a $1,000 for a days work. That's a lot of cans.

 

Jim

 

+1

 

Or even buying 50 cent books and selling them for $5. I'm sure it's small game to a lot of folks, but it works well for me, and I enjoy the hunt.

 

This is what it comes down to, especially if you are looking for stuff for collection at the same time. If I amortized paying myself even minimum wage for the hours spent searching through ebay listings and added that to the cost of the books I've actually bought, I'd probably have to quadruple the purchase price to figure what I've actually "spent" on the books.