Featured Bye to a great store,sad but normal

Found a wonderful new collective bout a month ago-good prices.No absolute thousand-buck screamers for a twenty dollar bill, but lots of promise.
You know the kind of place-if yer diligent,somethin' big will land in your lap-just be persistent,right?
Ah well,not really surprised, but just found out a few days ago-Employees get 1st pick !
Then tonight a Dealer friend confirmed it-yep,they bring all their finds into my Mall (good stuff).
PS-Will say, that for run o' the mill vintage,they're quite reasonable,BUT-as a spoiled retired geezer,I aint' goin' back to the days of twenty-buck Ebay hustles !
PSS-The way of the modern collecting world.Makes me damn near afraid to sell any of my better stuff.

 

i wonder how deep it goes with the 'experts' they use so regularly (we've had it valued by someone )

bet its more often than not accompanied by.......and do you want it for that price first expert ?

 

(and it works !!!!!...... (if you pretend to be an expert to these damn fools )

 

What did antique dealers first think when eBay started up? That had to have upended the way things had been going for a long time. I wasn't there, so I can't say.

 

My experience is that it's always been that way. Employees don't always know what you know. When I was in a mall, we had a lot of dealers come through who found very good items. Whenever I loaded my space, I always took a stroll around and found great stuff that I put on eBay. Examples are too numerous to list here. Once I found an EAPG Cake Stand worth $250 that the dealer had $40 on. Other dealers in the mall got 10% off, I almost felt guilty over than extra $4. Sold immediately on eBay. I think it was the Chandelier pattern IIRC. Mint condition. My eBay photos were so awesome that several web sites stole them.

A friend of mine found a large antique Fostoria Glass lamp for $20 in the mall. He had a good eye, it was in a corner in the back of the space. Same guy found a Consolidated Glass vase for under $10 that he sold on eb for either $85 or $160 (a while ago). He and his wife got their exercise by antique mall walking.

Give your place a little more time and maybe it will cough up a few nice pieces.

 

Same thing's happening at a Thrift that supports and is run by drug and alcohol addicts in recovery-workers get first dibs.
*** Guess it's totally normie now ?
In the 'old days' we all knew the managers at the charity thrifts pocketed the gold & diamond jewelry-but it was frowned on & technically a firing (even prosecutable offense).
First year I was in one of our more well-known Portland Malls (early 2000's).I found an image by Alphonse Mucha priced at $19.
It was a small poster of Sarah Bernhardt's play 'Gismonda' from Les Maîtres de l'Affiche . Sold it for $1200 on Ebay.
Ebay,AI,Goog Lens, and 1st Dibs Employee Perks-just another hurdle on our weekly pickin' marathon I guess.

Great question Pott ! 30 years ago when Ebay hit the flip phones didn't have cameras and online antique databases were super limited. You still needed your brain & a wall-full of expensive ($25-$75 apiece !) reference books.

 

I don't think ebay had too much impact in the early days. The adoption just wasn't all that great. I remember the occasional shop that had an ebay listings section where items were not available except on-line. That mostly annoyed the buyers who were in the store.

I closed my stand-alone store in 1991 and was not using ebay at the time. I got into it not all that long afterward. I had just bought a computer, having been on Web-TV prior. I bought it used on ebay. Was able to make purchases with the Web-TV but posting items for sale was pretty difficult. I know I paid over $600 for my first digital camera, so the start-up cost for doing ebay properly was pretty high.

Once ebay really got going, we began to see the price of common items plummet. I remember that Fisher Price toys and depression glass, to name a couple things in particular, really took a dive. On the other hand, ebay gave access to some pretty incredible items at reasonable prices. There wasn't much in the way of reliable price guides for many things. A lot of sellers were just throwing items up at auction and seeing where they would land. Timing was everything and some items really just didn't do as well as they might have.

It was a good time for bargain hunting, but you also had to beware. Sellers were not very good at descriptions and photography was often bad. I think about 20% of my purchases had undisclosed flaws. Sometimes I was able to get an adjustment or make a return, but I often just took the loss. It usually meant that I just couldn't make as much off the item as I had anticipated. I was buying a lot.

I was also selling a lot. At the height of my involvement with ebay, I was doing about $3500 a month. Quite often, I would buy something on ebay and turn around and resell it on ebay for profit. knowing what you have, writing good descriptions, taking good photos, and having a good seller rating was the key to success. This was in the mid 90s and lasted past the turn of the century.

 

Ditto Brad-Folks'd buy,pop open the package,inspect and then List it again ASAP.

 

I think most places now get skimmed before we ever see the merch. Even the local senior center did that for a while. The food pantry thrift in the next town was pulling scarves off of the rack while I was standing there, to sell on their web page. (hand rolled hems y'see.)

It can still pay to know more than the dealers, and have your eye in. Last year I found a bunch of Manoil skaters and such in a ReStore for $3 for the whole box. Years back now, it was two 18k chains in the Costume pile in an antique store. I think the "expert" dealer thought they were fakes. Paid $50 for my lot of stuff, and flipped the chains for $2000 to a dealer. It's getting harder and harder. Forget looking at Hoodwill; they phone scan everything, and only put out "good" stuff by accident. Rare accident.

 

On the other hand, ebay gave access to some pretty incredible items at reasonable prices..........

those were good days.......

 

Ebay was so much fun in the early days, but like so much else, online selling changed the antique biz. Rare wasn't so rare, and what one might've called dross sold for a lot.

 

It also gives a market to people who wouldn't have one otherwise, and has helped sell things like Tupperware. People are buying it and 90s who-cares toys, paper goods, and other things dealers would never have thought of 30 years ago.

 

does anybody ever remember the treasure hunts ebay used to do YEARS ago.

think they only did it one christmas time if i remember correctly

they would list something random as the prize, and you would have to buy that item from clues they gave out

was SO much fun, but never won one

 

so i guess the item when found must have had all the ebay info on the actual auction page (to let you know you had found it), but the finding of that page was the challenge (generalized clues).....and like i said

 

Yes Charlie I remember that and actually won.

I don't remember the clues given or the name of the book right now that was the right answer. Something I partially read in college.

But winning 1K from ebay was so fun. They sent me a check or money order, and I cashed it at my post office.

I remember now. The Grapes of Wrath. that was the one.

 

Those were the days when eBay was actually a good time.

 

Blimey Pearls !...was it that much

did you know you had won straight away once you had found the book or only after you had won ?

 

Charlie, I had to click on buy it now or something like that and that immediately took me to the winning page. It said something like you are a winner or whatever. I filled out the info they required to get the money. I believe I was selling on ebay then.

I remember I had a terrible migraine that night and right after I filled out the info needed to get my money I took to my bed.

 

very cool, i remember the rules being quite vague so interesting to know how they did it

couldn't have been many winners with a nice wedge like that !