Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Selling Collectibles Antiques and Vintage Items on s
So.....your ready to jump into okay to start selling your antiques, vintage items and collectibles?Heres a little guide to help you on your way.First off, in my experience, this is one of THE hardest catagories to sell in. Reason: There are not 50 million people looking for your product. There are only a select few that are searching for only "certain items" which they collect. Most of these buyers are not searching all the time. They search when they want to, there is no big HOT RUSH to get the items, and most times they stumble upon the items they are looking for by accident.Now if your selling just a certain type of collectible, such as figurines, then hopefully you will achieve a "cult following" if you will. These buyers will gee back to you time and time again, PROVIDING you give excellent shipping, packaging, and customer gemunication. More times than not, these customers are more impressed with getting a super quality item at a fair price, with great customer service all the way through the transaction. Here is the really tough one. If, like me, you decide to begee a "Jack of All Trades" when it gees to your collectibles selling, then you DEFINITLY are going to have your work cut out for you. I sell everything from glassware to old toys and books. In doing this, I have found that there are 5 HUGE pieces of advice I have to offer:Research: RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH! In this type of setting, you MUST do your research on each and every item your selling. This can be extremly time consuming, so be prepared. Remember, your buyer knows EXACLTY what you are selling and what the going price should be based on the condition of the item. You MUST be at least 1/2 as knowledgeable about your item your selling as your buyer. If not, then either your item is not going to sell because your price is too high, or your buyer is going to get a STEAL on an item you had no clue about.Best times and days to sell: There are HUGE amounts of information available on sold items though MANY different market analysis programs and web sites on what time of day, or what day to sell your items. These services do cost money, usually a monthly subscription fee. FORGET THEM! Save your hard earned money. When your talking about IPods or Xbox, these items are really great tools. They will in fact show you alot of information. If your into selling these items I would actually regemend that you go ahead and get one of these subscriptions. It may actually help you. However, if your into the collectibles, dont bother. WHY? Well, its simple. This goes back to what I was saying about this being the toughest catagory to sell in. There are NO right times, no right times of day, and NO listing times that are set in stone or proven to help in these catagories. Well, I take that back. I would in fact regemend (if your selling collectibles) to have your listings run as long as you can, (7 days for low end items and 10 for high end) to attract the buyers your looking for. As I said, these people look for only certain items and they do so when they WANT to. This is NOT an "I NEED IT NOW" catagory to keep up with the neighbors.Open an okay store: Again, we do NOT have 50 million people searching for our "1 particular" item on a daily basis. They buy "when" they want to, and "what" they want to, usually only after viewing the item and the items description NUMEROUS times. I have had items sell from my store MONTHS after the original auction listing went up one or two times, then was just parked it in my store. With an okay store, you get the first month free which will give you time to get some auctions up, and be able to "park" the items which didnt sell at auction in your store. Once your store is established, make sure to place links to the store in ALL of your auctions as many times as you can. If you make 2 sales a month out of your $15.95 store, then your covering your costs right there. DESCRIPTION!: I empahsize this one, and CANNOT stress it enough. YOUR BUYERS NEED TO KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THE CONDITION OF YOUR ITEM IS! When your selling in these catagories, even the smallest scratches, dings, nicks, or imperfections, can DRASTICALLY affect the value of your items not to mention REALLY ticking off your buyer when they receive an item with a flaw that you failed to mention. Do NOT rush your descriptions, hold the item in your hand and look it over VERY carefully, then describe EXACTLY what you see. This will not only save you TONS of questions and emails to answer, but could very well just save you from that negative feedback.Keywords and Title: Dont EVER put works like "L@@K" or "WOW!" into your auction titles. Though they seem great, these words are actually taking up space of another word that a buyer in this catagory could actually be SEARCHING for. When you go into the okay search bar, do you search for "L@@K?" Well, neither do I and Im willing to just bet that 99.99% of the people searching on okay dont do that either (the other .01% is the left for the "Eccentric People"). Instead of L@@K you could put RARE if the item is a hard to find item. When making your titles, put words in there that YOU as a collector would SEARCH for, and USE ALL THE LETTERS ALLOWED if you possibly can. I hope that these tips have helped you on your way. I made Powerseller in 6 months following these rules. Will I keep it? Probably not. I am only selling part time on okay, however, Buyer satisfaction is my FULL TIME JOB!.
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